Send a thief to catch a thief: Men seen as the best soldiers in fight against domestic violence

Any man, sinner or saint, Alpha Male or not, has no place to hide during these days of activism against gender-based violence. The army of local and international organisations crusading against this atrocity have two annoying points of reference when referring to Kenya: one, that 45 per cent of young women have experienced gender-based violence at some point in their lives; and, two, that 90 per cent of those who inflicted that pain on them were men.

This, sadly, is true. And so, given that these figures were arrived at after scientific research, the female of the species is getting a bit uncomfortable with the male, and in the process developing rather colourful, if not coarse, adjectives and euphemisms to describe the ‘devils’ in their lives.

But today, even after all those years of honest and provocative discourse on violence against women — and, recently, men — all the groups championing an end to this violation of human rights still have a two-headed dragon staring back at them: the two genders are still at war, sometimes with fatal consequences; and the men are increasingly becoming apathetic to the plight of the victims because they have been collectively demonised for too long. When you push a man to the wall, they seem to be telling the crusaders, he will fight back, one way or the other.

And statistics are there to prove that the fight is on: reports from the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret show that there has been a sharp increase in the number of gender-based violence reports recorded at the Centre for Assault Recovery, from 250 in 2007 to over 900 in 2010.

WORRYING STATISTICS

The United Nations Women Empowerment and Gender Equality — normally referred to as UN-Women — is the most vocal body fighting for the elimination of gender-based violence in the region, and its post-mortem analysis of the figures from Eldoret has them most worried.

In collaboration with other United Nations bodies, UN-Women conducted a multi-country study between 2010 and 2013 to build a nuanced understanding on why men, the traditional protectors, have turned out to be the majority tormentors, and to show how the findings from this study could be used to stop this gross violation of human rights.

Gender-based violence, the researchers found out, is a complex issue involving a myriad of factors deeply engaged in culture, economy, law, and, most intractably, our cultural constructions of masculinities.

While the study talked of other forms of ‘masculinities’, its major focus was the much embraced hegemonic masculinity, which conceptually explains how and why men maintain dominant social roles over women and other gender identities perceived as “feminine” in any given society.

Since time immemorial, men have been seen as perpetrators or potential perpetrators of violence against women, but relatively little effort, or even none at all, has been done to understand the causes and how that understanding can be leveraged as a primary prevention strategy.

Ms Pamela Tuiyot, UN-Women’s programme specialist on matters GBV, has taken note of that, and has a bit of advice for those leading the campaign: “We need to stop pointing fingers at men and involve them in this war,” she says. “Let them carry this message to the people because women are already converted yet not much fruit has been yielded.”

Dr Juliet Macharia, a communication and gender expert at Moi University, concurs, saying the vice of gender-based violence cannot be eradicated at the exclusion of any of the sexes.

“This is not a man-or-woman problem,” says Dr Macharia. “Conflict can only be solved if both parties are brought to the discussion table, and in the case of husband and wife, both should be involved in the process. Anything lesser than that takes the adversarial victim-versus-attacker perspective.”

Men, therefore, says Dr Macharia, need to be addressed as part of the solution, and not just the problem. It is time men are invited and challenged to critically reflect on the existence of patriarchy, male power and privilege, and to analyse the costs of those privileges not only to women and girls, but also to fellow men and boys.

Dr Macharia’s prescription for success seems to be modelled along, among others, the One Million Fathers initiative, which has been in existence since mid-2012 and seeks to consolidate all the associations and personalities against gender-based violence and collect one million signatures from men who will speak against the vice.

Some of those who have appended their signatures to the cause include Chief justice Willy Mutunga and former vice president Kalonzo Musyoka.

This approach of putting men at the helm of the non-violence campaign, communication experts and those who have worked with men wager, will work.

Albert Wambua, director of the recovery centre at Nairobi Women’s Hospital, has seen it all, but now he is an optimistic man because, he says, reported cases of abuse have gone down in areas where the campaign has been rolled out, including Mombasa.

So maybe we have been barking up the wrong tree all this time. Maybe the answer to all the gender-based violence was staring at us all the time.

Maybe all we needed to do was tap into the aspects of Kenyan culture and men’s attitudes that support gender equality and healthy relationships, and voila!

VILLIANS

Dr David Katiambo, a communications expert and lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya, supports the view, arguing that “the society receives messages about a cause better when it comes from a man than from a woman”.

“Men who have always been seen as the villains will listen when a fellow man asks them to stop violence,” says Dr Kitiambo. “They are the predominant perpetrators of violence and their decision-making roles and power in the economic, political and social spheres necessitates their commitment to eradicating violence against women. When a man approaches a fellow man, it will look like he is apologising on behalf of the victims and challenging the men that there is more to strength than being abusive.”

His views are supported by Pastor Tony Gobanga, who runs a men’s education programme at his Stones to Rubies Ministries, and who says the violence perpetrated by men has emanated from a culture that has taught the boy — and men in general — to embrace negative masculinity. This, he explains, upholds toughness, stoicism and self-reliance, often leading to emotionally dwarfed men who harm everyone around them.

