Ending domestic violence is up to men, speaker says

By Shasta Kearns Moore

The Southwest Community Connection, Jan 1, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Shasta Kearns Moore / The Southwest Community Connection

Psychologist Dr. Chris Huffine presents his theories on why working with men and boys is the only way to truly eradicate domestic abuse — which, according to police, has taken the lives of four people in the past year in Southwest Portland.

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FAR SOUTHWEST – The incidence of abusive behavior does not discriminate on the basis of age, class, ethnicity or sexual orientation, a local psychologist told nearly 50 people Nov. 25 on the Portland Community College Sylvania campus.

Dr. Chris Huffine – speaking, coincidentally, on the International Day for the Eradication of Violence Against Women – said the one factor that does indicate a propensity for abusive behavior is gender. Eighty-five to 90 percent of abusers are male and the same figure goes for victims being female.

This means, he argued, that the movement to establish battered women’s shelters will never eradicate domestic violence on its own because abusive men and boys have to be taught ways to deal with their emotions in a nonviolent way.

Men, he said, need “to understand that this is a male issue. It’s affecting our mothers and daughters and we need to get involved.”

Huffine, who has worked in the field of domestic violence for 16 years, is a nationally recognized presenter and the founder of the Allies in Change Counseling Center in Southwest Portland, which is one of the few clinics in Portland offering counseling for perpetrators, as well as victims, of domestic violence. Allies in Change also offers support groups and parenting classes for victims and abusers.

Huffine explained that traits culturally associated with men – self-reliant, unemotional, hard, aggressive – are not only inaccurate, but imply that the world is a “hostile and dangerous place.” He said that abusive men take that attitude one step further and apply it to their partner – they believe that their wives or girlfriends are not on their side and become suspicious and violent when they feel they are losing control.

But some men in the audience objected to many normal human traits being described as abusive.

For example, when Huffine mentioned selective listening, one student noted: “I don’t try to not listen. I just don’t sometimes.”

Huffine said that it is a matter of degree, frequency and intention.

For example, he said, say your child is taking an excruciatingly long time tying his shoes so you swat his hands away and tie it yourself. That is controlling, Huffine said, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the person who did it is abusive or that the child felt abused.

Domestic abuse is defined as: “A pattern of coercive behavior used by one person to control and subordinate another in an intimate relationship.”

Controlling behavior, Huffine said, is like drops of rain: you can have a few sprinkles here and there and be fine, but when it is a way of life, abuser and abused become psychologically trapped in a cycle of violence.

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