Hansard

I thank Katy Clark for bringing this important topic to the chamber.

As we have heard, domestic abuse charges in Scotland have increased for the fifth consecutive year. Katy Clark mentioned a figure of 33,000 cases; in my constituency, 111 incidents were reported last year, or one incident every three days. That figure alone is staggering, but the fact is that such figures do not reveal the true extent of domestic abuse in our communities.

I recently visited Women’s Aid East and Midlothian. It was mentioned that one of the barriers to talking about the issue is getting what it sees as justice for the act that has been carried out. For a myriad of reasons, abusers are often not reported.

I will let the minister address in summing up the key point about domestic abuse courts that Katy Clark mentioned.

The scale of violence in our society has reached pandemic proportions. At its core, that violence is gender based, whether it is men’s violence against women and girls or men’s violence against men and boys. Domestic abuse that is perpetrated by men against women is rooted in women’s unequal status in society. That is at the core of the problem, and men need to say that more and more. That is part of the wider social problem of male violence against women and girls.

Research from the University of Bristol reveals that sexism and misogyny set the scene for male abusive partners’ coercive and controlling behaviours. Dr Jackson Katz’s research delves even further into the root causes of male violence against women. His work focuses predominantly on attitudes and beliefs of manhood that society actively teaches. He encourages us not to think of men who are violent towards women as pathological monsters and individual perpetrators

“Because it is our society that’s producing these abusive men on a regular basis, generation after generation, across class, race and ethnicity.”

All the influences of rape culture, sport culture, porn culture, peer culture and media culture teach men certain lessons about manhood and social norms, which are produced and reproduced at every level.

Earlier today, I met Graham Goulden, who is formerly of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. That was an eye-opening meeting for me. He told me that the same system produces not only men who abuse, harm and are violent towards women, but men who abuse, harm and are violent towards men. That is not said in the spirit of minimising women’s experience of male violence; rather, it illustrates that men and women have the common enemy of male violence. That recognition is important in helping us to frame male violence against women in a way that brings men into the conversation. Again, we need to do that more and more, and we have a leadership role in our Parliament to do that.

Men have been erased from much of the conversation on the subject, which is essentially about men. Campaigns such as the “Don’t be that guy” campaign are so important because domestic abuse and violence against women and girls are symptoms of the socialisation of boys and the definitions of manhood that society creates and upholds, which lead to the current outcomes.

For so long, women have been the only ones to stand up and speak out against male violence. I know men who care deeply about the issue but caring deeply is not enough. We need more men to have the courage and strength to stand up and not remain silent in the face of abuse. We need men to challenge the behaviours and attitudes that, if left alone, manifest and transform into the rape and murder of women. We need that abusive behaviour to be seen as unacceptable not just because it is illegal, but because it is wrong and unacceptable in peer culture.

As Jackson Katz has said, we need men to break the

“silence in male culture about this ongoing tragedy of men’s violence against women”.

I thank Katy Clark for lodging the motion.