Untethered: How do we solve men’s violence against women?

Welcome to Untethered Advice, a new format for the Untethered pod! In today’s episode, a listener asks if monogamy is responsible in part for men’s violence against women, because of its emphasis on ownership. 

I answer this the best way I know how - by looking at the broader picture of where the SYSTEM of male violence learns its tactics from. And yes, I talk about Palestine and imperial violence. 

This is a challenge to western feminists who want to focus solely on domestic homicide in Australia while ignoring the genocide in Palestine. These two thinks are interconnected, and we cannot fix domestic violence without understanding and dismantling our complicity in imperial violence.

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Email you advice questions to untetheredpod@gmail.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of Untethered, the podcast that encourages you to unshackle yourself from preconceptions and misconceptions about life and everything you might have been told you need to do in order to live it well. I'm your host, clementine Ford, and this week I'm introducing something new untethered advice. Long-time followers of my work may know that advice is very much in my wheelhouse. During the pandemic, I created a weekly Instagram series called Friday Night Bites, which evolved into a weekly podcast called Dear Clementine, which sadly ended due to my criticism of the genocide in Palestine. Since launching Untethered, though, I've been trying a few things out to see what feels natural in terms of content, and I've realized how much I miss answering people's questions.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Consider it a little wink to the idea of being untethered from rules that I'm experimenting like this with what works best for this pod, but given how good I was at presenting Dear Clementine, I am going to transfer that format here and see if it works for people. As a solo operator producing, presenting and publishing this podcast so many Ps in that sentence this will give me the time and space to stay consistent without having to line up interviews and coordinate schedules with guests, et cetera, et cetera, plus all of the other work that I do. But it also means that I can do something I wanted to do at Dear Clementine, and that's present a monthly long conversation with a guest. Everyone wins, especially me and my time management ADHD life. With that said, if you have a question you'd like me to answer on Untethered, you can email me on untetheredpod at gmailcom and you can ask anything. Nothing is off limits here at Untethered. You can email me on untetheredpod at gmailcom and you can ask anything. Nothing is off limits here at Untethered, except the idea of limits themselves. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and please consider rating and reviewing it for the purpose of increasing its reach. If you'd like to support the making of Untethered, you can hit the link on the liner notes and subscribe either to my sub stack, where I write three weekly newsletters on a variety of things, including using tarot cards for creatives, or you can simply sign up to my subscription page on Buzzsprout, where you can support my work for as little as $3 a month To those who've been listening since the beginning, in fact, maybe even since my big sister hotline days.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Thank you, I appreciate you deeply. I'm recording today on the lands of the Wurundjeri people and remember, appreciate you deeply. I'm recording today on the lands of the Wurundjeri people and remember, wherever you are, know whose land you're on. This episode is brought to you by my good friends at Beyond Rest, moonee Ponds. I get some of my best creative ideas when I'm floating in a sensory deprivation tank True story and because the folks at Beyond Rest know how important it is to untether from distractions in the world. If you go there and you use the code Clementine, you will get 20% off a float or my other favorite thing to do an infrared sauna. Say hi to Mary, she's great. For now, though, let's get untethered.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Today's listener asks Do you believe that monogamy and the sense of ownership over someone's autonomy contributes to the systemic issue of men's violence against women? The reason I wanted to answer this question in particular is because obviously we've had an horrific year so far in Australia with domestic homicide with alleged I put that in quotation marks alleged murders of women. So far, 36 women have lost their lives to violence this year Now. Lives to violence this year. Now that's not only to men's violence, but it is in the main, in the majority, to alleged perpetrators who were male. As I record this, it's the 1st of May, which, in Australia, is the National Domestic Violence Remembrance Day and kicks off an entire month of awareness raising about domestic and family violence.

Speaker 1: 4:24

The reason that I kind of have a tone in my voice, I guess, when I say that is because I am I'm extremely demoralized and I almost went to say I'm exhausted, but lately I've been getting really infuriated when I see, I don't know, there's this particular way of speaking that people have in the online world where these catchphrases are used to translate something, and I'm increasingly thinking it's more about platform and brand building. You know people will say things like this terrible thing happened and I am tired, and it's like are you tired? You hear talking about it? Are you tired? Are you really tired of this thing? That like, why are you specifically tired? I just I don't. I don't know how to explain it. It's just something that irritates me about that particular catchphrase being used to um to introduce a, an objectively horrific thing, as if somehow your own personal feelings and your own personal quote unquote. Exhaustion over the matter is not equivalent, obviously, but it needs to be taken into account. It's a peccadillo that is irritating me lately. So I'm not going to say I'm exhausted Although of course there is something tiring about having the same conversations over and over and over and nothing happening, having the same conversations over and over and over and nothing happening but I am demoralized.

