The debate over men’s versus women’s domestic violence is increasingly prominent, both in academic scholarship and in popular culture. We have always known that both men and women are capable of using violence, and that both men and women are the victims of violence. At the same time, domestic violence has long been understood to be a problem largely of violence by men, against women and children. However, a very different understanding of domestic violence is now increasingly visible. Here, domestic or family violence is seen to be gender-equal or gender-neutral. In this paper, I assess this claim. I will demonstrate that there is no ‘gender symmetry’ in domestic violence, and there are important differences between men’s and women’s typical patterns of victimisation and perpetration.
Violence
(Trigger warning: for abusive, woman-hating language and threats of violence)
When I write about feminism and men’s violence against women, I often receive supportive comments. While some of the praise is earned, much of it gives me a lot of credit for doing very little.
White Ribbon is calling for papers for the inaugural White Ribbon International Conference to be held on 13-15 May 2013 in Sydney, Australia.
If you are interested in submitting a paper, please view the attached document and reply to events@whiteribbon.org.au by 5 February 2013.
Kind regards,
The White Ribbon Team
White Ribbon Australia is holding an international conference featuring key researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and activists from both national and international settings. The three-day international conference is titled: Global To Local: Preventing Men's Violence Against Women. Research, policy and practice in one space.
The conference is designed to engage a variety of stakeholders, including governments, international organisations, and community agencies in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and further afield.
There’s been an important shift in several different communities and scenes lately. In the kink world, in atheism circles, among feminist folks and their allies, in pagan communities, I’ve been seeing more people than ever before talking about the effects of sexual coercion, assault, harassment, unwanted attention, and other related topics. Of course, none of this is particularly new and women have been talking about it for years. But what’s different is the nature of the dialogue.
The Centre for Research on Men and Masculinities (CROMM) is hosting a two-day conference titled Engaging Men in Building Gender Equality. The conference focuses on and seeks to advance efforts to address men’s roles in building gender equality.
This report is a comprehensive examination of the roles bystanders can play in preventing sexual harassment in the workplace. The report draws on and synthesises insights from diverse bodies of scholarship and practice regarding violence prevention, whistle blowing, employee voice, workplace justice and workplace bullying. While there are significant organizational, legal and socio-political challenges in developing bystander approaches to sexual harassment, the paper argues that they also offer substantial promise.
In South Africa, men are increasingly rejecting widespread stereotypes of manhood by stepping forward to challenge gender roles that compromise their well-being and the health of their partners and their families. This case study documents the Sonke Gender Justice Network’s Fatherhood project, which was designed to reduce HIV transmission and address related problems, such as gender-based violence, women’s overwhelming burden of care, and the preponderance of children in need of care and support.
See http://www.icrw.org/publications/allowing-men-care for the report regarding this work.
Calls for greater male participation are now a commonplace in work on sexual and reproductive health and rights. The need to engage men in efforts to prevent sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and promote sexual health and gender equality is well accepted. But we know less about the optimal forms of such engagement, particularly when it comes to moving beyond a focus on changing individual men’s attitudes and behaviours.