Transcriber: Rachael Williams Reviewer: Denise RQ
I'm Danny Blay.
I've worked in the prevention of violence against women and family violence
for about 17 years now,
and the topic of the TED talks today, "When dark meets light",
really resonated with me in terms of my work.
My work being preventing family violence,
the notion of the family being at the center of those relationships
and the work that we do.
There are lots of different descriptions of men.
We know that men are overwhelmingly responsible for family violence,
but what do we know about the men we're working with or men in general?
Well, when we ask men or you look up definitions of masculinity,
there are lots of phrases that come to mind
that we readily try and attribute and hang our hat on
in terms of how do we define you and any average bloke in our community.
Men will talk about being the provider
and the protector of their family and friends.
About being loyal.
The notion of mateship is very strong in our community, whatever it means.
Men will talk about being brave. Men will talk about being practical.
We'll talk about them being heroic in terms of protecting their family,
about being out there and taking risks to ensure that people are safe,
or even take risks for their own enjoyment.
Men will talk about being efficient, about being able to do things,
a can-do approach about being practical, being resourceful,
about not having to rely on other people,
about being a positive male role model for others, particularly young people,
something, again, that's very much in the language that we use
when we're talking about families and relationships.
There's a whole lot of other descriptors about men and masculinity,
we don't necessarily always hear about.
In working in men's behaviour change programs
we'll ask the men, "Tell us about the man you are."
Men will generally be quite honest about some of the things that they are,
they see in themselves that they're not particularly proud of.
Men will sometimes talk about being irresponsible
or a bit too competitive, about being argumentative,
about taken entrenched positions, digging a hole for themselves
and not knowing how to get out and not wanting to,
not being a great negotiator around some of those things.
About feeling bullet-proof, about being infallible,
about being quite garrulous, talkative, talking over people,
not wanting to listen to others' arguments,
or being quite inconsiderate, being restless,
not being able to be at peace by themselves,
needing to be doing stuff all the time.
About sometimes being irritable, sometimes being quite angry,
sometimes being a bit childish
when it comes to those interactions around irritability and anger
and sometimes using violence.
These are some things that men tell us in men's behavior change programs.
Yet the list before is the man they want to be.
They're two quite different lists, two different groups of characteristics.
We ask the men, "How do you want to achieve being the man you want to be
rather than the way in which you see yourself now?"
What is it about the men in our community? What do we know about them?
We know men are overwhelmingly responsible for violence against women in families.
What else do we know about the men in our community that we don't really see?
For example, alleged Australian offenders last year, people who broke the law,
there were over 177,000 men, yet there was only about 45,000 women.
In prisons last year, in Australia,
there were more than 31,000 men locked up compared to about 2,500 women.
Driving on the roads: men are 4-5 times more likely to die on roads than women.
If you're riding a motorcycle in Australia and you unfortunately die,
you're almost exclusively going to be male.
Twice as many boys are suspended or expelled from school than girls.
98% of sex offenders in this country and elsewhere are male.
Family violence: we know that men are overwhelmingly responsible for it,
much more than women's use of violence themselves.
We need to explore that stuff and find out what's proving this gender difference.
The violence against women is endemic in our country and endemic everywhere,
but there are lots of myths and excuses around what that looks like.
It's important that we try and get some perspective around it.
What does family violence and violence against women look like
in Victoria, Australia?
Last week, Victoria Police released their annual crime stats.
There was over 68,000 reports of family violence to Victoria Police,
almost exclusively men using violence in the home.
There were more than 130,000 women in Australia last year
who experienced violence from a male partner or former partner.
Violence against women is the leading contributor
to illness and preventable death for women under the age of 45
compared to many well known preventable risk factors
like smoking, obesity, and high blood pressure.
Cost us 14.7 billion dollars
to our economy in Australia a couple of years ago.
It's obviously much higher than that, even now.
One in three women will experience violence
from a male partner or former partner sometime in their life.
One in three.
I remember hearing that for the first time when I was first learning about this.
