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.

Frameworks

Linda Alcoff and Laura Gray are two feminist thinkers who adapted Foucault's ideas on speech and the confessional to evaluate the implications of survivors of incest and sexual abuse going public with their stories. The authors point out that Foucault's thoughts on speech seem contradictory. By speaking out, we can make it acceptable to talk about the unacceptable; we may even change the relations of power, but we may also reinforce the dominant structures of society. Alcoff and Gray seem to believe that rather than a contradiction, these two points are a challenge. It is possible to meet this challenge through intentional, thoughtful action. They probe the how, who, and what of survivors speaking out in various forums including television talk shows, meetings, events, and anonymous writing on bathroom walls to show that the act of speaking out can be helpful to survivors, or it can refigure the experience into domination.[1] The authors conclude by suggesting that survivors work to gain autonomy over the context and content of their speech. To that end, they put forward shifting the frame of discourse from confession to witness. As they explain, "A witness is not someone who confesses, but someone who knows the truth and has the courage to tell it".[2]

Alcoff and Gray developed their ideas specifically for female survivors of incest and sexual abuse. They caution that it may not be possible, or desirable, for these ideas to be used with men, let alone male aggressors. I recognize and respect the need for caution here. However, I believe this framework could be beneficial to the MSV class. Government officials, from judges to prosecutors, want a program focused on individual acts of violence. More importantly, the criminal court system centralizes the needs of the State, not the survivors. We can already see government asserting control over the content and context of the BIP classes. The criminal court system wants individual men to confess their misdeeds to the State. The alternative would be men witnessing each other's violence and the connection to institutional forms of violence with women controlling, or at least heavily influencing, how that is done. Alcoff's and Gray's ideas allow MSV to resist interpellation by the State because it shows how the process is proceeding. Presently, MSV doesn't have a framework that distinguishes between confession and witness.

To support the idea of witnessing, the MSV class needs to support the autonomy of survivors regarding speech. While this orientation already exists at MSV, modifications are needed in order to avoid the creation of a confessional and to support the idea of witnessing. One aspect of the confessional Alcoff and Gray discuss is the expert mediator of women's experiences. The confessional needs an "objective" authority that can interpret the "raw experiences" of women's violence. As a contrast, in witnessing, the survivors can and should serve as their experts.[3] The MSV class has facilitators, and those facilitators are men. Even though women's experiences are brought into the class through writing, video, and other methods, because women are not bringing these experiences themselves, the facilitators tend to serve as expert mediators. Is the class then a place for confessing or witnessing? It contains both dynamics. That in and of itself may not be a problem. Because the ultimate aim of the class is to create allies for the destruction of patriarchy, there must be some way to interrupt and challenge the workings of patriarchy within the class. Facilitators are not there to be friends with men; they are there to challenge. It is probably not necessary that women survivors bring experiences before the class. However, it is a problem that there is no clear idea how to balance these dynamics.

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.

MSV understands that individualizing violence is easy for the men in the class and for society at large. The changes in curriculum in the last three years were made in order to resist this easy way out. This existence of a BIP at all is critiqued by MSV. The criminal court system sees BIPs as an easy fix, one that cheaply places the problem on individual men and absolves the State of responsibility. The demographics of a MSV class mirror national statistics on BIP attendance.[8] Overwhelmingly, those men attending BIPs are those caught in the criminal court system. Yet there are few critiques of these programs beyond number crunching the recidivism rate of attendees. According to conversations with MSV staff, it's only in the last 30 years that there has been any interest within the State or outside in working with men.[9] For the most part, the interest that does exist expresses itself as BIPs. Given all this, it makes sense to ask why MSV would keep such a program.

