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JUST JOSH: The Problem with the Conversation About Male Violence · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day, humans! Welcome to Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas.
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Here's a not very dangerous idea. Domestic violence is terrible.
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People shouldn't get murdered. People shouldn't be abused. People shouldn't be coerced.
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Coerced of relationships is something we need to do more about.
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But we're at a moment where we're having conversations about the scourge of domestic violence
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and male violence in a more general sense.
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That I fear are not particularly constructive.
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And I'd like to reflect on the way that we're having those conversations,
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part of my job on uncomfortable conversations, is to,
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I suppose, forensically analyse the way we're having conversations about things
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and try to offer a more constructive path.
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Because we're leaving a lot of people behind at the moment.
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Australia finds itself at a turning point in regards to attention
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to this particular issue.
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There is currently consideration of major reforms,
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both at a state and federal level.
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There have been huge rallies in most of the big cities in Australia
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against domestic violence and a sense of it being time to say we're fed up with this.
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And we need to do better.
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And there are a lot of things that are being proposed that I completely agree with.
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Some of the platforms that are being put forth by domestic violence advocates make a lot of sense.
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The five demands of the activists who are pressuring the government to do more
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are that they want to declare a national emergency.
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They want mandatory victim blaming prevention training for police,
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for the media and for first responders.
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That sounds sensible.
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They want alternative reporting options for violence victims,
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like specialist courts to hear their cases.
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That sounds reasonable.
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They want the media to wait 48 hours before identifying the victims of violence,
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also sounds fair to me.
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And for the government to give better and more sustainable funding for organizations
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with five year minimum commitments.
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Now the Prime Minister has done the latter.
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He's pledged $925 million over five years to give women $5,000 each if they need to flee violence.
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And there's also been some suggestion that we could reform the way
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that social security and child support payments work so they can't be used by male perpetrators
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of domestic violence to exert coercive control over their partners.
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I want to make it clear that I empathise enormously with people who find themselves trapped
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in these relationships.
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There's a lot more of it going on in more subtle and pernicious ways than maybe aware of.
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And whatever reforms we can sensibly undertake to free people from being in a relationship
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with an asshole, we should do.
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And yet, the conversation has turned, as it so often does, these days, into a binary
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about whether or not men are doing enough as a cohort.
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Men need to do better is the refrain.
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Women are victims of male violence.
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Women are being killed.
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We're being told.
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ABC News reports on the quote-unquote shocking rate of murders of women in Australia.
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That's verbatim directly from ABC News.
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So we'd expect that that's factually correct in a strict news sense, a shocking rate of murders
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of women.
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The Herald reports that the Prime Minister is being urged to declare a national emergency
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against gendered violence with advocacy groups begging governments to do more to stop
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women being murdered.
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Thousands of people marched, I'm quoting here from the Sydney Morning Herald,
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with signs reading, I'd feel safer alone with a bear.
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And murder on the dance floor on a run in a park at the shops in our homes.
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And men are like mushrooms, dangerous till proven otherwise.
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These marches have attracted the support of political figures from across the political
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spectrum, Malcolm Turnbull, former Prime Minister, liberal leader, joined the march.
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The premier of New South Wales, Chris Minnes joined the march.
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He's considering launching a royal commission into violence against women.
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The Prime Minister spoke at the rally, although the organizer didn't really seem to want him to.
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And another one of the signs that I thought was notable at the rally was from the independent
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federal MP Sophie Scamps, who held up a sign reading, you shut down Sydney for a coward's punch.
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What will you do for women?
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That's a reference to the lockout laws in New South Wales, where after a spate of one hit
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punches that literally killed men outside nightclubs, Sydney implemented some very draconian
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and in hindsight absurdly silly and restrictive nanny state laws about what you can drink,
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where and how long you can stay at certain establishments, it's largely killed Sydney's
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nightlife, which is now just limping back after those laws have been wound back somewhat.
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So I'm not sure that that's necessarily the cause that you want it to be.
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I'm not sure that you want to say yes, let's take an attitude and approach towards this
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current problem of violence that is akin to the one that we took there.
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In other words, a knee jerk overreach that has all kinds of horrendous unintended consequences,
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or perhaps intended consequences in the shutting down of Sydney's nightlife.
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The backdrop to all of this that I bring to this before I say things that will get me in trouble
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is violence against women is unacceptable, violence against men is unacceptable.
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We have a mental health crisis, especially among young people.
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We have a problem of young males and we have a problem of social media not necessarily presenting
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us with a constructive or accurate reflection of what's going on in the world.
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I've had many private conversations with female friends of mine who don't necessarily agree
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that they spend their days walking around terrified of male violence and we'll get to statistics in
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just a moment about why that might be. But the prior that I bring to this, one of the many
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priors is that the way we experience the world is as much a reflection of what we're bringing to
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the world as it is of the reality of the world itself. We can walk through the world with our heads
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held high, fearless and sensible and unafraid, or we can walk through the world cowed and terrified,
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jumping at shadows, and this is not to diminish the experience of people who've been victims of
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violence. It's to try to put it in a context of what is a historically unprecedentedly peaceful
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and non-violent time in the world and in this country. The fact is that young males are very
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violent. Males are quite violent and young males are particularly violent. I mean, the demographic
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that needs to be constrained by modern civilization more than any other is the young male. Look at the
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way that young males behave in all male boarding schools. Look at the way that males behave in all
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male prisons. Look at the way that young males behave during civil wars or the breakdown of society.
