by Jackson Katz
8. Personal option.
When he was a member of the original MVP program in the 1990s, the documentary filmmaker Byron Hurt used to recount an incident he witnessed in college. He was in the cafeteria at lunchtime with a group of men and women friends who were seated around a large table. Another male student whom they all knew came into the room, walked over to one of the women and leaned over to tell her something. She kissed him on the cheek. It all seemed innocent enough, until he abruptly reacted to the kiss with anger. He grabbed her by the shirt, lifted her out of her seat, and pushed her up against a concrete post next to the table. She started to cry. Everyone saw what happened, but no one said anything. Not even “hey, what do you think you’re doing?” No one asked her if she was all right. Hurt sat there in shocked silence. At the time, he was the quarterback of his college Division I AA football team. He was well-known and well-respected. He was built more like a linebacker than a quarterback. Why didn’t he speak up? “The dude was kind of cool,” he said. “I was scared and paralyzed by the thought of what might happen if I said something.” If the quarterback of the football team is intimidated into silence, imagine the pressure on average guys.
The overall goal of the MVP model is to stimulate dialogue and critical thinking about the ethical choices bystanders face when they witness abusive behaviors, and to help people think through the costs and benefits of action or inaction. It is also to reposition the bystander—the one who speaks out and confronts his abusive peer—as strong and courageous, not “weak,” “uncool,” or a “narc.” It is not appropriate to tell people how they should act in every situation; there are too many unknown variables to be prescriptive. It is likewise not realistic to expect a group of guys to agree about the best course of action to consider in any given scenario, especially since there are no “right” or “wrong” answers. The idea is to provide people with a greater menu of options in the hope that if at some point they are in a position to act, they will have more good options to choose from. The only option discouraged in MVP is to “do nothing.”
The following scenario from the college men’s playbook, called “Illegal Motion,” describes a disturbingly common event:
At a party, you see a friend trying to get an obviously drunk woman to leave with him. She’s not just buzzed; she’s stumbling over her own feet. You know the woman, and she seems reluctant.
This scenario always sparks lively dialogue, in part because it involves two of the central preoccupations of contemporary college social life: getting drunk and having sex. The MVP trainers ask the men if they would intervene in this situation, and if not, why not. Most college and high school men say they would not. It’s not their business, they say. It happens all the time. How do you know it is going to end badly? Many of them have been in these situations—and not only as bystanders. The train of thought gives them more to think about:
Men and women who are drinking hook up all the time . . . Then again, she looks really drunk. Maybe she’s not in a position to make a good decision . . . I know a lot of “date rape” involves alcohol. Could this be one of those situations? . . . But what if I’m overreacting? Won’t my friend be mad at me? Will he even listen to me? . . . But if I don’t do something, I might be letting her down. What should I do?
After they read the “train of thought,” the facilitators spark discussion with a series of questions:
• What, if anything, is the responsibility of the bystander to the drunk woman?
• Does it matter how well you know her, or if you know her at all? How would you feel if a woman you loved found herself in this situation, and no one intervened on her behalf?
• Does it matter how she ended up drunk? Is that relevant? What if you have seen her drunk before? Does that matter? What if someone slipped a roofie in her drink? Is it possible to tell?
• What, if anything, is the responsibility of the bystander to the guy who is trying to “hit it” with her? Does it matter how well you know him? What if he is your teammate or fraternity brother? Do you have a special responsibility to stop him from doing something that could get him in trouble?
• How many people here know the state law on the matter of sexual consent involving alcohol? Under the law in every state a person is considered unable to give consent if they are inebriated, which means that if a man sexually penetrates a drunk woman (or man) he can be prosecuted for rape.
I ask the men whom they feel they have a responsibility toward: the woman who is drunk, the man, or both. Their answers are sometimes encouraging, like when they say they care about both of them: her because she is vulnerable, and him because he might get in trouble. But on several occasions I have heard college-aged men state matter-of-factly that if the woman got herself in that predicament and she’s eighteen or older, they are not responsible to her because “she knew what she was doing.” Those coldly presented sentiments confirm what some feminists have maintained for decades: that in our sexist and increasingly pornographic culture, boys and men are socialized to objectify and dehumanize women—especially young sexually active women.
This is disturbing, but not as revealing as some of the responses by men who say they would do something. Some guys say they would “get their friend out of there,” because he might do something stupid, or face a false accusation of rape the next day. In other words, help him before he puts himself in a compromising situation, be his friend by looking out for his interests—not the woman’s—in a potential rape scenario. Just as often, guys assert that they would urge the drunk woman’s friends to look out for her interests by getting her out of there. Many men want to avoid the possibility of a direct confrontation with their friend even when they know he might be trying to take sexual advantage of a drunk and vulnerable young woman. Perhaps they are anxious about the possibility of violence. They might realistically be concerned that the guy could get belligerent and take a swing at them. But their reticence is also undoubtedly rooted in social anxiety, their fear based on an unconscious awareness that if they come to the defense of a vulnerable woman they might be seen as soft or sensitive, and hence lose standing among their peers.
