SALON

Monday, Mar 11, 2013 7:40 PM UTC

Patrick Stewart: Men need to help end abuse

The actor speaks out on rape, telling men to prevent domestic violence

By

Topics: patrick stewart, Ring the Bell, Violence Against Women, Rape, Hannity, Zerlina Maxwell,

Patrick Stewart: Men need to help end abusePatrick Stewart (Credit: Reuters/Jason Redmond)

Thank you, Captain Picard. Speaking over the weekend at an event he hosted for Breakthrough’s Ring the Bell anti-violence campaign, the actor issued a challenge — and sounded an important call for 1 million men to make 1 million “concrete, actionable promises” to end abuse against women, the “single greatest human rights violation of our generation.”

Stewart’s remarks were a well-timed and much-needed statement about the nature of violence against women, the environments in which it blooms and the ways we must recalibrate our expectations to change things. In his speech, Stewart spoke movingly of growing up with a father who was “an angry and unhappy man who was not able to control his emotions — or his hands” and he made a plea for action — “not an action that will make things better in six months’ time or a year’s time but action that might save someone’s life and someone’s future this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow morning.” That’s a strategy that’s tough for a lot of people to get their heads around. We live in a quick-fix world. Change the culture by just making a promise? By speaking out? Come on, can’t everybody just get a gun instead?

Depressingly, we are living right in a country in which telling women to carry concealed weapons seems like an easier fix against violence than encouraging people to just not be violent. Last week, Zerlina Maxwell caught all manner of pushback hell for saying, during an appearance on “Hannity,” that “We should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there.” Never mind that she wasn’t telling women not to protect or defend themselves. All Maxwell did was broach the subject of involving men, actively and consistently, in the conversation about sexual violence, because “a lot of times it’s someone you know and trust,” and the response was so vitriolic she couldn’t even look at her own Facebook page afterward.

We need to rewrite the script — and we need to get way over the idea that men don’t need to be part of it, because nice guys already know how to behave and bad guys won’t listen. That kind of thinking assumes that the world is black and white, and that there isn’t a spectrum of behaviors and attitudes. It conveniently ignores the peer element in cases like Steubenville and Cleveland and Delhi. Violence against women isn’t always the act of a lone sociopath. Sometimes it’s a bunch of guys, egging each other on. It isn’t always a monster in the shadows either. Sometimes it’s a man who doesn’t even understand how what he’s doing to a woman is rape or abuse — a man who might have acted in a very different way if he’d ever just learned how. That’s not a crazy idea. It’s an important one.

And here’s something else. The fringier, angrier element will tell you that involving men in violence prevention will somehow foster an environment in which men and boys are raised to believe they’re all potential abusers. That’s not it at all. It’s about understanding that behaviors and attitudes are learned and reinforced, and that we have the power to teach and reinforce in a more positive direction. It’s about acknowledging that putting all the onus of preventing rape and violence upon women — and our eternally questioned behavior — burdens us as the sole gatekeepers of aggression. And worse – it already teaches boys and girls, men and women, that just men can’t control themselves. Whatever, gals, it’s on you to figure it all out. How is that helpful? How is that respectful to either sex?

At the Ring the Bell event, former NFL quarterback Don McPherson spoke of why we need to rethink how we talk to our sons and our husbands and our co-workers and our friends. “We don’t raise boys to be men,” he said. “We raise them not to be women, or gay men. White people confronted white people to fight racism. Men need to confront men.” Ding! Ding ding ding ding!

Rape and abuse aren’t lady problems that we need to fix with our lady solutions. Men and women need to work together on these issues, creating programs in schools, talking openly about solutions. The guy who’s going to go on to commit violence against women isn’t a nameless ogre. He’s somebody’s brother. Somebody’s son. He’s somebody you know, right now. So why wouldn’t you want to talk to him now, before it’s too late?

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 12 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
363 points364 points | 348 comments
vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
271 points272 points | 28 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
232 points233 points | 32 comments
vote
Austerity Kills: Brian McArdle, a 57-year-old man who had had two strokes and could barely walk, was found "fit for work" by a government subcontractor, and had his benefits stopped. He died the next day.
118 points119 points | 15 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills -- radical cuts destroy economies and lives, and the honest numbers and economics keep proving it
116 points117 points | 13 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations