In the wake of the horrific shootings this week, Twitter and other social media have been a-flurry with defensive remarks from men (hashtag: notallmen) and responses from women (hashtag: yesallwomen). The dialogue seems to be going past each other, in a way that neither increases understanding nor gets at the heart of why these awful things are happening.
In the midst of this, a therapist has written this marvelous article, about secondary trauma and how we might better understand all of this.
In short:
- The women of this world express to men their experiences of what they go through on a day to day basis, living in rape culture.
- The men of this world who are trying to understand, who want to help, who want things to change, feel helpless, depressed, and like part of the problem, and express these frustrations to women.
- The women go, seriously, I just shared these horrible experiences with you and now you want me to soothe your hurt feelings? Screw off.
- The women still feel unseen and unheard, and the men screw off, having nowhere to put their secondary trauma.
In the post, the author notes how men often don’t have a lot of emotionally intimate male friends, particularly if they are partnered, and that they get the majority of their emotional needs met by the women in their lives. When those women need to be listened to – witnessed, without judgment – about things that men by virtue of being men largely don’t experience, those same women cannot then be the witnesses for the pain men feel over what they’ve just been told. It’s like a therapist turning around to their client and saying, “What you just told me was deeply upsetting, and I think I need some support around how upset your experience makes me.” While the relationship is not analogous, sometimes witnessing needs to be one-sided. Which is why men need witnesses, too.
But Sarah O says this all better than I can summarize. Please, go read.
Power In Your Hands 