I work with men who've been accused of domestic violence. I say "accused" because I wasn't there and I don't really know what happened. I do know, however, that these men often describe whatever happened as an "argument." My usual response to that is, "It must have been more than an argument because someone got scared enough to involve law enforcement" (too often the 911 calls are made by children). They will then try to explain the happening by starting every sentence with, "She..." or "Kids these days..." And such a vehement diffusion of responsibility for something that supposedly "didn't happen" always and everywhere creates suspicion.
I perceive these diffusions of personal responsibility as emotionally desperate projections that only reveal the fear-based beliefs and unexamined values of too many men. The resulting violent behavior and emotional vandalism - the verbal and non-verbal attacks intended to humiliate; the tactical threats intended to create and maintain an environment of fear; the indirect yet focused intentions of destroying property or hurting pets; using violence to intentionally cause physical pain; and/or the multi-faceted methods and intentions of sexual violence; etc. - display their images of "manhood" as nothing more than emotionally desperate beliefs and dehumanized functions of learned pathology.
Manhood as pathology. Men whose purposeful and internally motivated behaviors always and everywhere come from their own emotional desperation (even when they are putting on the mask of "nice guy" and "good citizen"). Men who reveal and reflect emotional weaknesses with enraged silence, righteous yelling or physical strength (typically such behavior is directed at a partner and the children he perceives as "his"). Men who are so rigidly attached to their impaired ego-needs that empathy for the emotional Experiences of others, especially their partners and children, becomes impossible. Men who constantly blame their behavior on drunken circumstances, deny everyone else's perspective of their behavior and/or minimize the validity of all Experiences but their own. Men who, consequently, are ignorant of the profound disconnect between how others perceive them and how they perceive themselves. Men who fail to understand how any attempt to change everyone and everything but their own “stuff” always creates some form of violence. Men who are conditioned by fear to think that creating fear in others equals respect and that punishment equals discipline. Men who justify violent behavior without realizing the immaturity and pathos of their efforts. Men who have beliefs about love but no actual experiences of it. Men who, by means of their emotionally desperate egos, compensate for all these fears and weaknesses by defining, believing and maintaining "manhood" as the oppression of others, especially women and children. Men whose internalized images are formed by chronic oppression, resulting in "pathological" Relationships of desperation, malfunctioning, defect and aberration.
The men I work with have internalized the images and beliefs of themselves and "manhood" that they discovered as children in oppressive family and community environments. In fact, I think society's oppressive efforts to "teach" have resulted in children "learning" the diffusion of responsibility (withdrawal, manipulation, rebellion, compliance) for themselves, each other and society as a whole. And because the Experiences of being alive are submerged in such environments every obscenity becomes normalized, a way of Life. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire points out how the struggle to "make" a different Life, one based on safety, love and freedom, begins with men's recognition that they have been destroyed. Freire also explains how these men, "having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject the image and replace it with autonomy and [personal] responsibility." In my work I've come to realize that asking men to eject their learned images of "manhood" is like asking them to change how they walk.
Yet, "we make the road by walking" (Freire) and change can only come from the courage within. But even the word "courage" cannot be understood from the perspective of "manhood" because it has less to do with bravery, strength or endurance and instead derives from the French word coeur meaning "heart." And the men I work with have had their hearts damaged - physically, emotionally and spiritually. From the very beginning of life too many are dehumanized. They've been "made" into oppressors through a system of oppression and so their behaviors of courage are twisted around beliefs of conquering. Nevertheless, they must learn to walk this world differently. To do this they have to find the responsibility and courage necessary to "make" being and becoming more fully human an act of personal freedom.
In working with men accused of domestic violence I am learning that "becoming human is a project" (Freire). I also have to understand how these guys firmly grasp onto belief systems that force them to overcompensate for the lack of courage they've come to believe is "manhood." And even though I describe their behavioral overcompensations as "pathology" I recognize that the desperations, malfunctioning, defects and aberrations come from the whole society's unexamined belief systems about men, women, children and the Relationships that "make" Life. So, in a completely oversimplified nutshell, the work I do involves examining how the culturally supported dehumanization of too many men creates the pathology called "manhood" and how this travesty is at the root of oppression and the dehumanizing violence against women and children.
