Men Avoid the Suffering of Others by Erasing Ourselves
Men’s work is to look directly at this. All of it.
A new report says that 11 women and girls are raped or sexually assaulted in every London borough every week. This link is to the ITV report on Twitter.
This is exactly the kind of data that millions of us men refuse to accept. Millions of us simply can not accept that we are part of a culture that is creating an epidemic of violence. We #NotAllMen the issue, avoid our own contributions to a culture of masculinity which denigrates women. We avoid looking at all.
Men’s work is to look directly at this. All of it. To see how we are trained into dominance culture and taught to protect ourselves by disconnecting and cutting ourselves off. We are taught to avoid seeing the suffering of others, of other boys and men, of women, non-binary people, LGBTQI+ people, BIPOC, immigrants.
The result is deep disconnection/isolation for men. And when harm is done by the man box culture which we, by our action on inaction, allow to continue, we say, “I didn’t do that.”
When men say in response to our violent culture of masculinity “I didn’t do that,” when we say #NotAllMen we may as well say, “I’m not here. I don’t exist” because that’s the result. We seek to avoid seeing the suffering of others by erasing ourselves.
It is up to men to show up. To do our work and seek the connection that man box culture has stolen from us. We have a vast world of connection waiting for us. Men at organizations like The ManKind Project are waiting to help us do our work to have richer fuller lives. Show. Up.
The world is in flames, brothers. We can change that. But we have to stop pretending we can hide from what is happening.
Want to learn more about the harm done by Man Box culture? Want to help a man you care about break out of the box? Get your copy of The Little #MeToo Book for Men. https://www.amazon.com/Little-MeToo-Book-Men/dp/0983466963
