Men’s mistreatment of women: PM ill-equipped to lead cultural changes in Australian society
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is ill-equipped to lead the cultural changes being demanded by Australian women.
There are many reasons for this but foremost is the fact that Mr Morrison is, like many other men leading major institutions, a product and beneficiary of a male culture that trains and rewards misogyny in boys and men.
This means he is blind to the power and prejudice that ground men’s dominance over women and which lie at the heart of women’s mistreatment.
Further, it means he is clueless and incapable of leading the root and branch changes needed in every sector of our society, including within the federal parliament, workplaces, every sector of government and the private sector, and most urgently in domestic settings, where misogyny in the form of male aggression, violence, homicide, and sexual predation is widespread.
For the past six weeks or so, Australians have had almost daily updates revealing the toxic male culture that pervades the Australian Parliament. Women inside and outside the building are finally having their “me too” moment.
An avalanche of stories concerning sexist comments, unwanted sexual advances, alleged rape, being ignored and sidelined, and being criticised for their weight, their looks, and their clothes are the stuff of daily headlines. Many of these stories involve MPs and male staffers in the Liberal Party and government headed by Prime Minister Morrison.
The PM has studiously ignored these stories until now. ABC journalist Patricia Karvelis put it like this:
“Morrison has spent the last month failing to read the national mood when it comes to the treatment of women.
“Convinced the issues around rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment were boutique feminist issues that didn’t have cut through in Australian suburbs, the Coalition has belatedly realised that sexism knows no class, race or political persuasion.
“It lives where male power festers unchallenged and manifests in the degrading treatment of women.
“Story after miserable story has exposed the toxicity of this culture.”
This doesn’t mean changing Australian culture is a lost cause; it means the colossal task should be led by others better equipped for the job.
The sooner the PM understands and accepts this, the sooner he can lend the vast resources of his office to endorse and enable cultural changes to be led by others in our society.
The PM now says he “gets it” when it comes to understanding women’s experience of mistreatment and misogyny, although the latter is not a term that has passed his lips.
He says he understands women’s intergenerational trauma, the relentlessness of the subordination, the lack of respect, the fear, the repetitive reality of being talked over, objectified, sexualised, marginalised, trivialised, harassed and assaulted.
He says he is shocked and disgusted by the almost daily examples of prejudice, aggression, and sexual misconduct exhibited by men in the federal parliament.
And that he has ordered no less than four inquiries into a rape allegation raised by former Liberal Party staffer, Brittany Higgins.
Men’s ignorance and shame
Men’s mistreatment of women has its foundations in power, privilege and prejudice. At an emotional level, it is rooted in ignorance and shame.
Too many men are emotionally illiterate, meaning they have little ability to feel or name their emotions, a deficit that makes them incapable of emotional empathy — understanding and responding appropriately to emotions in others, including women.
A case in point.
On March 15, former Liberal Party staffer, Brittany Higgins told news media that she had asked police to reactivate a complaint about an alleged sexual assault by a colleague in the parliamentary office of her then boss, defence minister Linda Reynolds in March of 2019.
Although Ms Higgins first raised the complaint with police days after the alleged incident, she paused it a few weeks later because she was concerned that pursuing it might lead to her losing her job as a parliamentary adviser.
Ms Higgins confirmed this during an interview with Network Ten on 15 March this year. “I realised my job was on the line,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I had a choice.”
During the same interview, Ms Higgins said the handling of her complaint by Minister Reynolds and senior staff, including some in Scott Morrison’s office, made her feel as though she had created a political problem for the government.
“There is a strange culture of silence in the parties and you just don’t … the idea of sort of speaking out on these sorts of issues, especially around [an election] campaign, is just like letting the team down, you are not a team player,” Higgins told Ten.
The next day, Mr Morrison announced a review into workplace culture in Parliament House and apologised to Ms Higgins for what she experienced following the alleged incident and conceded the government had mishandled its response.
Mr Morrison said the announcement followed a discussion with his wife Jenny the previous night and after he considered how he, as a father, would want his daughters to be treated.
