Please Stop Saying ‘People’ When You Really Mean ‘Men’
Humanity doesn’t have a violence problem, we have a male violence problem
Allow me to preface this by assuring you, once again, that I don’t hate men. I love my husband, son, brothers, old friends. Please try to read this without assuming bias. I offer sources and evidence. And if, at the end, you make a good faith argument, I will reply in good faith to that too. And if you troll, you’ll get the response you deserve.
Humanity doesn’t have a violence problem, we have a male violence problem. It sounds confronting put in such clear terms, but denying reality won’t change reality, whereas accepting and discussing it might.
Do The Numbers
Some women are violent, but that can’t alter the fact that the majority of violence, whether against women or men, is perpetrated by men.
For those of you living in an alternate universe, I’ve included links at the bottom citing the numbers. Men are, as a sex, much more violent than women, across the board. Throughout all cultures and ethnicities, men of all colours, creeds, and religions are much more violent than women — both to each other and to women.
Men, as a sex, are the main instigators of war, commit at least 90% of all violent crime, and behave as though raping women in wartime is an aperitif.
If you’re not a violent man, you’re not included in those numbers. I am not claiming all men are violent, certainly not my husband, brothers, son and my male friends.
But I need you to know — to really know and accept — that this is the reality, for all of us.
How Did This Happen?
Nobody knows.
You can posit whatever theories you like, and they are plentiful. All we truly know is that somewhere humanity took a wrong turn. Some men, at some point, decided that the simplest way to get what they wanted was to use violence to get it. And they did that because they could.
Somewhere, at some time, physically stronger men decided that it was okay to harm others if their immediate whims were satisfied. Somewhere, somewhen, some men started suppressing, or not acting upon the knowledge that women are human too. Other men quickly learned they too had to be violent to have their whims satisfied.
Violence, is amongst other things, a learned response. And men have learned the lesson well. Better to be brutal than to be brutalised.
Somewhere along the line, we began teaching women that defending themselves could lead to being beaten raped and murdered. But women not defending themselves leads to them being beaten raped and murdered too, and women being taught to be submissive just makes it easier for violent men to harm women.
But when you live in a society shaped by the most violent men (and we do) that sort of clear thinking logic is difficult to apply.
“It’s tempting to assume male dominance is the natural state of human society. It isn’t.”
We can apply all the theories we want. But the truth is, it doesn’t really matter why we have ended up living in such a dangerous, violent world run by dangerous, violent men. The reality is, we unfortunately do.
Sugar and spice and all things nice-men just can’t help it
If we all woke up tomorrow and women were just as physically strong as men, many of your cherished myths about what is “natural” female behaviour, such as compliance and cooperation and toleration of the intolerable, would be dispersed fast. I know I’ve never remotely resembled a submissive or placid doll happy to let you stomp on her rights.
But that’s irrelevant because we won’t wake up in that world tomorrow.
However, what is relevant is that violent men are, for the most part, choosing to be violent men.
How many times have you seen the man who just snapped and couldn’t help himself from assaulting or murdering a woman at the local supermarket, church, school run, PTA meeting-or even the local pub?
You haven’t. And if you claim to have seen this, you’re in the tiny minority. Even in a place where alcohol is regularly consumed, it is almost unheard of for men to “just snap.”
They wait until the woman is unprotected and choose to assault her away from protective eyes.
On almost every occasion violence occurs, men are choosing that violence. It is a choice. It starts as a choice to use violent language and moves into violent behaviour which ends, a lot more often than it should, in the rape and death of women by men.
Make the link
There is a correlation between anti women jokes, speech, and behaviours, and more violent behaviours to women. Turning a blind eye to ugly slurs and insults can mean you are turning a blind eye to potentially dangerous men.
But we all, intuitively, already understand that misogynistic behaviours are linked to more dangerous behaviours.
I’m not suggesting we police humour, that doesn’t work and free speech is desperately important. I’m saying that if we lived in a society where male violence wasn’t normalised, misogynistic humour would not be so readily accepted. I’m saying, if you read or hear hatred, mockery and dismissal of women for simply existing as human — no matter WHAT the excuse — look for a contact offence.
Why It Matters
Language shapes attitudes. Attitudes shape behaviour. We police ourselves.
Our ape brains accept what the society of other apes accepts as normality. The majority of the time we naked apes will go along with the majority consensus. Blame evolution. Only when we actually make the effort to remove a behaviour from society do we see real change.
Remember when women weren’t allowed the human right of voting? Remember when people smoked everywhere, planes trains and automobiles? Remember the hardened believers telling everyone they couldn’t change anything, it was just the way it was and always would be?
And yet change things we did.
The vast majority of behaviours complied with by societal agreement are not policed by any outside source. It would be an unmanageable system. Without being aware of it consciously, we agree to social terms when approved by the majority, and for the most part, as social apes do, we go along to get along.
And male violence is taught to children, normalised, accepted and winked at, at every level of society. From kindy to the grave we make excuses for and turn away from male violence. The why of that isn’t really the issue. The issue is that we can change this.
