What Can Men Do? The following article is the text of a talk given in Melbourne at the Men Can Stop Rape rally, organised by Men Against Sexual Assault (MASA), on 4 September, 1993. While I have long been concerned about justice for women, I first became actively involved in this struggle in 1981 when a woman who is now a good friend of mine took the time to tell me, quite bluntly, that I was ignorant. And she was right. As a result of this very uncomfortable realisation, I started listening much more deeply to what women were saying. And as I listened I became increasingly outraged about what was happening to my mother, my sisters, my partner and to other women. Moreover, as I learned more, I realised that I was motivated to change this state of affairs by my passion for justice on the one hand and my recognition that I was being denied a part of myself on the other. Sexual assault and violence against women generally is a disturbing issue for many men and certainly for those of us here today. Given that Stephen (Fisher) has talked about sexual assault specifically, I want to talk about the wider question of violence against women. In this sense, violence against women is not simply about men expressing uncontrolled anger. It is about a system - which is called patriarchy - in which the use of violence against women is not only tolerated but is actively encouraged. It is about violence which is not 'incidental'; it is about the systematic use of violence against women in order to control their lives and their power for a specific purpose; that is, for the benefit of men in general and some men in particular. So how does patriarchy do this? One way it does this is by teaching men to deny their feelings. While evolutionary forces gave men the potential for a full range of emotional expression, patriarchal socialisation teaches men to suppress their feelings. And if, as a man, you are not in touch with how you feel, how can you understand the pain of women? Now for me, acknowledging the violence directed at women involves feeling very uncomfortable; it involves feeling pain, particularly as I listen to women speak of their suffering; and it involves realising time and again how far I have yet to go because learning how to be a man who does not control and exploit women is not easy. So if you feel unsure at times about what you should do, I know how you feel. As men, we are all in this together. And yet, as men, we also have great power and great responsibility to change ourselves, to help change other men and to play our part in dismantling the institutions of patriarchal society. I used to be very wary of labels and, although I am less so now, I am always careful to explain what I mean. So how do I describe myself? I consider myself to be a profeminist man and a nonviolent activist. What do these labels mean? To me, being profeminist means being willing to act, as a man, in support of the feminist agenda. And being a nonviolent activist means being willing to act in response to the dictates of my conscience. If my conscience says that I must do it, then I try to do it, whatever the consequences. Like each one of you, I spend most of my time in an old world which is destroying us all. This is a world in which war, social injustice, environmental degradation and hatred is everywhere. In fact, as someone with a deep commitment to this Earth and its many species of life, I have witnessed first-hand much that is both life-destroying and soul-destroying in this world. I have worked in refugee camps in Africa and watched people die slowly of starvation. I have seen the effect it has on Kooris when they explain how the dominant culture in this country massacred their ancestors and still torments them today. I have seen rainforests laid waste in the name of profits and progress. And, as a member of the Gulf Peace Team during the Gulf War, I have watched from the Al Rasheed Hotel while western bombs killed the men, women and children of Baghdad. But, as an activist, I also spend much of my time helping to create a new world which nurtures us all. This world is peaceful, just, ecologically sustainable and loving. And, in at least one sense, I am very lucky. As an activist, I get to spend more time than most people living in those small parts of this loving and nurturing world which have already been created. It is because I can see the contrast between what this world is like and what the world could be like that I am so committed to working for change in a nonviolent way. And at the very top of my concerns is violence against women because, despite the horror of all those things I have just mentioned, violence against women is the longest standing and most pervasive injustice of them all. As a profeminist man who is willing to act on the basis of what I believe, I have identified three levels at which I must act in order to help destroy patriarchy and I encourage each one of you to consider acting at all three levels as well. Firstly, I must be willing to give myself emotional space. Patriarchy denies me important parts of myself and especially the right to my own feelings. If I am to be whole and to be powerful for the struggle against patriarchy, I need to give myself time to get in touch with how I feel: my sadness, my pain, my anger, my joy. I must not bury myself in my work so that I can hide from how I feel and ultimately render myself emotionally barren. I must reclaim my emotional self. What I have discovered during this process of getting in touch with how I feel is that these emotions, in fact, are the source of my power. My emotions tell me what is right and give me the power to act. It is no wonder that patriarchy is so afraid of men's and women's emotions. Secondly, I must be willing to work systematically to eliminate those personal behaviours which I use in order to control or to exploit women. Importantly, for example, this means that I do not use sexist language, I do not tell or listen to sexist jokes, I do not use pornography and I do my share of housework including cooking, cleaning and shopping. In addition, I am committed to challenging sexist behaviour in other men. And thirdly, I must be willing to take action against the values and institutions of patriarchy. This means that I must be willing to work in the political arena because part of my education as a profeminist man has been the realisation that the destruction of patriarchy requires more than changes in personal behaviour. It requires fundamental changes in our culture and equally fundamental changes in our political, economic and legal structures. And in order to bring these changes about, there are many possible points of intervention. For example, apart from campaigning against the use of pornography, the way in which women are portrayed in the media and against women's exclusion from structures of power, I believe that we should be working for the creation of completely new non-patriarchal structures and processes. For example, I do not think that it is possible to make parliaments or the legal system non-patriarchal just by including more women or by subjecting them to (even) major reform. I think that we need to be much more imaginative than this. We should work to create parallel structures which will ultimately make these institutions - which are quite unresponsive to the needs of women (and many others) - irrelevant. In my view, the work being done by feminists and others to create more inclusive decision-making processes and alternative conflict resolution mechanisms are initiatives which have far more potential than any strategy to merely reform the institutions of patriarchy. If this sounds radical it is because, in my view, uprooting patriarchy requires radical action. I have great hope that we can do what is necessary to eliminate violence against women and to create a nonviolent culture. Things are changing. For many reasons, including the inspiration provided by the feminist vision of a better world, more and more men are taking action. And that is why we are all here today. I want to thank you for your inspiration. It gives me greater strength to know that I act with the power of other good men. There are still many things that we can do. As you walk to the Treasury Gardens, you might take the opportunity to talk to other men, to share your feelings, to get support for what you do, and to share ideas and encouragement for what else you could do. The path of struggle is a long one. As men who care deeply about the women of this world, and about ourselves, let us use this walk to rededicate ourselves to this struggle. Robert J. Burrowes