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There's nothing more terrifying than a young male. We've done pretty good job in modern Western
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democracies of finding ways to constrain the urges, the impulses and the violent tendencies of
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young males. We're struggling a bit at the moment and I think that the best way forward is probably
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to understand why they're violent and to provide outlets in which they don't have to be violent
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rather than shrugging and saying, this is a problem for all men, men have to deal with it.
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I know that that's unpopular, but let's just look at the statistics about what's actually happening
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to try to figure out how we can most effectively target the solutions. So far this year, 28 women
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have lost their lives to what the authorities call gendered violence. Now that includes five
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who lost their lives in the Bondi stabbing. I don't know whether you want to include that as the
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background rate as part of the background rate of violence against women or whether you regard
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a mass casualty event where a maniac goes wild in a public place and kills many people as you can
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most of whom were women as anomalous. Nonetheless, it's 13 more women dead this year compared to
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the same time last year. In April alone, this year, 11 women died allegedly at the hands of men.
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Again, nearly half of those 11 in April were part of the Bondi stabbing a single mass casualty
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event. So that's the stats. How do they compare historically and is it true that we're seeing an
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unprecedented surge of violence against women? Well, the Australian Institute of Health and
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Welfare, which is the government agency that tasked with domestic violence, names three types
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of intimate partner violence. Let's just break it down. There's physical sexual violence,
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then there's emotional abuse, and then there's economic abuse. Now, one in four women,
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according to the stats, have experienced physical or sexual violence, and one in 14 men.
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When it comes to the second type of intimate partner violence, which is emotional abuse,
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23% of women and 14% of men, when it comes to the third type of intimate partner violence,
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which is economic abuse, 16% of women, and almost 8% of men. So about half, more than half,
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as many men as women, are victims of emotional abuse in relationships and economic abuse in
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relationships. Physical or sexual violence is where women get the worst outcome.
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And it's interesting if we're going to frame this as a gender question as men against women,
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and what is the problem with men. The rates of domestic violence are similar are actually
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slightly higher in same-sex relationships compared to heterosexual relationships. The Australian
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Research Center for Health and Sexuality studied this. They found significant levels of intimate
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partner violence in same-sex relationships, about 28% of male respondents, and 41% of female respondents
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said they were in a same-sex relationship. They had been in a same-sex relationship where a
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partner was abusive. There was a smaller study carried out by the same outfit, the Research
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Center for Health and Sexuality, which was in Victoria. It found that lesbians and women were
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more likely than gay men to report having been an abusive same-sex relationship. 41%, that's the
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41%. So if it's gendered, then when it comes to same-sex relationships, this is mostly a problem
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of female violence against women. This is not to say that men aren't responsible for the
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instances of male violence against women. It's to say that if we're going to offer as a reason
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for this violence, something that's intrinsic to men, that all men have to deal with and have
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to do better at copying to, that doesn't explain why the dynamics in same-sex lesbian relationships
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also yield similarly high results in intimate partner abuse. It suggests that there might be other
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things going on, emotional entanglement, controlling personalities, whatever that might be.
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So let's just look at the statistics about the various things that are going on because I really
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didn't understand. I was just sort of absorbing this from the mainstream media and going, wow,
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there's just this surge of women being killed at the hands of men. So what is happening here?
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In terms of murder, there were around 77 victims of homicide and related offenses in Australia
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in 2022, the last year for which there are good stats. That's an increase of seven victims
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over the previous year. Most of the victims of homicide are male, 69% of people who get killed
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in this country are male. When it comes to sexual assault, that increased by 3% from the previous
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year, five times as many women as men are victims of sexual assault. But 16% of sexual assault victims
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are male. In New South Wales, the state where I live, the most popular state administrator,
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it's 21% of sexual assault victims are male. Robbery is up 5%, 75% of those victims are male.
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And in New South Wales specifically, just looking at the state where I live, the homicide rate is
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84% male. In other words, the proportion of sexual assault victims who are female is less than
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the proportion of murder victims who are male. Does that make sense? Now, it's also worth noting that
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there are a lot more sexual assaults than there are murders, of course. There are 12,412 sexual assaults
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in 2022 versus only 79 homicides in the state. But if what we're focused on is the gender breakdown
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because men are killing women, it's worth noting that if I tell you that someone was sexually
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assaulted and you guess it was a man, then you are likely to be right, then if I tell you someone
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was murdered and you guess it was a woman. Does that make sense? A greater fraction of murders
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are committed against men than sexual assaults are against women. Surely what's really relevant
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here is how this tracks over time. Is it true that we are in an unprecedented period when men
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are inflicting violence on women in ways that they haven't in the past? It's not. It's not.
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That is not true. Again, adding all of the caveats about how every single act of violence is a
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tragedy, every death is a tragedy, every killing should try to be avoided. But from the guardian here,
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a left-leaning publication. While an uptick on the previous year, the rate of female intimate
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partner homicide was still the third lowest rate in the more than 30 years since these records
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began. The rate of women killed by their partners has decreased 66% since that time.
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This is not the conversation that we're having. Yes, let's try to pursue whatever policies make
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sense in order to reduce violence. But in order to do so, presumably we want the largest cohort
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of males to be on board with this mission, not feeling alienated because they're being accused
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of doing things that they haven't done. Now, I always get, whenever I say anything like this,
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I get pushed back and say, look, we're not saying all men. We're not saying all men. I understand.
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Nobody's saying that all men are violent. But there is absolutely a conversation about how
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all men are responsible for the violence of some men. And this is a kind of group victim blaming
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that we wouldn't accept under any other circumstances. We don't do this towards black people.
