Daniel Horowitz Garcia, "Contradictions of Discourse: Evaluating the Successes and Problems of a Batterer Intervention Program"
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Men Stopping Violence

Men Stopping Violence was formally founded in 1982 when the former executive director of a women's shelter (Kathleen Carlin) joined two male therapists (Dick Bathrick and Gus Kaufman, Jr.) in running a batterers' intervention program aimed at social change. Prior to forming the organization, Bathrick and Kaufman were hired by the Cobb County YWCA Women's Resource Center to facilitate a group for male batterers while Carlin and Susan May, then executive director of the Coalition for Battered Women, provided supervision by listening to tapes of the group. The tapes revealed a male world of "collusion and secrecy" around violence. The four realized that keeping "battered women's reality central" to the process was key to breaking male collusion.[4]

According to MSV, men's violence against women is the result of "men's socialization into a cultural, political and historical system that assigns inferior status to women and demands their dominance and control".[5] Within this socialization, men are able to commit violence against women and girls because it works, because they can, and because men are taught how. A man can use violence because he is usually physically stronger than a woman and, more importantly, there are few consequences to violence. Men are taught from childhood that using aggressive tactics in a relationship is normal, and to not use such tactics labels the man "pussy whipped." Ultimately, because men are taught that this relation of power is natural and right, they are also taught that male supremacy must be maintained at all costs, even "through aggression and violence if necessary".[6] In this way, the framework for the MSV classes is that all men have been taught violence against women by the patriarchy inherent in U.S. society. MSV does not believe in the so-called "good man" since even if a man, or the majority of men, do not engage in a type of behavior that can legally be called battering, the actions that flow from believing in male supremacy and its defense are also abusive behaviors. While the goals of the MSV classes are to end men's physical violence, they absolutely include ending other forms of men's violence against women. To this end men are taught to consider a more liberating definition of manhood—one based on assertiveness, respect, and equality—than what patriarchy has offered.

At the time I completed the program the curriculum now used was just being developed, but the basics of the class have remained the same. When I began co-facilitating a weekly class for MSV, we were using the new curriculum. As a facilitator my role was to set the agenda and move the men through the program. The facilitator is expected to be sharper in critique than other participants, but not harsh. The facilitators are not the source of all wisdom, but the class is steered in a particular direction, and specific final conclusions are meant to be reached. The class exercise on intersectionality is meant to end with the men agreeing that there is a link between race, gender, and class. While it isn't required for men to agree with the facilitators, there is pressure to go along with the group. The class curriculum relies heavily on the work of women scholars, activists, and survivors, in the form of readings and videos, to create a framework for how women experience violence in society. To this framework, men's experiences of committing violence are added through the curriculum exercises. Each experience is expected to corroborate the other. There is no formal requirement that a man agree with the framework. In practice, however, men who do not agree have a more difficult time with the class. They are criticized more often, challenged more often, and asked to explain themselves more often. If they do not agree, they have two choices: fight more or talk less. Both types of behavior are visible in the class. Some men plan on saying whatever they have to in order to graduate from the program. Others argue at every opportunity. The class design allows the facilitators to deal with either type. Men who say what they think the facilitators want to hear are pushed to describe their own violence in more and more intimate terms. Eventually, stock answers no longer suffice and the man is forced to be reflective in order to come up with any type of answer. Argumentative men face debate, point-by-point. In both cases, however, time is a limiting factor. Since classes are only two hours long, it is difficult to spend every class arguing with or pushing a single man. The BIP can't remain the only place men's patriarchal views of violence are challenged. MSV's new curriculum is designed, in part, to correct this. The curriculum includes the formation of social structures within the man's community intended to push and challenge patriarchal views of violence outside of the BIP class. Without some mechanism like this, the message of an alternative masculinity can easily be lost.

Here, Alcoff and Gray's interpretation of Foucault's idea of discourse is useful. They write that a discourse is not necessarily about what is true and what is false, but about what can be said. In their words, what is "statable".[7] In addition, they state that multiple discourses may exist at the same time, but only in hierarchical relation to each other. The MSV classes are part of, or attempt to be part of, the public discourse of men's violence against women as framed by women. In this context, what is statable is how the men in the classes have benefited from and continue to benefit from patriarchy at the expense of women. To do otherwise would be to focus attention away from the harm the men have done; to run the risk of erasing violations they have committed or, even worse, moving the men from aggressors to victims. The men in the class have abused because patriarchy has taught them how. The discourse of the MSV class is hyper-focused on this "statable fact." But this fact is statable only within MSV because it runs counter to patriarchal discourse. The dominant, patriarchal discourse of society continues to frame all abuse by men as either excusable (i.e. not really abuse) or the result of an individual pathology. Once outside the class the statable fact changes; it either pathologizes violence or blames women when they suffer from it. The conflict of two opposite statable facts creates a tension. Within the class the men's abuse cannot be excused. Any man who tries to excuse his or another's abuse would run into direct conflict with the curriculum. But it is possible for a man to see men's violence against women as pathology. He may say violence is the result of a sick mind, or he may say it is the result of ignorance. The sick should be treated and the ignorant educated. In either case, man's view of violence is incorporated into patriarchal discourse as he views violence not as the result of a patriarchal definition of masculinity rooted in domination, but simply as the result of individual choices. The tension created by the class is resolved by blaming individual men for their violence. Given the hegemony of patriarchal discourse, it may be too much to ask that all men attending the BIP resolve the tension by adopting a new masculinity. It is probably more realistic to view the BIP, indeed all of MSV's efforts, as a project that interrupts patriarchal messages at strategic points. If so, then it is important that each interruption be as effective as possible.

The process is further complicated by the makeup of the men taking the class. At any given time, more than 75% of men taking the class are men of color, the overwhelming majority being African American. About half of the men enrolled are only in the class because they have been ordered to attend by the court. These men are living with the threat of jail or prison time if they do not complete the course. Of the remaining half, most attend because their partners have demanded it. These men face the prospect of losing their marriage or relationship if they do not complete the class. A small minority of men take the class for political reasons. These men, including myself, enrolled in the class in order to study their lives from a place of privilege. As someone who took this position, I constantly saw myself as different from the other men. I was attending the class as a form of political commitment to women in struggle. I had never hit anyone. My behaviors were not abusive. In short, I saw myself as a "good man." As a facilitator, I found this attitude common among the men who had not been ordered to attend the class. At least half of the men are under constant state surveillance as well as under the threat of state violence through the criminal court system. The other half are dealing with what they view as a "personal problem" in their relationship. Added to this mix are one or two men there as a political experiment. These groups initially see nothing in common with each other because each man, relying on patriarchal discourse, does not see his actions as abuse. Each man begins the class believing he is different from all the other men. By the end of the 24-week program, however, I found that almost all of the men believed the opposite. That most men end the class believing their actions are not much different than others suggests the MSV class is successful in interrupting patriarchal discourse, at least in this aspect. I find this most encouraging, and the suggestions I offer are aimed at extending the length and number of these interruptions.

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