Editor’s note: This is in response to the article “Lecturer: Men can end violence against women,” published in Monday’s Daily Lobo. The article was about a talk given by Ted Bunch, co-founder of the organization A Call To Men, which is part of a UN initiative committed to ending violence against women around the world. In the talk, Bunch said men are socially conditioned to view women as inferior and that we can change this attitude toward women.
Editor,
I was shocked to see an egregiously sexist headline in the Daily Lobo today. I did not attend Ted Bunch’s lecture, but I must say the snippet posted as the headline for the article was abhorrent.
Imagine a similar headline: “Minorities can end theft.” It’s a sad stereotype that ethnic minorities — be they Italian, Irish, Mexican, African-American or otherwise — are often labeled as criminals. The outrage that would stem from an anticrime speaker encouraging an end to property crime by saying something that targets a group of people because of a stereotype would be enormous, and rightfully so.
This headline and this lecturer present men as the cause of violence against women. A study led by Daniel Whitaker of the University of Georgia found that in the United States, violence was reciprocal in fully half of relationships with domestic violence. In the relationships without reciprocated violence, women were the perpetrators nearly 70 percent of the time.
Domestic violence is not a male-versus-female issue, and presenting men as both the problem and the solution to domestic violence is immensely sexist. Both women and men are capable of perpetrating partner violence and an effective solution to this problem is for both genders to work together to end it.
Human beings can end domestic violence, not one gender or the other.
Paul Hunt
UNM student