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We don't do this towards Muslims. In fact, an interesting point was made by Waleed Ali
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in the age in the city morning, Harold recently, where he likened this movement
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insisting that men must do better to the conversation that happens after terrorist incidents, where
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people say that Muslims need to do better. Allow me to quote Waleed, he writes,
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holding all men responsible for a violent minority has failed to keep women safe.
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He says, we've seen plenty of assertions that violence against women is the end of a continuum
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that begins with a sexist joke. We've seen please for men to have the conversation. Unspecified
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as that directive may be, for the good men to set the bad men straight, he writes.
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The more I hear this discourse, he writes, the more it reminds me of being told that it was up
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to Muslims to own the problem of terrorism and get serious about solving it,
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that the good Muslims had to set the bad Muslims straight, that Muslims needed to start challenging
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radical Islamism, that terrorism was the end of a continuum that began with anti-American discourse
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or wearing women wearing headscarves. He writes, and here's the thing, it didn't work.
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Muslims didn't suddenly call a meeting, agree that enough was enough and tell the terrorists
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to knock it off. Instead, they felt alienated from the conversation, and in many cases,
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became defensive. While he writes, for all the obvious differences between these examples,
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they have something important in common. When you're being associated with a crime,
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you can't even imagine committing, and told it's your problem to solve, you tend not to feel
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enlisted. Instead, you feel incapable. And when you cast a social problem like that as a problem
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of identity, lots of people will retreat and defend an identity they feel is unfairly maligned.
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Now, in some respects, I disagree with Waleed's analysis because I actually think that Islam does
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play a bigger role in the acts of jihadism than being a male does in acts of violence against,
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well, anybody. I say anybody because we've just established that more than twice as many murders
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are inflicted on men than on women. So it's not like we're immune from the problem of male
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violence. We're immune largely from the specific problem of domestic violence and coercive
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control when we're in heterosexual relationships, but not in homosexual relationships. But we are
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absolutely not immune from the problem of walking down the street and being robbed, stabbed, punched
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by another violent male. In some respects, people always say, well, you know, not all men don't give
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me not all men. That's just a dodge. Well, is it? I mean, I think if you were to say not all
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Arabs, for example, we shouldn't profile Arabs because of their ethnicity and the color of their
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skin. They might be Christian Lebanese people. For example, they might have nothing to do with
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jihadism. Then it would be legitimate to say not all Arabs. It's a little bit tricky when you say
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not all Muslims because jihadism, martyrdom, and a whole ideology that is wrapped up in what
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where Islamism has gone over the past couple of generations, does provide some explanatory power
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over why terrorists are doing the things that they're doing over why jihadists believe what
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they believe over why Islamists have the modes of behavior that they do. In other words,
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there's a motivating factor where you can say that the person would not be behaving the way that
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they are. Were it not for the beliefs that they hold and those beliefs are derived from Islam?
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There is no similar set of beliefs that you can ascribe to the Arab. There is no similar set of
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beliefs that you can ascribe to the Jew or the woman or the male. So in some respects, a better
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analogy from what it would be to say, well, black people commit more violent crimes than white
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people and more property crimes. Therefore, why don't black people take responsibility for it?
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I mean, that is not a valid move. I mean, maybe a valid move if you're talking about particular
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ways of structuring a culture, particular values. It's not a good move when you're talking about
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just the color of a person's skin. It's not a good move when you're talking about the genitals
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that dangle or don't dangle between their legs. And yet, you read the letters to the editor
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in the wake of Waleed Ali publishing this piece. Allow me to quote, oh, Waleed writes one reader,
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only a man could write it makes little sense to treat every man as potentially violent.
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If only every man wore a tattoo on his forehead to warn women as to whether they were inclined
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to violence against women. Unfortunately, Waleed, this reader writes, published in the Fairfax press,
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no woman can tell which man is violent until it happens. So it's obvious that women will likely
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treat every man as potentially violent. I invite you to substitute the word man for black person,
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there. No one can tell which black person is violent until it happens. So it's obvious
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that people will treat every black person as potentially violent. Is there something off about
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that? If there is, why doesn't the same logic apply here? Would it even be a constructive thing
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to say if you wanted to win over black people to get them on side to support reforms that you
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are hoping would diminish violent crime among the black community? Wouldn't it be better not to
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sort of group them all into the same guilty class? Another letter to the editor,
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men writes this reader and I do mean most men, she emphasizes, feel a sense of entitlement fed by
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thousands of years of dominance. They feel entitled to the best seat at the table, the
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choicest cut of meat, the larger share of a joint income, the most seats at the corporate table,
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the final say in an argument, etc. Most also feel entitled at some level, this letter writer writes,
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to have all the things done for them, their mothers probably did for them, and so feel entitled
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to obedience from women, most often their partner. Whenever their partner objects to their opinions
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being dismissed or cooking for or cleaning up after a man or worse walking out on him, men feel
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disrespected and many respond to this, quote unquote, lack of respect, with anger sometimes violence.
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At the risk of being somewhat unsympathetic, may I propose that this particular letter writer is
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just picking shitty men? Is it true that most men in 2024 feel entitled to the choicest cut of meat?
