Waleed Aly has challenged the widespread belief among politicians and activists that male violence against women arises from a lack of respect; Instead, she suggests that the desire to hurt women actually comes from attackers feeling ashamed and humiliated.
The project host addressed Australia’s domestic violence crisis in an op-ed following shocking statistics showing a woman is murdered every four days.
Aly, who is also a professor of politics at Monash University, said he had put off writing the article for almost a decade.
She referenced the words of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who in 2015 said: “Disrespect for women does not always result in violence against women.” But all violence against women begins with disrespecting them.’
Aly said he always thought Mr Turnbull’s comment was incorrect but had never said anything publicly, until now.
“I couldn’t suppress a simple thought when I heard Turnbull’s comment: I just don’t think it’s right,” Aly wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald.
“That’s because my academic work studied the roots of violence, where research overwhelmingly identifies factors like humiliation, shame and guilt as motivating factors, not disrespect.”
Waleed Aly has disputed the idea that the root of male violence against women is a lack of respect, suggesting instead that violence arises because attackers feel ashamed and humiliated.
Aly said research showed that perpetrators of violent crimes often felt that they themselves had not been respected.
He referenced American prison psychiatrist James Gilligan, who said he had yet to see a violent act that “was not provoked by the experience of feeling ashamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed.”
Gilligan stated that the most dangerous men “are those who fear they are weak.”
The issue of domestic violence in Australia has come to the fore in recent weeks after 28 women were allegedly murdered this year alone.
Men are urged to start talking to each other about domestic violence and, in Aly’s words, “let the ‘good’ men straighten out the ‘bad’ men.”
Aly’s comments come a day after the funeral of Molly Ticehurst, 28, who was allegedly murdered by her ex-boyfriend Daniel Billings.
“This conveys the widespread idea that, ultimately, this is a man’s problem, and that each of us must take it on and solve it,” he said.
He said that “it makes little sense” to treat all men as violent, when the blame lies with a minority.
Aly added that associating all men with violence could lead them to “withdraw and defend an identity that they consider unfairly maligned.”
But he said there was still hope for Australia’s domestic violence problem.
He said the way forward was to address the minority responsible for violence by addressing their risk factors, rather than looking at all men in general.
‘Accept the enormity of the task, but do not drown in it. He makes the invincible intelligible. He is fierce, but restrained. In short, it deserves the next decade of respect,” he stated.
Aly also noted that charging “all men” with the task of solving the domestic violence epidemic was no different than “being told it was up to Muslims to own the problem of terrorism,” an attitude that “didn’t work” and only It resulted in Muslims feeling guilty. ‘alienated’.
His comments come a day after the funeral of Molly Ticehurst, 28, allegedly murdered by her ex-boyfriend Daniel Billings.
