ABSTRACT
Until Emerge’s founding in 1977 as the world’s first batterer intervention program, notions of men taking responsibility for their own and each other’s violence toward women were untested. The initial emphasis of the battered women’s movement had been on calling attention to domestic violence, redefining it as a crime against women, and promoting safety and justice for victims. But many victim advocates argued that men must join women in this fight, not only to communicate the message that violence against women was a human rights issue of equal importance to men but also that men had a unique role to play in educating and confronting men who batter. Ideally, men would join this fight without usurping women’s leadership or undermining the feminist analysis that battering is a problem with roots deeply embedded in sexism and patriarchy. Historically, there was good reason for such concerns given the male domination in previous social change movements.
