Having explored some of the ways in which the team does and does not reject sex-role stereotyping in its work with women, the discussion now moves to a
consideration of the team’s work with male clients. In examining the data three areas emerge for consideration, all of which are broadly related to the issue of sex-role stereotyping.
Challenging men’s sexism
An early insight into the way in which the team dealt with men’s racist and sexist remarks was offered when an angry, agitated and ‘stoned’ male client called at the Garage. I sat in with Sue while she dealt with him.
" Will was angry because his partner - 'the bitch' - had gone off after a lunch-time drinking session 'with a black fella' and 'a lesbian', taking all Will's money. While he was not openly challenged on his abusive remarks as, presumably, this would have merely fuelled his anger, Sue, steadfastly refused to get drawn into colluding with his attempts to portray himself as the victim and his partner as his abuser. Sue managed to calm Will down, let him know he was being heard but was not tempted into colluding with his complaints about his partner in an attempt to placate him.
(July 1993)
The scenario is a fairly standard one and as an ex-practitioner I recognised the temptation to be drawn into and thus collude with men’s sexist behaviours and attitudes. The temptation to do so derives either from the need to avoid antagonising clients or from the perceived need to encourage their confidences.
The temptation to collude was not always resisted as strenuously. Other
observations confirmed that more collusive encounters operated. An example of this was a male member of staffs encounter with a client wanting condoms to take away on holiday. The worker clearly saw the rather large supply of condoms as a confirmation of his client’s sexual virility and managed to communicate this through a joking remark.
This contrasted with another member of staffs handing out of condoms which was accompanied by remarks which associated condom use with safe sex and sexual health rather than with male virility and sexual accomplishments. The fact that the first encounter was between men and the other not is indicative, perhaps, of the particular pressures on male staff to forge links with their male clients and to rely on collusive strategies which bolster traditional masculine identity, to achieve them.
Other ways in which male workers colluded with rather than confronted men’s sexism were observed.
'Harry and I's visit to his young client who is about to go into the local hospital for detoxification revealed that there was some dispute between himself and his partner about where she should stay while he was in hospital. Craig wanted her to stay with his family, Lisa wanted to remain at home. Harry's solution was to use humour to break into the dispute and to suggest that Lisa could go home with him. The intention, as Hany later explained, was to challenge the way in which Lisa was being devalued, but the effect was to further undermine her independence by setting up a situation, albeit not a serious one, in which the two men, Hany and his client, were competing for Lisa as some kind of prize."
(July 1993)
This encounter with Lisa and Craig also offered an insight into the ways in which men control women’s drug use. Craig was the chaotic user of the partnership and was amused by Lisa’s ‘dabbling’ in cannabis and LSD. It was clear however that he would condemn any further drug use on her part.
A further insight into this double-standard operated by male users was offered by a young woman’s account of how her husband, a heavy drinker and drug dealer, had evicted her from their home because of her increasing drug use. Men’s control over women in the private sphere extends, not surprisingly, to a control over women’s use of drugs. This is not to suggest that this control is either complete or universal, Will’s experience testified to that! Nevertheless, such controlling tactics are apparent and are not something which workers find easy to address. Evidence from the encounter with Craig and Lisa suggests that worker’s attempts to challenge male control can backfire where they are not underpinned by a rigorous rejection of the concept of female dependency.
It is not the case that the CDT demonstrated a complete lack of insight into the operation of men’s power over women in the family. Worker’s awareness in this respect was apparent. In discussing a long-standing male client’s relationship with his wife, Harry remarked that Bob’s wife was someone who made him feel strong and powerful and that she was always there to feed her husband’s ego in this way. There was little evidence that this misuse of male power was a focus of the client/worker encounter, however. The client’s continuing chaotic drug use, despite the team’s agreement to provide him with Amphetamine on prescription, dominated the treatment agenda. While worker’s insight into what Harry described as men’s "power games" was evident, there was a lack of rigour in applying this awareness and in translating it into coherent strategies aimed at bringing about changes in male client’s attitudes and behaviours.