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I don't know what dinner parties you're going to lady, but when I'm sitting around family style,
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I'm waiting until other people serve themselves, regardless of their gender, and I'm certainly not
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picking the choicest cut if I'm first, I'm trying to be polite and take the bad bits and leave the
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good bits for other people. The best seat at the table? I'm always the one who's picking the
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shitty little stool and letting other people sit at the chair, and I don't think I'm an exceptionally
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remarkable male. I think we've got the memo. I understand this was the case in the 1950s. Guess
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what? That was three generations ago now. I don't know what we're talking about here. If you think
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this is just cherry picking some readers who were inarticulate in their response to a specific article,
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you would be wrong. I can give you tweets, but better still, I can give you the opinion of a Sydney
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GP, a general practitioner or a family doctor who was published in the opinion pages of the
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Sydney Morning Herald, with an article entitled It's Time for Men to Get Uncomfortable
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and to Stay There, even if it's difficult. I want to read some of this because I think it
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encapsulates the worldview that is undergirding a lot of the conversation about male violence,
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and what we need to do about it, and that I think is enormously unconstructive. Don't worry,
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I'm not just going to be taking potshots here. I'll provide some solutions at the end of this,
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but she writes that after the Bondi stabbing, quote, when I tried to talk to men in my social
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life or workplace, I saw the same thing as always, a guardedness that settled in behind their eyes.
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They knuckled down to the important work of protecting themselves. I saw the habitual
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lurch of their minds taking up armor against us, preparing to defend their virtue. I can't
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describe the pain this causes, she writes, men who I know care about me, prioritizing their own
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emotional comfort over the physical safety of my body. All right, let's pause that for a moment.
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Prioritizing their emotional comfort over the physical safety of your body.
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There are a lot of assumptions in that. They may be prioritizing their emotional comfort.
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They may also be prioritizing their sense of reason. They may just be prioritizing their sense of
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a fear go, a fear crack of a whip, and as their bullshit detector might be going off, because they
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might not believe that you are actually physically endangered. You say that by drawing an analogy
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between a horrendous mass casualty event and the microaggressions that men supposedly perpetrate
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against women on a daily basis, that you are ensuring the physical safety of your body.
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But the men you're talking to don't see it that way. They don't think that they're actually
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abandoning the physical safety of your body. You know why they don't think that? Because you're not,
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and they're not. It does not endanger the physical safety of your body for them to disagree with you
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about whether or not their general ideas about gender are directly linked to a maniac stabbing
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six people to death in a shopping mall. It's a bit rich to say that any time someone disagrees
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with your interpretation of culture and politics, that means that they are prioritizing their
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emotional comfort over your physical safety. What is the threat to your physical safety
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in the moment of you having this conversation with those men? I guarantee if they're decent men
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that if someone barged into that cafe where you're having the conversation with them and
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endangered your physical safety, they would leap up and do something. If not, if they would run away
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like cowards, then that's the problem. Not the fact that they don't want to go on some long
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boring tangent with you about why all men are responsible for the actions of a psychopath.
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This Sydney GP continues. She writes, the problem is not that men are inherently evil.
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Oh, thank you. I appreciate that clarification. The problem she writes,
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Dutel, is our social agreement that allows men to behave with cruelty, cowardice and psychological
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laziness otherwise known as patriarchy. It's the belief we grew up within this country,
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proclaimed again and again by the courts and the media that are man's feelings are more worthy
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of protection than a woman's body. She writes that the bond I stabbing is, quote,
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the predictable culmination of the relentless insistence that women's lives, bodies,
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reproductive capacity and emotional energy exist only for the benefit of men. These acts are one
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end of a wide spectrum. She writes, do you expect your daughter to take responsibility for the
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emotional well-being of others more than you do your son? Allow me to interject here and say,
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absolutely, I do not. My daughter runs the household and my son is gentle flower. Do you expect
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free care giving from the female members of your family and not the male? No, I do not. And again,
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I don't think I'm unusual here. I don't think like I'm in some exemplar of modern masculinity.
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I don't know. Maybe I may, I may just be living in an ivory tower here and this may be way,
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more widespread than I think. I'm certain that it's more widespread in certain communities,
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but I'd get myself into even more trouble if I named those communities such as conservative
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Muslim communities or conservative Chinese communities in southwest of Sydney. I'm sure that
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there are much more patriarchal and traditional attitudes between men and women than there are
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among the majority of elite university educated people who are reading this article in the
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Sydney Morning Herald, an elite broadsheet newspaper. Do you immediately categorize,
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I'm reading again, from the GPs article, do you immediately categorize an older woman you
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don't like as a Karen because she's not fulfilling her social obligation to be attractive and pleasing to you?
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Allow me to interject. No, that's not the reason I call her a Karen. I call her a Karen because she's
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being an uppity little, you know what? In a way that I wouldn't tolerate from a man either.
