First Principles of the WRC

If it were between countries, we'd call it a war. If it were a disease, we'd call it an epidemic. If it were an oil spill, we'd call it a disaster. But it's happening to women, and it's just an everyday affair. It is violence against women. It is rape at home and on dates. It is the beating or the blow that one out of four Canadian women receive in their lifetime. It is sexual harassment at work. It is sexual abuse of the young. It is murder.

There's no secret enemy pulling the trigger, no unseen virus that leads to death. It's just men. Men from all social backgrounds and of all colours and ages. Men in business suits and men in blue collars. Men who plant the fields and men who sell furniture. Not weirdoes. Just regular guys.

All those regular guys, though, have helped create a climate of fear and mistrust among women. Our sisters, our mothers, our daughters and our lovers can no longer feel safe in their homes. At night they can't walk to the corner store for milk without wondering who's walking behind them. It's hard for them to turn on the TV without seeing men running amok in displays of brutality against women and other men. Even the millions of women in relationships with that majority of men who are gentle and caring feel they cannot totally trust men. All women are imprisoned in a culture of violence.

Men's violence against women isn't aberrant behaviour. Men have created cultures where men use violence against other men, where we wreak violence on the natural environment, where we see violence as the best means to resolve differences between nations, where every boy is forced to learn to fight or be branded a sissy, and where men have forms of power and privileges that women do not enjoy.

Men have been defined as part of the problem. But we think that men can also be part of the solution. Confronting men's violence requires nothing less than a commitment to full equality for women and a redefinition of what it means to be men, to discover a meaning to manhood that doesn't require blood to be spilled.

With all of our love, respect and support for the women in our lives:

• We ask unions, professional associations, student councils, corporations and government bodies to make this an issue of priority, starting with the circulation of this statement.
  
• We urge all levels of government to increase their funding of rape crisis shelters, shelters for battered women, and for services to treat men who batter.
  
• We call for large-scale educational programmes on the issue of men's violence for police officers and judges, in work places and in schools.
  
• We commit ourselves to think about sexism in our own words and deeds and to challenge sexism around us. We urge all men to do the same.
  
• We urge men to circulate this statement to other men, and to send donations to women's groups or to the White Ribbon Campaign to help continue this work. We ask the media to show their concern by reprinting and broadcasting this statement in full.

Last modified on: Saturday, April 11, 1998.