In recent years, both public awareness and condemnation of domestic violence have greatly increased. Once it was commonly met with silence and resignation. More recently, however, its extent and its serious effects are widely recognised and deplored. Overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women and children, it is now more attentively policed and subject to heavy penalties. These developments are important in registering the disapproval of society against domestic violence, but they do not of themselves prevent people from reoffending. Neither do they address the reasons why men act violently, nor discourage young people from doing so.
The risk inherent in focusing on men’s behaviour and on its punishment is that it will lead us to belittle men as a whole, or to see men who act violently as monsters and not as persons. To be incurious and dismissive of people rarely helps them to change. If women and children are to be free from violence, the men responsible for violence need to be seen and respected as persons – even as we reject their behaviour. The attitudes and beliefs that influence their behaviour need to be recognised, and they and boys today to be introduced to a better way of expressing their masculinity.
In building this respect and understanding a recent and beautifully written Report is exemplary. The Jesuit Social Services Men’s Project initiated the Man Box 2024 report on how men perceive masculinity in Australia. The name Man Box might initially seem to imply disrespect, suggesting that it places men into a box containing undesirable specimens of the human race. In the research, however, the Man Box insists on respect. It arises from United States research identifying a set of beliefs that put pressure on some men to act violently. The Man Box is not about boxing people in but about releasing them from a socially constructed box that diminishes them. The report, model for its rigour and clarity, draws on Australian experience of men in Australia to ask how widely men share rigid beliefs about how men should think and behave, they may flow into their behaviour, and how they affect their wellbeing.
The beliefs that the Report explores identify being a real man with self-sufficiency, acting tough, being physically attractive, insisting on rigid rules governing the roles of men and women, being homophobic, hypersexual, and being controlling and violent if necessary. Although variations of some such beliefs might be held in a way that is sensitive to persons and situations, in the Man Box they are rigid and brittle.
In the research participants were presented with statements embodying these beliefs and attitudes and asked whether they represented society’s expectations of men, and to what extent they would agree or disagree with them. They were also asked about how far they acted out these beliefs, about their level of satisfaction with their lives and their mental health. Their responses to each statement and question were then correlated and they were placed in groups ranging from total rejection of the typical man box beliefs to total adherence to them.
'The Report is heartening in the relatively high proportion of men who substantially rejected the attitudes and beliefs embodied in the Man Box.'
The Report discussed the differences of response between younger and older men, and also explored the degree of correlation between the level of overall adherence and the responses to the particular questions.
And the Report is heartening in the relatively high proportion of men who substantially rejected the attitudes and beliefs embodied in the Man Box, and the relatively low proportion who accepted them totally. It also recognises that only a minority of men who subscribe to all the rules of the Man Box admitted having acted violently. Yet it is chastening in that almost a half of the younger participants felt pressure to conform to Man Box rules and that a quarter of them agreed with them. Men who most strongly agreed with them were far more likely than those who least endorsed them to have perpetrated sexual and physical violence. The difficulty of changing personal attitudes was evident in the limited change of personal beliefs among people who recognised that they no longer had popular support.
This very inadequate summary of the Report does no justice to the richness of the insights and the questions that it explores. It will richly reward a leisurely and reflective reading. The summary also conceals the respect showed by the Report for all the people who took part in it. The statements of belief to which they are asked to respond are presented neutrally, and the comments made about the people who respond are never dismissive.
While unequivocally rejecting the behaviour of men who act violently towards women and children, the Report evokes compassion for persons who support most strongly and live by the rigid Man Box rules. The attitudes make for an impoverished and unhappy life. Men who endorse them totally condemn themselves to a life of isolation, to the pursuit of sexual satisfaction without affection, to relationships marked by inequality, and to life in the shadow of violence. They are more likely to have thoughts of self-harm, to heavy drinking and problem gambling, and to have little pleasure in life It is a life that is unfree and unsatisfying and often marked by mental illness. Ultimately the Man Box is a Man Trap.
Underlying the dispassionate research in the Report lies the conviction that to find deliverance from the rigid adherence to attitudes so lacking in freedom, mutuality and joy would be a great blessing, to accompany men on this journey would be a great privilege, and that to encourage children and young men to swim against the tide and adopt a more fully human understanding of what it means to be a man and to live by more expansive rules is an urgent task. It lies at the heart of reducing the level of domestic violence and the accompanying misery and humiliation of so many women and children. It would set so many human beings free.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
Main image: Two brothers at sunset. (Getty images)