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Do you leave the chores and mental load of a household to your female partner? No. Do you treat
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women you don't find attractive with the same respect as women you do? I mean, that's an interesting
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one. We're all over the joint here. We're all over the shop. Aren't we trying to compare whether or
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not there's a double standard in the way that we treat women and the way that we treat men? I mean,
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let's set aside for a moment the question of whether or not any of these more raise that she's
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describing to the patriarchy have a direct link to actual male violence or the overreaction of
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violent assholes to a perceived slight whether that be from someone else who's outside a nightclub
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who happens to be a male or someone they're an intimate relationship with or a complete stranger
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at a shopping mall who they stab. Forget for a moment whether or not we actually buy that there's
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a link that there's some mechanism that would translate old-fashioned patriarchal ideas that I've
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got to say were held by a lot of upstanding men. I mean, the greatest generation was hardly a
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feminist paradise but these guys were extremely restrained and loving and caring and doting
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on women at the time but set that aside. Let's just let's ignore whether or not there's a connection
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between these ideas, these sexist ideas and violence and just ask whether or not we're actually
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being specific about what the sexist ideas are because she's saying, do you treat an attractive
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woman with the same respect as an unattractive woman? I mean, I confess that I probably am nicer to
29:47
attractive people of all genders. You're going to say, well, of course, you're okay but I think we're all,
29:53
I mean, I know there are studies that prove that we are all more affectionate towards people who
29:58
look nice in particular tall men than we are towards unattractive people. That's not evidence of
30:05
patriarchy. That might be some other kind of bias but she, it's a long bow to go from that to
30:11
male violence against women. I mean, we know that men who are tall do much better in all kinds
30:19
of scenarios including the amount of money they earn and their ability to get a promotion than
30:24
men who are short. Is that part of the patriarchy? Perhaps, I don't know. She goes on, open your mind
30:33
without self-judgment, she writes. To the idea that your expectation of your girlfriend doing
30:39
more housework than you because she's better at it sits distantly but definitely on the same
30:45
spectrum as the expectation that she subjugate her life to yours. This in turn sits in terrifying
30:52
proximity to the belief that you can control her money, track her vehicle and assault her body.
31:00
Let's just clarify the bow that's being drawn here. Your expectation that your girlfriend should
31:08
do more housework than you because she's better at it is on the same spectrum as you assaulting her
31:14
body. This GP writes, you too are a descendant of a society in which women for much of history
31:22
were not considered human but resources to be used by men. Again, that is just factually false
31:30
that women were not considered to be human. I don't know whether that's some metaphorical flourish
31:34
but certainly in a literal sense they were considered fully human and they weren't
31:39
that even when they were being deprived of rights in ways that would regard, we would regard
31:43
today as being incredibly retrograde. They were not considered unhuman, mere resources. I mean,
31:50
the men who were enacting the patriarchy back in the day when women had no rights thought that
31:55
they were the protectors of women thought that they were the ones going out doing the hard work in
31:59
the fields while the women stayed at home and didn't have to go off and fight wars and didn't
32:03
have to go down mines and got to stay and look after the kids and get the bounty that the men
32:07
brought home. I mean, ever since cavemen times that was the patriarchy and it wasn't a patriarchy
32:12
that considered women not to be human. It considered them to be a different type of human and that was
32:16
biased and prejudiced in all kinds of ways and it was horribly sexist and it's good that we've
32:20
done away with it but let's not rewrite history. It was not that they weren't considered human.
32:25
This op-ed column just goes on to say, it is possible that you carry some of that inside you still.
32:31
It's possible that you don't and that's wonderful but please check. She says,
32:36
this reflection might bring you adjacent to the idea that you have some attitudes on the same
32:41
spectrum as men who've killed a woman. This is an uncomfortable place to be. She writes, please stay
32:48
there a little longer. Well, okay, do I have some attitudes that are on the same spectrum as men
32:57
who have killed a woman? Yes, does the writer of this piece have some attitudes that are on the
33:04
same spectrum as men who've killed a woman? Yes. Does she think that boys lack good role models
33:13
at the moment? Does she believe that boys are falling behind in school? Does she believe that more
33:17
girls go to university than boys do? Does she believe that girls dominate in fields of the future?
33:24
Like health care? Does she believe that women are better able to use their sexuality to get ahead
33:29
than men are? Does she believe that there's an adolescent health crisis? If she believes those
33:33
things, then she probably believes the same things on the same spectrum as someone who killed a
33:39
woman. The shooter in Bondi might have probably believed those things too if he was a sexist and
33:45
misogynistic as we're being led to believe he was. What does that have to do with anything?
33:51
The difference between an idea and violence is the violence. I mean, the idea that violence is
33:58
okay is an idea which is pernicious and needs to be fought. But to simply say that anyone who holds
34:04
outdated ideas about gender differences, who hasn't done a critical gender studies class at university
34:13
and swallowed unthinkingly the current social justice dogma are about the sex as being identical
34:20
and them having no differences between them. They're being no different propensities between
34:25
boys and girls or men and women. That person is on a spectrum with violence.
34:32
Even if it were true, it would be wildly unconstructive because what can you possibly do about that?
34:38
Anyway, this woman goes on to say, perhaps things are changing. She writes, ending her
34:45
opared with thankfully a positive note. Perhaps things are changing. She writes two days after Bondi
34:52
Junction. Justice Michael Lee gave his judgment. This was in the Brittany Higgins trial. A woman
34:59
is permitted to be complex. This person writes of that case to be unsatisfactory and yet still human
35:05
and entitled not to be raped. Perhaps things are changing. She writes again, even the most
35:11
emotionally reactive media outlets seem to have learned. They can't frame domestic terrorism as
35:16
she drove him to it without some backlash. Perhaps things are changing. She repeats,
35:23
I arrived late to a meeting. This female family doctor writes in the pages of the Sydney Morning
35:28
Herald. And as I was apologizing, he waved his hand, stop saying sorry, women say sorry too much,
35:35
men should say sorry more. Then she writes, my surf coach was leading a group of women into the
35:41
water. A man wandered by and nudged him. You've got a good gig, haven't you? And leared at us,
35:47
the coach stared at him isely and told him to move along.