The “Illegal Motion” scenario also provides the context for a discussion about false accusations of rape. Many men in college—athletes, fraternity members, and others—believe they or their friends are at significant risk of being falsely accused of rape by a woman. This phenomenon is what Alan Berkowitz refers to as men’s “false fear of false accusation.” I do not immediately tell the men how I feel about this fear, but I do share with them the FBI statistic about the number of rapes that are not reported: between 80 and 90 percent. In other words, the vast majority of women (and men) who are raped never report it to the officials. I ask them why they think this is. With help they usually come up with many of the key reasons: the rape itself was traumatic, and they don’t want to put themselves through the trauma of the legal process; doing a “rape kit” to collect evidence is painful, invasive, and can be highly embarrassing, as medical professionals need to extract pubic hairs and swabs from a woman’s genitals or anus; the woman’s sexual behavior and character are often attacked by people who take the side of the alleged rapist; perhaps the woman knows the man who raped her and is furious with him, but even so does not want to see him to go to prison. Once the men have gone through this list, I pose the question: if these disincentives are powerful enough to keep the vast majority of actual rape victims from reporting the crime, how realistic is it to believe that large numbers of women are falsely doing so? Why would they want to invite the heartache and social stigma? I always make sure to acknowledge that false reports of rape do occur—in anywhere from 2 to 8 percent of cases, depending on how one defines “false” and whose research they rely on. (See endnotes for further discussion.) There is no doubt that being falsely accused of rape is a horrendous and potentially traumatizing experience. It is also important to recognize that men of color have a slightly more justified fear of false accusation, even though it is, as
Berkowitz says, primarily a “false fear.”
The conversation in an MVP session—whether it is with a group of high school students or in a roomful of marines—really picks up when someone confesses that he would not say anything if he saw one of his boys in a situation like the “Illegal Motion” scenario because “I wouldn’t want to be a blocker.” A “cock-blocker,” or “CB,” is a widely used term in the hip-hop generation, but most people over thirty have never heard it, unless they work closely with kids or have kids of their own who speak openly with them. A “CB” refers to a man who gets in the way of another man’s “game,” or attempt to hook up with a woman. Needless to say it is not a term of endearment. If a guy develops a reputation as a cock-blocker, he risks a possible loss of status in the male hierarchy, which amazingly for many men is too high a price to pay for preventing a possible rape.
Once there is some discussion about these questions, the facilitators move to the options:
1. Do nothing. It’s really none of my business.
2. Try to get my friend to leave her alone. Tell him he has to be real careful dealing sexually with a drunk woman.
3. Find some of her friends and try to convince them to get her home safely.
4. Approach the woman and ask her how she feels, and if she wants help getting home.
5. Try to find the person whose apartment or house it is, or someone who seems responsible, and ask them to assist me in defusing this situation.
6. Get a group of my friends together, male and female, and confront my friend, firmly telling him to stop pursuing this drunk woman.
7. Personal option.
Not all of the MVP scenarios involve incidents of physical or sexual abuse. For example, one scenario in the high school boys’ playbook is called “Offsides”:
You’re riding in the back seat of your friend’s car late one afternoon with two other male friends. Someone spots a young woman jogging a few hundred yards ahead and the driver starts to slow down. Your friend in the passenger’s side of the front seat starts to roll down his window to yell something at her.
This scenario provides an opportunity for young men to imagine how young women’s experience of the public world differs from their own. How is it possible for one person (or three) to regard this as harmless fun and another to experience it as harassing and threatening behavior? Although they live together and go to school together, boys’ and girls’ lives are very different, especially because one sex learns early in life to fear the other. As amazing as this sounds to many of my women friends, young men in MVP sessions—high school and college students—often report that they had never even thought about girls’ feelings in situations like this. (White people in antiracist workshops often report similar feelings when they are asked to put themselves in the shoes of people of color.) When this scenario is discussed in mixed-gender settings, some young men begin to realize for the first time how easily they can scare girls and women and limit their ability to move freely in the world. After all, how do the girls know that guys in the car are not rapists who are going to lie in wait around the corner? Numerous men I have talked to over the years describe one of their first “aha” moments about male privilege as the time they realized women feared them as they walked or drove by on the streets—even when the men themselves felt non-threatening.
Of course not all young men are quite as empathetic. Some express impatience with the entire premise of this scenario. I have heard more than a few men say they know girls who look for that sort of attention from men, so what’s the big deal? They react defensively to the suggestion that behavior which they consider normal “guy behavior” is being defined as problematic. Young men also frequently maintain that it is totally unrealistic to expect one of them to say something to his friends in this scenario—even if he knows that what they are about to do is wrong.
