The male as perpetrator

As I stated in my most recent blog on males and trauma, “Embedded in the framework of trauma that was developed 40 years ago is the idea of the male as perpetrator (as discussed in Agreement #5 of the Eight Agreements on Males, Trauma and Addiction Recovery). Agreement #5 states: “Males are often assumed to be the perpetrator, which has negatively biased our concepts of trauma and models for addiction treatment, and often results in the re-traumatization of males.”

This is a powerful and clearly provocative assertion. As the one who wrote the first draft of the Agreements, I can tell you it was out of a place of defiance and anger that I wrote this one. I knew how provocative it was. I had no idea how it would be received. There was a lot of discussion on this agreement at a May 2013 summit, which was the first time national experts and persons with lived experience came together from the addictions and mental health worlds to focus specifically on the areas of males, addiction, and trauma recovery. I must give great credit to the women who were present, who not only supported the idea but did so without defensiveness or equivocation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that from this discussion, the male attendees truly felt the support of the women who were present and knew that our truth was going to be honored.

So, how did we get here?

When community-based services were first being developed 40 years ago, it was driven primarily by women who were finally bringing to light some of the most horrific actions human beings can take against another: sexual abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence, physical abuse, and many other forms of violence, abuse and neglect. This was a truly significant milestone in the transformation of the universal human narrative. Unfortunately, there was a hidden cost that I do not think was intentional. Who were the victims in the vast majority of these circumstances? Women and children. Who were the perpetrators? Men. So why care about men’s trauma if they are perpetrators?

That is precisely how the idea of “male as perpetrator” became embedded in our frameworks for trauma. Male trauma became hidden, if not completely ignored. Sometimes it is overt, but most of the time it is insidious. The idea has become embedded in our justice system, our service delivery systems, and our collective conscience. Just listen to any number of the putative relationship experts out there talk about men, and you’ll hear it. It’s everywhere.

This idea is absolutely a part of “The Water” that I refer to—the reality in which we swim and are so often unaware. Many men whom I have worked with have internalized this idea as well, leading many who are engaged in violent and abusive behavior to believe they are not worth compassion, love, forgiveness and healing. These men do not understand the complex interaction among male socialization, trauma and violence, and as a result they see themselves as violent, bad, perpetrators, and batterers (and we do also). It becomes a core part of their identity.

I had a man who worked in the intimate partner violence (IPV) field for years tell me that his supervisor explicitly told him when it came to working with “batterers”: “Compassion equals collusion.” That mentality permeates our fields, and is nowhere more evident than in the domestic violence (DV)/IPV disciplines. That area of services has some incredibly compassionate people, but it is also infested by very traumatized and angry people who think they are doing their own work by attempting to “fix” men. And we wonder why we have such abysmal rates of success when it comes to DV, IPV and anger management services?

To complicate the matter further, men tend to externalize the effects of trauma, which means it often shows up as aggression, rage and violence. In other words, we give others every reason to see us as perpetrators. In fact, another word for a man with trauma, for this exact reason, is the crude “a-word” often used to describe an angry male. But the majority of men to which we affix that label are simply scared and wounded people, very likely with some degree of trauma. So, as one of the core mantras of the trauma-informed care field says, what would happen if we saw these men from a perspective of what happened to them rather than simply what is wrong with them? How would that change the way we conceptualize services? How would that change the way we deliver services? How many men would we kick out of treatment? The truth is that we often do not create safe environments for men, they react to that lack of safety the only way they know how, and then we kick them out! What about our culpability?

I am not going to pretend that what I am saying is easy: having compassion for men who perpetrate abusive and violent acts. Lest anyone accuse me of condoning violent or abusive behavior, let me be very clear that I believe 80% or so of those men engaged in this behavior are, as David Wexler says, good men behaving badly. There is another 20% or so who are so deeply wounded, and may even be sociopaths, and for the public’s safety need more traditional interventions, such as incarceration. The hope is that they get trauma-informed services while there.

However, I will never forget the story that a man who worked in the criminal justice system in Massachusetts told me. He had success working with a man, a little at a time over a matter of years, who was not only in solitary confinement as part of his prison sentence but could not be let out of his cell without a complex system of restraints. This man, who had been labeled an untreatable sociopath, not only got out of solitary confinement but became a model prisoner and was released into community services. The solution: creating a safe place for the man to deal with his trauma, having him experience compassion from another, and finding forgiveness for the man he had been in the past.

There is so much more I could say about this, but I hope what I have written here helps to get us, as a field, uncomfortable and willing to take a long, hard look at how we provide services for men and help them to heal from their trauma.