“Jenny and I spoke last night and she said to me, you have to think about this as a father. What would you want to happen if it were our girls?” he told reporters.
“Jenny has a way of clarifying things. Always has. And so, as I’ve reflected on that overnight and listened to Brittany and what she had to say.”
In other words, Mr Morrison needed his wife to tell him what he should have been feeling and how to respond empathically as a human being.
Emotional literacy lacking in men
Emotional literacy, which the American psychotherapist Claude Steiner defined as ‘the ability to understand your emotions, the ability to listen to others and empathise with their emotions, and the ability to express emotions productively’, seems to come naturally to females. [i]
What’s more accurate is to say is that girls and women are encouraged to feel and express their emotions and to recognise and respond appropriately to them in others.
Sitting in a café this morning, I overheard a conversation between women. A new baby boy had just been born to the daughter of one of the women.
Congratulations were given and received, but what characterised most of the conversation was their empathy. “Thank goodness it’s now over for your daughter,” said one women. “I’m glad her ordeal is over.” Another said: “I’m so happy to hear that everyone is healthy and well,” while a third added: “Now she can rest for a few days and start to enjoy her baby boy.”
Can you imagine the same conversation ever occuring among men?
By contrast, male conditioning teaches boys to suppress many of their feelings, especially ones that leave them prey to male criticism, such as fear, shame and sadness. “Boys don’t cry,” is a trope as old as time.
As feeling and expressing the full range of human emotions is beaten or shamed out of them, boys eventually become insensitive to their emotions and the emotions of others.
When they experience events that should stir feelings of fear or sadness, they often feel nothing. More often they feel angry, a derivative emotion that is a safer and more acceptable in male culture.
Their anger is also born of frustration and denial: they live in bodies roiling with emotions with no outlet until they boil over into anger, self-harm and violence towards others, including women.
Another case in point.
A few days ago, Mr Morrison lashed out angrily at journalist at a Parliament House news conference in which he had addressed media about the latest example of sexual misconduct in the building.
The night before the news conference another example had emerged about a Liberal Party staffer’s conduct in Parliament House. The incident involved a staffer sacked after he had allegedly taking photos of a lewd act on the desk of a female Liberal MP.
Sky News reporter Andrew Clennell put it to the Prime Minister that the situation made it look like he had lost control of ministerial staff.
“Right now,” Mr Morrison responded, “you’d be aware in your own organisation, that there is a person who has had a complaint made against them for harassment of a woman in a women’s toilet and that matter is being pursued by your own HR department.
“Let’s not, all of us who sit in glass houses here, start getting into that.”
Morrison’s inappropriate accusation turned out to be false and he was forced to apologise later that day.
We don’t know how the PM felt about being asked a legitimate question about his leadership on an issue that demands sensitivity, wisdom and compassion. What we witnessed instead was an angry and baseless attack on a representative of a news organisation.
Men’s shame
When we behave in ways that fall short of our own or society’s standards, we realise there is a gap between the standard and our behaviour. As a result, some people feel guilt while others experience shame.
Brené Brown has made a distinction between the two emotions that is critical in explaining some of men’s behaviour towards themselves and others, including women.
While guilt has a focus on behaviour — “I did something bad” — shame has a focus on self — “I am bad.”
As we grow up, we experience hundreds of shaming messages from influential adults and peers: who do you think you are? You’re not good enough. You’re a failure. You’re stupid. Arrogant. Violent. Criminal. Sinful.
When we internalise a shaming message from a powerful adult or peer, we make the mistake of focusing on our identity or self instead of our behaviour.
Internalising shaming messages, according to Brown, is highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, and eating disorders.
By contrast, guilt is inversely correlated with these pathologies. The ability to hold something we have done up against something we want to be able to do is adaptive, she argues. Uncomfortable but adaptive.
It’s adaptive because admitting we’ve behaved badly or in a way that is sub-standard — being honest and accountable — and making a new commitment to behave differently in future is positive, learnable and measurable. Unlearning internalised shaming messages is far harder.
