Ending the Silence: The Origins and Treatment of Male Violence Against Women

Andrea Levan is Co-ordinator of Women’s Studies at Laurentian
University.

As the subtitle suggests, this book is a comprehensive examination of
violence against women. As a therapist working with male offenders,
Thorne-Finch brings a particular clinical perspective to the issue, and
his primary audience is certainly other men. Nevertheless, the book
takes a broad and comprehensive view that makes it a valuable
contribution to the literature, and particularly useful as a
comprehensive introduction to the problem.

The range of the book is evident, in several ways. For one thing, the
author includes among the categories of male violence against women not
only battering, femicide, and sexual assault, but also the “greyer”
areas such as emotional abuse and sexual harassment, and he makes a
careful analysis of the similarities between all these types of abuse.
His listing of the emotional and physical effects of such abuse is also
comprehensive. One of the most interesting and important sections of the
book is the examination of causes. After reviewing some of the major
physiological and psychological theories, Thorne-Finch opts for the
social constructionist explanations, in particular focusing on the ways
in which institutions such as the family, the media, sports, the
military, and pornography create a definition of masculinity that is
both violent and misogynist. In these sections, he represents the
insights that many feminist scholars have contributed to our
understanding of the extent and pervasiveness of the problem.

The sections on state response place the emphasis on the treatment of
male offenders. From a feminist perspective, these are less satisfying,
because they do not explore in any substantive way the questions many
feminists have raised about the role of the state in reinforcing the
problem or, as a number of recent works have discussed, in distorting or
watering down our understanding of it. Nevertheless, Thorne-Finch’s
analysis of male-treatment programs does illustrate similar complexities
and concerns about state priorities that feminist scholars have raised
in other contexts.

Thorne-Finch is also an advocate of pro-feminist male activism, and his
section on male responses to feminism is perhaps the most fascinating
part of the book. It would make interesting reading for feminists who
consider the “men’s movement” a homogeneous, somewhat strident,
and threatening phenomenon—in other words, much as many men regard
feminists. Thorne-Finch shows there are divisions of opinion and
theoretical stance among men’s groups, just as there are among
women’s groups. By and large, he feels that only a few groups have
fully confronted men’s role in perpetuating violence against women
but, nevertheless, he perceives in various groups a number of complex
(positive as well as negative) responses to feminism. All in all, this
is an informative and wide-ranging book.