Speaker 1: 5:51

I'm someone who, you know, in my own ways I'm certainly not going to claim to have done anything particularly spectacular. You know, we have really like just incredible first frontline workers, first responders in Australia and everywhere that is tackling men's violence against women, and they do the hard yards behind the scenes often of trying to change policies, of responding as I said, you know, on the ground, of dealing with the incredible lack of funding that services get to support survivors and victims of family violence and they don't get to platform themselves or brand build, they just get out there and do the work. So I'm not going to say that I'm the equivalent of that, but over the last 15 years of public writing and public speaking, I have attended countless rallies. I've attended countless rallies. I've attended, you know, countless sessions. I've participated in countless conversations about an issue that is not only still happening but that we seem to be just continually having the same circular fucking conversations on.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Now. I say this with absolutely no disrespect or shade against anyone who organized or attended or even spoke at the rallies that were held on the weekend to address the issue of men's violence against women, particularly in the. You know the horrendous sort of run and scourge of domestic homicides that we've seen lately that has claimed over 30 women's lives this year. And I say over 30 without specifically mentioning the number because not all of those people were killed by men. But with no disrespect to anyone who attended those rallies or spoke at them, this is not new information. Nothing that I heard said at those rallies was new or groundbreaking or, you know, offering any kind of ideas that have not been presented so far.

Speaker 1: 7:52

And again, I say that not to be critical of the people who spoke, but it is difficult to see the same conversations being had over and over and over, the same conversations being had over and over and over and within those conversations, the same accusations being made of governments and, you know, policymaking bodies that not enough is being done, because in part I sort of think that not enough reflection either is taking place within feminism. There's not enough looking to the past to see what has been done. There's not enough looking to the past to see what has been done, to see what works. There's not enough, I guess, commitment even to the idea of that behind the scenes work, of policy change, and you know the boring stuff that doesn't earn you followers, that doesn't earn you praise, but that actually needs to be done in order to change any of this. So that's kind of moving away from the question about monogamy itself.

Speaker 1: 8:46

But I say all that because I think that we need to think so much more broadly about what it is that actually informs, you know, the patterns of male violence and the perpetration of men's violence against women that we are at a point in which we, I think, as feminists, don't even necessarily know what it is we're working towards, beyond this vague idea of like, well, we want women to live safely, okay, well, that's a great, essential goal, of course, like, I would never argue against that. But that's also the kind of vagaries that governments say operate in, where they will say well, of course, we want a future in which women aren't subject to violence and they'll very rarely say men's violence, but let's just say that they assume that it doesn't actually mean anything, and I include myself in this criticism as well. I have said as much as the next person. Well, we need to dismantle patriarchy, and that is one of the first steps to solving the problem.

Speaker 1: 9:47

All right, that's true, but how do we do that? What does that actually mean? Or is that just an easy thing for someone like me and others to say Because it sounds good, it sounds progressive, it sounds like we know what we're talking about, without actually really considering the broader context of how something like that could even be done? I guess I'm at the point in my life where I'm feeling like even questions like you know, is monogamy the root of the problem, that maybe this is just all too simplistic. We're just thinking too simplistically about what is actually informing and driving this problem.

Speaker 1: 10:33

So I'm going to answer your question in a couple of ways, and one is that we'll look directly at the monogamy part of it, and the other is I want us to think broadly about what is happening in the world today that cannot be disentangled from the perpetration of men's violence, in Australia in particular. Now, australia actually has this is a weird thing to say because it's, you know, there's no number that is low enough, aside from zero when it comes to men murdering women, but Australia actually has a fairly low rate of domestic abuse and domestic homicide in comparison to other parts of the world and, in fact, worldwide and this is according to UN Women. In 2022, nearly 89,000 women and girls were killed intentionally across the globe. Australia actually is one of 30 countries that is amongst the lowest prevalence when it comes to men's violence against women and domestic homicide. And again, I say that not to say well, look, we're doing really well and you know, like, let's stop complaining and it's actually not that bad here, because it's still fucking bad.

