Peggy Revell
Joe Weinberg has been asked a lot of stupid questions over the years, but as a violence and abuse educator, he takes it all as a part of his job.
“They can ask me stupid questions and try to put me on the spot,” said Weinberg. “I mean, they’re kids, you know?”
For the past week-and-a-half, Weinberg has been travelling throughout Northwestern Ontario, speaking to communities and schools about how the cycle of violence can be stopped.
As president of “Men Stopping Rape,” based out of Madison, Wis., Weinberg’s speaking tour, entitled “Men of Strength,” was arranged by the combined efforts of the sexual health program at the Northwestern Health Unit and the Lake of the Woods Child Development Centre.
He’s given thousands of workshops and speeches on sexual abuse, rape, and violence, mainly focusing his efforts on speaking to young men. He gives them the chance to ask questions on relationships, on women, and on sex, silly or serious, that they may not otherwise feel comfortable asking.
“They can ask any question, and they have to get it out of their system,” Weinberg noted. “And some stay in a very shallow place because that’s safe, but they come out of it and they’re stunned that I’m talking about these things, often identifying traumas in their own lives.
“I’m certainly making a place for them to look at the quality of their own sexual interactions.”
“The [health unit] has done quite a bit lately in terms of looking at violence in our communities,” said public health nurse Gillian Lunny. “When we did the violence forum in Dryden earlier in the year, it was so wonderful to have community partners together talking about an issue that affects all of us.
“We had the opportunity to bring in a speaker for some sort of education initiative, [and] to have a man speak about violence against women and sexual assault is something we don’t hear very much and something we need to hear more of in our community,” Lunny added.
While Weinberg speaks to youths about violence against women, where he begins is addressing the violence that males have in their own lives.
“I think there’s a lot of violence in all boys’ lives,” he noted, explaining it’s not necessarily physical violence, but it’s a raised voice, white knuckles and rage, insults and escalation, and the threat of being hurt or even killed if a male is perceived to be gay or step outside the acceptable male stereotype.
It’s a stereotype that boys can’t possibly live up to, Weinberg said—one where being a man means being in charge, on top, knowing everything, being the leader, being violent, and being sexually aggressive.
“None of us are strong enough, emotionally dead enough, to step over bodies figuratively and literally. And yet [boys] still judge themselves very harshly for ‘failing’ to live up to the real man stereotype,” he remarked.
It’s a stereotype that doesn’t leave room for other things males can be: gentle, soft, caring, and kind.
“Unfortunately, a lot of these attributes that we should celebrate, that they share and have, are the stereotypes of gayness, so [males] constantly have to be on the watch that they don’t reveal the ‘gayness’ that most of them aren’t,” Weinberg explained.
It’s also a problem that starts early on, often at home at a young age, when boys are directed to trucks, action figures, building blocks, and toy guns—yet never a doll that would help teach them to be caring and nurturing.
“Many fathers don’t even tell their sons that they love them,” he said. “These boys, every single one of them, are starved for love and for loving male attention.
“But I’m no longer surprised by how almost similar people are, as well,” Weinberg added, commenting on what he has seen so far on his trip north of the border. “The way boys are socialized is so similar here.
“I saw no significant difference, and sadly, I didn’t see a huge difference from now to 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and it’s not just because I’m lazy and don’t want to update my material.
“I would really encourage parents and adults to look at the way they were raised, and to take the risk to take the time to, if they can, to look at the compromises and sadness and abuses and neglect and lies that they were raised with and see just how many of them are replicating the same sort of provably destructive ways of parenting,” he stressed.
And it is destructive, he said, because it means males grow up not knowing how to deal with their emotions and have healthy relationships, not only with other men but with women.
As a feminist, Weinberg also his audience’s worst nightmare, he added, talking about consent, rape, and that some of them have committed acts that legally would qualify as sexual assault.
“The question to me is ‘How do you understand your behaviour, how do you stop reinforcing negative behaviour in other males . . . because most of it is directly what men tell us to do, you know? Real men do this. Real men don’t do this.’”
“To have a man stand up and say ‘it is wrong what goes on,’ it may help boys in terms of identifying the issues they may have and look more for role models that can help them with violence or anger issues, or seeing women as partners,” noted Lunny.
“I know a lot of times we think, ‘Well, kids these days,’ but the same things were going on when I was in school,” she added. “And we know what kids go through in terms of peer pressure, and access to alcohol, drugs, things that can affect their safety and their decision-making skills.
“So it’s a perfect group to just plant the seed that this is something that they can look at their lives, look at how they were brought up, and maybe change something for the better.”
Weinberg said he never intentionally set out to become a rape prevention educator. He was always one of those “nice guys,” just another “goofy kid” growing up, he noted. But during his mid-30s, he was trying to sober up after years of drug use and also was going through a divorce.
He realized that, as a male, he had never been given the tools to deal with the emotions he had.
“I was desperate to have [my ex-wife] translate how I was feeling to me,” he remarked.
Not only were his relationships with women filled with compromises, after attending male-only Al-Anon meetings, Weinberg realized his relationships with men were one-dimensional. “We could talk and eventually we’d have to end up talking about that woman’s breasts because we didn’t have a lot to talk about otherwise,” he noted.
“I was desperate to find men that weren’t ‘normal,’ that weren’t one-dimensional.”
His therapist suggested he join with “Men Stopping Rape,” but he balked at the idea.
“I thought: not the nice guys. I just had this image that they were weenies and they were gay,” Weinberg admitted. “I wasn’t going to beat anybody up, but it wasn’t an inviting place.”
But after much reading, and reflection, it was a place he found himself involved with, eventually going into schools and prisons to talk with youth, especially males, about the violence in their lives.
And if there’s one thing he wants students to come away with after the presentation, it’s that he took them seriously—stupid question included—and that he cared about them.
“They’re so frequently treated like they’re not worth anything,” Weinberg said. “It’s not just because I don’t want them to grow up to rape. I want them to grow up to be people.”
