By Chuck Derry For many years, I facilitated courtmandated groups for men who batter. In the early 1980s we were concentrating on healthy relationship skills building, emotional identification and selfcontrol, and anger management, among other related issues. Then battered women in Duluth, Minnesota, began gathering to discuss the impact of the violence on their lives.… Continue Reading Abusive Men Describe the Benefits of Violence
Strange article, I don’t get the point of it. Like, of course it is about power and control. You don’t need to give me a list of cruel things and abuse.
And it is also utterly strange to read how baffled the author is by their responses. Obviously the abuse by these men is working in this narrow frame of context. There is plenty of information out there on this already, nothing new here.
But apparently the author also completely missed out on what the benefits would be for men to step back from violence and control. Yeah sure, in the context of emotionally limited and estranged men, maybe being control-seeking, manipulative and sadistic is the best possibility to get short-term gratification. But do these people really live a happy life? I would argue that everyone, including these abusive men, would benefit immensely from them learning to get in touch with their own emotions and that of others.
None of that is discussed in this article and I wonder why it was posted to a feminism community in the first place??
It seems to be just one part of the writer describing how he worked in the field of rehabilitation of violent abusers.
By seeing that they did all these things to get and retain power and that there was only the threat of arrest or court mandated time with the writer as a negative, he realized he had to rehabilitate them differently because giving them tools to better communicate was just used as another tool to wield power.
Maybe he has another post where he talks about what tools actually work to rehabilitate abusers.
The site this is from also seems to be a magazine for profeminist men, which if it is truly pro feminist then it could be a good resource for men who need a better understanding of the way the world is for women.
Yes, I understood what the intention of the article was. But I’m really sceptical of pro-feminist groups for men (because they usually don’t challenge men’s patriarchal tendencies) and the article seems to confirm my scepticism. But yeah, I would probably give the author the benefit of the doubt, were it not posted to a feminist community here. I mean, some people seem to take something with them from it. But I’m missing any kind of analysis or further interpretation of the material discussed in the article. Right now, people could even feel validated as abusers because they’ve learned that there are good reasons to abuse others.
There are selfish positives for the abuser that doesn’t mean they are good reasons, though I guess an abuser might see them as good.
Maybe this guy will follow up with more on what he did to help them in a manner that would help equalize the women in their lives rather than raise themselves.
Well, thanks to this comment I went back and had a look at the website the article was published in. The article is already pretty old (from 2015) and the author didn’t publish a lot in the subsequent years. But I found this much more in depth analysis by a sociology professor re-published on this website. Below is a statement by the original author of the article posted here. And yes, this guy seems to have a good grasp on how to deal with the underlying problem of masculinity:
What I have found to be true is that as we access our compassion and put into practice our altruistic caring for women and girls, we collide with our male privilege. If our primary motivation is self-interest, we will not relinquish those privileges and the ongoing benefits we receive due to “toxic” masculinity. We will retreat, internally become silent, talk well, but not change significant behaviors, both personally and institutionally. To me, our willingness to give up our sexist privilege/benefits—including our silence—is the foundation of change, not our immediate self-interest.
If we care about women and children’s lives, we will begin to relinquish those benefits. We will use our remaining male privilege and influence (which we cannot totally discard because of sexist social norms) to undermine patriarchal structures of oppression. We will work to end the violence, harassment, discrimination, income inequality, exploitation, subordination, and danger that women and girls live with every day.
I missed this point in the original article, although yeah, I now better understand why people can still take something from it :)
Strange article, I don’t get the point of it. Like, of course it is about power and control. You don’t need to give me a list of cruel things and abuse.
And it is also utterly strange to read how baffled the author is by their responses. Obviously the abuse by these men is working in this narrow frame of context. There is plenty of information out there on this already, nothing new here.
But apparently the author also completely missed out on what the benefits would be for men to step back from violence and control. Yeah sure, in the context of emotionally limited and estranged men, maybe being control-seeking, manipulative and sadistic is the best possibility to get short-term gratification. But do these people really live a happy life? I would argue that everyone, including these abusive men, would benefit immensely from them learning to get in touch with their own emotions and that of others.
None of that is discussed in this article and I wonder why it was posted to a feminism community in the first place??
It seems to be just one part of the writer describing how he worked in the field of rehabilitation of violent abusers.
By seeing that they did all these things to get and retain power and that there was only the threat of arrest or court mandated time with the writer as a negative, he realized he had to rehabilitate them differently because giving them tools to better communicate was just used as another tool to wield power.
Maybe he has another post where he talks about what tools actually work to rehabilitate abusers.
The site this is from also seems to be a magazine for profeminist men, which if it is truly pro feminist then it could be a good resource for men who need a better understanding of the way the world is for women.
Yes, I understood what the intention of the article was. But I’m really sceptical of pro-feminist groups for men (because they usually don’t challenge men’s patriarchal tendencies) and the article seems to confirm my scepticism. But yeah, I would probably give the author the benefit of the doubt, were it not posted to a feminist community here. I mean, some people seem to take something with them from it. But I’m missing any kind of analysis or further interpretation of the material discussed in the article. Right now, people could even feel validated as abusers because they’ve learned that there are good reasons to abuse others.
There are selfish positives for the abuser that doesn’t mean they are good reasons, though I guess an abuser might see them as good.
Maybe this guy will follow up with more on what he did to help them in a manner that would help equalize the women in their lives rather than raise themselves.
Well, thanks to this comment I went back and had a look at the website the article was published in. The article is already pretty old (from 2015) and the author didn’t publish a lot in the subsequent years. But I found this much more in depth analysis by a sociology professor re-published on this website. Below is a statement by the original author of the article posted here. And yes, this guy seems to have a good grasp on how to deal with the underlying problem of masculinity:
I missed this point in the original article, although yeah, I now better understand why people can still take something from it :)