It’s a year since Sarah Everard was murdered in London by Wayne Couzens, a male police officer. Ahead of the anniversary, Positive News spoke to men – including a former police officer – who are helping dismantle the culture that allows gender-based violence to flourish
Graham Goulden served as a police officer for thirty years, eight of which were spent in the famed Violence Reduction Unit (Glasgow). He now specialises in tackling men’s violence, by delivering leadership and bystander training to men
“Most men are good guys. But a lot of them wrongly think their male friends support sexist views.”
Retired police officer Graham Goulden is explaining what stops men from challenging misogyny – whether they’re in the workplace or among mates at the pub. He says that fear of being rejected by peers is a major stumblingblock. However, evidence suggests that male harm-doers abuse women, and girls believe their views are supported.
“It’s a perfect storm for good men to do nothing, and the harm-doers to keep doing what they’re doing.”
What Goulden seeks to do is “bring the healthy norm to the surface”, by training people in sports teams, schools, universities and workplaces to become active bystanders. He facilitates discussions that give men the confidence and courage to confront sexual harassment or make misogynistic comments.
“Most men are disgusted by harm-doers, and will respect other men for challenging them. But unless we have these conversations, some men are left thinking: ‘Will I be supported?’”
When Goulden began his career in 1987, he thought that the only way to deal with violence was to police it: “to attend calls, gather evidence and report people to the courts,” he recalls. “But I became less comfortable with that: it was like playing Whac-A-Mole. We need to reduce the number of moles in the first place.”
Goulden advocates ‘bringing the healthy norm to the surface’ to help improve attitudes. Sam Bush
Later, he was appointed chief inspector for the Prevention of Violence. Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, he had a lifechanging encounter with US educator Jackson Katz – a pioneer of bystander intervention training – at a conference in 2010. “In just two minutes, Jackson made me think differently. All the dots joined up in my mind.”
These dots constellated Goulden’s professional life – preventing largely male violence and domestic abuse – with his personal one: his two daughters “coming across harmful situations” as teenagers, and his own father, who died by suicide in 2008. He began to see suicide as self-directed violence that was largely committed by men and reflected on his own actions as a man. “After losing my dad, I internalised my feelings. That’s what us guys do.”
Goulden explains that bystander training reduces violence by encouraging people to speak up, to be brave, and to face the uncomfortable. It engages participants by framing them not as perpetrators but as solutions to violence prevention. The latter can “run the risk of switching men off”, he says.
We’re trying to get men to check their behaviours and attitudes way before it becomes a problem
Goulden asks groups of people to come up with solutions for a variety of scenarios. How would they react to a friend harassing an innocent woman in a bar environment? How can they support a friend who is experiencing domestic abuse? “You press the pause button, which you don’t get to do in real life,” he notes.
The sessions aren’t about teaching participants how to behave, but about giving them a toolkit of strategies. Sometimes gently challenging a mate’s behaviour might be the best approach. “You can use your friendship to say: ‘I respect you enough to tell you that was wrong’.”
His participants “practise and practise [their bystander strategies] until it becomes muscle memory,” Goulden says. He speaks to all-male and mixed-gender groups: “I’ll go into any community to have these conversations.”
That includes communities online: he collaborated with Police Scotland on the powerful viral video campaign Don’t Be That Guy.
“What we’re trying to do with that campaign is to get men to check their behaviours and attitudes way before it becomes a problem – challenge their views, their language, their banter, because that’s where murder and sexual assault are rooted. It can be difficult to grasp that. [But] men don’t just go out and kill, rape or sexually assault. It starts somewhere and often that’s in words and language, which become part of the culture.”
Goulden finds it encouraging to see how open most men are to his sessions. Although he may never see all of the participants again in his life, there is growing evidence to support bystander education. He is encouraged to imagine them spreading the benefits of their training into their communities.
“In many ways,” he reflects, “we’re planting seeds, planting trees that we’ll never see being grown.” He hopes that their influence will be felt in society regardless.
Main image: Sam Bush
