Ending the Battle
Disclaimer: this is a post about sex and gender and that kind of stuff. It is perfectly understandable if you react to my thoughts by saying “Well, you WOULD say that, as you’re a man”. You are probably quite right to do so. So feel free to say that - to yourself, I stress, not to me - and dismiss all that I say out of hand. I endorse your decision.
There was a movie called The Battle of the Sexes, starring Steve Carell and Emma Stone. The movie was about a tennis match in 1973, also called “The Battle of the Sexes” for marketing purposes, in which the number one female tennis player in the world, aged 29, defeated a 55-year-old man who had retired 22 years earlier. Many people consider this to have been a spectacular blow for gender equality, proving once and for all that young women at the peak of physical fitness can sometimes defeat out-of-shape middle-aged men in meaningless publicity stunts.
It’s a good example of what the phrase “battle of the sexes” generally signifies: irrelevant nonsense dressed up as something meaningful. Of course, what the phrase also implies is that the sexes are, essentially, opposed to each other: that male and female are opposing teams.
People don’t play weird tennis matches to make this point anymore, but the idea that men and women are teams persists in a hell of a lot of discourse about matters of gender equality, and most of that discourse is as stupid as the tennis match.
Because it’s just not true. At all. Men are not a monolith. Women are not a monolith. Neither sex is a bloc of like-minded people who stick together, pursue the interests of their own kind as a matter of instinct, and are made up of individuals who can all be held responsible for the rights and wrongs of every other individual in their bloc.
There’s a lot that makes me angry about the majority of commentary on these issues, but I think almost all of it stems from that “battle of the sexes” mentality. How often do you see, for example, the assertion that the answer to male violence and abusive behaviour is for “good men” to pull the “bad men” into line? That the reason men behave abhorrently is, basically, that other men don’t do enough to stop them?
This assertion seems to be based on a belief that “good men” have unique influence over “bad men”, because they are all men, and not only does the responsibility lie with all men to monitor and correct the behaviour of all other men, but that they are the only ones who can do so. It should be easy, after all, when the men all meet up at their weekly Men Meeting, for the good men to order the bad men to stop being bad, which the bad men will then do, because they got the order from other men, and men automatically obey other men’s instructions.
Well, no. Besides the fact that violent and abusive men do not, as a rule, give a shit what other men might think is the right thing to do, I have no idea under what circumstances we are even supposed to have the opportunity to correct our fellows. I can honestly say that among all the men of my acquaintance, I have no knowledge of any of them ever being abusive towards women. I’m not saying no man I know is an abuser: I’m saying that if any of them are, I would have no idea of it. So these mythical “conversations” that men are supposed to be having with other men to make violence go away, I assume, would go one of two ways: either I head down to the pub with my mates and tell them that if any of them are secret wife-beaters, cut that shit out; or I head down to the pub, accost a group of strangers, and admonish them for any abuse they may have been thinking about doing.
What I’m saying is this: the crisis of male violence against women is not a matter of Men Versus Women; it’s a matter of People Who Want To Stop Violence Against Women versus People Who Don’t. I am fairly sure the first group is much bigger, and includes almost all humans, both male and female. The second group, I’ve no doubt, is overwhelmingly (though not exclusively) male, but it is neither a group that comprises all men, nor a group that all men have unique influence over.
Everyone, men and women, has a responsibility to live well, treat people right, and do their best, when given the chance, to make a positive difference in the lives of others. You can divide humanity into any number of tribes based on any number of criteria, but in a very real sense, we are all in this together and our interests as people are not quarantined according to sex.
OK, so that’s a pretty general touchy-feely principle, and I don’t want to suggest that, because I’m banging on about male violence, that it is only in that area that I think the principle applies. In all areas where we are still striving to achieve equality for women, men should be striving alongside women, because equality for women is something we should all want, because we are, indeed, all on the same team.
That said, the matter of male violence is one that should inflame us in particular, because it is so urgent and so horribly damaging. And yes, it should inflame men just as much as it does women - not because we men need to feel ashamed of being men due to other men’s crimes, but because we are all human beings and every man has just as much an interest in promoting the safety and happiness of women as he does in promoting the safety and happiness of men. And yes, that goes the other way too: though obviously activists will have their particular focus, in general women should be just as invested in men’s welfare as they are in women’s, because neither sex is more or less human than the other.
Male violence is also a subject which is treated in an especially terrible way by the media, in a number of ways. The mainstream media has only recently, for example, begun seriously looking at the widespread problem of domestic violence, and the fact that it is the greatest threat to women’s safety. In doing this, however, the media has not apologised or pulled back from their commitment to scaremongering over stranger danger: they’ve done a very successful job of convincing women that they are in mortal peril from random men every time they step outside. This is, of course, because it is very difficult to get a woman to fear her partner if she is not already in an abusive relationship, but it is very easy to get anyone to fear shadowy hypothetical strangers who may be lurking behind every corner.
And yet it’s men who have more to fear from other men when out in public - in fact it’s men who are murdered in far greater numbers than women in general. Anyone, of course, can be attacked while out in public, and there will always be violent criminals who can pose a threat at any time. But in most places, in this country, women are not at extreme risk when they go out - certainly statistically speaking less of a risk than men are. Women are at far greater risk at home, from men they know, but even the acknowledgment of this fact of late hasn’t stopped the narrative of “look out, there’s monsters everywhere you go” powering onwards.
The issue of male violence against other men, in fact, isn’t addressed anywhere near enough publicly. I don’t know whether this is because men aren’t considered a class the way women are - we count the number of murdered women because every victim is considered part of a greater whole of systemic violence, while we don’t pay attention to the number of murdered men because every victim is an isolated incident - or because the fact that men are mostly killed by other men means we kind of believe they brought it on themselves: because hey, if men don’t want to get murdered by other men, maybe they shouldn’t have been so violent. All men are responsible for all other men, remember? If a guy beats the shit out of you outside the pub, it’s pretty much your own fault for not being a good enough man to convince that guy to not be a bad man.
But beyond the basic cruelty of that mentality, I believe that addressing male violence against men is crucial to addressing male violence against women. Because from a young age, boys are taught that violence is a proper way for a man to solve problems. Now, this lesson generally comes parallel to the lesson that it is wrong to hit a girl. But when you’re told it’s wrong to hit some people, but not that it’s wrong to hit ANY people, the belief that it’s OK to respond to anger, frustration or offence by hitting someone takes root, and when the moment comes that you find yourself reacting out of pure instinct, you find yourself lashing out at whoever is in front of you, or whoever is making you feel bad.
In other words, as long as men are allowed to believe that violence against other men is not so bad, it’ll be almost impossible to stop them committing violence against women as well.
And yeah, that’s something that men everywhere need to play a part in promoting. And so do women everywhere. Because we are not women trying to protect other women, and men trying to improve other men. We are people trying to protect people, and people trying to improve people. We’re on the same side. The Battle of the Sexes doesn’t exist: the battle we should be fighting is against those who want to convince us to care only about our own side.