And one easy way to start that change is to remove the bubble wrap around speaking about male violence. Stop worrying about hurting men’s feelings.Do try to engage with those men you think you can reach.
And at least consider pushing back and changing things for the better.
When reporting the news, commenting on an article, writing a post on Facebook, or out in the real world: indeed anywhere at all, if discussing male violence and male crimes, say so.
Say men kill women. Say men kill men. Say men are responsible for at least 90% of all violent crime (some stats indicate even higher numbers). Say men start wars. Say men murder one another in horrific amounts. Say the word men if you are talking about men. (Please, no whatabouting, I am happy to read your post about female violence. Feel free to link it in the comments).
Violence didn’t kill her. A man killed her. Please don’t use the word people if you mean men.
If you imagine we already do this, I’m afraid you’d be wrong.
The passive voice is the default when discussing men’s violence against women and children, Elizabeth Sheehy, professor at the University of Ottawa’s faculty of law, told me in an interview earlier this year for a Maclean’s investigation into Canada’s “epidemic” of femicide, defined as “the killing of one or more females by one or more males because they are female.” We need to use the active voice, says Sheehy, a noted authority on legal responses to men’s violence against women and children: “We say ‘things have happened to a woman’; we’re not willing to say ‘He did this to her.’”
Please really examine the words people use and the headlines when discussing male violence. Read things critically. Then name the problem. Let “people” see the extent of the problem the world has with male violence.
A First Step
The first step to forcing those men responsible for most of the violence in the world is to actually speak about their violence as being unacceptable in a loud clear voice. If we make the effort, as “people” to state the facts about male violence clearly, if we call out all the violent men for their violent behaviour instead of hiding behind the word people, we drag the problem into the light.
We can only do that by naming the problem. The problem is not human violence. The problem is male violence.
Once in the light, the second step should be speaking up loudly, often and regularly (when safe to do so) on how it is simply unacceptable that these men are so violent. Never victim-blaming, or pontificating. Just point and say No. State that violent men are disgusting men, that if you are choosing to be a violent man then we — all the decent men and women — want you to stop it.
If you imagine that already happens, you’d be wrong about that too.
Shame As A Societal Tool
Shame violent men into being less violent. Shame is a well-studied tool, and it works.
There will always be a small core of resistant psychopaths, those with cognitive issues, and anti-social deviants. But if you bother to make a behaviour unacceptable (as we have in no way done with male violence) over a relatively short time all but the most hardened recalcitrants will, at worst, minimise their behaviour, and at best, stop it.
“Through the lens of evolutionary biology, shame evolved to encourage adherence to beneficial social norms. This is backed up by the fact that shame is more prevalent in collectivist societies where people spend little to no time alone than it is in individualistic societies where people live more isolated lives.”
Not only don’t we shame violent men, but we also glorify them. We glorify them in the media, in our speech, in our leaders. And then we hide male violence behind the word “people.”
The third step. Who knows what that might look like?
If we can all, collectively, agree to steps one and two, we can collectively find a third step to move forward.
He murdered her.
He raped her.
A much harsher condemnation than she was raped, or she was murdered.
And the harsh reality is that it’s mostly men doing the raping and murdering, of both sexes, but overwhelmingly of women.
So if you’ve ever had a woman you cared about please name the problem.
You can do one thing differently.
Please stop saying people when you mean men. Because the truth, for some, could be a matter of life and death.
Published 2020 https://www.thewhorticulturalist.com — revised & updated here.
Alison Tennent, Queensland Australia, 2021 Copyright Alison Tennent 2020. Scottish by birth, upbringing and bloodline, Australian by citizenship ceremony since 2002. If you’re reading this anywhere except Medium, this work may have been plagiarized.
Sources:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23831740-400-the-origins-of-sexism-how-men-came-to-rule-12000-years-ago/ https://makethelink.org.au/make-the-link/whymakethelink/ https://fs.blog/2020/01/positive-side-of-shame/ https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women https://www.ourwatch.org.au/quick-facts/ https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2018001/article/54978/02-eng.htm https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/domestic-abuse-is-a-gendered-crime/ https://ncadv.org/statistics https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4628110/ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018868913615 https://xyonline.net/content/sexist-humour-and-rape-jokes-five-key-points https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/this-is-why-sexist-jokes-are-dangerous-20190310-p5131w.html https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/sexist-humor-and-rape-proclivity-moderating-role-joke-teller-gender-and-severity-sexual-assault https://encompass.eku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=etd https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fmg23831740- https://readmedium.com/whenyou-claim-cancel-culture-doesnt-exist-781c851de5ef https://medium.com/writers-blokke/calling-all-women-write https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2011/ling001/Frazer-Miller-2009.pdf https://debuk.wordpress.com/tag/passive-voice/ https://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist156/Bohner_2001.pdf https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/6359 https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/lets-finally-call-violence-against-women-what-it-really-is/ https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2019/01/28/the-language-of-sexual-violence-doreen-arcus
Originally published at https://www.thewhorticulturalist.com on October 13, 2020.
