Our Humanity is not in our Strength
By Richard Leader
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Marc Lépine walked into the École Polytechnique
on December 6, 1989 and murdered 14 female students, severely injuring
nearly as many. He specifically blamed feminism for inspiring his
actions—believing that affirmative action policies had denied
him his rightful place in the world as a successful engineer—and
saw his violence against those women as a political act of protest.
However, he made no such response against the men of the Canadian
military who had rejected him previously, nor against the men of
the university who denied him his application: those men were protected
from his wrath through the misogyny that both they—male society
in general—and Lépine held in common. Two years later
the White Ribbon Campaign was formed, now a multinational organization
of men who work to raise awareness of male violence towards women.
They do this through the wearing of the eponymous white ribbons,
outreach events, and various media campaigns.
Their
latest effort has been the adoption of numerous posters presenting
a similar theme, the “my strength is not for hurting”
series (or simply the “Strength Campaign” for those
participating outside of Canada through Men Can Stop Rape.org, the
group that first created this line back in 2001), which all include
that same basic quotation as a headline. The cornerstone poster
depicts four men of various ethnicities with the headline followed
by a somewhat languid “so when guys disrespect women, we say
that’s not right.” Other versions display
those same four men (although some models appear in additional online-posters)
paired with women of ostensibly similar or matching ethnicities,
bearing the quotes:
So when I wasn’t sure how she felt, I asked*
So when she wanted me to STOP, I stopped
So when she said no, I said OK*
So when I wanted to and she didn’t, we didn’t
*at least two separate posters use this text
Of
the six separate heterosexual groupings I came across, only one
included a couple that most people would interpret as non-Hispanic
“Caucasians,” something that seems to indicate that
minority men are more likely to be perpetrators of violence—at
least when all the images are presented together at once on a website.
This is perhaps an unfortunate consequence, one would hope, of trying
to offer inclusive images so local workers can best reflect their
own communities, but an impression that the White Ribbon Campaign
should have been aware of creating given that Marc Lépine’s
victims were cause for national alarm when those of Robert Pickton,
a man who killed over sixty women in the Vancouver region, were
not afforded that same urgency as many of them were being exploited
in the sex industry. Both race and class have had a tremendous impact
on how men have historically responded to reports of their violence
against women and this history is something of which the White Ribbon
Campaign should well remain cognizant.
Perhaps more surprising is how the text is itself a far cry from
what many of the White Ribbon Campaign’s own pro-feminist
writers (such as Michael Kaufman) have long been saying about masculinity
and even other posters the organization has promoted in the past.
One of which was an art-nouveau sketch of a figure (fairly low rent
compared to the slick photography of the Strength Campaign) that
asked:
Have you ever noticed the WORST thing you can call a MAN is
a WOMAN?
What does that say about how we view women?
Work for gender equality, healthy relationships, and an end
to violence against women.
Yet it is now men’s purported strength that will protect
women; where women are both cast as inherently weak even as violence
is presented as a choice each man can make—and the possession
of that choice itself is indicative of his rightful status as a
man and not a woman. While the literature of the Strength Campaign’s
organizers (most of which is disseminated by the US based component
at Men Can Stop Rape.org or MCSR, which seems to have far less of
a bedrock in feminism and more in traditional urban social-services,
and thus their term for the campaign will be used below) indicates
that they have made this deliberate focus on ‘choice’
in order to prove that male violence is not inevitable. While a
sensible and optimistic enough conclusion on its own, this has come
at the cost of making it appear that male domination is certain:
as if male strength and female weakness is an unassailable fact.
That criticism itself certainly opens up unintended avenues (many
antifeminists enjoy arguing that women are the primary cause of
domestic violence and men its chief victims) that I wish to head
off, but the focus on choice is an especially dangerous one given
that it sets up a form of patriarchal apotheosis where every man
is allowed to consider himself the fate-maker of the women around
him. He can choose rightly or wrongly—just as the characters
of male fantasy life in scenarios out of Star Wars and
the like can stray to one side of “The Force” or another—but
the choice remains in his male hands and those who choose ‘correctly’
tend to believe themselves owed a reward for their benevolence.
