by Jackson Katz
How are we going to ensure that female service members are protected from sexual assault if no one is clear about who assaults them? It is not pleasant, but these women’s assailants are not disembodied abstractions. They are fellow male service members. They are men who wear the uniform of the United States armed forces. At a minimum, don’t women who put their lives on the line to serve in the military deserve this kind of honest language?
PASSIVE VOICE
Have you ever heard a politician under fire at a press conference utter the phrase “mistakes were made?” In our cynical age, everyone knows this phrase is about passing the buck. If the buck truly stopped with them, a forthright leader would say, “I made a mistake,” or “We made a mistake.” Instead, by shifting into the passive voice, they shift the focus off of themselves. This is a tried-and-true method employed by guilty people to manipulate language in an effort to dodge accountability.
Use of the passive voice is also one of the chief linguistic culprits responsible for deflecting attention away from men’s role in violence against women. If you pay close attention, you will see that much of the national conversation about gender violence—on the Web, in newspaper and magazine articles, on TV, and in everyday speech—is dominated by passive sentences.
News stories dutifully report—sometimes in sensational fashion—the bad things that happen to women. You see it all the time in headlines: “Aspiring Model Murdered,” “Girl Abducted,” “Student Raped”; in statistics: “Every day, three women are murdered as a result of domestic violence,” or “More than half of rape victims are raped by the age of eighteen”; or in dramatic assertions: “Millions of girls and women suffer sexual harassment in school and in the workplace.” The trouble is that you rarely hear men’s roles clearly stated in these crimes. This omission is not necessarily conscious. It is true that batterers often intentionally use the passive voice to deflect blame: “She went and got herself beat up.” “There was a little fight in my house last night.” But many people without an obvious motive to obfuscate and evade the truth use the passive voice as well.
For example, take the infamous Janet Jackson-Justin Timberlake performance during the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII, on February 1, 2004. The last moment of their duet—when Timberlake popped off part of Jackson’s corset, exposing her breast—became one of the most talked about incidents in pop culture history. To this day it is not clear if what happened was a “wardrobe malfunction,” as Jackson described it, or a planned publicity stunt. But one thing is clear: much of the chatter about the episode concerned Janet Jackson’s “exposed breast,” as if it simply exposed itself. Many commentators, and people around the water cooler the next day at work, referred to the incident as the Janet Jackson incident, omitting any reference to Timberlake. It is true that he is not as big a star as Jackson, but the dance move that caused the exposure was not merely an artistic rendition of sexual expression. As described by D. C. Rybak of the Minneapolis Star in one of thousands of media accounts, right after Timberlake sang the lyrics “I’m gonna have you naked by the end of this song,” he reached across Jackson’s gladiator-type bustier and pulled off the fabric covering her right breast. In other words, the “dance” move combined with the lyric created a kind of pantomimed sexual assault carried out by Timberlake on Jackson’s body as the culmination of the narrative arc of the song.
This aspect of the incident was totally overshadowed by the firestorm of controversy about the visual image of her exposed breast. In much of the media discussion, the debate centered on the question of whether this was a new low in the shameless exploitation of sexual titillation on television, as if the true problem was “obscenity” in prime time. There was little public discussion of whether it was even appropriate to eroticize a sexual assault in a culture where, according to the National Victim Center, approximately seventyeight women aged eighteen and over are forcibly raped every hour.
The passive voice effectively shifts responsibility for violence—and the responsibility for preventing it—from male perpetrators to female victims. Consider how this works in everyday speech. The following questions all feature passive language:
• How many women were raped at this college last year?
• How many girls at this high school have been in abusive relationships?
• Approximately how many teenage girls in the United States get pregnant every year?
In each case, use of the passive voice shifts our attention off of men and boys and onto women and girls. This reinforces the idea that gender violence is a women’s issue, because the focus of the conversation is what is happening to girls and women, not who is doing it, or why. We can rewrite these sentences in active language:
• How many men raped women at this college last year?
• How many boys at this high school have abused their girlfriends?
• Approximately how many men and boys in the U.S. impregnated teenage girls last year?
The active voice changes the meaning. If the sort of language in the second list were more common, we would certainly be more likely to hold men accountable for men’s violence. The language would push us in that direction.
Admittedly, the two sets of sentences are not 100 percent parallel. For example, there is not typically a one-to-one ratio of rapists to rape victims. Experts remind us that the typical rapist rapes multiple victims, so the number of men who rape women is a lot less than the number of women who are raped. But how often does one even hear the question, How many men have raped women?
In the second sentence, there is also not a one-to-one ratio, in part because girls in the school might have been abused by other girls, or boys/men who were not students. In the third sentence, one parallel question to how many girls got pregnant? is how many boys impregnated girls? But most girls who “get pregnant” are impregnated by men over the age of eighteen. It is much more common for fourteen-year-old girls to be impregnated by twenty-one-year-old men than to be impregnated by their male age-peers. Men’s irresponsible and often coercive sexual behavior is one of the root causes of teen pregnancy. But how often are adult men included in discussions about teen pregnancy?