Speaker 1: 11:39

It's fucking bad everywhere that women and children are being killed by men. That is a given, yeah, but I want people to consider why it is that this recent spate of alleged men's crimes against women again alleged in quotation marks, why this has mobilised such activity in Australia, amongst feminists, in particular, when and yes, I'm going to fucking go there again when the imperialist violence against women and children in Palestine has barely caused a ripple. The reason that I need to make that connection is not because I'm once again banging my drum about Palestine although I will be banging my drum about Palestine until Palestine is free but it's because this shit is all connected, and it's connected because we cannot think about women's liberation from men's violence without thinking about global liberation from capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy and all of the systems of dominance that rely on violence to maintain themselves that then either filter down or are reflected in other dynamics that exist across the world. So patriarchal violence against women you cannot disentangle it from imperialist violence and I think in this historical moment in time in which, for the past seven months, there has been a brutal genocide being enacted and played out on our screens, it is unavoidable we can't not see it, but so many people still choose to ignore it. And so many self-proclaimed feminists who marched in Australia on the weekend, some of whom spoke in Australia on the weekend, so many of those self-proclaimed feminists have completely chosen to ignore or stay silent on what's happening to women and children and, yes, men as well. But let's just, if you're going to claim that your focus is feminism that is being done to women and children in Palestine, the slaughter that is occurring, the number of orphans who are being created, the number of amputations that are being performed on children without anesthetic every day, the number of women here who marched in those rallies and who performed I think this incredible, incensed outrage over what is being done to us here and how unsafe women are in this country and yet are ignoring the actual evidence of white imperialist violence, that is, patriarchal violence writ large. That is the biggest reflection of that violence that we have right now happening right in front of us. To ignore that whilst at the same time claiming to be protesting this horrendous, horrendous existence of violence here. I think that that is something that we need to reflect on as feminists and as people who are claiming to be working towards the feminist cause and working for the liberation and safety of women and children in this country.

Speaker 1: 14:57

What is the relationship between those two things? Because they have a relationship. They are interconnected. They are not separate from each other, no matter how many people and no matter how many women again who marched on the weekend want to believe that these are two separate issues. They are interconnected Because what is patriarchal violence against women? What is men's violence against women? What is men's feeling of ownership of women, if it's not an expression of power, if it's not an expression of dominance and maintenance of dominating systems, which is exactly what we're seeing white imperialist governments worldwide participate in, with the upholding of violent oppression, apartheid and occupation in Palestine and now the mass slaughter of people to maintain that system. We can't look away from that and at the same time turn around and say, well, we have a real problem in this country. When will they stop killing us Like?

Speaker 1: 15:53

I don't mean to sound mocking, because there is no woman in this country who should live in fear of male violence, but that is equally true of Palestinian women, that's equally true of Iraqi women, that's equally true of Iranian women, that's equally true of any woman around the world who not only has to contend with the same systems of patriarchal violence that we in Australia have to contend with, but also has to add to that the fear and the very real, demonstrably proven threat of imperialist violence, where they get fists maybe rained down on them in their homes and bombs rained down on them outside by a Western world that is tacitly endorsing it. So I know that that's really deviated from the question of monogamy here, but I wanted to introduce it first and foremost because I think it's it's it's inextricable from what we are seeing still perpetrated here, and who's to say as well that being sort of suffocated by and swamped by this overwhelming picture of abuse and violence and imperialist slaughter that is just drenching us all right now and the apathy to it. I think that this does something really almost irreversibly poisoning to our souls and that I think as well is filtered down in the way that we treat people. You know, in our communities and the expressions of power that we enact against others. Men have been given by patriarchy the implicit permission to dominate women. Now, whether or not all men choose to do that is a different story, and we know, of course, that men can choose not to do that, although I'm not going to be the first to say that a lot of men who are violent towards women or emotionally abusive towards women in their own lives would have been marching on the weekend, because part of that whole pretense is participating in feminist communities to get the praise that women heap on them just for showing up. So we know that patriarchal dominance is intricately and intimately woven into the fabric of masculinity and that is an historical fact that continues to play out.

Speaker 1: 18:18

Now those cells, or activate those feelings in men. Any other number of things can trigger them. Now, when I say that, I don't mean, oh, men have no choice. Of course, again, men always have a choice. But we have to look at every single social movement and every single social behavioral practice that is propped up and endorsed, to see what it is that is giving a portion of those men the unbelievable and catastrophic entitlement to treat women the way that they do and to discard women the way that they feel allowed to.

Speaker 1: 19:07

I don't think that it's monogamy that does that. I don't think that it's monogamy that does that. I don't think that monogamy necessarily helps the situation. But that's not because of this idea of, you know, a one-to-one sexual relationship with someone. That's to do with the idea that monogamy in a white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal world and that's the only context I can speak in because that's the one that I live in but in that kind of world, monogamy is required and devotion from women to men and to the marital system is required to prop up white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. This is why white women inherently and I write about this in my book, I don't this is why white middle-class women in particular are crucial to the project of dismantling patriarchy and men's violence, not because we're more powerful, not because we are smarter or we'll do it better, but because we're the linchpin in those systems.

