From The Times

November 26, 2009

Violence: let’s separate the men from the boys

Posters, T-shirts and education campaigns won’t do. Only robust child protection will break the cycle for boys – and girls

Camila Batmanghelidjh

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It is wonderful to hear that the Government is launching an “ambitious strategy aiming to bring an end to violence against women and girls”. The agencies that championed this should be congratulated. It is the result of the most effective campaign spearheaded by the End Violence Against Women Coalition, as well as years of work done by refuges working with vulnerable women and children.

We are told that the strategy will make available £13 million to support victims of sexual and domestic violence; there will be a national communications strategy to educate children and the general public to understand that violence against women is abhorrent. In addition, there will be helplines supporting those who are being stalked and those who have experienced sexual violence. Domestic violence protection orders or “go orders” will be put in place to allow victims to stay in their homes and make perpetrators leave so that long-term plans for protection can be made. The NHS will also be asked to examine its role in responding to female victims of violence.

As I was reading through the announcement, I had a sense of joy but also of regret. I am happy for women but sad for boys and men. They too experience so much violence, but no one seems to be rising up to protect them. There is a risk that the analysis of violence stays embedded in simplistic narratives.

The perpetrator is often thought to be the male and the victim the female. Undoubtedly, women suffer across the world at the hands of men who perceive themselves to be superior, and whose perverse sense of “biological elitism” gives them permission to harm, control and minimise women.

However, the violence afflicting Britain is much more complicated. It is important to understand that, broadly speaking, there are two types of people involved in violence; the more disturbed I call the initiators of violence; the less disturbed are the imitators, who rise in defence when they have been attacked themselves.

 

Ending violence against women is profoundly important. But, then, so is ending violence against children, against men, boys, girls - against people altogether.

Camila Batmanghelidjh offers some very helpful and thought-provoking observations about how violence grows and is perpetuated within families. Girls as well as boys can be violent.

In the service of truth, I would like to point out that violence is not just an issue for boys. Girls can also be extremely violent — they often harm younger children as well as each other. Shockingly large numbers of boys and girls are constantly harmed by drug dealers, child abusers and through gang violence.

Campaigners have done a great job representing the women victims of domestic violence, but we need a broader commitment to reduce violence, one that is not simply a cosmetic campaign based on posters, concerts and life-not-knife T-shirts.

We need more of this kind of clear-headed thinking about one of the most damaging and often hidden aspects of family life and the bringing up of children.

The Baha'i perspective is that we are all born with latent virtues and that we all have the potential to rise to great heights of nobility. But we can also fall to great depths of depravity. It takes courage and commitment by adults to work with children and young people - particularly those aged 11-15 - to break the cycles that perpetuate violent behaviour, to transform individual, family and neighbourhood culture away from contest and violence to mutuality and support.

Now let’s superimpose the distribution of actual messages guys have sent:

When it comes down to actually choosing targets, men choose the modelesque. [The most attractive women]
get nearly 5 times as many messages as a typical woman and 28 times as many messages as a woman at the low end of our curve. Site-wide, two-thirds of male messages go to the best-looking third of women. So basically, guys are fighting each other 2-for-1 for the absolute best-rated females, while plenty of potentially charming, even cute, girls go unwritten.

The medical term for this is male pattern madness.

The female equivalent of the above chart shows a different bias:

As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium.

Men are completely fair in evaluating women's looks but unfair in who they contact. Women are completely unfair in evaluating men's looks (80% of men are below average!) but much more fair in who they contact.

I think this means that I am really happy that I am married.

via boingboing

Boyhood studies—virtually unheard of a few years ago—has taken off, with a shelf full of books already published, more on the way, and a new journal devoted to the subject. Much of the focus so far has been on boys falling behind academically, paired with the notion that school is not conducive to the way boys learn. What motivates boys, the argument goes, is different from what motivates girls, and society should adjust accordingly.

Not everyone buys the boy talk.