Holy shit I just worked out my problem with the ‘we need to educate men not blame women’ thing (besides the obvious ‘they know it’s wrong and they do it anyway, because the evil is the point’):
It is just another form of hyper individualism.
Ok, in some quarters we are slowly moving past the ‘what was she wearing, why didn’t she leave’ point, and towards the ‘he shouldn’t have done that and it’s not her fault’ point, and that’s wonderful, but by focusing exclusively on the behaviour of the individual, whether victim or perpetrator, you are very neatly removing the rest of us from the equation, and (most likely) doing so out of laziness.
Yes, we need to talk about men who commit violent acts, and seek to prevent them, but that doesn’t just involve telling men not to do them - it involves changing the rest of society to protect women and children from the men who don’t want to change. It’s a collective effort.
Rather than saying ‘men need to do better’ and then patting ourselves on the back and calling it a day, we need to start enacting large scale change. Most abuse takes place in the home? Ok, let’s overhaul our approach to domestic life, the nuclear family, and social isolation. Some abuse takes place in the streets? Ok, let’s redesign our streets to make them safer, let’s create community protection groups with only women, hell let’s move towards a 24 hour society with no empty streets. Would any of those interventions work? I don’t know, but if we really care about protecting women and children from male violence, anything has got to be worth a try.
Move past individualism. Move towards true community. Step up.
Or in other words, the question that has been going round my head for days, and which I would like to direct at everyone with some form of power or influence:
What are YOU doing to prevent men killing women and children?