For men, the biggest shaming message is “you are weak.” So, suppressing one’s natural ability to feel and express one’s more tender emotions is the safest way to avoid accusations of weakness.
This is precisely what a toxic male culture does: it rewards men for suppressing most of their feelings; for being emotionally numb and illiterate.
Moreover, it turns men into emotional time bombs: ready to explode in violent and catastrophic ways that violate themselves, strangers and loved ones.
Rape. Murder. Mass shootings. Domestic violence. Sexual harassment. Sexual exploitation. These are the consequences of men’s emotional ignorance and internalised shame.
Shame needs three things to fester and grow: secrecy, silence and judgment, all of which are created and reinforced by a socialising male culture. Sadly, most men have no clue about how to begin talking about their fears, their sadness, or their shame. And even if they did, are there men who would know how to listen to them?
Empathy is the antidote to shame
Empathy is the antidote to shame, so the most powerful words we need to hear when we are struggling with internalised shaming messages is “me too”.
This is why cracking men’s silence and suffering requires courage and vulnerability, not perfection.
Part of what we need in male leaders in every sector of society is men who are willing to show and teach emotional vulnerability by telling the truth about themselves.
We need male leaders who can feel and demonstrate the full range of human emotions, which is the proving ground for emotional literacy and empathy.
We need male leaders willing to demonstrate authentic accountability, not a scripted or half-hearted apology given in the hope that this is enough to answer for their actions.
We need men who are willing to investigate the origins of their bad behaviour so that they can consciously begin to learn how to change their lives, and therefore the lives of women and children for the better.
We need safe, evolved, conscious men — elders — who are willing to teach boys and men the requisite emotional and leadership skills of how to be a balanced, conscious human being.
Who can teach boys and men these skills?
There are a few Australian organisations that have been running effective educational programs for men, boys and girls that could be part of a wider set of policies and solutions to the problems now crying out for attention.
In Australia, the Pathways Foundation has many programs for boys and girls who are growing into adulthood. In particular it runs multiday rites of passage camps for boys and girls run by skilled, emotionally literate leaders. It has been operating for 20 years and the Governor General the Hon David Hurley AC and her excellency Mrs Linda Hurley are its joint patrons.
“As a values-based organisation our framework is that of Respect, Responsibility and Awareness for self, others and the environment,” says the Foundation. “Pathways Programs assist with the prevention of risk-taking behaviours, self-harm, anxiety, substance abuse, under achievement, bullying, body image and disconnection with themselves, families, peers and their community.”
The Mankind Project Australia has been running men’s rites of passage in Australia since 2002 and has centres operating in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. Perhaps more importantly, it operates men’s groups where men can learn the soft skills of humanness that they often miss out on during boyhood and as they move into adulthood.
These skills include abilities such as emotional literacy and include abilities such as deep listening, feeling and expressing emotions, speaking honestly from the heart, taking responsibility for the impacts of one’s words and actions, and learning life-purpose and leadership skills.
Learning and developing these skills in the company of other men has many benefits but foremost is that men can bring these newfound skills to the way they conduct relationships between themselves and the wider world.
Research and anecdote suggest that well-run men’s groups are training grounds for these skills because they provide an antidote to many of the shaming messages boys and men learn in the absence of emotionally literate male role models during their developing years. They are not a panacea for misogyny or stopping men’s mistreatment of women. The solution to this deep cultural issue requires a raft of educational and other policy responses that will take generations to take effect.
Resources
How To Start And Run A Men’s Group Successfully
Starting & Running a Successful Men’s Group Starting a Men’s Group
Brené Brown — Listening to shame
Brené Brown — The power of vulnerability
About the author
Dan Gaffney is a teacher and author. He leads workshops and educational events and hosts a men’s group in the Blue Mountains. His book and podcast series, Journey Home — Essays on Living and Dying was published in November 2019.
[i] Steiner, C and Perry, P. (1997) Achieving Emotional Literacy. London: Bloomsbury
