Contradictions of Discourse:
Evaluating the Successes and Problems of a Batterer Intervention Program
Three years ago I went through a 24-week batterer intervention
program (BIP). Earlier this year I co-facilitated a program for six
months with the same organization, Men Stopping Violence (MSV), based in
Decatur, Georgia. Both experiences were profound and have changed how I
view violence and organizing. Before going through the MSV program, I
had never spent time examining my life from a point of privilege. As a
working-class man of color I attended "multicultural" meetings and
dismantling trainings throughout the 1990s believing I only had to focus
on how I suffered from racial and class violence. I understood women had
a different relationship to violence, but I did not believe I was
responsible for that relationship. I learned from the MSV class that one
can simultaneously benefit from and be targeted by violence. This essay
is an attempt to take what I learned a step further. As a facilitator of
the MSV class, I taught men to not only name the hurt they caused but to
name where and when they learned to cause such hurt. After my six months
of facilitation I still believe in MSV and its program. However, I
believe the role of the facilitator and the relationship of the class
and MSV to women's organizations needs to be deeply studied. I also
believe it's necessary to problematize the "naming" process within the
program. I worry that a group of men confessing to the hurts we've
caused assuages our guilt but does little to alleviate the problem. It
may even be that the act of confessing reinforces the problem. As I will
show, the confessional can be used as a tool of domination. Without
great care, the MSV classes, and others, can be used to racially
pathologize men's violence against women.
My main concern is that the men's class, the BIP, runs the risk of
reinforcing oppression because there isn't a clear decision about
whether it is about confession (as discussed by Michel Foucault) or
witness (as laid out by Linda Alcoff and Laura Gray). This decision
would express itself as critically examining the role of the facilitator
in the class as well as fully developing strategies that prevent the
organization's interpellation by the State. I am concerned that the
criminal justice system has come to see BIPs as a panacea. Increasingly,
judges and prosecutors view sending individual men to classes where they
learn not to be violent as the solution to men's violence against women.
MSV runs the risk of supporting this individualizing and pathologizing
approach because it has adopted an "insider/outsider" strategy. As an
"insider" organization, MSV has well-developed relationships with the
State at all levels and aims to use these relationships to push a
systemic critique of violence. However, it has underdeveloped its
relationships with "outsider" groups that do not see the State, in any
form, as an ally. If relationships with these types of groups are not
fully developed, MSV runs the risk of being subsumed by the ideology of
the State. The organization's ability to push systemic critique, either
in its relationships with the State or in the BIP classes, will be
hampered.
This essay is an attempt to discuss concerns I have with the BIP at
MSV. I have discussed my concerns with the organizational staff and, for
the most part, we agree. However, this is an ongoing process, and since
I am no longer volunteering at MSV (although I am listed as a freelance
facilitator) I provide my thoughts as a service to an organization I
believe is of great value to social justice efforts. My suggestions are
not designed to "fix" the problems I outline. Orienting the class
towards the act of witnessing and fully developing organizational
relationships with "outsider" groups would create a space to develop the
"fixes" needed.
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