The novelist Andrew Vachss makes a related point about use of the term “child prostitute.” Writing in Parade magazine in June 2005, Vachss points out that the term implies that little children are “seductive” and “volunteer” to have sex with adults in exchange for cash. It helps to place judgmental focus on the character of the child, not on the people (overwhelmingly men) who manipulate and use them. “When we use terms such as ‘lose one’s virginity’ in referring to adult sex acts with children instead of calling it ‘rape,’” he writes, “or when we say that teachers ‘have affairs’ with their pupils instead of saying that the teachers sexually exploit them, the only beneficiaries are the predators who target children.”
In a paper entitled “Patriarchal False Descriptions of Language” presented at the National Women’s Studies Conference in 1980, the linguist Julia Penelope brilliantly dissects how the passive voice harms women. She warns women to be aware of the language they use to talk about violence, because current language convention is antithetical to offender accountability and does not serve women’s interests. Penelope illustrates her point with the following sequence of sentences:
1. John beat Mary.
2. Mary was beaten by John.
3. Mary was beaten.
4. Mary was battered.
5. Mary is a battered woman.
The first sentence is a good, active English sentence. The second sentence rewrites the first, but this time in the passive voice. This does not simply change the structure of the sentence; it changes the meaning. People who take remedial writing classes often turn in first drafts that are filled with passive sentences. They hedge their bets, qualify themselves, and dance around key points. A good writing instructor will typically tell them: “Say what you mean. Take responsibility for your ideas. Be direct.” But the use of the pa
ssive voice is more than just bad writing; it has a political effect. In this case it changes the subject of the sentence from John to Mary. Not coincidentally, John is at the end of the second sentence, which means he is close to dropping off the map of our consciousness. By the third sentence, John is gone, and it’s all about Mary. In the final sentence, Mary’s very identity—Mary is a battered woman—has been created by the now-absent John.
People frequently ask why battered women stay with the men who beat them. They are right to ask the question, although it is likely that some people’s curiosity about battered women is actually frustration with them, because if you have never been a battered woman you rarely have a clue about the complexities of their families and relationships. Still, it is instructive that few think to ask similar questions about batterers. Why do they beat women? Why do so many American men seek to control through force the women they claim to love? How might the use of active language point us toward answers to these questions?
Many advocates in the field, along with academics who study domestic violence, argue that the incessant focus on the behavior of battered women is de facto proof of the prevalence of victim-blaming. Women who are the victims of violence are frequently held responsible for what was done to them. This is a type of revictimization that not only discourages women from seeking help or getting out of abusive relationships; it also makes it more difficult to hold abusive men accountable for their behavior.
Victim-blaming is popular for many reasons. In this case the passive voice—intentionally or not—deflects attention off men at the same time that it helps keep the focus on women. This, in turn, reinforces the idea that “violence against women” is exclusively a women’s issue, which gets us back to the original problem: men’s central role is either overlooked or rendered invisible.
The phrase “violence against women” itself contributes to this dynamic. It is so common and influential that relatively few people ever pause to contemplate what is wrong with it. But “violence against women” is a passive phrase. It contains no active agent. It is like saying, “shit happens.” No one makes it happen, at least no one we can identify from the available evidence. It is just something that unfortunately occurs. If you insert the active agent—men—a new phrase emerges: Men’s violence against women. It doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily, but it is far more accurate and honest.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Bystanders
“‘Funny thing,’ [Curley’s wife] said. ‘If I catch any one man, and he’s alone, I get along fine with him. But just let two of the guys get together an’ you won’t talk. Jus’ nothing but mad.’ She dropped her fingers and put her hands on her hips. ‘You’re all scared of each other, that’s what. Ever’one of you’s scared the rest is goin’ to get something on you.’”
—John Steinbeck, Of Mice And Men
Most gender-violence prevention efforts over the past several decades have been based on a crude binary model: women and girls are victims or potential victims, and men and boys are perpetrators or potential perpetrators. Not surprisingly, most prevention efforts have focused on women and girls, and how they can avoid physical and sexual assault by boyfriends, husbands, acquaintances, or strangers. This female-centered approach typically includes both the dissemination of literature with headlines like“Warning signs of abusive relationships,” and advice to women and girls about personal safety measures (e.g., do not accept drinks at a party or club if you do not see them poured).
But these popular strategies are not really about prevention. They are about “risk reduction” for women. Their stock in trade is to teach individual girls and women how to avoid victimization. They communicate a simple and powerful message: there are many abusive and dangerous men out there, and you need to have your guard up at all times. Until recently, however, few gender-violence prevention initiatives made it a priority to actually target men and boys, or attempted to change social norms in male culture. The high rate of male perpetration was simply taken for granted as an unpleasant fact of life.
