WHAT MEN DON’T GET ABOUT THE BEAR VERSUS MAN MEME.

I remember reading a Letter to the Editor some years ago, about the Taiji Whale Slaughter and whaling where the writer said that their next car, camera or electronic device would not be Japanese as a result. People are very quick to judge those to whom they view as others, without understanding that there’s a counterculture in Japan, and that a sizeable proportion of the population of Japan does not eat whale meat. Beef is expensive in Japan, and some Japanese are vegetarians and there’s also Greenpeace in Japan.

If we take the analogy with bears and apply it to sharks, whenever there is a shark attack at a beach, people are quick to call for a hunt for the shark responsible (bearing in mind that sharks don’t swim around with licence plates on their tailfins) and the installation of shark nets and drumlines at beaches and they urge people not to go swimming at unpatrolled beaches. Yet whenever male violence against women is mentioned, men become overly defensive about it or resort to deflection.

I know that intimate partner violence does occur in same-sex relationships, but most male-on-male violence is fueled by alcohol and when alcohol and aggression come together, what can seem like a trivial thing, such as an argument over a place in a queue at a taxi rank, can result in one person lying dead on the ground or dying in hospital. It’s all very well for a person to then say, when the aggressor is the defendant in the dock, “Oh, this is so out of character,” (I remember someone I knew many years ago, who, when his car was parked on the street outside his house and a passenger in a passing car reached out the open window and knocked on his car with their fist, ran down to the car, pulled the person out of it and punched them in the mouth, removing three of their teeth. It wasn’t reported to the police, but had he been charged with assault, the prosector would have asked, “And was there any damage to your car?” “No.” “Yet you knocked three of this person’s teeth out.” Not only that but depending upon how many people were in the passing car, a full-scale brawl may have erupted, and he may have come off considerably worse.) I know, I used to get angry at the thought of someone doing that to my car, but that was because when I was at school, I had my property damaged or stolen by bullies, but I did not resort to physical violence and nor would I have as the consequences of an assault charge, if a conviction is imposed, are serious.

Male on female violence, however, can take two forms. The minority of cases are by males unknown to the victim (particularly sexual assault) but the majority of cases of sexual assault are by someone known to them or a family member or trusted friend. Most physical violence against women by men is intimate partner violence, where the man treats the woman like his property.

Nobody is saying that all men are violent abusers, but all men have a responsibility to call it out. And that can start at subtle levels. For example, I remember pop singer Rihanna being described to my disgust, in a men’s magazine, as “Chris Brown’s punching bag.” No, she was NOT his punching bag, she was SUPPOSED to be his PARTNER! That is an offensive way of talking about domestic violence. I was also pleased when an Australian female senator sued the magazine over a picture it posted of her.

What people need to see is that it’s easy for people to say, if someone is bitten by a dog that people will say that there’s a problem and that dog has to be destroyed and there are calls for that breed of dog to be prohibited as a family pet. It is also easy for people to call for shark culls and for people to boycott products from a certain country, but people become defensive when asked to look at themselves.