The train of thought provides further material for discussion:
What’s my friend going to say? Will it be something sexual, or is he just going to yell out something stupid? Does it matter?…How will this girl feel to hear a group of guys in a car shouting at her? Will she be scared? We’re just a harmless group of guys, but how could she know that?…I know girls who jog. I wonder if they ever get harassed by guys in cars…Can I say something to stop my friends from saying something? Won’t they get ticked off at me? What should I do in this situation?
After someone reads aloud the “train of thought,” the MVP trainers ask questions like:
• Does anyone have a sister or girlfriend who jogs? Have you ever talked to her about how she feels when guys in cars yell things at her? What did she say?
• When guys shout at girls out of a car window, what are they trying to accomplish? Who are they trying to impress? The girl? Their friends?
• Does a young man have a responsibility to support or defend a girl he does not know and might never meet?
The scenario ends with a discussion of the options:
1. Don’t say anything. It’s just harmless fun and speaking up would do more harm than good.
2. Try to change the subject in order to distract my friends and get their attention off of the female jogger.
3. Tell the driver to speed up and say, “Come on, guys, let’s leave her alone.”
4. Don’t say anything right then, but later, tell my friends that I don’t think we should be harassing girls like that.
5. Talk to a female friend of mine who runs and find out how she feels when guys drive by and say things.
6. Personal option.
One of the enduring lessons of MVP is that when you approach men with the intent of enlisting them as allies in the fight against gender violence—rather than as potential perpetrators—many of them rise to the challenge. Men who have participated in MVP sessions often say the experience was nothing like what they expected. Whether from personal history or paranoia, a lot of men expect to be lectured at in a gender-violence prevention workshop. Many of them are impressed when they find out instead that it’s not a lecture but a dialogue, and that rather than being blamed for men’s violence against women they are being challenged to do something about it. Jeff O’Brien, who has directed MVP since 1999, tells this story about a session with a professional football team:
The guys were predictably reluctant as we began our first of three trainings with the group. We had good discussions on the first day, and when we began day two, a big linebacker just bluntly stated “You guys are some cool motherfuckers…when you first showed up I thought this was going to be bullshit, but y’all are keepin’ it real.” That’s a compliment in “guyspeak,” and the best way he could express his appreciation for the value of the discussions we were having and still be a “man.”
On another occasion, when O’Brien and some colleagues finished a training with an elite college football team, they were given the “doubleclap,” a gesture reserved for their inner-team activities, and a sign of solidarity and respect. This is notable because MVP trainers do not pander to pampered male athletes—they confront sexist beliefs and victim-blaming statements when they arise and challenge the men to resist peer pressure and become leaders—off the field. One indication that the MVP approach resonates with a lot of men is that many of them stay after sessions to talk with the trainers. O’Brien, a former All-American college football player who has conducted hundreds of MVP trainings across the U.S. with high school, college, and professional athletes, explains it this way: “We do gender-violence prevention, but for us this means having honest conversations with guys about how we’ve all been socialized as men. I believe that most men are longing for male relationships that have some depth and genuineness. Outside of a ninety-minute training, we are complete strangers, yet guys ask us for advice on all sorts of life issues.”
MVP IN THE MARINE CORPS
There is no doubt that a violence prevention program with marines sounds like an oxymoron at first glance. After all, marines have a well-deserved reputation for being hyp
ermasculine warriors, not advocates for non-violence and gender equity. When people hear that I run a version of the Mentors in Violence Prevention program for the United States Marine Corps, they ask: aren’t marines trained to commit—rather than prevent—acts of violence? I certainly understand people’s skepticism, in part because I was once a skeptic myself. But today, after many years and dozens of trainings on Marine Corps bases around the world, I have a much different perspective on the Corps, especially the individuals that it comprises.
This shift in perspective came about when I first met and started working with the Marines in 1997. I quickly came to see that beneath the façade created by their hard bodies and crisp uniforms, marines were complicated people just like everybody else. In fact, one thing I make sure to tell civilian MVP trainers before they work with marines for the first time is that they should not be fooled by the combat fatigues and short haircuts. Marines—and other military members—have professional commitments that differentiate them from civilians—especially in a time of war. But male marines have more in common with civilian men than either group might think. After all, before they are marines they are fathers, brothers, sons, and lovers of women and girls. As such, gender-violence issues are as personal for them as they are for any civilian. In addition, most Marines are only in the service for four years, after which they return to their families and communities, largely in small towns in rural America and poor and working-class sections of big cities. What they learn in the Marine Corps thus affects not only them but all of the people they come in contact with throughout their lives.