TW: Discussion of sexual and domestic violence
We know that one in four women experience intimate partner violence. But the real story? More than one in three Australian men admitted to using violence in the Ten to Men Insights Report released by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in June.
While the report itself used the terminology that men “reported they had ever used a form of intimate partner violence”, I want to emphasise the idea of self-admission. They didn’t allude to engaging in this violence. They weren’t accused of it. They admitted to doing it.
That figure used to be one in four. In just a decade, the rate of self-reported abuse has surged with 120,000 more men using violence for the first time each year. And that’s just those who are willing to say so in an anonymous survey.
The most common form of intimate partner violence reported was emotional abuse, followed by physical and sexual violence. The advocacy sector would argue that self-reported sexual assault perpetration would be far higher if it was better understood in intimate partner contexts. Suddenly, Australia’s rising rate of victimisation feels certain.
But here’s the thing. While the data is clear, our response to it won’t be. Because if we accept that the perpetration of abuse is common, we must also accept that perpetrators are people we know and love. It never adds up; most people know a victim, yet no one wants to think of their father, brother or friend as abusive. It’s just too confronting. Uncomfortable. As a result, victims are routinely disbelieved.
Victim-blaming is perpetuated by rape culture, a lack of empathy, poor education about the nature of sexual violence, and misconceptions about our justice system. But I think it also stems from a drive for self-preservation. Out of fear, we distance ourselves from victims by highlighting aspects of the series of events that might have led to a crime, in an attempt to convince ourselves that it could never happen to us. Whatever the justification, we prefer to see the victim as somehow wrong, instead of facing the fact that any one of us could be at risk.
For victims we don’t know, this is easy. Victims who are strangers lend themselves nicely to the cognitive dissonance we rely on to go about our lives unaffected by the world’s horrible truths. But a victim we know? That’s hard, and not just because we often hold more empathy for people close to us… A victim we know is very likely to have been assaulted by a perpetrator we know.
And therein lies the issue.
For decades, we’ve spun stories of female victimhood as a personal flaw. Maybe it’s something broken in her that attracts the wrong men or provokes bad behaviour. But if a woman dates 10 men, and at least three are emotionally abusive, and at least one will physically assault her… the problem isn’t her. It shouldn’t have to be spelt out. The problem is the men who are doing this.
When it comes to sexual violence, we often talk about shame being misplaced. The victims carry the shame of the event, not the perpetrators.
Imagine if we flipped the script. Instead of saying, “one in four women has experienced abuse,” we said “one in three men will abuse their girlfriends”. What if we criticised male behaviour, not female patterns of surviving it? Is the reframe too confronting? Does it require too much of you?
Men’s violence against women doesn’t just happen. It happens because we allow it to. Because we protect men’s reputations over women’s lives. Because it’s easier to believe that she’s difficult, or a liar, or a slut, than to admit that your mate might be dangerous. But if we don’t confront the scale of perpetration and the nature of those perpetrating, we lose our ability to imagine a different future, one where violence isn’t inevitable. A future where abuse isn’t something girls are taught to avoid, but boys are taught not to harm. Prevention is prioritised.
I saw a quote recently from educator and author Jackson Katz: “If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to raise a rapist”. One in three men. That’s a lot of villagers.
We tend to measure accountability in courtroom convictions, but real justice is social. It’s cultural. It looks like shame where shame is due. It looks like intervention, to stop it happening again, or in the first place. It’s easy to support victims in theory, but real solidarity is uncomfortable. Everyone thinks they’ll do the right thing, until it costs them something. Author Judith Herman writes, “the victim asks the bystander to share the burden of pain.” That burden is heavy, but it’s yours, too. You’re part of the village, remember.
Until we hold ourselves accountable and recognise that the silent complicity of the majority got us here, we’ll keep failing victims and perpetrators alike. We all have a role to play in ending gendered violence, and your role matters most when the perpetrator is your friend.
If you or anyone you know is affected by domestic, family or sexual violence and needs support, please call 1800 RESPECT.
Sarah Rosenberg is Executive Director and Co-Founder of With You We Can, an online resource demystifying the police and legal processes for victims of sexual violence while working to improve them.
Top photo – Pictured: Sarah Rosenberg, Source: Supplied
