Although our county professes to be worried sick about violence and crime in our city's streets, few people have come up with a practical solution for the problem.
After WWII the question was often asked, "How responsible was the rest of the world for the murder of six million Jews?"
Today I would ask, "How responsible are noncriminal men for the horrendous amounts of male violence and other crimes against women?"
It must be an awful moment when you hear women complain about "men" in general and you realize, even just a little bit, that you are what they're talking about. Much of men's reactive defensiveness seems to be a hedge against their feelings of shame. Suddenly it's not those "bad" men out there who are the problem--it's all men......but this is not so.
Whether running antiviolence campaigns, doing profeminist consciousness-raising, or developing equal partnerships with women, many men are finding ways to end violence and promote equality in their lives and in the world.
Feminism is the struggle of more than one half of the population for equal rights. It's also about rethinking our identities, our relationships, the very meaning of our lives.
For men, feminism is not only about what they can't do--like commit violence, harassment, or rape--or shouldn't do, like leave childcare and housework to their women. It's also about what they cando, what they should do, and even what I know they want to do--be good husbands, better fathers, partners, or friends.
Feminism involves an empirical observation, "That women are not equal, and the moral postition declares they should be." Privilege is hard to give up. Simply being aware of women's oppression and feeling guilty about it, denying it, or beating drums and reconnecting with nature, isn't the same as challenging the system.
This struggle needs men with courage, men who can face an oppressive, powerful system and the wrath of other men. To become a part of the solution involves a moral choice about whether to use gender privilege to further male advantage or to join women in taking responsibility for how our social system works. Gender oppression and violence has given women no option but to survive and work for change. It demands nothing less from men.
Unfortunately, I'm of the opinion that men are not connected to each other-- not in the ways that women are. For men to feel their deep and deadening disconnection with their own and other people's lives is potentially so painful and frightening, that most men simply don't want to know about it.
This is a wake-up call for all men to realize what their gender is perpetrating on society. Until men begin to share seriously in the emotional, intellectual, and practical aspects of struggling with our legacy, not only will change be seriously limited, but men and women will continue to feel at odds with one another--because in fact they will be at odds.
Half the taxpayers are women--men commit the most crime. Many women pay for male crime with their lives, but all women taxpayers pay for male crime with their tax dollars. Men are expensive. Ninety-four percent of all prisoners are male. Whether it is robbery, burglary, white-collar crime, crime against children, crime against women, drug dealing, drunk driving, murder, crime in government, or gang violence; Crime and Violence is a masculine statement.
If we could convince men that crime is a male statement for which they should pay more tax dollars, there's a possibility they might "clean up their act." Millions of men beat their wives, creating the need for battered women's shelters. The fastest growing crime, rape, terrifies half the population of this country. Hate crimes are encouraged by male organizations, such as the skinheads and the KKK. Yet where is the outrage at all this male crime?
Profeminist men must make feminism comprehensible to other men, not as a loss of power and control, but as a challenge to the false sense of entitlement they have to that power in the first place. Profeminism is about supporting both women's equality and other men's efforts to live more ethically consistent and more emotionally healthy lives.
"This cause is not altogether and exclusively woman's cause." wrote Frederick Douglass in 1848. "It is a cause of brotherhood as well as sisterhood, and both must rise and fall together."
Discuss this article with a friend and become proactive. We need all the help we can get.
Anita Henri
County Women's Commission
County Domestic Violence Commission
Opinions expressed in this article are solely Ms. Henri's.