White Ribbons and Red-Blooded Men

University of Calgary - December 3, 1993
by Ken Fisher

Introduction

By way of introducing the topic, I would like to say a few words about both the White Ribbon Campaign and myself.

No other week in the year raises more questions about what it means to be a man. Across the country, schools, the media and the workplace are all addressing the issues of men's violence against women. The murder four years ago of fourteen women at Montreal's É cole Polytechnique will be commemorated as a turning point in the evolution of Canadian society.
The White Ribbon Campaign, with all its flaws, is the first and, as yet, only national campaign in the world that invites men to symbolize their opposition to men's violence toward women.
It was a campaign created by men in one of the least sexist, least racist and least homophobic countries in the world. Yet, we are a still a country that has long since passed the point of tolerable levels of violence.
As for myself, I grew up trying to be a man like other men. In many ways, I succeeded. I played rugby for Queen's University, arm wrestled with lumberjacks in New Brunswick and worked on a railway gang. I shovelled gravel from Moose Jaw to Medicine Hat.
However, I chose a career in community development and, for almost no money, worked for 16 years all over the world helping the poor.
By then, I thought I was morally superior to most of my male classmates at Queen's and to men in general who had followed a path to success.
A couple of years ago, I was forced to acknowledge that, despite all of my consciousness, my behaviour was one of putting my career or latest cause first, and the care and nurture of my family away down the list. Like five generations of men before me in my father's family, I let myself be governed by unpredictable outbursts.
Although not physically violent, my fits of so-called righteousness were finally halted, when my wife and son said that I either had to get help or leave. After some period of denial, I got help. Despite all the correct causes, I was no different that most of my peers. I was a man who felt that his work was more important than his relationships and that his anger was justified.
These intergenerational patterns of male aggression have now been exposed. It is up to me and my sons to continue to dismantle this behaviour within us.
In the course of my remarks today, I wish to speak briefly about three things.
First, what is the current state of men's violence?
I don't believe that there is any such thing as male violence. Men are not inherently violent. Male is a biological term. We are biologically aggressive and defensive depending on the circumstances. But males are not inherently violent any more than females are inherently passive. There are violent men, and there are passive women.
Secondly, what might be some of the long-range solutions? I personally feel rather helpless in the face of the emerging and far-from-cresting wave of violence in our society.
Thirdly, what can we men do now? The power of one is inestimably more than the power of no one.
I hope to speak for about twenty minutes, after which time there could be questions and discussion.

1. The Current State of Violence Against Women

Globally, there is a war against women being conducted by men. It has to do with safety in the streets and at home; abortion rights; the unshared burden of child care and food production; and the unequal opportunity to play the various roles in our human community as evidenced by the United Nations report, which indicated that women provide 66% of the labour, receive 10% of the wages and control 1% of the capital.

Some fairly recent news stories illustrate this war against women:

· Two weeks ago, Statistics Canada released a survey intended to identify the extent of violence against women in Canada. Fifty-one per cent or over five million Canadian women over the age of 16 have been assaulted by a man. Sixty per cent or over 3 million have been assaulted more than once. Eighteen per cent or one million have sustained physical injury in the attack. Twenty-nine per cent or 2.6 million married or formerly married women were assaulted by their male partners. Almost 2/3 of these married women have been assaulted more than once. Ten per cent said that they have experienced violence in the last twelve months. Do a large number of Canadian men have a personality disorder, or is this a statement about our culture?

· The United Nations is reconvening the War Crimes Tribunal that
disbanded in 1946 in Nurenburg, Germany, to investigate the war crimes that have been committed in the former Yugoslavia. For the first time in the history of war, rape will be considered a crime.

· At the Globe and Mail, two male columnists, under the heading of MEN, have consistently devalued the plight of women by emphasizing how restricted and victimized men are. They question who the real victim is and who really has the least power, as if there is a winner to declare. A female columnist has countered by describing her own experience of assault at the hands of a live-in boy friend.

· In the past year, 70,000 women in Canada have been in shelters for battered women.

