Holding a Healing Space for All
What is often missed and not acknowledged, is the pain and trauma that men experience as they try to fit into narrow definitions of manhood.
In the movement to end male violence toward women, efforts to eliminate harm have traditionally embraced a one-dimensional approach that relies solely on intervention strategies to create safety. While the effectiveness of that approach can be debated, the long-ranging effects of trauma should not be. When trauma goes unaddressed it can disconnect us in a way that tempts us to see those who cause harm and those who experience harm through completely different lenses. As a result, our attempts to address violence are often characterized by an either/or approach rather than a both/and mindset. Those of us on the ground level of this work must be vigilant about liberating our strategies and widening our lens if we are to cure violence.
Our efforts to reduce harm and create peace must start with a willingness to hold more than one truth at a time. In the work to end gender-based violence, there should be no dispute about the need to invest in survivor services. Domestic violence shelters, services to heal and empower survivors, as well as measures to ensure women’s safety are all needed to restore the selfhood that violence attempts to diminish. It is my belief, however, that this alone will not cure violence towards women.
If we are earnest about sustaining safety for women, we must empower survivors AND uncover the roots of male violence. It is no secret that men are the primary perpetrators of the harm that women experience. This fact alone necessitates an interrogation of masculinity and its propensity to cause harm. In the absence of a dual approach towards safety, our intervention efforts will continue to operate solely in the realm of effect rather than uncovering the root cause. The truth is that all men, whether they’ve committed an act of physical violence or not, are socialized into a system that calls for them to surrender their full humanity and attempts to indoctrinate them into the ways of power, privilege, and entitlement.
What is often missed and not acknowledged, is the pain and trauma that men experience as they try to fit into these narrow definitions of manhood. The system of patriarchy prepares boys, at an early age, to become men who cause harm to themselves, to women, and to other men who exist outside traditional masculine norms. This is why we must do the preventive work of educating, healing, and re-socializing men into ways of being that honor the fullness of who they are, while awakening them to the same fullness in women. I am convinced that the man who embraces healing and endeavors to know himself outside of a binary existence, will be inclined to choose peace over harm.
As peace advocates, we must expand our capacity for grace, empathy, and compassion. We can hold the safety of women, the empowerment of survivors, and the transformation of men in our hands simultaneously.
We are big enough and human enough to hold it all.