35:53
Another anecdote she recounts, yesterday I was walking on a narrow footpath. As a man walked
35:58
towards me, she writes, I prepared for the routine patriarchy chicken to be pushed off the path by
36:04
his swinging elbows and my own invisibility. Something unusual happened, she writes. He shifted his
36:12
bags to his other hand. He barely glanced at me. But subconsciously, he recognized that another
36:19
person was using the path, and he reduced his occupation of the footpath to exactly half.
36:27
She writes, I recognize the relative triviality of these events. But every act of misogyny,
36:32
however trivial, contributes to a world in which women are less safe. And every act that acknowledges
36:39
the humanity of women makes us more safe. Excuse me while I go in a box of tissues for that gorgeous
36:47
schmaltcy heart wrenching tribute. So she's saying that the problem of sexism and misogyny and
36:57
casual male supremacy is everywhere. And then she gives five examples of where it doesn't exist
37:04
that she's plucked from her life recently. So not only is she drawing an extraordinary bow
37:10
between retrograde attitudes of men and microaggressions of male privilege with at the other end of
37:18
the spectrum stabbing women, beating women and murdering women. But she then says that actually
37:26
those attitudes aren't very prevalent because she's got all these examples of where the surf coach
37:31
isolated stared down another man and another man didn't actually hug the footpath as she expected
37:35
him to. I mean, is the problem here a man or is the problem here your expectations of what men
37:39
are going to be? This comes back to the point that I was making the beginning. About the world
37:46
is shaped as much by our expectations of it as by what's actually happening. She's walking
37:50
through the world with an expectation that men are going to bash her off the footpath. And then when
37:54
men don't, she says, well, perhaps, you know, this was the exception that proves the rule.
37:59
Yeah, well, maybe it's just maybe you just selectively noticing when things happen that particularly
38:05
frustrate you and that comport with your worldview and confirm your stereotype of men as all
38:11
being brutes. And if you think I'm just having a go at women here, I'm really, really not because
38:16
what sticks in my crawl perhaps more than anything else is the virtue signalling that goes on
38:23
amongst progressive men in putting aside any of their reservations about the validity and rationality
38:31
of this conversation in order to say all of the right things that they think are going to get
38:35
them the clicks and the likes and they're going to make them seem like good allies.
38:39
Like, have a listen to this or you can watch it if you're watching the YouTube video. By the way,
38:43
if you're listening to this on the podcast and you're not watching the YouTube, you can see all of
38:47
the data and the statistics and the articles themselves, which we bring up on the YouTube image.
38:53
It's a much more exciting experience than just listening to the podcast. But have a listen to this,
38:56
this is a clip that went wildly viral in Australia from a podcast that I really like and I have a
39:00
lot of respect for these guys, but it isn't necessarily the most perfect example of actually wrestling
39:07
in a bullshit freeway with a very controversial subject. For men listening to do the exercise
39:13
in your head of like, imagine how you would feel. Imagine there are thousands of crazed men
39:24
out there who are targeting men. And so like, no man is safe. Out in the streets of Australia,
39:31
all around Australia, men are being targeted, being beaten, killed, raped.
39:37
Like, imagine that is a thing that's happening. Then I'm walking out here after this and I'm
39:43
definitely worried. I'm worried. I'm looking around going like, okay, well, you're always making
39:49
sure, okay, which path is safer for me? You're looking at all the men around you going like, okay,
39:54
could they be? Are they dangerous? Am I safe here? Is this straight okay? Are there enough people
39:59
here that, you know, to constantly be thinking about that would, and that is the experience for women?
40:05
It's pretty black and white. I think there are very few things in life that this black and white,
40:10
like, women are being murdered at a horrific rate. And we have stats for the amount of hospitalisations
40:19
and for the amount of reported cases. But you speak to anyone who's worked in any area close to this
40:25
and they suspect that the amount of women who are being assaulted in relationships is so much
40:30
higher than what's being reported. It's disgusting stuff and it needs to be talked about more.
40:34
Okay. Well, that is true as far as it goes. Women are being murdered at a horrific rate in the
40:41
sense that every murder is horrific for the person to whom it happens and their family and there
40:46
shouldn't be any murders. So I think we can all agree on that. We don't really need to get a memo
40:51
on that, do we? I think we're on the same page about murder being bad. In terms of the actual
40:56
rate, historically, we've already seen that it's at the third lowest rate that it's been in 30 years.
41:02
April was a terrible month. Will that end up being ironed out over the course of the rest of the
41:06
year? We just don't know. I'm not trying to downplay the hurt that happens to the people who are
41:13
actually involved. I'm trying to push back against a sense of victimisation and a sense of vulnerability
41:20
and a sense of powerlessness that I don't think is good for women and a sense of defensiveness that
41:26
I don't think is constructive in men. We need to create the largest cohort of people who are on
41:31
the same page who don't feel like they're being unfairly maligned on the male side. We also need
41:36
to create a psychological environment in which women, especially young women, don't have a
41:41
misguided understanding of the actual threat that they face when they're walking through the world.
41:46
So let's just take this bit by bit. I just want to replay some of what we just heard. Imagine
41:52
there are thousands of crazed men out there who are targeting men. Well, there are. I mean,
42:00
there are. We've already seen the statistics. 118 women were murdered in the last year for which
42:06
there were records and 259 men. So more than twice as many men. So yes, we get that. And so like,
42:12
no man is safe. Right. They're not out in the streets of Australia, all around Australia.