When men were targeted for prevention efforts, in educational or community settings, they were often seen as potential perpetrators. The message to them: you need to recognize the triggers for your own bad behaviors so you can interrupt the process before you have the urge to strike your girlfriend/wife. Or, you need to develop better interpersonal communication skills, like good listening, so you do not force yourself on women sexually. Or, if you occasionally or regularly drink alcohol and then behave in a manner you cannot defend when sober, you need to get immediate help for your drinking problem.
The first problem with this approach is that it treats gender violence as an individual issue that is caused by a man’s personality flaws. It presumes that gender violence is a type of dysfunctional behavior that can be cured with therapy or punished by jail time, rather than a specific manifestation of a deeply rooted system of male dominance. As we have seen, people constantly misrepresent gender violence as the behavior of a few bad apples.
Secondly, it is ineffective to target men as potential perpetrators because most men do not identify themselves this way. In fact, many men who have been convicted of gender-violence crimes still believe they are somehow different from the sorts of men who do terrible things to women. Battererintervention counselors report that the men with whom they work often describe their own behavior as harmless, while criticizing other men’s actions as more serious and worthy of condemnation. “I am not like those guys,” they say, as they search for definitions of “abuse” that do not include any of the acts they have been convicted of perpetrating.
There are many different types of rapists, but studies have shown that some men who rape women are so narcissistic that it never occurs to them that they have committed a crime. This delusion helps explain the countless documented incidents where a man has raped a woman and then actually asked her for her phone number so they can arrange another “date.” If men who have committed horrific acts cannot see their own behavior for what it is and continue to resist introspection—in other words, if actual batterers and rapists tune out messages aimed at batterers and rapists—why should other men pay attention?
When I give a presentation to a roomful of men—in the sports culture, the Marine Corps, or anywhere—I do not adopt an accusatory tone. I do not say, “You guys better listen up, because I know some of you are doing bad things to women.” This would not be fair, and it would not be effective. Men are bound to become defensive and hostile. They will ask themselves: Who the hell is this person? Why is he talking to me? What does he know about me? This isn’t my problem. He should be talking to the lowlifes who actually need to hear this message.
Instead of pointing my finger at them, I challenge them. “Come on, guys,” I say. “The women and girls that we care about have to live with an awful lot of sexist abuse and violence. Many guys in this room have women close to them who have been sexually abused as girls, or raped in high school or college. I know I do. There are guys in this room whose mothers are domesticviolence or sexual-assault survivors. If that’s not bad enough, the simple threat of men’s violence—the mere possibility that it could happen—orders women’s daily lives. Have you ever talked with your women friends and girlfriends about the sorts of precautions they have to take when it gets dark? Can you imagine how you would feel if your freedom was restricted like that? This isn’t right.”
Many men nod in agreement. Occasionally they even applaud in support; but they have no idea what to do next. Because most men see gender violence as an individual problem, they figure all that is required of them is to keep a check on their own behavior. It never occurs to a lot of thoughtful and responsible men that they have a much greater role to play. This is a fertile starting point for a discussion about the concept of men as bystanders.
The term “bystander” is often associated with passivity, a description of someone who stands by while bad things happen. The 1988 Hollywood film The Accused reinforced
this idea and took it one step further. It featured Jodie Foster in the role of a young woman who was gang-raped by a group of men on a pool table in a bar as a second group of men cheered. The movie was loosely based on an infamous real-life incident in 1983 at Big Dan’s bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The major difference between the film and the actual gang rape is that in the former, the bystanders were convicted of a crime, while in the actual incident none of the bystanders were even charged.
Another common definition of the term “bystander” suggests an innocent witness to a crime. One of the most famous pop-culture references to bystanders was in the final episode of Seinfeld in 1998, where the four main characters were put on trial for the crime of being cynical and self-absorbed louts who laughed at a victim as she was car-jacked by a gang of thugs. Their attorney, a Johnnie Cochran look-alike, defended them on the basis that no one had ever heard of a “guilty bystander.” In social justice education, the term “bystander” can be used to identify people who are part of an oppressive system, but are neither victims nor perpetrators. In the wake of the Holocaust much has been written and theorized about the role played by “good Germans” in allowing the genocide to occur. Research into the social psychology of bystander behavior accelerated in the wake of the 1964 case of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was stabbed to death by a man in the public courtyard of a Queens, New York, apartment complex. The case drew widespread attention and catalyzed much interest in the academic field of social psychology because dozens of neighbors peered out from behind their window shades at the sound of the woman’s screams, but no one intervened or even called the police—for forty-five minutes—as she lay dying. In a more recent infamous case in 1997, a nineteen-year-old Berkeley engineering student, David Cash, stood outside the bathroom of a Las Vegas Casino as his friend sexually assaulted and murdered a seven-year-old girl. When asked why he did not intervene, even though he knew something terrible was happening, Cash asserted that it was none of his business. Cash’s disavowal of any responsibility—moral or legal—sparked a series of protests at Berkeley and an unsuccessful effort to have him expelled.