Considerable success of this approach has been reported in the Asia-Pacific region, home to more than half of the world’s population, and where also the highest number gender-related violations of human rights occur. These countries include Pakistan and Lebanon, two war-ravaged nations that provide a chaotic incubator in which abuse thrives.

Efforts by religious groups such as White Ribbon in Pakistan and Canada, and Abaad in Lebanon, use places of worship in their campaigns to show that no religion endorses violence against women. In Rwanda and neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, a non-profit group, Promundo, is creating spaces where boys and men can overcome the violence they have experienced.

In Rio de Janeiro, a city notorious for battery against women, Promundo uses football leagues to engage men of all ages in discussions about ending violence against women. Players discuss relationships and ways to peacefully resolve couples’ conflicts, as well as how to be non-violent, involved fathers.

In all the countries where men have been integrated into the change campaigns, participants’ reports of using physical violence against female partners fell drastically, in some cases from 27 per cent to seven per cent in less than one year.

Clinical studies to profile the psychological and sociological backgrounds of perpetrators of violence have revealed interesting facts about the attackers. First, men from homes where a father used violence are more than twice as likely to use violence against their own partners than men who did not witness such violence growing up.

This finding is corroborated by the Kenya Police Annual Crime Report of 2010, which pointed that men who had been convicted for wife battery or rape had experienced violence in their developmental stages.

SOCIALISATION

Second, as British psychologist Cordelia Fine writes in Delusions of Gender, abusive young men and boys are socialised to believe that the ideal man, the real man, is tough, unemotional, powerful, dominant, uncompromising and in control.

This concept of masculinity, Pastor Gobanga warns, is not only limiting and dated, but also dangerous. “A man needs emotional logic, the ability to balance his natural black-and-white thinking with emotions. No woman wants to be around an overly emotional man,” Pastor Gobanga says. “A man who is this violent is as a result of the way boys have been raised to be ‘tough men’ and the impossible demands of masculinity.”

Absentee fathers are also to blame, writes Cordelia, as they leave the boy to be raised and pampered too much by the mother, and hence grow up into a man possessed by a deep sense of entitlement and a need to practise negative masculinity.

“Although it may not always be possible, boys should be raised in an environment where they are exposed to the protective-provider role of the father as well as the nurturing gentleness of the mother,” Pastor Gobanga advises.

But Dr Macharia, the gender and communication expert at Moi University, disagrees, saying that, even though single-parenthood may contribute to social ills, it is wrong to put it atop the pedestal of all that is wrong with modern parenting.

“Socialisation,” she explains, “is the product of a lot of variables, including the society, church and the media. So these things must be observed in concert if we are to get to the root of the problem. Blaming single parents for the ills of their children deliberately ignores all the other variables that may contribute to that.”

Contrary to what some evolutionary scholars assert, Dr Macharia continues, men are not biologically programmed to be abusive, particularly towards women.

Their violence does not operate in a vacuum, so they learn a substantial number of actions, values and beliefs from growing up in — and being part of — the cultural context they live in. Their values and beliefs are expressions of broader social forces, which in Kenya are too often patriarchal in nature.

WORK WITHIN MASCULINITY

For men like award-winning artiste Eko Dydda, the reality for many men is that it is hard for them to examine their own role in a patriarchal system, where almost everything they learn about masculinity is how to work within it, how to survive it, and how to make it work to their advantage, never how to critically examine it and challenge it.

With this realisation, people like Pastor Gobanga want to retain such traditionally male yet positive traits as bravery and protectiveness while creating a new definition that also includes the full range of human emotions.

“We should teach men how we can remain positively assertive while removing negative aggression, it’s all about keeping what’s positive about traditional masculinity while jettisoning what’s bad,” he says.

And, according to Pamela of UN-Women, boys need to be introduced into a new definition of masculinity which would be would be “flexible rather than dichotomous; with no separate traits into rigidly defined categories of what is male and what is not”.

Using opinion leaders that men look up to — such as politicians and showbiz bigwigs — to catch boys before they are fully socialised into being destructively macho would be advantageous to this fight, says Pamela. This is what Dr Katiambo calls “a wise social advertising” move that will not only appeal to emotions, but logic as well. If musician Juliani or athlete David Rudisha were to speak against violence, Dr Katiambo says, “it will be like Brad Pitt asking young boys to do something”.

For behavioural change to happen, experts concentrate on three themes: intrapersonal awareness, interpersonal skill development and service to others.

Boys going through this programme, therefore, will be taught how to establish what it means to be a man, how to handle difficult situations and why they should help others.

Their inspirations, Dr Katiambo advises, may draw from the experiences of males who have gone before them, including Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ himself, and local figures such as the president.

The stories of these great men, he says, may be used to spark discussions about how men can use their power appropriately and effectively.

Do you agree? Should men lead in fight against gender violence? Send your comments to [email protected]