42:18
Men are being targeted. Correct. That's true. More than twice the rate that women are being beaten,
42:24
killed, raped. Okay. I'll give them that. They're not being raped. Like, imagine that is a thing
42:29
that's happening. Then I'm walking out here after this. And I'm definitely worried. Okay. But you
42:36
are not currently worried, even though the statistics show that your twice is likely to be killed,
42:41
then you would be if you're a woman. So why aren't you currently worried? You're not currently
42:45
worried because you haven't ingested a constant media drum beat of how dangerous the world is for men.
42:50
You ingested a media drum beat of how dangerous the world is for women. Is that a good thing for
42:55
women to be walking through the world being told that they're constantly about to be attacked? I
43:01
don't know. If it provides motivation for us to do something about the problem, maybe it's a
43:05
price worth paying, but let's not pretend it's not a price. Yeah. I'm worried. I'm like looking
43:09
around going like, okay, well, you're always making sure, okay, which path is safest for me?
43:14
You're looking at all the men around you going like, okay, could they be? Are they dangerous?
43:19
Am I safe here? Yeah. You should be looking at the men around you going, are they dangerous?
43:23
If you're walking down a deserted street at night in a big city and a shape of a man comes
43:29
walking down the street towards you, you should be thinking, are they dangerous to some extent?
43:34
You are likely to be killed by that person as a man. You're not likely to be victim of sexual
43:38
assault, but you are likely to be killed and we're talking about women being killed.
43:42
To constantly be thinking about that, and that is the experience for women. Yes, and it's
43:49
tragic and is it the experience for women because they are being murdered by men at unprecedented
43:55
rates, which they're not, or is it the experience of women because the way we're having this conversation
44:00
stinks. It's pretty black and white. I think there are very few things in life that this black and
44:06
white, like, women are being murdered at a horrific rate. Okay, let's go back to this women
44:12
are being murdered at a horrific rate thing because I've already said it's horrific if a single
44:15
person is murdered, but I don't see this as black and white at all. Okay, 118 women murdered,
44:22
259 men murdered. We're talking about people being killed. We're setting aside for a moment
44:27
of domestic violence. I've already said that I agree with the proposals that we should do,
44:31
which would enact to reform the way that coercive control operates in relationships, both gay and
44:36
straight, which include very high figures of domestic abuse and violence and coercion amongst lesbian
44:43
same-sex couples, where there's no male involved at all. So let's do everything we can to fix that
44:48
problem. The domestic violence problem, choir domestic violence. But in terms of the horrific
44:54
rate of women being murdered by men, I mean, 118 women in 2022. 25 Australians a week die on the
45:06
roads. 112 Australians a week die from falling over. Right? 5,800 Australians a year die from falling
45:17
over. And of those, 114 are from falling off a ladder, scaffolding, building, tree, cliff,
45:24
or into the water. That's actually a line item that the Bureau of Statistics collects about
45:30
the ways that people die. Now most of those people falling off things are men. So the epidemic of
45:36
females being murdered is roughly comparable to the epidemic of men dying from falling off
45:42
ladders, cliffs, trees, building stairs and by bumping into the furniture. That's not to say we
45:48
shouldn't do something about it. Of course we should. Being killed is a bad thing. And falling off
45:55
a ladder is a bad thing. So let's try to fix all of it. Let's do as much as we can. Let's be respectful
46:02
to the victims, sorry, survivors. Well, maybe that didn't survive if they're victims of murder.
46:07
But to be pumping out this relentless message, this barrage of terror that women are being
46:15
murdered at horrific, unprecedented rates, what are we doing? Who are we appeasing?
46:22
What crowd are we playing to? Like I get that you want to seem like you're on the right side
46:27
of history here and that you're the upstanding and pathic person in the conversation. And I know
46:31
that I'll get pilloried as being a clueless male who just doesn't get it who's trying to do a
46:36
rant on hashtag not all men. But can we talk about facts? I get that it's an emotional issue,
46:42
but my job is not to be emotional. My job is to be rational. And the job of policy and the job
46:47
of public conversation and the job of journalists should be to be rational, to treat each other like
46:53
we're grown-ups, to cut through the bullshit. We're not doing a very good job of it, least of all
46:59
on social media, where I posted a clip from our last episode and wrote, how do you discuss the
47:04
problem of male violence without alienating all men? That was in the tweet. Well, you can imagine
47:11
the replies. One person says, can't men understand that nobody is saying all men? It's beyond
47:16
frustrating that women are expected to find solutions. Another person wrote, how will we fix the problem
47:22
of gendered violence? If we don't understand the problem of gendered violence, but in the main,
47:26
I would say that people who say not all men have zero interest in fixing the problem couldn't
47:30
give a fuck that person says. Another person says, Josh, it's only the
47:35
entitled and abusive men who feel alienated or threatened when discussing male violence. That's
47:41
the point. Look, these are nice ad hominem arguments, but they just shut down the conversation before
47:47
it even begins by saying that anyone who says not all men is not interested in solving the problem.
47:51
Maybe you need to say not all men in order to identify which men are actually the problem men
47:55
and do something about them. A lot of shoplifters are female. For example, that's a gendered crime.
48:02
In some jurisdictions and sometimes in places, shoplifting has actually been a majority female
48:07
problem. Would it make any sense to say instead of understanding the reasons why women shoplift,
48:13
we just have to force women to have that conversation. Women must do better. The real problem
48:20
is that women as a group need to fundamentally reorient their attitude towards stealing.
48:26
I'm not saying all women are shoplifters, but I'm saying it is the responsibility of all women
48:30
to deal with the shoplifters in their midst. I'm sick of male police officers trying to solve the
48:35
problem of female shoplifting. This is a problem for women to sort out. Don't tell me that you're
48:40
not a shoplifter and think you can absolve yourself of responsibility for your cohort of people.
