Type:	Journal Article
Title:	Rethinking profeminist men’s behaviour change programs
Other Titles:	Women against violence : an Australian feminist journal
Authors:	Pease, Bob
Keywords:	Policy;CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse);Perpetrators;Perpetrator programs;Theories of violence;Indigenous issues;Prevention;Cross-cultural
Year:	2005
Publisher:	CASA House (Centre Against Sexual Assault)
Citation:	(16), 2004-2005
Notes:	This article provides a literature review of perpetrator programmes that express profeminist values to assess the extent to which feminist analyses of men’s violence have been incorporated in the principles, theories and strategies for working with violent men. It argues that profeminist programmes for violent men or perpetrators’ programmes had led to a series of axioms which often failed to address the complexities of feminist theories. These include: expanding the definition of violence to include all controlling behaviours could lead to a concept of violence which loses its meaning; treating men’s violence as learned behaviour has led to cognitive-behavioural approaches which shift power and control from a structural issue to a behaviour issue; identification of masculinity led to a sex-role approach that gives more emphasis on the costs of masculinity rather than men’s privileges, which provides little analysis of gendered power or inequality; while men’s violence is about control of women but it is not always consciously exercised by violent men; men’s programmes have generally failed to address the intersections of race, class and culture in relation to men’s violence; and that the focus on men’s capacity to change does not examine the structural and cultural limitations on the process of individual change as the conception of ‘sole responsibility’ for violence is that of a rational and autonomous man disconnected from the patriarchal social relations. It explains the development of such approaches as partially a result of facilitators being drawn from therapeutic feminist literature rather than the wider feminist social theories. Therefore, the diversity of debates within feminism is not reflected in the men’s programmes. It suggests that the limitations of existing representations of feminist analysis in men’s programmes need to be understood so that programmes could be developed to build on feminist understandings, to ensure that feminist analyses are not depoliticised or co-opted as they are in the current approaches of most of the men’s programmes.
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/16703
ISSN:	1327-5550
Appears in Collections:	Journal Articles

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