For almost 30 years, MSV has been in a formal relationship with the State. Men are court ordered to attend classes, MSV reports on the men who do attend, and the organization economically benefits from both trainings and paid attendance. Given the current situation the organization is faced with two choices: cut off all ties with the State or have some kind of plan for engagement. MSV has chosen to stay engaged with government on the local, state, and federal levels. Their strategy seems to be focused on pushing back with a strong critical evaluation of the nature and purpose of BIPs. Staff members point out that by staying engaged they have been able to influence research by the National Institute of Justice, the agency responsible for research and evaluation within the Department of Justice. Of course, this hasn't been enough to bring about systemic change. But MSV doesn't view itself as alone in this struggle. One can interpret MSV's plan as an "insider/outsider" strategy with the organization playing the role of insider. Organizations that have cut off all formal contact with the State are the "outsider" organizations. INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a prime example of an outsider organization. According to MSV staff members it might be too easy for government officials to dismiss INCITE, but as an insider organization MSV is capable of forcing conversations based on a critical analysis similar to that of INCITE.[10] Specifically, this is challenging government officials' definition of violence. While the State discourse on violence is limited to the individual, MSV points out how systemic violence also harms women. Prosecutors and politicians may only want to focus on physical violence and the husband or boyfriend responsible, but MSV is in position to also talk about, for example, the economic violence of low wages.

At least two evaluative questions come to mind: how well has the insider/outsider strategy been working to push a critical analysis, and what is the relationship of the BIP to this strategy? It seems clear that MSV has had some success in forcing a larger conversation about men and violence within the framework of the Department of Justice. It is also clear this hasn't been enough to stop the spread of BIPs around the country as the only solution to men's violence. On this alone, however, it would be unfair to call MSV's strategy into question. Pathologizing individual men for patriarchal violence is an integral part of patriarchy, and one organization, no matter how effective, could not possibly stop this trend. However, based on the interview conducted for this paper, a weak point was revealed: while the organization does maintain many relationships with other organizations, they are not particularly systematized in regard to the insider/outsider strategy. Many of the relationships are between individuals rather than organizational. This means that while a staff member could call up a friend working with another organization, there is not necessarily an understanding within MSV of how analysis, strategy, information, etc. is shared among the different groups.[11] To change this situation would require MSV to take the initiative in developing and sustaining stronger relationships. As part of its operational plan, MSV would need to focus on expanding dialogues with other organizations.

In order for the insider/outsider strategy to have any kind of effect, MSV will have to find a way to build relationships with organizations that share a common analysis but do not engage with government. As I've shown, the framework of confessional vs. witness can be useful for MSV in evaluating its work. To be more in line with witnessing, the content and the context of the class curriculum must intentionally centralize survivors' experience. Strong, deep relationships with outsider, women-led organizations can create the accountability necessary to avoid compromising the context of the curriculum. Although MSV is committed to a systemic critique, organizations have their own inertia. The relationships I suggest would allow, even force, the organization to confront and adapt to political change. Formalizing and further developing relationships with "outsider" organizations would help MSV with the content of the class curriculum as well. Outsider organizations can analyze the class, particularly the role of the facilitators. Being held accountable by an outside group would help MSV facilitators insure that women's experiences are brought into the class in ways that women can control. At the same time, it wouldn't be the responsibility of women to train men to be allies.

Given the larger strategy, what is the role of the BIP, or men's class, at MSV? The class is only one of six programs that MSV offers, but it is responsible for giving the organization national credibility. Since the class has such weight, it makes sense for it to come under special scrutiny. The BIP at MSV is part of a larger community-accountability model that sees violence against women as a systemic problem and maintains that the solution must be community-based. Each of the six programs are aimed at building a community capable of ending such violence.[12] Perhaps the MSV class is aimed at introducing those with privilege to one potential way new power relations could work. In effect, MSV is creating future male allies for the next wave of the women's movement. If this is the case, then it is critical that the men in the class are not there to "confess" but rather to witness the violence they have done. Confession would reinforce the idea that the men's actions are the result of pathology and that by going through the class they have been "cured." To witness the violence they have done is to see that they are capable of inflicting harm at any time because of the privileged status of men in society. Unlike a pathology, a social location cannot be cured except through the reordering of social relationships. Furthermore, effective evaluation of the work depends on evaluating the relationship of those with privilege willing to challenge the current system (i.e. potential allies) to those without said privilege in an effort to make new power relations. Put more succinctly, one would have to see how the men in the classes relate to the women's organizations considered "outsiders" in the insider/outsider strategy. The organizational relationships mentioned earlier are a critical part of the BIP, or any MSV program, reaching maximum effectiveness.