48:45
This is responsible for so much of this nation's shoplifting. I mean, it wouldn't make any sense.
48:50
Let's look at shoplifting. Let's look at shoplifters. Let's look at their motivations,
48:54
why they do what they do, how we can stop them from doing it, how we can provide justice
48:58
and restitution to the victims of shoplifting. I don't even need to go as far as talking,
49:02
as bringing race into it again, but you could absolutely imagine a conversation in which you're
49:06
talking about the disproportionate rate of violent crime or property crime committed by Black people
49:12
versus white people. You're saying, well, why do they keep saying that it's not their responsibility
49:16
to solve that problem? It wouldn't fly. Why does it fly with men? Again, I'm not saying this
49:25
because I'm like offended and delicate and I'm like a snowflake who doesn't want to deal with the
49:30
things that I need to deal with. I am more than happy to deal with the stuff that I need to deal with.
49:34
But my goal here is to create a large but as large a possible a cohort of people who are on our
49:40
side who are on the side of reform and you don't do that by alienating innocent people and demonizing
49:45
people who have nothing to do with the problem. If you think that men are all sitting around in pubs
49:50
and when one of them says, oh, you know, well, she did it, but I gave her a bit of a slap
49:55
that the other men go, oh, yeah, good on you, mate. You're dreaming. If there is a pub where that is
50:00
happening, then that is diabolical, but I will guarantee you that is a vast, vast, vast, vast, vast
50:08
minority of circumstances. And it is a circumstance that most males simply never encounter. I have never
50:14
seen a conversation like that. I have never in my life been with a group of guys where one of them
50:20
has confessed to some kind of coercive or emotional control, let alone physical violence against
50:26
a partner and everybody else has sort of chuckled along and thought that's okay. It is absolutely
50:32
taboo. So what more do you want us to do? Like, I will do whatever you want me to do. I will solve
50:38
whatever you want me to solve. I will cop whatever you want me to cop and I will fix anything that's
50:43
within my power to fix. But I won't participate in a conversation that it strikes me as designed
50:49
to create as much division as possible and as much blame as possible and that I don't think is
50:56
doing the job of creating the largest possible demos from which to enact change. Like, think about
51:02
what we try to do in any other situation of violence when a community is violent. Just rewind
51:09
back to the counterterrorism campaign of the first couple of decades of this century. The job
51:16
of counterterrorism experts, as they saw it, was to alienate and divide extremist Muslims from
51:22
the rest of the Muslim community. The job was not to demonize all Muslims and to the extent that
51:29
we did that, it backfired and it was counterproductive. What we wanted to do was provide a vision of
51:33
Islam that was positive and optimistic and honest. The job was not to say that ISIS is the same as
51:40
all Muslims and all Muslims have to do something about ISIS. It was to alienate them. It was to
51:45
sideline them. It was to put a cleavage in between terrorists and the rest of the community. Why
51:52
wouldn't you want to do the same thing here? Why wouldn't you want to isolate violent males from
51:56
the rest of men and say to men instead of men do men need to do better? Say to men let's analyze
52:02
exactly what's going on in your midst because something's obviously dysfunctional. So let's figure
52:07
out what that thing is and what sets some men apart from the vast majority of men who don't
52:11
participate in these kinds of behaviors. It reminds me of another poster that we saw at the rally
52:16
which said men are like mushrooms dangerous till proven otherwise. Well, that's a lovely way to
52:22
walk through the world, isn't it? To assume that half of the population is dangerous inherently
52:28
dangerous. Again, imagine applying it to any other group even if that group is disproportionately
52:32
responsible for a particular crime, a specific racial group. It's not a constructive way to have
52:38
a conversation. I don't want people to live in fear. I want to strive towards consensus
52:44
and I want to isolate the violent males from the rest of the male community. To the extent that
52:50
we can have conversations that do that instead of conversations that demonize all men, I welcome
52:56
the conversation and I want to have those uncomfortable conversations. And I should add,
53:01
lastly, in case you think that I'm just being a reactionary male here, that one of Australia's
53:06
leading authorities in sexual exploitation and gendered violence, Professor Michael Slater,
53:12
Professor of Criminology at UNSW, agrees broadly with this analysis. He talks about a sacred cow,
53:22
which is in academic circles, a philosophy called the ameliorative hypothesis, which is broadly
53:29
what I've been talking about, broadly the kind of worldview that we've seen thrust at us in recent
53:35
weeks, that microaggressions and power structures, the existence of a patriarchy and of sexist
53:40
attitudes leads directly to violence against women. He writes, many critics consider this philosophy
53:48
too risky to question or to criticize publicly. So for the most part, they've been voicing these
53:54
concerns privately with growing urgency. This is because Professor Slater, by the way, and this is
53:59
me talking now, not him, is fundamentally committed to actual reforms that can isolate violence,
54:06
look at its causes and can try to fix it, rather than big arm-waving sweeping generalizations about
54:13
gender, which seem to be the favored tactic of activists and politicians and the commentariat.
54:22
Professor Slater writes, we cannot keep having these conversations in private, meaning these
54:26
dissenting conversations, much like the one I'm having now. Like other sectors faced with entrenched
54:31
public health problems, we need to have the courage to have difficult conversations about what is
54:36
and isn't working. That's my goal here to have those difficult conversations, to have those
54:41
uncomfortable conversations. I hope you've enjoyed it. Lots of love. Take care. Be safe. See you next week.