Speaker 1: 20:09

We're the swing vote, if patriarchy and capitalism in particular can say to a specific class of woman. Well, we will reward you for choosing this side. We will reward you by pledging allegiance and devotion to this side, this side that in turn, props up male power and male dominance and male authority. You will be spared from its wrath if you just convince yourself that this is the side that will benefit and aid you the most, and consider that as well, that white women in particular are conditioned. We're trained to choose ourselves first. We're not trained to work as part of a collective. We're not encouraged into collective action, which is why we're so fucking bad at it, because we're so self-obsessed and we're so committed to this idea of being at the top of the pile, because that's the culture of dominance that we've been indoctrinated into.

Speaker 1: 21:08

So it's not monogamy necessarily. That is kind of behind that. It's the idea of what monogamy represents, which is the power of the family, the power that, again, white middle-class women in particular feel that we're denied and that the only thing really standing between us and true equality is somehow getting the same privileges and rights as men, who we see as being our dominators, without actually thinking okay, well, what if we collectively worked with everyone else who is being oppressed by these systems, if we aligned ourselves with those collective actions and were led by them instead of accepting this, you know, very fucked up invitation to join into the patriarchal marital system of monogamy, as you've kind of asked here, what if we aligned ourselves with collective action and we dismantled all of those systems? What kind of world could that look like? And that's not very appealing to a lot of women and it's actually not very appealing to a lot of the kinds of women who, again, I'm going to argue, were performatively women outraged on the weekend.

Speaker 1: 22:15

I know that sounds really harsh. I'm not suggesting that their feelings of anger about the state of affairs in Australia towards women are necessarily coming from a bad place. But you know, as Sissy Austin and Vanessa Turnbull Roberts have both commented over the weekend, this kind of attention is not given to Aboriginal women who are victimized by patriarchal violence and white supremacist violence. Aboriginal women who are harmed and murdered by the colony. We don't march as white women collectively for them because we don't see ourselves in them. Whiteness is a scourge, and so all of these you know, fairly and yes, I know that the organiser of the national rallies this weekend is an incredible young, indigenous woman, and so all of these you know fairly. And yes, I know that the organizer of the national rallies this weekend is an incredible, young, indigenous woman. This is not a critique of her at all. I take my hat off to someone who was able to pull together national rallies of that scale and to do it with, you know, under a huge microscope and, of course, with everything that kind of got derailed by Alba stealing the mic from her. Like I get all of that. My full respect to her.

Speaker 1: 23:20

But I'm talking about white women in this country and what we respond to, what we think in that category are dismissive of what's happening in Palestine or, in the worst aspects of them, supportive of what's happening in Palestine because they don't see Palestinian women as being of the same category. They don't see the murder of thousands, thousands of women in the last seven months as being catastrophic, that they can't hold in their heads the idea that 36 women being killed in Australia by May 1st alone, that this is somehow, you know, the peak that they can understand of the worst things that could possibly be done to women in this country, and yet thousands and thousands of Palestinian women and their children being killed by imperialism, by imperialism, by imperialist policies and governments that we uphold and support, that we fund, that this somehow is just a consequence of quote unquote war. I think it's really vital that if you are in that category and if you're feeling at all challenged by what I'm saying here, to question whether or not you have ever uttered a sentence or a sentiment that says to men in this country this is a you problem, you need to step up, you need to be involved, you need to take responsibility for this, because this shouldn't be a women's problem to solve. If you've ever felt committed to that idea which is a true idea, that is a truth then you have to apply it to yourself. You have to say, okay, well, maybe white imperialism is a me problem, maybe it is part of my responsibility as a white person living in an imperialist country and again, of course, I'm not assuming that everyone listening to this is white, but the majority of you will be maybe it's a you problem and an us problem to be at the forefront of dismantling those systems Because, as I said, they are all connected.

Speaker 1: 25:32

We cannot see men's violence against women that is perpetrated in the home as being different to imperialist violence between countries where the dominant party believes that it is their right to behave with impunity, without apology, to take what they think belongs to them and to keep the people who are protesting in line, to keep them living under a regime of fear, to punish them by murdering their children, by murdering their loved ones. Those two things are exactly the same. They are just being perpetrated in different scales. Monogamy, I think, needs to be seen, or what you're asking needs to be seen in that context. What does ownership look like? And I don't think that, you know, encouraging a system of polyamory will do jack shit.

