I am rereading Lundy Bancroft’s ground-breaking book “Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men”. Bancroft – a counsellor who specialises in working with abusive men – uses his knowledge regarding how abusers think, to help women recognise when they are being controlled or devalued, and to find ways to get free of an abusive relationship.
(For me, recognising control and being devalued in a relationship is crucial. Because I didn’t recognise these factors until the last stages of living with an abusive partner, I became conditioned to live my life through him and for him to where I was purely an extension of him, and afraid of the unknown outside of the family. I became so brain-washed that I didn’t know I was being abused. I felt that I was at fault for his behaviour, so tried to fix the abuse and the abuser).
I would recommend this book for any male who is concerned they may be engaging in patterns of control over their partner and/or violent and abusive behaviours.
Arman Abrahimzadeh, one of the panel on the ABC’s Q&A on July 7, 2022, talked about how he didn’t recognise his own controlling behaviours in personal relationships until his father murdered his mother. These tragic circumstances are too often the only impetus for men replicating an abuser in the family (namely a father, uncle, or brother) to cease abusing others close to them.
Lundy’s book could assist the male reader to recognise their own concerning behaviours towards family members and so prompt that person to seek support in changing their mind set of abusing. For women, reading this book will help them to understand why their partner abuses and build understanding that they are not responsible for his abuse, nor are they the one to “fix” his abuse.
In her 2021 article Prevention and Justice for Sexual Violence, University of Melbourne criminologist Professor Bianca Fileborn says, “A critical question is what can be done to counter the sexual violence we see in society, which is perpetrated predominately against women and the LGBTIQA+ communities.
“We can’t just rely on law reform, which has for decades failed to deliver substantive change. I’m much more interested in, firstly, what can we do around preventing sexual violence and in changing those norms, attitudes and structural factors that drive sexual violence in the first place.
“Secondly, how might we develop alternative avenues for achieving a sense of justice, because it’s pretty clear that the mainstream justice system just isn’t up to task?” Prof Fileborn writes.
One alternative is “transformative” justice, which she says is “aimed at actually challenging and undoing those structural factors that underpin sexual violence”.
“It could involve working with a perpetrator to challenge and change their understandings of masculinity that led to them perpetrating in the first place. It can also involve supporting perpetrators who might be marginalised in other ways, for example in relation to mental health or, say, a lack of employment.
“Finally, it’s also focused on working with survivors to help them to heal and recover and to ensure that they’re safe in the community at all times.”
Both Bancroft and Fileborn focus on preventative measures as much as ways to reduce family abuse after it has occurred. Primary prevention is now being considered the most effective means to eliminating such abuse. Victims of abuse, social services and the judicial system have tried to find ways to reduce violence against women and children with little overall success; the incidence of abuse is rising if anything. Strategies used in the past need to be re-evaluated with prevention (stopping abuse at the start).
As well, involving not just women to find the solutions but men too, is a key to tackling this family violence scourge.
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Michael Flood is an internationally recognised researcher of men, masculinities and violence prevention, based at the Queensland University of Technology. Dr Flood has had a life-long involvement in activism and education in support of feminism and social justice. In his 2022 book Engaging Men and Boys in Violence Prevention, part of the book series Global Masculinities, the author discusses the following: across the globe, violence prevention initiatives focused on men and boys are proliferating rapidly. Engaging Men and Boys in Violence Prevention highlights effective and innovative strategies for the primary prevention of domestic violence, sexual violence, and other forms of harassment and abuse. The book combines research on gender, masculinities, and violence with case studies from a wide-ranging use of international scholarship on men, masculinities, violence, and violence prevention to provide a rich and evidence-based discussion.
The book provides practical and accessible guidance on how to engage men and boys in violence prevention. This information is vital to our seeing changes in society that benefit all of us, victims, and non-victims alike.
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A new report by Anne Summers has been released, based on previously unpublished 2016 data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that was customised for Summers’ work in a Paul Ramsay Foundation fellowship. It reflects on disturbing statistics around the dilemmas single mothers face when deciding to leave or stay in an abusive relationship. Of the 311,000 single mothers included in the study, 185,700 (60 per cent) had had a physically violent partner and 220,200 (71 per cent) had been in an emotionally abusive relationship. Three-quarters said the violence was the main reason they left the relationship.
A further 275,000 women were still living with partners who had been or still were abusive.
Almost 90,000 said they had never left but wanted to, with half saying they either didn’t have the money to do so or had nowhere to go.
After compiling this report, Summers concluded that, since abuse against women and children is not seeing a reduction in incidents, and strategies in place to deal with the increased violence against intimate partners and rising number of mothers fleeing violent partners are not working quickly enough, society needs to be focusing on primary intervention; stopping the abuse before it starts as I earlier mentioned. It is time, she says, to start asking the men what can be done to prevent males abusing. Look to male role models to educate other males in using strategies of communication that are collaborative and do not involve means of violence and abuse to achieve outcomes.
Research into why it is predominantly men that abuse, what forms abuse takes and effective means to deter men from abusing that are beneficent and productive rather than punitive, is vital and necessary.
What causes abuse? The primary causes are gender inequality and the need for power and control over the other in an intimate relationship. An abusive partner will try to excuse his/her behaviour, saying it has been influenced by working too hard, stress, over tiredness, alcohol abuse and so on. However, while these factors can exacerbate family abuse, they are not the core reasons for abuse occurring.
The takeaway from my narrative is this: abusers choose to abuse and it’s never your fault for being abused.
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I hope you have learned something from this article. After you’ve left here, please look out for each other; your friends, family, and yourself. Be aware that one in five are abused and one in four may be an abuser so you probably know someone who fits those two groups. Rather than being a passive bystander, if you witness abuse and can safely do so, either intervene by calling out the abusive behaviour – saying to the abuser that their behaviour is inappropriate and possibly injurious to the victim, the aggressor themselves, or the public – and needs to stop. This is where men can be involved in reducing violence against women and children in our society, by not ignoring abusive behaviour in public whether it be a joke by one of their group that denigrates females or active put downs of a female by their partner in the public environment. In residential settings, if neighbours hear abuse nearby, call the police. Don’t ignore the signals. You may save a life.
I would like to end with this: it is better to avoid another relationship until old patterns established by abusive partners have been resolved. Give yourself space to heal and to think of yourself as a person deserving of love and the right to be safe, before starting a new relationship. Being single is fine too.
If you need support or more information on this issue, please call the Respect National help line on 1800 737 732, or Lifeline on 131 114.
Deborah Thomson moved to Tasmania with her daughter in 2010, and now lives with her partner of nine years and a parrot. She moved to escape domestic violence and, inspired by her new partner, wrote her first book, Whose Life Is It Anyway? Recognising and Surviving Domestic Violence, to help others recognise abuse (and in particular coercive control), in the home, and to increase their motivation to leave earlier. After publishing her first book, she became a trained advocate through Engender Equality, a non-government Tasmanian organisation working with people and communities impacted by family violence. Deborah Thomson advocates for survivors of family violence, speaking at domestic violence events across Tasmania, through media channels and podcasts. She recently completed a second book, detailing lived experience with domestic violence by her then husband, spanning 17 years from 1985 to 2003. This book is now used in Tasmania as an information resource for family violence counsellors and students on practicals.