Where members of the team raised the issue of male client’s sexism in their interviews I tried to discover what strategies were operating to deal with it. The answer seemed to be that on the whole worker’s challenges to men’s sexism were weak and tentative:
"well I try to...you've got to suss the situation out. I sometimes deal with it with a bit of a laugh and a joke..' if you were married to me, the boot would be on the other foot...' that kind of thing...just to see what the reaction would be....I think that helps me decide which way I'm going to work with people". (Sue)
The concern not to "frighten men off" by challenging their sexism was apparent. It was suggested that it was something that a worker would have to have on the "back- burner" (Sue) to be brought into view if and when an opportunity occurred.
Challenging male clients, for whatever reasons, clearly poses a threat to workers and it is not surprising that they back off from it. An illustration of the way in which the risk of precipitating aggression deters workers from confronting their male clients is offered by the example of the client referred to in the discussion of client/worker relationships (p. 131). Counselling sessions were made difficult by Will’s refusal to look at Sue who he held responsible for the team’s refusal to increase the size of his ‘script’. She recognised the need to confront him about this but in reflecting on why she had not done so, she says:
...but I never picked it up and said 'well look, you must feel that I've penalised you'...that was my fault but I didn't think I felt comfortable enough to do that..."
(Me) You didn't feel able to do that?"
"No...I don't think I wanted the wrath really, because I would have got a barrage of verbal abuse and I really couldn't have done with it...and that's a bit of a cop-out".(Sue)
This example of Sue’s reluctance to challenge her male client is an indication of his ability to intimidate and therefore control the encounter. Despite the presence of a (male) co-worker in these sessions, the client was able to resist a challenge to his behaviour since neither of the workers were willing to provoke his ‘wrath’. It is interesting that Sue criticises her behaviour, seeing it as a "cop-out", rather than as a coping mechanism in the face of male aggression. It is also interesting to speculate about the extent to which men’s behaviour and attitudes towards women go unchallenged in the social work encounter precisely because of men’s abilities to control the agenda through threat of aggression.
I was particularly interested in the way in which the encounter between male client and female worker had the potential for replicating and thus reinforcing patterns of male dominance. Sue’s account of her counselling sessions with a male client in prison, who she described as ”a hard, macho type”, prompted a concern on my part that she was being seen as a 'captive audience1 for her client, providing him with an opportunity to display his past exploits. Her account of the counselling sessions - and it was an account rather than firsthand observation - suggested that the client spent a good deal o f time recounting his various exploits to her. My interpretation of these sessions was that Sue was being used to relieve the boredom of imprisonment and to provide a foil to her client’s ego, by allowing him to reflect an image of himself as a successful, if temporarily
incarcerated, criminal. The fact that she expressed some concern that she was being ••tested out" and that she had to work hard to suppress her moral outrage at some of the criminal activities that her client had been involved in, prompted me to question the client’s motives for requesting and continuing with the sessions:
"...he tests me I think 'what will you do if I tell you this...how will you react?'" (Sue)
Sue’s interpretation of her client’s motives did not accord with mine. She felt that her client was engaged in a genuine attempt at a moral and ethical review of his life to date. My (more cynical) view, deriving from my own past experience with similar clients and the feminist lens through which I was now viewing events, focused on the male client’s potential for subverting the sessions in order to provide a confirmation of, rather than challenge to the machismo which Sue identifies.
Over and above the particular issues raised by this encounter, Sue’s discussion of her work with this client gives insight into more general issues. As with her work at the massage parlour, Sue struggled to rid herself of the judgmental attitudes which she sees as characterising her work on the Ward and inappropriate to her work on the team. In exploring her struggle to adopt the client-centredvalues of the team Sue threw them into sharp relief:
"I work very hard...I work hard at not letting my morals come out because I don't want to let that
influence him wanting to tell me what he thinks I want to hear". (Sue)
This raises the question of how far a challenge to men’s sexism can be generated in the context of a relationship which stresses a non-judgemental approach and which relies on the client to control the agenda. If the aim is to be non-judgemental, does this necessarily preclude the worker from challenging the machismo embedded in a man’s view of himself and which oppresses the women he comes into contact with? If the client is relied upon to set the agenda, and if he does not regard his masculine identity and behaviour as problematic, does this effectively mean it is left unaddressed? These are important questions which may go some way to accounting for the difficulty that practitioners appear to have in translating their awareness of the problem of gendered power relationships into strategies for change. The tools of the trade, i.e. client-centred counselling, and an emphasis on a non-judgemental style of work, might make it difficult to launch the challenge to men’s oppressive behaviours which a feminist approach to social care practice must include.