Speaker 1: 26:26

Until we actually address the root cause of power and what we believe is ours, by right, we can only solve the it's too. It's too minimizing even to say problem. We can only solve the constant historical narrative of men seeing it as their right to keep women in line, first and foremost, and to in you know, a smaller number of cases, but an equally devastating number of cases to punish women for stepping out of line or stepping out of what they believe to be their natural born right, as men punish them with death, with murder, with. You know, you've shamed me, so I will kill you. That kind of mentality. That can't be solved simply by addressing masculinity. That's not going to be solved by creating men's programs where men are given greater self-esteem. That's not going to be solved by, you know, by just alone going into schools and talking to boys about respecting women.

Speaker 1: 27:34

These are all superficial. I'm not saying that they're meaningless, but these are all superficial band-aid solutions, because the root cause of it is what power looks like and the root cause of it is what is reflected in the world that we live in, that shows a particular kind of man, what power does to maintain itself and what will be excused by powerful systems. We need to remember as well that one of the things that's informing not just Palestine but any kind of imperialist expression of dominance around the world, is the hierarchy of power, and so men within that hierarchy, rather than address their lower position, maybe on that hierarchy, rather than address the fact that we are all enslaved to capitalism and patriarchy and we are all operating under the auspices of a small and very powerful group of largely men, but not solely men, largely white men that, rather than address the kind of sense of insecurity and shame and invalidation maybe of that men, are taking the opportunity to rectify it within their own mind or rectify it within their own communities by saying well, at least I can be dominant against women, at least I've got control over them. So this is learned behavior. It's filtered down by the capitalist, white supremacist patriarchy that we live in, which is currently perpetrating a very highly visible and destructive and brutal genocide and getting away with it under our noses. So, to close out, I'm going to once again make the link between those things. So, to close out, I'm going to once again make the link between those things. If we can see, as a society of people, a global tacit endorsement of a genocide that is allowing a collective group of powerful white imperialist countries to back an ethnostate formed on the ideal of white supremacy, no matter what it says, that is, that is the truth, a European white supremacist nation.

Speaker 1: 29:45

If we are ignoring the mass violence that is being perpetrated against an oppressed and occupied people to maintain systems of power that disenfranchise not just them but disenfranchise us all, then how can we turn around and say, well, what can be done? What can we? Why? Why aren't they doing anything to solve men's violence against women here in Australia? Of course they're not doing anything to to end men's violence against women in Australia because we show them as a community that we endorse patriarchal violence against a nation of people when it suits us. We have to start with ourselves and what kind of society we want to live in.

Speaker 1: 30:28

And it's not enough to just say well, we need to end men's violence against women, we need to make men respect women, we need to fucking dismantle the whole system, the whole global system of power, otherwise we are only ever slapping a bandaid over it and we will continue to have these circular conversations, these circular conversations about what can be done that ultimately, in a way, in the end, almost end up feeding our sense of activity without necessarily needing to follow through with actual action. You know, it feels good to go to a march and scream and cry and hold a placard and applaud a speaker, because it feels like you're getting something done, it feels purposeful, purposeful. But there's no purpose to it if it's just demanding something without actually looking at the root cause, at the root cause of why power historically and currently still is able to be executed in such horrific ways. Where is it being learned from? Where is it being conditioned ways? Where is it being learned from? Where is it being conditioned? Where is it being made acceptable, and if it's being made acceptable by our very leaders in such obvious and visible ways, in a way that so many people are cheering for, then we have no real right as a society to turn around and demand that we be given protection, that we be treated better, because we're only endorsing exactly what they've taught us Some food for thought.

Speaker 1: 32:13

You've been listening to Untethered with me your very passionate host, clementine Ford. Thank you so much. Thank you to the people who send in questions. I've got a whole backlog of things and I will be doing different themes every episode. It's not necessarily going to always be political. You can ask any questions on relationships, on work, on friendships and, yes, on current events.

Speaker 1: 32:35

Again, if you like the show, please remember to subscribe, rate and review it. You can support me on either Substack, where you can get access to three of my weekly newsletters. You can also just support me on Buzzsprout for as little as $3 a month. I'm also on Patreon, where there are a few different tiers that give you different kinds of things. You can find all that information in the liner notes here. It has been a pleasure to speak to you today. I feel untethered from my rage after all of that, and I hope in some small way you feel untethered too and you know empowered to go out and make a change and untether us all from this fucking capitalist hellscape that we're living in. Until next time, stay untethered and never stop standing with Palestine.