Last week was also the 10th anniversary of White Ribbon Day in Australia, which begins a period of activism to stop violence against women, culminating on December 10th with Human Rights Day.
It’s disturbing to see this anniversary greeted not with encouraging reports of widespread activism and positive change, but with ongoing reports of male violence toward women. In a society where men are statistically the main perpetrators of violence against all genders, we need to accept some hard truths. The problem is whenever we try to accept anything, a raft of excuses and counter attacks arrive: violence is caused by monsters not men, the statistics are wrong, men suffer violence as well.
We, as men, seem to struggle to accept the truth about ourselves.
A strange dichotomy exists. On one hand we deplore violence. We distance ourselves from violent actions by demonising the perpetrator…
But then on the other hand we condone violence, we accept it as part of our behaviour. It becomes an inevitability.
The Other Sociologist 