Róisín Ingle on . . . men’s violence against women

Just like the poor, men's violence against women will always be with us. We will talk about it, occasionally, when it involves an Oscar Pistorius or a Ched Evans, but mostly it will happen out of sight, the way it does in Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. It will happen the way it always has in the majority of cases, with women in their homes suffering behind a cliched cloak of silence and closed doors.

Most of the time, when voices cut through the silence, it is women we hear talking. Women made up the majority of the audience at the launch of the annual report of the Saoirse women's refuge I attended a few months ago. Women dominated the audience at the recent "Man Up" event backed by Ryan Tubridy.

The involvement of Tubridy made the event newsworthy, and not just because of his celebrity. Here was a man talking in public about other men beating up women. A man talking about how unacceptable that is. A man calling on other men not to commit violence against women.

Every year I help judge a competition run by the Vodafone Foundation called World of Difference. Hundreds of people apply to win the chance of a salaried job working with the charity of their choice for a year. This year a male candidate sat across the desk from us who wanted to talk about what it means in our society to be a boy and a man.

This Irish man used to live in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife Jill. One night she went out for a few drinks and she never came home. She was raped and murdered by Adrian Bayley, a man out of jail on parole. Tom Meagher wanted to talk to us about how his wife’s murder inspired his mission to reduce men’s violence against women.

Earlier this year Meagher wrote an internationally acclaimed blog on whiteribbonblog.com . White Ribbon is a male-led campaign to end violence against women. He began by shattering the "monster myth". While in the aftermath of his wife's death it had been "self-comforting" for him to dismiss violent men as psychotic or sociopathic, seeing her murderer in court forming coherent sentences confirmed what he hadn't wanted to accept – that the men murdering and raping women are normal men that we work alongside, live with and count as friends.

He wrote that men’s violence against women cannot be separated from certain cultural norms: men shouting comments at women in the street, casual rape jokes and threats, women being groped in nightclubs and other everyday occurrences. He believes all of this contributes to a culture in which rape and violence are allowed to exist.

“Violent men are socialised by ingrained sexism and entrenched masculinity that permeates everything from our daily interactions all the way up to our highest institutions,” he wrote.

Meagher and many men across the world are passionate about ending men’s violence against women. He and the White Ribbon campaign in Ireland hope to start going into Irish schools and talking to young boys and girls about these issues. They want to help young people notice and be more vigilant around sexist behaviour. They want to give them the language to speak up when they feel uncomfortable around sexism. They want to talk to teenagers about issues such as consent and respect and in doing so, Meagher said, create a “well-adjusted Irish youth free from toxic gender stereotypes and the violence they create”.

“If we don’t target men,” he said, “it’s like trying to cure a disease without looking at the cause of the disease.”

Of course women can be violent, but most violence is perpetrated by men. As non-violent men – a group thankfully in the majority – begin to engage more with the causes of this violence we are going to hear a lot more from them on this issue. Which is welcome because, as actress and UN goodwill ambassador for women Emma Watson said recently, we need "to galvanise as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for change".

It’s true that men’s violence against women will always be with us. But now men like Tom Meagher and Ryan Tubridy are stepping up and speaking out and that is something beyond cliche. It is something hopeful, something new. roisin@irishtimes.com

White Ribbon Day is on November 25th

For more see whiteribbon.ie