UNITED STATES
Joyful Heart Foundation
I spoke recently with a group of college men whose fraternity had been sanctioned for sexually offensive attitudes and behavior. Our discussion was part of a mandated remedy. Not surprisingly, mandated conversations often don’t lead immediately to open dialogue.
Efforts to educate men about sexual violence generally cast them in one of two roles: bystanders, either preventing or supporting sexually aggressive behavior, speech or attitudes; or as perpetrators of violence.
This time, we experimented with introducing a third role to our conversation: the reality that men are also frequently the victims of violence, including the one in six men, who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood.
Make no mistake. Trauma can never be an excuse for hurting others. But I’ve found that acknowledging men’s experiences of trauma can lead to startling insights about violence. And by the end of the session, these men were readily identifying ways that men’s socialized behaviors can cause real harm.
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