I immediately reflected on the one in three women in my life;
one in three women in my family, the girls I went to school with,
at university, socially, down the street, in the supermarket, at the footie,
wherever it might be.
It's a frightening number of people.
The biggest one, the pointy end, the end-game for a lot of this behavior:
in Australia around one woman a week dies
at the hands of their male partner or former partner.
Every week.
This year it's nudging two a week.
Why is it happening? What is going on with these blokes?
Why is there such a huge gender divide
in terms of violence in intimate relationships and families?
There's lots of myths and excuses around this stuff.
It's a lot of stuff that I think we try and keep hold of and we grab onto
because it makes us feel a bit better.
As I mentioned before, the newspaper is full of stories
about these monsters who've killed women recently and over the past few years.
It's much easier for us to say, "It's those people over there.
Those guys are nuts. They're monsters. They're psychopaths.
It's got nothing to do with me."
A lot of those myths are helpful for us to contextualize it,
but really, it's not particularly helpful,
because the data and the research tells us something quite different.
Men don't use violence towards women because they get drunk or use drugs.
It's not about their culture. It's not because they get stressed.
It's not in their biology, it's not in their genes.
It's not because they all had an unhappy childhood
or there wasn't a positive male role model in their lives at the time.
A lot of people believe that some women deserve it
because they push the buttons, they started it.
Some people say that some women even enjoy it.
After all, if she didn't enjoy it, if she wasn't happy about it,
why doesn't she just leave?
We know it's extremely complicated, and difficult, and risky
for women to leave violent relationships.
We talk about anger. Men just get angry. Some guys just lose the plot.
They have a brain snap, and they do something stupid,
and yes, they regret it afterwards, and they feel very remorseful for it,
but they can't help it, it's just the way they're constructed.
It's just the way they're built. They're hard-wired to do it.
The notion of anger in this context is really interesting.
What we know about anger is that it's an emotion,
like hundreds of other emotions that we human beings experience.
All of us experience anger at some time or another.
But nobody ever got hurt from somebody feeling an emotion.
People get hurt from experiencing a behavior from somebody else.
Lots and lots of people get angry. Most people don't use violence.
Lot's of men use violence towards their partners not out of anger.
What we do know is violence is a behavior
and it's the behavior that we need to be focused on
in terms of prevention.
We can talk all we like about how angry some men might be getting,
but we know that in certain circumstances, they're not going to use violence.
We know this by talking to the guys. They'll say, "She just pushed my buttons.
She nags me. I lost the plot. I did something really stupid."
I'll ask them, "Who else have you used violence towards?"
"What do you mean?"
"When's the last time you hit your boss?"
"Hit my boss?"
"Yeah. When's the last time you punched out your boss?"
"I can't do that."
"Why not?"
"I'll get fired, and probably get arrested and charged, and might get convicted."
"That's really interesting.
There's consequences to your violence if you were to hit your boss,
or the police officer, or a magistrate, or the big burly bouncer out the front.
What's the consequence to your violence in the home?
What's the consequence to your violence towards your female partner?"
And, as I mentioned before,
because this stuff happens behind closed doors,
more often than not, there isn't a consequence.
We're getting much better at reporting, and at police responses,
but still most of it remains hidden.
Men, by their own reports, can be very good
at using violence in particular circumstances
in a particular way that makes it undetectable.
Men will talk about using physical violence in a certain way
that women won't be showing bruises and cuts if they're out on the street.
There is a choice there.
That can be quite confronting for a lot of the guys that we work with.
They've come to this point saying, "I don't have a choice in this.
This is being imposed on me. It's just the way I'm built."
But they're able to readily identify ways and circumstances
when they don't use violence,
when they choose to not use violence at all.
When we start presenting a different way of thinking
that violence is a choice, and behaviour is a choice,
it can be quite motivating to change ways.
But only if we do a lot more prevention work
and a lot more exploratory work
about finding out what the real motivations are
for using violence towards women
We talk to men about taking responsibility for all their behavior.
They can try and blame all those myths and excuses as much as they like.