Alcoff and Gray believe that speaking out is a powerful tool both for bringing to light actual conditions in society and for moving individuals from "passive victim to active survivor".[13] Their proposition that such discourse can move the problem of violence from an individual level to a societal one suggests that non-survivors can have an active role in altering power relations. When viewed from a societal level, sexual violence is a problem of a patriarchal ordering of relations. Individuals are taught how to behave by such patriarchal ordering. Therefore, individuals can be taught to behave differently if the societal ordering is changed. Of course, not all individuals in society share equal power relations. Society is ordered to benefit men. Patriarchy teaches men that this ordering is natural, and that maintaining this order is necessary for society's survival. Patriarchy also teaches men violence as a method of maintaining order, and this violence can be stopped if men are taught to behave differently. The key is re-ordering the relations of power within society. Alcoff and Gray would undoubtedly agree that men can be a part of this process. They would also undoubtedly voice concern over how men relate to public discourse on sexual violence. Most of Foucault can be read as a warning, and his writing about discourse is no exception. In The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, Foucault asserts that any effort to end repression would be "at a considerable cost" stating further that a "whole new economy in the mechanisms of power will be required." He also wrote that an "irruption of speech" would be necessary.[14] We can take from this that speech is necessary to introduce new mechanisms of power. Yet we must be careful, or at least intentional, when we do so. We must pay as close attention to the impact of our actions as to the intention of our actions. As Alcoff and Gray summarize, the frame of discourse is understood by how the discourse itself proceeds, not in reference to objective intentions. Mistakes and unintended consequences are inevitable, but we do not have to let this stop us from taking action. If we begin our action with careful thought, we already have the ability and tools to change course as needed. My work with MSV has been enlightening, but I began the work without careful thought of why I would be doing it. As this essay shows, hopefully, this was a mistake. What is necessary is a careful review of why and how the work is being done. The content of the work has much merit. The context of the discourse needs work.

Endnotes

1. Linda Alcoff and Laura Gray, "Survivor Discourse: Transgression or Recuperation?" Signs 18.2 (1993): 260. [Return to text]

2. Alcoff and Gray, 287-8. [Return to text]

3. Alcoff and Gray, 281-2. [Return to text]

4. Men Stopping Violence, "Our History," Men Stopping Violence. 1 December 2009. [Return to text]

5. Dick Bathrick, Ulester Douglas, Sulaiman Nuriddin, Phyllis Alesia Perry, and John Tramel, Men at Work: Building Safe Communities (Decatur, Georgia: Men Stopping Violence, 2008): Introduction. [Return to text]

6. Bathrick, Introduction. [Return to text]

7. Alcoff and Gray, 265. [Return to text]

8. Ulester Douglas, Dick Bathrick, and Phyllis Alesia Perry, "Deconstructing Male Violence Against Women: The Men Stopping Violence Community-Accountability Model" Violence Against Women 14.2 (2008): 2-3. [Return to text]

9. Ulester Douglas and Dick Bathrick, Personal interview with the author, 19 May 2010. [Return to text]

10. Douglas and Bathrick, Interview. [Return to text]

11. Douglas and Bathrick, Interview. [Return to text]

12. Douglas, Bathrick, and Perry, 2-4. [Return to text]

13. Alcoff and Gray, 261. [Return to text]

14. Michel Foucault. "We 'Other Victorians.'" From The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction in The Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow, ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 294. [Return to text]