Violence against women is not a choice and neither should its continued
existence also benefit those men who do not perpetrate it themselves,
as such an incentive certainly gives them a vested interest in its
perpetuation—so long as it stays outside of their own immediate
sphere of relations.
While the US contingent is the largest backer of the Strength Campaign,
having offering cutely named “Strength Training” workshops
and the like since early 2001, Chris Holz, co-chair of the White
Ribbon Campaign, had this to say about their adoption of the program
(although he fails to mention that it is over four years old and
not something they devised themselves) in their spring 2005 newsletter:
White Ribbon is launching an incredible campaign aimed at young
men. We’ve produced five posters that are on their way
to schools and workplaces across Canada. Each has a positive
message about the difference men can make in the lives of the
women they care about. Trial runs have showed these images have
a huge impact.
Such an impact is to be expected: men are being told exactly what
they want to hear, that they are indeed men, and being a man means
something. Conversely, their previous attempt at a poster that asked
why “the worst thing you can call a man is a woman”
shipped with a separate bit of paper that had to explain the more
recondite themes it was exploring, disclaiming its use of expressions
such as “bitch” and “sissy,” using nearly
250 words to connect denigration of ‘the feminine’ to
violence against women in case the poster itself was not perfectly
capable of connecting the dots. Chivalry, on the other hand, is
a subject with which most men are intimately familiar.
The efficacy of this “impact” must be called into question,
however, as appeals to men’s strength are nothing new in this
arena. Colleges and universities have long held “real men”
essay contests with slogans such as “real men don’t
rape” and the National Organization for Women (NOW) even sells
a “Real Men Don’t Use Violence” bumper sticker,
all setting up those men who act out violently as defective, rather
than normative, in their masculinity. This is an important reversal
to take note of given the fact that those behind these marketing
campaigns tend to believe—or are forced to believe by the
‘gender experts,’ rather than feminists, who are increasingly
acting as gatekeepers when it comes to such public discourse—in
a spectrum of masculinity. It is then posited that only certain
segments of this continuum are malignant as the overwhelming majority
of “masculinities” are themselves oppressed by a more
“dominant” or “hegemonic” masculinity, and
are thus positive or at least benign due to their subordination.
This vested interest in keeping masculinity around as a concrete
entity requires substantial sleight of hand: “real men”
campaigns are required to see the most violent sorts of masculinity
as aberrations, mistakes in an inherently noble archetype of protectors
and defenders, and yet the adherents to masculine personas who do
not fully partake in the bounties of patriarchy (often won through
sanctioned violence) are simultaneously also entitled to see themselves
as subordinated in an attempt to have it both ways. The professed
“dominant” masculinity becomes one of rhetorical convenience.

These supposed gender experts, rather than feminists (especially
radical feminists who are themselves frequently viewed as oppressors),
are often found on the periphery of such pro-feminist actions. The
last and most likely final issue of Brother, a magazine
put out by the National Organization of Men against Sexism (NOMAS),
in winter of 2001 included an advertisement for GenderPAC—a
group more interested in the oppression of “gender expression”
than more serious violations of human rights on account of sex—not
far from its praise of a billboard put up by a number of men in
Maine that offered “Strong Men Don’t Bully” as
its anti-domestic violence message. That missive itself ties into
an undercurrent of patriarchal mandates declaring that it is only
weak or powerless men who are forced to rely on violence to control
their women; a real man can exhort control much like a puppeteer
using his resources of capitalism and religion to achieve the same
effect far more gracefully.