· Most major Canadian cities now have monuments commemorating the women killed by men in Canada . Calgary artist Teresa Posyniak has created a monument to all these women who have been murdered by men in Canada since December the 6th, 1989. It will be on display at the December 6th commemorative ceremony. Her sculpture is entitled Lest We Forget.

· In Ontario alone, there is almost half a billion dollars outstanding in child-support payments, owed almost entirely by men. This expense is now coming from the public purse.

· Millions of women in Asia are missing from the Census and are presumed victims of infanticide, murder or intentional malnutrition. Yet, during this same year in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, there was no recorded example of a woman killing her husband.

· In 1991, in Texas, 312 husbands, mostly after a period of abuse, killed their wives, and 312 wives, mostly after a period of being abused, killed their husbands. In the same year, in Canada, an equal number of men and women killed their children. Probably the circumstance for committing these murders were different.

· This year, a report on Toronto schools revealed that both girls and boys were equally involved in acts of aggression.

· Two boys in the United Kingdom sought out a two-year-old victim to kill. The manner of the murder was very much like a scene from a current horror movie that was rented by the father of one of the two 10-year-old boys. More than twenty adults had the opportunity to stop this murder in progress. Britons refuse to look at their culture and prefer to blame two sets of parents and two boys.

· In Toronto, Judge Hryciuk was recently removed from the bench for abusing and assaulting female crown attorneys and court staff. This was our Anita Hill event. In this case the women were believed and the man was fired rather than promoted. As in nearly all cases of harassment, the women and men who supported this complaint will be treated as the aggressors who disrupted the norms of the office and who couldn't take a joke. It is still some time away for those who have genuine complaints of harassment to receive the full support of their co-workers
and spouses.

· The highest cause of death in the workplace for men is an industrial accident; for women in the workplace it is murder.
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· Some male coaches of national women's sports teams got accused of sexual assault. The University of Calgary recently hosted a workshop for coaches on the subject of Sexual Harassment and Sport.

· Engineering professors have begun the job of being supportive of women in engineering, but Professor Yaqzan of the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Arts still advises that, if female students accept an invitation to chat at 'his' place, they should know that sex is expected! Is this latter example an issue of free speech or an issue of socially responsible speech?

· Violence in the schools has now become a national issue. Some schools have been closed because of violence. A boy was murdered in the school yard here in Calgary last year, and Greg Psutka was killed on this campus in April.

The question remains: Who is looking after the kids?