Men’s groups
If the one-to-one counselling session is a difficult arena in which to challenge men’s sexism, group-work with men seemed to be an impossible one. Women worker’s accounts of their attempts to work with male colleagues running group sessions for male prisoners on the issue of drugs and drug use, testify to the difficulties of challenging men’s sexism in an all-male environment. Women staff said that they had been "sitting targets" for male abuse and harassment and by the time I arrived at the Garage only Dave was involved in this type of work, at the local Young Offender Institute.
It was with some trepidation, having had the benefit of the women worker’s experiences of these groups, that I accompanied Dave on one of his visits to observe the work that he did. In the event, Dave’s command of the group and his tight hold on their attentions meant that my presence was hardly noticed and therefore did not attract sexist comments. Dave’s handling of the group was impressive.
Dave met the young men largely on their own terms, using the language of the street-user and demonstrating his extensive knowledge of drugs and drug use. But he also managed to subtly undermine the young men’s macho image of themselves as street wise users when he described all the ways in which drugs were tampered with and users duped and cheated. This had the effect of subverting the image of the drug user as street-wise hero while at the same time alerting the young men to the dangers of using.
He used a video with one of the groups to help focus their attention on issues of health and safety in relation to drug use. In making the video, women as well as men had been used to demonstrate the dangers of injecting. Dave had earlier suggested that the predominance of women in the video was designed to challenge the idea that injecting drug use was a male preserve. But rather than challenge the sexist assumptions of the young men in the group, the images of women users merely confirmed them. Remarks of "dirty bitch" were made on a number of occasions. Dave heard but did not pick up on the remarks.
In reviewing the session on the journey back, Dave raised his non-response to the remarks, as an issue. His explanation for not challenging them was lack of time. He was right to suppose that a response to the young men’s remarks would have opened up many issues and would have demanded much more time than he had. He would also have been entering upon territory which was relatively unknown compared to his well planned session on drugs and drug use. The fact was, however, that men’s sexism remained unaddressed while the subject of drug use had had a good airing. While on the one hand Dave had neatly challenged the notion of the street-wise drug user as the embodiment of aggressive masculinity by substituting the image of drug user-as-hero with that of drug user-as-dupe, on the other, derogatory views of women had been left unchallenged and reinforced by the silence with which they were met.
In relation to the young men’s behaviour, the question of the researcher’s responsibility to challenge and my own silence cannot escape attention. I was able to abrogate my responsibilities, on the grounds that I was an observer. I was nevertheless, left with a feeling that I had been complicit in the silence, and that I was as reluctant as Dave to open up a challenge to the young men’s view of women.
Challenging Male Violence
An important way in which male abuse of women featured in the work of the Garage, was via its work with women, many of whom had been victims of male abuse. Violence and abuse was also a significant feature of the way in which male clients of the service related to their female partners and other female relatives. The team often found itself working with either the victims or the perpetrators of male violence towards women.
That many of the team’s current clients were involved in the violent or sexual abuse of women was evident. Some particularly disturbing accounts of male client’s
violent abuse were recounted by the team. One of Harry’s long-term clients had a history of abuse towards his wife which had been known to have included other men. Another long-term client of the service was known to have inflicted serious sexual violence on a girlfriend who had been unfaithful to him. Dave was working with a client who was regularly inflicted violent assaults on his mother and other cases where mothers were the victims of male violence were apparent.
I was struck by the way in which male violence was an integral feature of the lives of the people the service came into contact with but it was not a focus for
intervention. I discussed the issue with the team on a number of occasions and evidence suggests that these discussions prompted them to think about the issue of male violence in a way in which they had not previously done. Jackie, for instance, when asked in her interview whether she felt that men on the team worked effectively with their male clients around the issue of male violence remarked:
"i don't know, because we've never particularly talked about it till you popped up on the scene". (Jackie)
This was some confirmation that my presence and my shared observations, had prompted the team to reflect on how it worked with violent men. Further evidence of my role in prompting discussion on the issue was gleaned.
"I arrived at the lunch-time meeting today a little late and was met by Sue saying; "We've just been talking about you”. It transpired that the team had been discussing