Domestic Violence is Gendered Violence

"If you are interested in working to end gender-based violence," the woman said to the room of students seeking their masters in criminal justice, "come see me."

Photo by Ben Pollard

Wow! I thought, I am interested in working to end gender-based violence. According to several studies available on the American Bar Association's webpage, the perpetrators of domestic violence and rape are overwhelmingly male. The teacher at the criminal justice school called these acts gender-based because she was looking at the gender of the victims. I am worried that 85-95% of the perpetrators are men.

Gender's Victimization

It isn't just that traditional gender has something to do with the victimization of women. Traditional masculinity causes the victimization of women. The old-school feminist movement of the 60's spoke a lot about the bribes, the carrots of masculinity, because women wanted a piece of that action. However, little has been said about the punishments, the sticks of masculinity.

This unattributed painting is a great metaphor for how a boy may manage to be feminine but not feminized; wield violence.

In an earlier blog, I described the cycle of masculanization, but I can summarize it here. A properly masculanized man must not be feminized. On the playground, when a boy refuses to fight back, he is girl-like, and he will often be subject to a beating, or at very least a tongue lashing/ostracizing. Masculanization is a relational activity. In order to be a "man/boy," all you have to do is point to something that is not you and say that's a "woman/girl." According to traditional masculinity, anything that is victimized is feminine, so if you victimize somebody, you are proving your masculinization. Too often, the thing feminized is another male who must then prove his masculinity. It is a desperate and impossible cycle that can only lead to more and more violence. This violence is often directed at our loved ones or even strangers in a movie theater.

That it is men who usually commit the mass stranger homicides at places like an Aurora movie theater, Virginia Tech, and Columbine is not simply a product of masculinity's influence on them. These are scared and violent people who are acting out on mental sickness. However, women are just as often unhealthy as men. Women should be committing crimes of violence just as often as men do, but they don't. It is the process of masculanization that brings unhealthy men to hurt others (even as it is the process of feminization that brings unhealthy women to hurt themselves in the cases of cutters and anorexia). So, it is indeed true that domestic violence, rape, and stalking are not just gender based, they are gender caused.

Ending the Cycle of Gender

When the professor at the school of criminal justice spoke about working to end gender based violence, she spoke about important and meaningful work. She was talking about stopping the perpetrators in their tracks by designing effective enforcement mechanisms that are sadly lacking. She was talking about making sure that women know there are places for them to turn so that they do not have to become one of the majority of women murdered by their intimate partner who had already left him. All of this is crucial work, but she was probably not talking about liberating men from masculanization so that gender caused crime will never happen again.

It may be too late for the perpetrators of gender caused crime. It may be that locking them up and restraining them is all that can be done. We cannot shame a masculanized man into feeling okay with being feminized. That only leads to more desperation in his need to masculanize himself by finding a victim. Similarly, punishing these men can't work. According to a study at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania 41% of domestic violence perpetrators reassault within 18 months of their first assault. We will never convince masculinzation to be okay with being feminized. Feminization is the thing that masculinzed men seek most to avoid. But for future generations, we can stop the gender cycle in its tracks.

In order to end gender-caused violence, we must truly value traditionally feminine skills. We must no longer denigrate housekeeping and childcare as something that liberated women seek to avoid. We must rather convince men that they are rewarding important and meaningful skills to be cultivated. In order to do that, the feminist movement needs to step up and start talking about liberating men. Because the appropriate response for a man who is recognized for being feminized is not, "who cares because women are equal," but "I appreciate you noticed because men are free."

Masculine Weenieism

Why Weenies Think They're Manly, and Why it Matters

Weenie- 1: frankfurter, 2: penis, 3: nerd.

Wurst Wigs by Tup Wanders

Weenies solve problems with bluster and violence. Weenies believe that dressing up like a super hero is what makes a super hero. The modern American "tough guy" is a weenie, and I mourn true toughness.

How can I mourn toughness? I am a critic of masculinity. My blog is dedicated to the notion that masculinity is a rouse that compels men to alienate themselves in lives of violence while doing terrible things to the people they care for.

But true toughness has nothing to do with masculinity. Traditional masculinity is obsessed with looking tough at the expense of actually being tough.

