Rage Bait Deflecting From Opening Debate Around VAWG. Again.
The news emerged last week about the Government’s new Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy which will be launched this week (w/c 15th December) and amid a number of claims – that experts and organisations were sidelined in the discussions around the best ways to halve incidences of reported VAWG in a decade (from 1.6 million reports a year to a still-unacceptable 800,000 reports annually) – the headline announcement was focused on the ‘Adolescence-fuelled’ notion of “targeting school boys”. A screenshot of the BBC News headline is on the cover of this Substack post and you can see how not only does it detract from the messages around the broader strategy and funding for it (£550 million) but how it also plays into the hands of those within the broader debate around masculinities that focuses on the way men and boys are ‘marginalised by feminism’.
This massively unhelpful headline plays into the online narratives that men and boys have already absorbed around (frequently) manufactured male victimhood. That ‘everyone says all boys are toxic’ and that this ‘tars all boys with the same brush’ – it’s rage bait and isn’t likely to be true. My reimagined headline is in white text on a black background and highlights that schools will teach all students the same messages in PSHE and RSE sessions – after all, if we want boys to consider women as human beings worthy of equality and respect, it’s vital that girls’ voices and opinions are considered in the debate. We can only engender empathy when we hear from those marginalised by societal norms and the pressures that online narratives bring to relationship expectations. Let’s use these sessions as the Empathy Lightbulb moments we need to help young people value one another, regardless of gender.
There is already work in schools around the #PSHE / #RSHE curriculum discussed stereotyping, harmful relationship behaviours and misogyny but often the systematic links between p0rn, sexism, misogyny and #MVAWG aren’t explored fully enough in a packed and pressured curriculum. My work in recent years has been squarely around these topics and although my work is based on data from the ONS and research from other organisations like Ofsted, Votes For Schools and the Youth Endowment Fund, there is often pushback from students who feel “boys are being unfairly targeted” when we are merely opening up debates around the facts and how we as men and boys must be a solution to the issue of Male Violence Against Women and Girls through understandings of concepts such as bystander intervention and the way Continuums of Harm support the development of better environments.
If we achieve healthier relationship behaviours and the reduction of VAWG as a result of this strategy, then it’s not a case of ‘boys being targeted’ it’s a case of boys AND girls understanding the things that lead to harms and how to prevent them. Together.
If you’d like some help opening the debates, please get in touch.
Bernie.