WITH the Grangegorman murders still fresh in all of our minds, it is perhaps time to look at who speaks out, who doesn't and why. The standard pattern is for organisations such as Women's Aid, Rape Crisis Centres and the National Women's Council to speak out, and in grieving for the victims, demand change to promote safety for women and children.

Meanwhile, men generally maintain a public silence on such tragedies. This does not mean of course that men are not deeply saddened and repulsed by such violence. But at a public level, men's individual feelings go unheard. Changing this means developing a true Zero Tolerance society where men work alongside the justice system in eliminating this crime.

In one sense the case for men taking on this issue and promoting Zero Tolerance is devastatingly simple: Women just don't feel safe. All men, whether we like it or not, have become symbols of danger to women.

This is not at all the same as saying that all men are potential rapists, murderers or batterers. It means rather that individual men's violence keeps all women in a state of fear and self monitoring because women can never be sure that it will not be this man who will rape, attack, attempt murder.

Thus, men in general are feared, and in that sense individual men's violence comes to represent a form of collective male power over women, even though most men have not the slightest intention of perpetrating violence. Women in general are rendered cautious and subordinated by the supremacy of men that exists in society.

This ties violence and gender relations firmly into issues of power, and it is crucial to the struggle for solutions that we see this larger picture. Men gain a dividend from patriarchy in terms of honour, prestige, the right to command, as well as a material dividend. In the rich capitalist countries, men's average incomes are approximately double women's average incomes. Of 55 US fortunes of about $1 billion in 1992, only five were mainly in the hands of women - and all but one of those as a result of inheritance from men.

As Bob Connell, the leading sociologist of masculinity, has recently argued, given these facts the "battle of the sexes" is no joke. Violence is inherent to a gender order which constitutes men as an interest group concerned with defence, and women as an interest group concerned with change.

The American radical feminist Andrea Dworkin once suggested that one way forward in eliminating violence against women was for men to declare a 24 hour ceasefire.

IN the wake of those other ceasefires that so much energy is rightly being put into, men's violence in inter personal relationships is the most brutal social problem facing us on this island at this time. Yet where are the (male) politicians and other men attempting to debate it and initiate a peace process in gender relations?

I'm not trying to make a cheap point here or suggest that male politicians, for instance, don't care. To be fair, the Government has appointed a Working Group on Violence Against Women, chaired by Minister of State Eithne Fitzgerald. It is soon to report its findings and simply must result in further resources and social reforms. However, the fact remains that men avoid talking about violence, never mind really taking on the issue.

But this is profoundly difficult. There is something in the shared unspoken bonds that unite men as men that leads us to stay silent and not even challenge one another's views on such life and death matters, that makes all the football talk such a relief. Safe. That "something" is what Connell terms the "patriarchal dividend" - the advantages men in general gain from the overall subordination of women.

Not all men, and perhaps even a limited number, actually live up to the exalted ideals of true masculinity in our culture. Indeed, some men do badly out of patriarchy because it not only gives men collective power over women, but over some groups of men, like the poor, unemployed, and gay men.

Studies are beginning to show that some men also fear victimisation and suffer greatly when it happens. But women's subjective experience of danger is far greater and men generally have the advantage of walking the streets and living in their homes relatively free from fears of violence.

Thus, the patriarchal dividend accrues to all men, whether we want it to or not. This should not be taken to mean that all men carry responsibility for the appalling behaviour of the criminal men or that most men are cruelly exploiting women. On the contrary, as Connell observes: "Marriage, fatherhood and community life often involve extensive compromises with women rather than naked domination or an uncontested display of authority. A great many men who draw the patriarchal dividend also respect their wives and mothers, are never violent towards women, do their accustomed share of the housework, and bring home the family wage.

But although most men aren't violent, research and intervention work with those who are shows that they feel justified by an ideology of supremacy. A ceasefire among men has to include not just stopping all acts of violence but challenging the attitudes and the ideology of supremacy which plays into the decisions some individual men take to abuse women.

This means men have to visibly move beyond a complicity with the patriarchial project to speak out and act. It must involve men demonstrating that we are taking the issue of women's safety very seriously. The White Ribbon organisation in Canada is a good example of the kind of men's campaign that has begun to do this. They ask men to wear a white ribbon to express their personal pledge "never to commit, condone, or remain silent about violence against women". Their public education work is extending into schools and other forms of direct work with men around gender relations.

So breaking the silence on violence can be done. The benefits of men struggling collectively to reject the patriarchal dividend and promote justice and true personal safety are potentially great, not only for women and children, but for men too.

There is real space in this process to explore and honour the goodness of men and to advance the conditions for safe, trustworthy and loving gender relationships. But first the ceasefire among men must be announced and peace talks allowed to begin.