While organizations such as GenderPAC (who believe that “gender
ought to be protected as a basic civil right”) tend to be
gender lovers rather than gender abolitionists, even though claims
to the contrary are often made, such encouragement of masculinity
is especially dangerous in the context of violence prevention. If
the legitimization of the so-called subordinated masculinities—especially
that of drag kings, “female-to-male” transsexuals, or
even that of lesbian sadomasochists who sometimes visit actual harm
to their female sexual partners under the rubric that it being consensual
trumps its factual status as domestic violence—results in
a wider range of masculinity being considered to be both disenfranchised
and positive, where the only “hegemonic” agents
are not just rich, white, and heterosexual but also high school
prom kings, football players, and senators, a wide swath of the
most “traditional” forms of masculinity are also excused
by this framing. Men Can Stop Rape refers to these allegedly beneficial
forms of masculinity as “counterstories” to the negative
“dominant story,” and concludes their list of objectives
for Strength Training with the futile hope that they can “Positively
re-vision masculinity in order to promote nonviolence and gender
equity.”
This presumption of gender and gender roles as healthy—provided
one can pick and choose a favorite among them—is gaining traction
especially amongst younger people. A 2005 “Visions in Feminism”
conference held at the University of Maryland not only had a strong
transgender component to its curriculum, but also a segment on masculinity
in punk rock music, proposing “because we believe in the do-it-ourselves
ethos, we will also look ahead to the creation of a positive, non-oppressive
masculinity for our community and beyond.” Though now mostly
defunct, a group hosted by Yahoo.com calling itself “malefeminists”
has the following as its mission statement:
We’re about the role feminism ought to play in MEN’S
lives & having the courage to RESPECT and ENCOURAGE women
in every way.
Most of all we’re about STRENGTH. The STRENGTH to appreciate
independent, outspoken women, the STRENGTH to challenge our
own pre-conceptions, the STRENGTH to live as mature, developed
MEN instead of the weak, angry stereotypes we see every day.
Rather than “refusing to be a man” as John Stoltenberg
wrote in decades past, new and improved forms of masculinity are
seen as the preferred path for the next generation, where men are
men and women are women—and if anyone objects to that then
they at least have the option of switching. Instead of divorcing
actions, ideas, or cultural props and their subsequent interpretation
from gender, things such as “nurturing masculinity”
and “aggressive femininity” are proposed, which ever
solidifies gender as a reality despite—perhaps—softening
the blow to those such categories are imposed upon. Manhood is allowed
to remain more desirable than personhood, something this Liberal
pursuit has very much in common with the Promise Keepers on the
Right. Consider the “praise” that Men Can Stop Rape
uses to advertise the efficacy of their efforts and how much of
it is wedded to idealized forms of masculinity:
Wow! What great work you are doing. When we invited you to
speak at our 2001 Education Director’s Retreat…we
had seen the Strength Campaign posters in the metro stops around
DC [and] were already impressed with your work…Too often
masculinity has been defined solely in terms of “power
over someone.” Your messages of redefining masculinity
to include nurturing and caring are critical tools and strategies
to changing our culture and to bringing, as our conference said,
“hope for humanity.”
—Glenn Northern, Program Manager, Planned Parenthood Federation
of America
We build the best defenses against assault, but attacking the
problem at its root is the only real solution. The most promising
group on the front lines is an organization called Men Can Stop
Rape. Their provocative ad campaign features photos of young,
soap-opera-quality chiseled hunks and gorgeous, full-lipped
women with messages like, “My strength is not for hurting,
so when I wanted to and she didn’t, we didn’t.”
If one-third of today’s college men find forcing sex on
a woman acceptable, maybe [Men Can Stop Rape] will set the new
trend of responsible masculinity. I, for one, find it exceedingly
sexy.
—Megan Dively, Student Columnist for The Penn,
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
This campaign is very refreshing. I particularly like the positive
direction of the ads as they show men who look “cool”
and like a part of the “in crowd” caring for others
in a non-wimpy way. Kudos to the design team.
—Shelley Bearman, Kansas Department of Health and Environment
I love that the posters give “real men” a chance
to be social change agents while still claiming their masculinity.
I love that your [poster] series sends this message to men of
all racial/ethnic groups. Also, I like that the poster series
doesn’t present itself as radical work—it seems
like “normal guy” stuff.
