to download - Voice Male Magazine

Why Men and Women Must Work Together
to End Domestic Violence
By Marian Kent
• Voice Male
“If we want to truly end
domestic violence,men and
women must begin to work
together. And not just token
collaboration here or there,
either—true partnership,
true commitment is required.”
Rob Okun, executive director of
The Men’s Resource Center
for Change and Marian Kent,
executive director of Safe Passage.
H
istorically, the battered
women’s movement
has been just that—a
movement consisting of
women counseling and
sheltering, advocating and agitating,
in support of and on behalf of other
women who have been abused. In the
process of building this movement,
women have created a highly effective
national network to achieve safety for
themselves and their children and to
remake their lives. At the same time,
pro-feminist men committed to ending
violence have worked with other
men, in consciousness-raising groups,
through education and batterers’ intervention
programs, to support men and
challenge violence.
As effective as these movements have
been, the still alarming rate of domestic
violence incidents and casualties
requires us to think and act differently.
If we want to truly end domestic violence,
men and women must begin
to work together. And not just token
collaboration here or there, either—
true partnership, true commitment is
required.
Imagine men and women, families,
youth and elders, people of different
cultures and groups—entire communities—coming
forward together to reject
violence. Imagine a community taking
the position that no matter what its
members might be facing, no matter
their problems or stresses or hardships,
using violence against a loved
one is not the answer. Imagine people
being supported in their times of crisis
so that they have alternatives to
battering as a means of grasping for
power. Imagine couples and families,
where safety allows, being supported
in working through their issues
together, transforming their relationships,
and remaining together instead
of separating.
This is the vision Safe Passage, the
battered women’s organization I direct
in Northampton, Massachusetts, and
the Men’s Resource Center for Change,
colleagues headquartered in nearby
Amherst, share as we commit to a new,
historic partnership, working closely
together toward truly ending family
violence. Recognizing that most of the
work of each of our organizations has
been focused on intervention, we plan
to focus on prevention, in addition
to the crucial services we are already
providing.
Until now, Safe Passage’s safety and
intervention work has by necessity
usually required a focus on separation—supporting
women in leaving
their abusers and starting fresh from
a secure place. Although the MRC’s
batterer intervention work through its
Moving Forward program (formerly
MOVE) makes no assumptions about
the partner leaving or staying in the
relationship, it is not uncommon for
the MRC to be working with the men
after their partners have left. Because
both organizations have made a strong
commitment to women’s safety and to
ending men’s violence against women,
we know that some members of our
community perceive both of us as “antimale”
or “anti-family.” In order for these
perceptions to change and in order for
us to reach everyone in the community
who needs our services, we need to
transform our approach to families and
communities.
Where in the past women—and
women’s groups—may have been skeptical
about working with men against
battering, Safe Passage now sees working
together as vital to ending domestic
violence and in fact to the health of the
movement. We are clear that women
and men must work together in order
to respond to people and families holistically.
Our commitment is strong, as
indicated by these new developments:
Safe Passage has recently hired our
first-ever male staff member—our new
volunteer coordinator. Also in recent
months, our board of directors took the
historic step of changing its bylaws to
include men as members.
The plan for Safe Passage and the
Men’s Resource Center for Change moving
forward together includes engaging
Photo by Tom Chen
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