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Men Should Join Attorney General Ashcroft and Pledge to Defeat Domestic Violence
By Kevin Fobbs
July 15, 2004

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke.

On June 9, 2004, Paulette Litzan of Sterling Heights, Michigan, had all of her dreams, all of her expectations of life, all of the abuse she had endured from her ex-boyfriend Harry D. Stanley come to an end with a single shot to her head. What news accounts don't record is the terror Paulette and thousands of women like her in Metro Detroit endure as they crouch half-hidden behind bathroom doors, kneeling behind bedroom doors, partially exposed underneath kitchen tables.... waiting, just waiting, for the full burst of fatal rage, his explosive blows, a gunshot, and for their life to end.

Long before the final moments of her life, Paulette had been minimized, marginalized and had become, frankly, nothing more than an object of pursuit and a target of fatalistic emotional rage.

Meanwhile up the road is a Hooters Restaurant or further west on the far northwest border of Detroit is a strip club where men and some women gather in what they call with tragic humor "business meetings" or their "office." In these meetings their "business" is to objectify women; the agenda is to joke and make off-color remarks. Their eyes dart after the women their minds are pursuing. Do you see the connection?

Both types of men, both types of events -- one fatally tragic and the other a tragedy in the making -- are inextricably bound to each other like two sides of the same coin. Both sides were forged in childhood; both behaviors were learned and reinforced by fathers, uncles, grandfathers, and brothers who also learned the same behavior. Well it is time for men to take a stand and stop and break this endless cycle of violence. Their sons, their nephews, their brothers, their grandsons must grow up to be respectful men, responsible men...in other words: Real Men.

My father taught me a long time ago that real men don't beat or hit their wives. He said real men don't hold their sisters back, or hold their wives down and call them names, demand that they continue a tradition of "Go get me a beer" slavery, "just because I said so."

What I am saying, and what other men like President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft are saying, is that objectifying women or forcing women to cower, to run, to evade blows whether it is physical blows or heartlessly damaging verbal or psychological blows is flat out wrong! It is still perpetuating male domination, discrimination, and -- for Paulette Litzan -- murder-by-rage by objectification and by minimization.

Over the years I have had several female friends whose husbands or boyfriends frequent either one or both types of "male" offices. These same women complain on one hand that their husband, boyfriend or significant other does not take them seriously, and does not respect their skills, abilities or knowledge. Yet at the same time these women (do and are expected to) wait on their man like a servant, clean up after him like he's a baby, wash his clothes as if it's below him to do it, prepare his dinner at his beck and call, make all of his appointments...See a pattern here?

Men are skilled in their denials. They dodge the truth about why they go to these establishments. They run away, they evade, they cower from the thought that the way they were raised should be any different from how they intend to raise their sons, and, worse yet, how they should "raise" their wife, to make certain she gets the correct learnin' from him. I beg your pardon, but women don't need to be "raised" or have "learnin' administered" from anyone once they're adults. The idea that women have some sort of childlike quality to them is in itself dysfunctional thinking.

Some of my female friends say my conjectures are a lot of hooey. They say the same husbands who frequent strip bars in search of meaningful conversation or who are entertained by the ambiance of a restaurant whose name is focused on the anatomy of women and is really just there for the "hot wings" are not the same men who discriminate against them, hold them down, or keep them from realizing their full potential. Well I say that's just hooey!

I wonder if these same female friends feel the same as the 1.6 million current and former female employees of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Wal-Mart is the nation's largest private employer. In what will be the nation's largest class-action lawsuit and private civil rights case in U.S. history, a federal judge has certified that lawsuit which alleges that Wal-Mart created a system that pays its female workers less than males in comparable jobs, as well as passed women over for key promotions in favor of men on a frequent basis will go forward for trial. Old behaviors learned in youth and perpetuated into adulthood just seem to die hard, don't they?

In 1998, U.S. District Judge Constance Baker Motley ruled the settlement reached in the fall of 1997 on behalf of 23 women who worked for Merrill Lynch in the company's Garden City, New York branch was inadequate in not going far enough in righting the "wrongs" female brokers were exposed to. According to the lawsuit this branch had a basement room where men subjected women to lewd pranks and obscene remarks and where they openly chugged Bloody Marys from a garbage can in a special area they called the "Boom Boom Room". These women claimed that brokers harassed and intimidated female employees in the basement meeting area. They also charged that they were paid less than their male counterparts and weren't promoted as often. Isolated incident? No connection? I don't think so.