—Deirdre Rosenfeld, Director, Women’s Center, Minnesota
State University
It would be dishonest not to admit that a good measure of my objection
to the Strength Campaign is out of selfishness. Whether I am or
even feel like a “normal guy” is a pointless question
to entertain, but just as those men with the most patriarchal power
are paradoxically most of use—and thus doubly privileged—to
many segments of the feminist movement, it seems that pro-feminists
are themselves being asked to take the backseat to the men (and
their sexy masculinity) whom we might consider to be our own oppressors.
For my own part, I realize that such jealousy or anger is of limited
value: if one woman is saved from male violence due to the efforts
of the Strength Campaign, then it has indeed accomplished something.
However, if it is the men who are seen as the most threatening to
women who are most deserving of special dispensation—namely
the continual flattering of the same masculinity that serves as
the bedrock for women’s fear—feminists themselves have
good reason to find this work suspect: indeed, it is Men Can Stop
Rape and not a more forthright Men Can Stop Raping.
Identity is at the core of this issue. Like conservatives who are
currently in the midst of an internal struggle, overreacting to
how religion itself has become seen as effeminate in certain respects
(and thus they are attempting to infuse a fair amount of macho energy
back into services to win back those more important male souls),
Leftist anti-domestic violence efforts are also caught in a paradox.
At once bastions of patriarchal power such as athletics and fraternal
orders are considered hotbeds when it comes to the perpetration
of violence itself, and yet their power—both practical and
semiotic—is necessary to reach boys and men “where they
are,” lest they be uninterested in or even offended by the
anti-violence message. Men Can Stop Rape relied on professional
athletes and unrelenting sports messages for their single issue
of REP Magazine (which one might presume is not aging well
as they continue to push it nearly five years after it was developed)
and in a January 2004 resource sheet advises:
Meet men where they are. Clearly in doing this work
we want men to grow in their awareness of the issues and in
their willingness to act to prevent violence against women.
However, we can't let our vision of where we want them to go
obscure our sense of where they are, not only in terms of masculinity,
but in other ways as well:
1) Geographically 2) Culturally 3) Emotionally
It’s important to let men teach us about where they are
during workshops. If they can’t connect with the music
or movies or actors we use as examples, ask them to supply examples.
It’s important to avoid assuming that men are incapable
of experiencing a wide range of emotions and to check in with
them about what they’re feeling. And it’s important
to take into account that men experience masculinity in different
ways, and so it’s more valuable to think of and be sensitive
to different masculinities present at a workshop.
If “masculinity” itself has no definitive meaning,
encompassing anything that any individual—whether male, female,
or intersexed—claiming it for an identity wishes it to encompass
(even the most purportedly feminine of constructs), it seems odd
to privilege that meaningless by being wary of stepping on its toes.
No matter how meaningless, it would seem that the word still has
power and that such efforts are given over to adding to it (hence
the confluence of those gender experts), rather than dismantling
it at its core. All this talk of respect and sensitivity to “different
masculinities” is a smokescreen and “meeting men where
they are” is a euphemism, all to hide from the fact that those
working the programs are themselves afraid of men, absolutely terrified
of them—and for good reason. Female audiences can be pushed
around, prodded or protested (something gender experts excel at
doing) into obeisance. Men, as gender terrorists, need to be approached
from a position of weakness in order to be mollycoddled into being
receptive of any message at all. If violence stems from feelings
of entitlement, catering to such privilege seems to be a perilous
proposition in the long run, even if it allows a measure of safety
to anti-violence workers themselves in the short term as they attempt
to interact with other men.
