Toward an Understanding of Male Violence Against Women

Toward an Understanding of Male Violence Against Women, at the Violence Against Women section at Feminist.com, says several reasons have been given for any particular man's abuse of any particular woman:

• his individual psychological problems
• sexual frustration
• unbearable life pressures
• some innate urge toward aggression

Well, we men have experienced psychological problems, sexual frustration, life pressures, and aggressive urges for a long, long time. Why are we being so violent toward women today?

One reason that comes to mind is that we men have somehow been given the idea that the above list of problems is now "unbearable," when it was all in a day's work in prior generations.

Psychological problems? We had no time for them before the baby boomers came along. (I'm a boomer.) In an earlier age, it was only "hysterical" women who had all these problems.

Sexual frustration? We boomers were the first generation to come to believe that it was wrong to frustrate the sex drive. Earlier generations were told by their religious leaders that channeling the sex drive into marriage, and marriage alone, was exactly the right thing to do.

Life pressures? What about our parents and grandparents who went through the Great Depression? Their mere survival was, in today's terms, an "unbearable life pressure." Yet they bore it.

Innate male aggression? It's only been going on for thousands, if not millions, of years.

Why, today, are we suddenly so heavily into beating our wives and girlfriends — abusing them, belittling them, cheating on them but taking such umbrage if we think they're cheating on us?

The VAW "Understanding Male Violence" page continues, "Men have been taught to relate to the world in terms of dominance and control, and they have been taught that violence is an acceptable method of maintaining control, resolving conflicts, and expressing anger."

I agree: dominance-and-control as a male strategy of resolving conflicts and expressing anger is much bigger today than when I was a youth in the 1950s and '60s. Why? One thought: when I was in my early 20s, around 1970, the "women's liberation" movement took hold. For about a decade during the 1970s, it looked as if it would quash male dominance-and-control strategies in the name of gender equality. Men would take over traditionally feminine roles, at least to some extent, while women would take up careers outside the home. The term "househusband" was born. It was no longer cool to be macho.

But that's all changed now. Now, not only are the coolest men macho, so are the coolest women. Where have we gone wrong?

Women's liberation — feminism — did not bring about a nonsexist millennium after all, one in which nobody was macho any more. That's not news in this post-feminist age ... but I think it is important in any attempt to understand today's male violence against women.

The "Understanding Male Violence" page goes on:

When a boss sexually harasses an employee, he exerts his power to restrict her freedom to work and improve her position. When a battering husband uses beatings to confine his wife to the home and to prevent her from seeing friends and family or from pursuing outside work, he exerts dominance and control. When men rape women, they act out of a wish to dominate or punish.

Yes, that's what rape, sexual harassment, and wife beating are, but why are they so common today?

I think it goes back to a deep-seated male view of "his" woman as a thing he is supposed to own, to possess, to rule. Particularly her sexuality and her reproductive capacities are — supposedly, to him — his to do with as he pleases. If she threatens his ownership "rights" in any way — flirts (or maybe sleeps) with another guy, is "uppity" at work (where she doesn't "belong" anyway) — she's just "asking" to be disciplined.

This deep-seated male possessiveness of women and their sexual/reproductive capacities is, to me, a better explanation of male violence against women today than all the psychological distress, life pressures, and so forth that men are subjected to. Yes, they are contributing factors, but the real reason he hits or harms her is sexual possessiveness.

What's the antidote? How about going back to the feminist program of the 1970s and fixing whatever kept it from coming to full fruition in the first place?