Well that was ancient history, right? No!

Just this week Morgan Stanley, the second biggest brokerage and securities firm in America, inked an out-of court $54 million settlement over sex bias and they agreed to enhance diversity while (of course) denying any discrimination.

Let's see, groping and harassment in a New York Boom Boom Room, sexual discrimination at America's heartland stores and behind Wall Street corporate doors, objectification of women on strip bar stages, and women being mocked, maligned and murdered by "caring, compassionate" husbands, boyfriends, or significant others on bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and basement floors. Still don't see a connection?

Well, some men do see a connection.

Last October at a White House event President Bush signed a proclamation-declaring the month of October as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month." The president announced two important initiatives: the Justice Department's Family Justice Center Initiative and the Department of Health and Human Services' Safe and Bright Futures for Children Initiative. The Justice Department will lead a $20 million-dollar program to develop comprehensive domestic violence victim service and support centers in 12 communities across the country.

The president's Family Justice Center Initiative will make victims' search for help and justice easier by bringing professionals who provide an array of necessary services together under one roof. In addition, the president announced the release of a new Stop Family Violence postage stamp from which the proceeds will help victims of domestic violence.

On October 8, 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft labeled domestic violence as not only wrong but that it destroys the lives of far too many women and children, when he said

"I'm challenging men across America to take the pledge against domestic violence. We must work together to eliminate the horrific cycle of violence."

Men, we do have responsibility to do more than just shake our heads! We do have to learn to not just be more aware of the conditions, which can rise up within ourselves but also learn to take preventive measures as well instead of condoning the behavior as innocent or unconnected.

We men have to become more responsible husbands and fathers. We must become aware of the crude underbelly which exists in America and its culture of silence which has been enforced by men and tolerated too many times by nodding wives who would rather go along with bowed heads than to rise up. We all have to decide that our young sons are not being "playful" when they tease or demean young girls. We must see that children learn from watching their father bully their mother, from seeing an argument escalate into a physical altercation. We must begin to look for and understand the connection between what children are learning from their parents and how that behavior is continued to adulthood. We must stop our sons from developing psychological armor and weaponry which could be used destructively when they are older teens and young men.

Thankfully there are some "Real Men" out there who understand that women are more than a "run and fetch it" machine. Real Men begin to change their own behaviors and actions themselves because they understand that their daughter, sister, mother or grandmother deserves the respect that adult men have to offer.

It is about time for men to march to "Take Back Life" and to educate their sons on how to be respectful, to share and not deride, to discuss and not browbeat, to work together and not lord over, and not teach them to nip and tuck away a woman's humanity by assaulting, insulting or threatening their wives, girlfriends or co-workers selfhood or destroying their dignity. Men must teach their sons how to be Real Men by setting the correct example and not remain little boys trapped in men's bodies themselves. Real men must raise their sons to have real respect for all young girls, and all women.

But just in case you men and some women believe these incidents of death and assaults are isolated. I wonder if you think the 1,309,061 women who experienced domestic violence in 1998 according to the Justice Department report ``Intimate Partner Violence'' are isolated incidents. What about the 1,320 domestic violence murders of women the same year in America, according to another 1998 Justice Department report, ``Violence Against Women Survey. Are they somehow isolated as well?

Were over 53,000 domestic abuse complaints that were filed in Michigan in 2002 were isolated incidents? I wonder if you somehow can tell the families of the 73 people who were murdered in this state's domestic disputes in 2002 were trivial. I also wonder if the men who sit their in their smugness as they "meet" in the topless bar also feel that the 62 victims who were brutally murdered in Michigan by their spouse or ex-significant other could clearly make a distinction between a murdering spouse who first marginalized them and the men who watch the half nude women dancing up on a stage who they are marginalizing as well?

It's too late for Paulette Litzan and the untold tens of thousands of female victims who came before her. But it's not too late for men to take the first step toward adulthood to prevent any more needless deaths.

This evil must not continue. It must not be allowed to murder again. Real Men must answer the challenge. It's the adult thing to do

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.