While some might argue that such claims are hopelessly extravagant,
Ivory Tower, or out of touch with the realities of conducting outreach
programs (yet the equally academic arguments of gender experts who
often declare gender and even biological sex to be meaningless,
something of little comfort to females who are very much exploited
for their anatomy in the third world, are somehow seen as holding
more practical value than such assertions deserve: especially when
praxis is generally limited to preferred-pronoun protection for
people within Liberal subcultures in the West), what or who people
identify “as” or “with” is of far less importance
than what they actually do. Adam Jones, a largely antifeminist writer,
fancies himself an expert on “gendercide,” using a supposed
non-profit group, Gendercide Watch, as a continuous and rather transparent
advertisement for a volume he edited in 1994: Gendercide and
Genocide. He admits the term was first coined by a woman, Mary
Anne Warren, for feminist reasons in her 1985 Gendercide: The
Implications of Sex Selection, though Jones is adamant that
men are the predominant victims of such violence, not assigning
any significance to the fact that it is men themselves who are perpetrating
the violence against other men nor that the male winners and losers
in wars typically share the same patriarchal values. In fact, Jones
uses Gendercide Watch to present the Montreal Massacre (evidently
unaware of the ethnocentric considerations given more recent examples
such as the more than 300 murders of women in the region of Juarez,
Mexico) as one of the few cases where females have been the victims
of systematic violence, an anomaly in a process that he believes
usually privileges women, going so far as to unprofessionally link
to an article on his personal homepage (apparently first published
in 1992 by MERGE Journal, a periodical often still cited
by Men’s Rights activists who wish to prove females the more
violent sex, despite the inaccessibility of its actual text) entitled
“Why
I Won’t Wear a White Ribbon.”
His primary argument is that the White Ribbon Campaign is asking
men to feel kinship with perpetrators of violence (“Marc Lépine
is as remote from most men as Lizzie Borden is from most women”),
requiring men to feel some measure of “guilt” or responsibility
for acts that they themselves do not commit (“But I won’t
be wearing a white ribbon. For me, it would be a badge of shame—a
shame I don’t feel”). How men benefit from women living
in fear of male violence is either omitted or reversed to make men
the disadvantaged party. To this effect he cites a number of examples
of male on male murders and states, “If men don’t share
the fear, it doesn’t mean they don’t share the risk,”
as if that lack of fear—which affords men many economic, political,
and social opportunities over women—costs men something as
a gendered class, rather than as unlucky individuals.
While
pointing out men’s general ignorance of potential drawbacks
inherent to the patriarchal system can be useful and important work,
it is all too often pulled in line with patriarchal goals, as it
is in the efforts of Adam Jones. When he asks a spurious question
such as “What does the White Ribbon campaigner say to men
who have been brutalized by assailants who are also male? Are those
men responsible, in some way, for their own victimization?”
pro-feminists must have the audacity to answer “yes,”
in as much as we ourselves have contributed to a culture of violence
by benefiting from it through all the times our ‘numbers’
have not been called—and that much is not mutually exclusive
with helping such victims or even ourselves. What or who people
identify with or as is less important than what that identification
signifies politically. Jones’ refusal to admit any identification
on his part with men’s violence and the Strength Campaign’s
insistence on bulwarking masculinity are in some ways opposites
when it comes to identity formulation, but are indistinguishable
in the effect that they each achieve—as it is even in cases
where males choose to identify as “women,” both denying
responsibility for their privilege while exploiting for their own
benefit the safe spaces that feminists have dared to carve out.
The White Ribbon Campaign has much to be wary of when it comes
to the wholesale adoption of Men Can Stop Rape’s Strength
Campaign, in that they are two separate traditions that just happen
to share some of the same vocabulary. The words might be the same
(gender, violence, masculinity, etc.) but they are assembled differently
and for disparate reasons, even if their putative goals are the
same. Whereas the White Ribbon Campaign was created with specific
pro-feminist intentions, though at times considered problematic
even to feminists, Men Can Stop Rape is an artifact of an attempt
to salvage the damage done to minority male masculinity in the Washington
DC area due to racism; it should be remembered that the heightened
level of homophobia in minority communities is also a reflection
of this attempt at healing fractured masculinity, something that
activists should consider before stamping the Progressive seal of
approval on such measures. This process of adoption has also been
a dishonest one, where the Strength Campaign has been marketed to
their audiences as something wildly new—rather than borrowed
material that has been tried and tested—as if appeals to men’s
power, whether benevolent or grotesque, and other such acts of fealty
are an astonishing innovation. Masculinity will not be the end of
patriarchy: The master does not care what furniture one moves around,
nor even if you burn his house down, provided you are still willing
to call him “master.”
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