Blog
We Need to Talk About Men
When we have been harmed and we do not have a safe outlet to express our pain, we are more likely to hurt others and/or to hurt ourselves. Boys and men are often socialized not to talk about their feelings, not to cry, or seek support. Many young men are given explicit and implicit messages that if they’ve been hurt the only acceptable emotion is anger. And where does that anger go? If we want to make strides in prevention, we have to explicitly acknowledge that all genders can experience sexual and domestic violence. We have to hold ourselves accountable if we are creating harm and silencing survivors by upholding a gender binary when working to prevent gender-based violence. We have to examine how the standards of traditional masculinity harm everyone, including men.
The Hard Truth
The last few weeks, we’ve been talking and writing a lot about accountability. At JT Consulting we believe accountability is violence prevention. But accountability work isn’t just something we do for others. We have to start with ourselves.
Risk vs. Reward: What Prevents us from Preventing Gender-based Violence?
I challenge all of us to think about the ways we can actively confront attitudes and beliefs that permit violence to occur to so many people. How do we play a role in shifting our company or community norms to silently condoning imbalances of power and gender-based violence to a community that loudly and emphatically condemns it? How do we create communities- or perhaps even a world- where people are held accountable with compassion and survivors are believed and supported.