NCJ Number
221769
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 14 Issue: 2 Dated: February 2008 Pages: 247-261
Date Published
February 2008
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This paper describes the ecological, community-based accountability model used by Men Stopping Violence (MSV), a 24-year-old metro Atlanta-based organization that works to end male violence against women.
Abstract
The MSV community-accountability model of male violence against women challenges and works to reform the cultural and historical mechanisms that support violence against women. Although MSV offers a 6-month batterers' intervention program (BIP), this program is only part of the larger work of the organization in the community. MSV seeks to involve men in the community who have not been identified as batterers. A significant part of MSV's work is the identification, education, and organization of men to become active in efforts to inform the community about male violence against their intimate partners and the underlying cultural values that promote such behavior. In developing its programs and strategies, MSV uses an analysis of the global patriarchal system to educate men about the causes of male violence against women. MSV's analysis of global patriarchy closely parallels that espoused by author and activist Bell Hooks (2004), who writes that patriarchy is "A political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and anyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence." MSV's analysis views this political-social system as an ideological global one that is sustained and strengthened by smaller, related systems at the familial, local, and national levels. Recognizing that community values strongly influence individual behaviors, MSV focuses not only on individual abusers but also on the values and attitudes of the community toward male-female interactions reflected in the upbringing of children and the influence of peers. 1 figure, 12 references