2. Long-Range Solutions

Let's start with the children first, and then talk about men and women.
Some helpful thinking has been done by Michael Valpy, another Globe and Mail columnist. He quoted the work of a Toronto psychiatrist, Paul Steinhauer, who said that more and more children are unable to find an adequate social connection because of unmet needs "to have a satisfactory and continuous attachment to a parental figure" and "to tame and diffuse inherent human aggression. Children experiencing an unsuccessful attachment or multiple separations frequently have their level of biologically derived aggression greatly increased by the excessive rage resulting from the frustration of their attachment needs." This also produces a person who fails "to develop adequate self-esteem, [lacks]confidence and [is]
excessively sensitive to disapproval," [is] "unable to sustain friendships in the face of normal tensions," [and has] "a widespread difficulty relating intimately to others."
Valpy goes on to say that; "As a society, we are not making the necessary commitment, devoting the necessary time [or] employing the necessary energy to raising our children." It is the stresses of the past 20 or 30 years on family life and relations between the sexes that are now leaving their marks on family life.
We are now at the point of accepting a much broader definition of the family. Only a small percentage of the population is part of a traditional family with a father, a mother, no divorce and two children. An even smaller percentage of families provide an extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles and 'cousins by the dozens'. Melded families, couples with no children, gay or lesbian couples with or without a child or children, single parents mostly female -- all constitute a 'family.'
What is still true about these families is the assumption of being nuclear. Nearly all of the families of our society are still very much isolated from one another. Supportive or critical comments about one's children by the neighbours or others in the community are viewed with fear, suspicion or defensiveness. What
right have they to intrude on our life? How dare they judge us? It would seem to me that, in fact, most of us who are parents do feel dissatisfied and insecure about the quality of care that we give to our children.
We must take down the barriers around the nuclear family that block those family relationships from intimacy with other families and the neighbourhood. The lessons that women and men have learned in support and consciousness-raising groups must be applied to our place of habitation. Sharing with and caring for each other in a non-sectarian, not-for-money-or-members fashion must be redesigned, not rebuilt. A new civility must be created and sustained, despite the high mobility of families. This sense of place and belonging is for me the primary pressure point for ending violence. Ending men's violence against women must be seen in that context.
We must provide a compassionate and intelligent national daycare program. With most adults working or wanting to work, children need to be intentionally nurtured.
Adequate affordable housing would also enhance the well-being of the community and the stability of children.
Distribution of wealth must be rethought in the light (or in the dark) of economic restructuring. The women of the former Soviet Union now suffer from four times more unemployment than men and only receive 40 % of the wages for work of equal value. The status of women was better protected before that particular restructuring. In Canada, Pay Equity is still a distance away.
Employment Equity for women, visible minorities, gays and lesbians and the disabled is slowly happening but cannot be taken for granted.
If the quality of our spiritual life is to be enhanced the chapels in which young men worship must be altered. The video arcade and availability of pornographic and violent videos promote a hatred of life and of women. Shoot! Kill! Try again! Your score is...You are a winner! You are a loser! It also promotes a self-hatred in that the performance requirement for men can never be achieved. In this temple, there is always insecurity.
I wont say much about the socialization that many boys receive in the world of sports; or about the messages they receive about girls. However, it is the Sunday afternoon and Monday night gladiators that are worshipped, not the plight of women and children. As well, by mid teens, a boy or girl may have witnessed 28,000 'killings' on television. Thus, we need an environmental movement for all things living
including our own species.
If these are the long term-dimensions of ending violence, what are the immediate next steps for men?

3. Red-Blooded Men

Red-blooded men used to be a war-cry. "Go and serve your country! Protect our women and children and our free way of life! Don't be effeminate! Kill the enemy!" It now seems to mean the condoning of violence against gays-and lesbians, other races, women, other men and children. Self-labelled red-blooded men are probably not doing any of these things in a conscious way, but they implicitly support them by their silence and by their lack of interest or defensiveness about the changing roles of women and the increased power that women are having. It is very hard to let go of five thousand years of affirmative action for the dominant group of men.
To many men, this prospect of equality, that women are worth just as much as men, is frightening. To the men who believe that women are not as effective, that they need protection and are weaker and yet are more nurturing, sensitive and deferential, it must seem that the world turning upside down rather than simply been broadened to include women.
These fearful voices are silencing both women and men who wish to speak
out against discrimination, harassment and other forms of aggressive behaviour. In times of crisis, we can look forward or backward for solutions. The Alberta legislature, in particular, seems to be caught in the rear-view mirror.
It's not that Rambo is bad. Every man or woman should have the Rambo role as part of their repertoire. One never knows when that role might be called for. The point is that there are so many other roles that men need to fill for the sake of the well-being of society. Parenting and housework are probably two easy areas to identify. For men, the role of friend to women or friend to men is more challenging because it directly or indirectly confronts the barriers among men and the barriers around the nuclear family. Nevertheless, these barriers must be reduced.
Its good that we now have social programs to care for the elderly. However, not long ago, the fact that one relied on one's children for future care was a form of accountability on how you treated them. Now that this is not so true, many men and some women seem to treat children as more expendable. The violence and frustration of the emerging generation is then enhanced.
There should be a new term that could be used to designate the courageous man. His behaviour would include the following characteristics:
He is in the process of dismantling patriarchy within himself. He is replacing his belief in an unfettered individualism with an identification with his neighbours, old and young, his community of interest, and his co-workers. He does this on an emotional or cultural basis not as a political statement. Men have always joined groups but not ones that cultivated emotional openness.
Men's support groups have played a critical role in this process. The better we are at being able to process our feelings, the more assertive we will be in our day-to-day communications rather than being actively or passively aggressive.
On average, National Football League players die seven years earlier than average men who die seven years earlier than women. The virtue is to play hurt and hurt the other guy. Take steroids, and get well quickly! Hide the pain, and be a winner! In fact, hide the pain and you will die sooner! Seventy years ago the difference in age of mortality between the sexes was one year.