True Toughness is a Virtue

Men and women who float below the condescending notice of traditional historians have spent millennia being tough. Whenever a traditional history book mentions the brave troops who died on the battlefield, it neglects the farmers who worked doggedly to make the food to feed the troops. Blacksmiths slaved in the heat to make weapons and cooking pots. Women cared for children everyday despite the weather or their own health. They cooked. They gardened and raised chickens. Trench diggers dug the roads. Stone cutters made the buildings. Millions of people showed the prosaic toughness requisite for a society to persevere.

Navy SEAL Training.
Photo by U.S. Navy.

One of feminism's great successes was in allowing women to adopt toughness without being outcasts. It brought women out of their gilded cage and down to the ground where they could have greater impact on the world. Before the movement, women who adapted to circumstance were lambasted as masculine, butch, or simply bitches. But adapting to circumstance is what makes people powerful.

Walking the line between adapting and stubbornly refusing to adapt is what makes people moral and yet consistent; strong and yet kind. It is the definition of toughness, and our modern view of "toughness" is strikingly lacking in it.

S.U.V.'s= Weenie-mobiles

Dodge Ram. Photo by Rojo.

What could be more "tough" than buying a huge tank-like S.U.V? Some people buy them because they want to be up above traffic. Some men want them to haul around stuff. Some men want to be able to go up dirt roads in the countryside. Contractors and farmers have legitimate needs for trucks. If your truck is completely filled and completely emptied two times a week or more, I have no gripe with you owning a truck. 

But if your truck goes through the car wash two times a week or more, you are a weenie. If you get to a steep muddy dirt road, and you opt to stay inside your car instead of hungrily hiking it, you are a weenie. If you drive a truck everyday of the year so that you can haul your fifth wheel to go camping, instead of camping in a tent and making do, you are a weenie. If you drive a truck because it's good in the snow, you are a weenie.

Doing without is what toughness is all about. Consuming and wasting less because we know that persisting through difficulty makes us stronger and happier is what toughness is all about. S.U.V.'s  and useless pickup trucks are about waste, decadence and squishiness. But somehow they have become aligned with modern masculine toughness, along with myriad other images of our weenie-tastic masculine culture.

Racing Bicycles

Hipsters and spandex-wearing lawyers on their day off have both taken to riding bicycles meant for racing. These bikes may be light, but they are not meant to be ridden on the roads.

A fixed-gear carbon-fiber track bike. Great on the track.
Weenie gear on the street. Photo by Escuela Virtual de Deportes

Carbon fiber, while strong, is brittle and shatters without any indication that it has developed a flaw, which is why bike racers always have two backup bikes in the cars behind them. Cleats are ridiculous, uncomfortable, and offer no benefit unless you train in them 30 hours a week or more. 

Fixed gear bicycles offer powerful, lightweight, friction-free drive trains, but they are not meant to stop or swerve safely, nor account for tired legs, or steep hills. Racing bikes are not adaptable. They cannot haul around a grocery bag safely, much less a child or two. Owning one and riding it on the weekend is fun. But riding one to work because it is lighter while carrying a backpack or messenger bag that weighs fifteen pounds is silly.

How are fixie-riding hipsters, and spandex-wearing lawyers weenies? Because both of these bikes are about looking durable, and adaptable, when in fact both of the bikes are far less durable and adaptable then your run-of-the-mill huffy from Walmart. Wearing the gear is about looking like a racer, looking tough, not being tough. If your goal is to look tough, and you sacrifice true toughness to get that look, you are as weenie-fabulous as Mitt Romney (p.s. Mitt Romney is a weenie).

Masculinity Makes Weenies of Men

Worksman Bikes make bikes that
are actually tough

Today's masculinity, like so much else in modern life, is about buying power. Masculinity has become a runway show of phallic power tools, cushy interiors, and ad-space-covered sporting goods. For eighty years, advertisers have been telling us that our gender can be bought, and we gratefully believe them.

Unfortunately, masculinity cannot be bought, and the more we buy to make us feel masculine, the more we realize that we are deficient. Masculinity is a myth, a chimera. It is unattainable and deeply unsatisfying. Soldiers and sports-figures who come close to it find themselves in lives of alienation and violence. But even they spend their lives attempting to prove their masculinity, because it can be lost in the blink of an eye. It is an infinite and driving motivator, which is why it is so useful to advertisers (and morality police).

Rivendell is another company that makes actually tough bikes.

The only way out is to reject the notion that masculinity can be attained at all. The only way to feel comfortable about your own toughness is to be tough, not buy tough. Take the parts of masculinity that are valuable, like true toughness, reject the parts that are damaging, like violence and looking tough, and be your own person. Be your own man. Be tough. Be free.