Standing Against Tanks

STANDING AGAINST TANKS
September 2000

Remember the man who stood in front of the tanks in Tinamin Square? Well, for the past couple of weeks I've heard these tanks rumbling in my mind and I have finally had to stand in front of them.

A few weeks ago a woman who heads a local women's shelter wrote an article for our local paper titled; "What is Domestic Violence?" The whole piece boiled down to this, "He does this to her. He is this. He is that."etc. There was not a single change in gender reference when it came to the roles of abuser and victim. The attacker was always male, the one attacked always female.

I, for one, know better and I'll bet you do too. So I wrote an article, outraged as I was by her piece, which was titled; "Domestic Violence is a 50-50 Issue." She responded with; "Domestic Violence is Not a 50-50 Issue" citing "statistics" which I knew to be false; "The leading cause of injury to women is domestic violence." False. "Every 15 seconds a woman is attacked in the U.S." False. There is no such statistic. There were many others.

Here I'll quote from an article by Cathy Young titled; "Domestic Violence and Pseudo-Statistics".

"Here is a breakdown of the top causes of injury-related emergency room visits by women:

Accidental falls 26.9 percent. Motor vehicle accidents 13.4 percent. Accidents caused by piercing or cutting objects, 7.1 percent. Striking against or struck accidentally by objects or persons; 7.1 percent. Accidents due to natural and environmental factors (animal bites, venomous plants) 5.0 percent. Overexertion and strenuous movements 4.6 percent. Homicide and injury purposely inflicted by other persons 4.1 percent.

"It is worth noting that the interpersonal violence in this study includes 'all' violence, not just domestic, and that the numbers refer to the percentages of emergency-room visits for 'injuries', not 'all' emergency-room visits. One predictable objection is that hospital emergency rooms are missing many cases of domestic violence: women whose injuries are attributed to falls or cuts are actually being pushed down the stairs or cut by their batterers, for whom they cover up at the hospital. But if what is recorded as accidental trauma in women actually concealed vast numbers of injuries due to domestic violence, we would see many more accidental injuries reported for women than for men. That is not the case."

And to the implication that women are most often the victims of men: ".men are over 50 percent more likely than women to seek emergency-room treatment for injuries from interpersonal violence. 14 percent of women's injuries could not be classified because the entries were illegible or left blank; but the same was true of 17 percent of men's injuries. The CDC* study still shows that annually, about 600,000 women and 950,000 men seek emergency medical care due to interpersonal violence."

*Center for Disease Control.

It is an ancient ploy, used by propagandists throughout time, to use faked numbers to negatively depict a targeted group. Hitler used faked numbers to depict the Jews in pre-war Germany as profiting from the general financial depression in the 30's. Economic racists in this country used fake numbers to create a stereotype of the black welfare mother with six children driving a Cadillac and, in general, living off the sweat of "honest, hard working tax payers". Fake numbers have been used to influence public opinion, create wars, win elections and, impugn the motives of individuals and groups. And this series of articles, written by someone who has a political and economic agenda to support, is just such an effort.

I would like the luxury of overlooking such stuff. But I have this thing in me. It has come to life over time and with a great deal of effort. It is a pride in being a male in this society. I have worked hard to be a good one. And every male I know and am associated with has struggled in this same way. Struggled to be worthy of being called a man. It has meant flying in the face of those who would make maleness synonymous with brutality, aggression, danger, mistrust, deceit and stupidity. And it means that over and over again, we, as men, have had to speak out when it would be easier, as has been our custom, to say; "Ah, the hell with 'em." Ignoring the insult. Ignoring the absolute slander of our gender. We have thought it an easier course to take, walking away, ignoring the hurt and wound. Sometimes we even join in the jeering just to get it over with and be a "good sport" about it. Self loathing is one of the symptoms of having given up in the face of overwhelming odds and joining with the persecutors.

I resisted writing this article because I wanted to walk away from it. I was tired of fighting the battle. Rejoining it just opened the old abuse wounds and I didn't want to revisit that place again.

I just can't do it.

My malaise increased. My anger over it kept me emotionally preoccupied. I can't go back to sleep. These kinds of attacks on men have to be confronted. Lies must be exposed. Not to attempt to dislodge them means that they will take root and spread like a kudzu vine in popular consciousness until the truth can no longer be found in the strangling tangle.

My personal objection to them is not enough. I must not, I cannot, as a responsible male human being, fall silent or turn my back on these kinds of attacks. I must speak out. The luxury of remaining silent is not an option.

We, as a gender, get used to shrugging off pain, physical and emotional. Our tendency to do this has produced a picture of us as dangerous buffoons. The legacy of this is male children who have no models of men as heroes. Real men that is. Not the overblown models of Hollywood and TV fictions. The last time this society held men in that kind of regard was World War ll when GI Joe, the Everyman, was elevated from the pathetic soup line failure image of the depression and dust bowl, to the savoir of Democracy and Freedom in the world.

The heroics men display today are far less public; the dependable provider, the teacher of morals and ethics and challenger of self limitation. The supporter of dreams and reporter of realities. We are the ones who will stand in front of tanks when the issue is less definable than our own personal interest. We will save strangers without a thought for our safety. We will stand for what is right and against what is wrong.

And I will stand here, against the wrong of convicting men to support an economic and political agenda. Short term this ploy may get the funding, because it has, for a long time, been popular to convict men. Long term, it will destroy our society.

Coyote On Coyote - More about Coyote by Dick Prosapio

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