Ultimately, we are all responsible for everything that we do.
Nobody's making us do anything that we don't want to do.
Why are men using violence?
The research is really quite clear now, it's really quite useful
in terms of understanding the motivations for men using violence towards women.
The greatest predictor of men's violence towards women isn't those myths or excuses
but it's attitudes, beliefs, and values
about women, gender, relationships,
about family, about entitlement.
Entitlement based on me being a bloke.
I'm entitled to certain things, therefore, I'm going to achieve them.
That might not be a completely conscious kind of conversation,
but the research is really clear that if some of those boxes are ticked
in terms of what men believe women's role is and what men's roles are,
then that will certainly inform men's use of violence down the track.
The biggest motivator around those values, attitudes, and beliefs
is around male privilege.
Introducing that conversation to men who use violence,
or many other people in the community, can be quite confronting.
There can be a lot of resistance.
"Privilege? What are you talking about? I haven't got any privilege.
I go to work and put food on the table just like everybody else."
"What kind of privilege do you think I'm talking about?"
The research is really clear about male privilege
in terms of the very genuine differences between the genders
in everyday life circumstances.
If I was to apply for a job
and I was competing against women who were equally qualified and experienced
statistically, I'm more likely to get the job.
When I go to work, I have to invest far less effort and money
into my attire and my grooming regime than women do.
I'll be far less judged by those characteristics.
If I get married, no-one's going to ask whether I'm going to change my name.
No-one's going to ask me about my work-life balance if I have children.
If I choose to not have children, no-one's going to question my masculinity.
If I do have children,
no-one's going to question their surname if it's not mine.
If I do have children, chances are that my female partner is going to do
the most repetitive, boring, and dirty chores compared to me.
If I do have children,
chances are that the boys that I have will receive more attention.
They will be encourage to be more active, and sometimes aggressive, than the girls.
At school, as a child, boys will receive more attention.
If I muck up my driving or my finances,
it's not going to be attributed to my gender
nor is it going to be queried what time of the month it is.
If I have sex with lots of women, I'm not going to be labelled
anything like what women might be in a similar situation.
If I am at work, it is far less likely I'm going to be sexually harassed.
There are lots of very specific activities that we engage in every single day,
where men are privileged due to our circumstances,
and socialization, and what we've experienced.
The greatest male privilege
is that I have the privilege
of being completely unaware of my male privilege.
I don't even have to think about it.
I can just scoot along through life doing normal things that normal blokes do
and not even have to worry about it.
It's something that women engage with and consider all the time.
Women are exposed to the differences
in which men can sometimes be privileged more than women.
The way that men will, quite often, speak over women in a meeting or conversation
unlike women will do, and not even think about it. not be aware of it.
What do we do about that?
It's vital, as men, that we have the conversation with ourselves
about how I'm privileged compared to girls and the women in my life.
How are the other boys and men in my life privileged compared to girls and women?
We need to really refuse to engage in the myth that boys will be boys.
There is no evidence that suggests that there is enormous differences
between the genders based on biology, or chemistry, or genetics.
This is all socialized stuff. This is what we learn from day one.
We need to develop our empathy.
Working in men's behavior change programs, we'll often ask the question of the men,
"How did she feel when you did or said that?"
He'll say, "I don't know. You'll have to ask her."
"If you did know, what would she say?"
He does know, because that's the reason why he's used that behavior.
He knows precisely what the impact is because he's got away with it.
We need to do that thing that we sometimes colloquially call
"walk a mile in her shoes".
What's her experience when you're doing that stuff,
saying those things, using that behavior, making those decisions for her,
not letting her make her own decisions, or have her own rights
in the same way that you do?
We need to ask how we are using our own male privilege,
our social privilege above others,
and if we need to concede some stuff
to ensure that the girls and the women in our lives
have an equitable chance of living their lives
at the same levels as we do.
We need to challenge that myth about boys will be boys.
Maybe then, we can stop family violence, we can stop men's violence towards women,
we can bring some light into the dark.
Cheers.
(Applause)