Silence is no longer an option for Irish men, it’s time to call out violence against women before it comes to your home
A MARCH has been planned in Dublin next week calling for Government action — amid a worrying “epidemic” of violence against women.
People are expected to gather at the Spire on O’Connell Street and march to Dail Eireann next Wednesday, to coincide with International Women’s Day.
And while many females are expected to take part in the march, John Deane-O’Keeffe says it’s time for men to play an active role in addressing the issue of male violence.
John, a lecturer in Criminology and Forensic Psychology, and patron of AdVIC — Advocates for the Victims of Homicide — says that the toxic masculinity trend, pushed by influencers such as Andrew Tate, needs to be addressed.
Today, he explains movements such as The Irish Sun’s Call This Out campaign are needed now more than ever.
ABOUT two years ago, I was out observing on a night shift with Frontline Gardai in South Inner City Dublin.
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They received a report that a woman had been beaten in a local flats complex.
On arrival, we were greeted with a scene that would not have looked out of place had a hurricane hit.
Cups and saucers were broken, armchairs upended and slashed, pictures torn down off the wall, clothes ripped and lying all over the floor.
From the kitchen came a faint cry and when we entered, a woman in her mid-forties lay bleeding from the arm and face — a face unrecognisable from bruising.
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She was barely conscious. Subsequently, when she regained some composure before the ambulance arrived, she revealed that she had been attacked by her two, now missing teenage sons.
Her crime? She told them she had a boyfriend and would like them to meet him. The horror is this incident is nothing unusual.
The greater horror is we fail as a community to call out this barbarism and deal with it through our criminal justice system in an appropriate manner.
Let’s get one thing straight — prison is populated with men, and comparatively, very few women. Men kill and hurt women — and other men.
Men like to externalise their anger, women may often internalise theirs, confining the suffering to themselves.
Do women commit violence? Of course they do. But this does not scratch the surface when compared to the unfathomable violence criminal men continue to commit on innocent women here in 2023. We always have choices and, however difficult some men find it to make good ones, it is always an option not to attack women.
So they make their choices whatever way you spin it, and what does the rest of society do with men who attack women and/or their children? We make a joke of it.
People discuss being ‘stalked’ by their ex-partners when they get a text or two in the middle of the night once the relationship is over, or when they hear that the former partner might be asking their friend’s about them. That is not stalking — trust me on that one. That’s a break-up.
If you don’t believe me, ask Mary Mullaly from Co Cork whose life was turned upside down by a real stalker when she had to move house and area — and still could not get way from his threats and harassment. Hundreds of other women across the country are being harassed, stalked, bullied and emotional and physically attacked by partners, ex-partners and unknown males.
All of them believe that they have a God-given right to attack women.
Perhaps we should not be surprised. In a world where the likes of women-hater Andrew Tate take pride of place in boys’ phones, what do we expect?
In the world of the ego-inflated male, all manner of horrors will, and are, being visited on the opposite sex.
Perhaps up to 90 per cent of women who are the victims of violent men, are either related to them, are/or were in an intimate relationship with them, or know them.
These feral men use the cover of relation, love or so-called friendship, to unleash the terrors of their savage imaginations and behaviours. Why? Simply because they can.
And the reason they can, is that good men stand by and do nothing.
That woman could be our sister, our mother, our cousin, our niece and our daughter and yet we turn away when it is someone else’s.
After all, the criminal justice system will deal with them, we say. Well, it doesn’t and we certainly don’t.
The modern Irish male remains paralysed with inertia when it comes to violence against women — until it comes to their own door.
How many more women have to have detached retinas, ruptured spleens, broken bones and life-long psychiatric conditions before the men of Ireland stand up and change, not just the system, but male attitudes — for good?
Silence is no longer an option for any man in Ireland. Time to call it out. Before it comes to your home.