There are two dragons that are constantly trying to stop courageous new men at the gateways of change.

If a man becomes more caring. more emotionally open, more aesthetically appreciative, he is likely to be labeled gay. This labelling is an attempt to stifle this redefining of masculinity. The threat starts in the school yard and continues through life. Masculinity has been defined by what we are not. Men are not 'faggots' nor are we' bitches'.
We men have been socialized to believe that intimacy and sex are basically the same thing. Many of us have only experienced intimacy with our sexual partners. Thus, if a women happens to talk with us in an intimate fashion, we somehow think that sex must be just around the corner. Professor Yaqzan of the University of New Brunswick is one of these men.
As men discover that sex and intimacy can be unbundled, there is a genuine shock in discovering that men can be intimate with one another and can still be heterosexual. What a delightful surprise! For a while, this discovery can make men uneasy and vulnerable.
The most overt form of being a gay-positive male, is to not only not fear gay men but to be supportive of equal rights before the law for gays and lesbians, to actively challenge homophobia and to be involved in the ongoing tragedy of AIDS.
The second dragon guarding the gateways of change is the accusation of being a woman sympathizer. If a man becomes emotionally more open, less afraid of being nurturing or asking for help, doesn't that mean that he has joined the girls
team?
By the by, in last week's Globe and Mail, a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that during a 15-minute visit to the doctor, women will ask and average of eight questions and men will ask none at all.
Men don't like the vulnerability of asking for directions or asking Doctors questions. What a relief to be able to drop all that being-in-charge and become an equal participant.
The overt form of this sympathizing is called anti-sexist men or profeminist men.
The men who take this path of challenging both homophobia and sexism within themselves and in society take on a different accountability and spiritual make-up. This amazing journey for the new men requires breaking ranks with the 'Brotherhood of All Guys.' These men will forever have an X on their membership record to indicate that, although they may slip back into Brotherhood gatherings

from time to time, they should not be trusted.

When men wear a white ribbon during the week of December 6, I believe it is an act of courage and an act of hope for our gender. For some time, we will be rewarded with scepticism from some women and fear from many men.
Whether you wear a White Ribbon or not, if you listen to women talk about their experience of men's sexism and then, at some time later, without breaking confidentiality, you report on that to your male associates, you may feel that you are speaking a foreign language, but this very act will reduce our society's support for violence against women.
Not too long from now, the issue of men's violence to other men will get on the table. The skills of listening and talking about violence will be expanded to include the experience of men and boys.
Courageous men today are the ones who, regardless of sexual orientation, race, age or ablebodiness, want to use their everyday banal opportunities for
conversation and action to forward the possibility of a violence-free world.
The Houston Oiler player who refused to get on the plane for the next game and remained at the side of his partner as she gave birth to their child rebelled against his coach. Ten years ago, it wouldn't have occurred, or he would have been suspended without recourse. Today, this player received extraordinary public support from women and men and the coach had to retract his suspension.
Men have rebelled against other men for centuries. However, never has that rebellion been posited in the well-being of women, children and the environment. Never has that rebellion been linked to the dismantling of racism, homophobia and poverty.
Wearing a white ribbon during one week of December has those implications.
I'd like to conclude by reading from the White Ribbon Campaign News.

Seven Things Men Can Do This White Ribbon Week
To Help End Men's Violence Against Women

1. Wear a white ribbon as a personal pledge never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women.
2. Challenge friends who use sexist language and jokes that degrade women.
3. Learn to identify and challenge sexual harassment and violence in your workplace, school and family.
4. Contribute to your local shelter for battered women, rape crisis centre and other women's programs.
5. Ask a women with whom you are close to share with you how violence has affected her life.
6. Examine how your own behaviour might be part of the problem.
7. Contribute to the White Ribbon Campaign. Become a member.