Male Rage is In Season

There seems to be an epidemic of male rage in my neighborhood lately.  The shouting matches below my floor have spread to the apartment next door, and raised male voices can be heard on my dog-walk route, loaded with cuss words aimed at the women in these men’s lives.

And yet, Congress is divided about renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.  Due to objections over expanding protection to LGBT folk, Native American women and immigrants (in the form of more visas), “republicans complained the changes to the law were designed to set them up and distract from issues such as the economy that Democrats would rather not discuss.”

The thing is, this has everything to do with the economy.   The economic plunge of 2008 fell more on the male gender than the female gender. The very first outcome of the housing crash was that houses stopped being built: contractors, carpenters, electricians, roofers, plumbers, landscapers – all out of work indefinitely.  From there it spread to corporate America, with layoffs disproportionately putting men out of work. According to the Council on Contemporary Families, men and women feel the crisis in distinctive ways:

“Men have born the brunt of the recession so far, accounting for more than three-quarters of job losses. And men are more likely than women to experience job or income loss as a fundamental threat to their identity. But the wives of laid-off men also suffer: Unemployed men are more likely to exhibit hostility towards their partners than unemployed women. Not surprisingly, female partners of unemployed men have higher level of depressive and anxious symptoms than do male partners of unemployed women.

Imagine: formerly independent bread winners that were head of households now subject to rely on government ‘hand-outs’ and their wives for survival.  Couple that with the depression, shame, and sense of powerlessness and lack of agency that often accompany looking for jobs when jobs are scarce, and rising tempers seems a likely result.

People of faith who work for peace understand the connection between violence and poverty, agency, and justice.  First coined by Bishop Dom Helder Camara in 1971, the Spiral of Violence begins with “fundamental experiences of injustice and violation” like “lack of social opportunity, educational discrimination, policy harassment, unemployment, military occupation, and so on”[1].  In these situations, an inherent byproduct is the idea that it’s “beyond our capacity to change”.

And so, as with previous economic recessions, a new survey shows that domestic violence is up nationwide.  “Peg Coleman [Utah Domestic Violence Council] says unemployment increases the risk for violence three fold. ‘If their [the abuser’s] strategies are less than respectful to begin with, they are going to seek more control in areas where they feel that they have it, which can lead to abuse.’” 

And yet, the conservative march towards cutting benefits and government spending continues, aimed at state funded programs like home health care and nursing homes – which will have a disproportionate impact on women’s careers.  Cutting is not the answer:   we need more funding to help intervene in impoverished families and domestic abuse situations – before it’s too late. 

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[1] Enns, Elaine & Myers, Ched.  Ambassadors of Reconciliation, Vol II: Divese Christian Practices of Restorative Justice and Peacemaking.  Maryknoll, NY, 2009.  6.