New Approach to Domestic Violence

On my way to work this morning, I heard a radio piece about a new domestic violence program in Brooklyn and thought it worth sharing with the Feministing Community.  Transcript can be found here.

Men who have been convicted of domestic violence may be ordered to attend a "Domestic Violence Accountability Program" for 6 months as an alternative to serving jail time.  The program looks at domestic violence as the outgrowth of extreme sexism (although I would call it misogyny) and tries to tackle the abusers’ attitudes towards and ideas about women.  So, the sessions are run by both a woman and a man, so the abusers see a woman in an authority position.  The men are challenged when they refer to women as girls, or when they try to defend cat-calling as a compliment, among other things.

What I found most interesting about the program is it’s insistence on reframing the issue as a men’s issue, because so often the emphasis is layed on the victims rather than the perpetrators.  For example, the program director is seeking to start the nonprofit "A Call to Men," and he talks about reframing domestic violence statistics to say "the leading cause of injury to women is men’s violence," rather than "domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women".

Another key tactic is comparing sexism to racism, since most of the men are black or Latino.  For urban men who have constantly experienced racism, this seems to be an effective way to give them a sense of what women go through – obviously sexism and racism are different and have different nuances that shouldn’t be ignored, but the basic feeling of being harassed or injured by a member of a privileged group is probably comparable (although as a white woman, I admit I’ve never experienced racism and I can’t speak to that experience).

Unfortunately, the program staffers assume that the men won’t actually stop being abusive and so they warn women to expect that their partners will be the same as before.  I’m unsure, then, what the goals are – if the men’s attitudes won’t change sufficiently to stop abusing women, is this having any effect?  Moreover, by letting them take this class as an alternative to jailtime, are we putting more women at risk?  Then again, jail doesn’t mean the end of abuse, and it may in fact breed more abusive behaviors thanks to the prison environment.  Maybe this class won’t stamp out the abusive behaviors, but it might lead the men to change some of their opinions regarding women, or raise their sons to be a bit more respectful of women.  I don’t honestly know – I haven’t been in an abusive situation and I can’t speak to what would work here.  But taking a fresh approach to this problem, seeing it as a men’s issue that needs to be confronted at the root of men’s attitudes towards women, may be part of the answer.