When men abuse women…
I expect you have read about some of the more recent revelations about how men behave in secret around women. I refer to the CNN investigations into men drugging and raping their partners, filming it, and posting the content online.
This report has been particularly upsetting for me, and I suspect for many women and men, that men would consider finding ways to make their wives unconscious so they can rape and abuse them.
How horrific. What disgusting men.
This is desperately sad on so many levels. The fact that men would even consider this - how can they?
It feels to me that they must be debased and loveless. These men let us all down. They give men a terrible reputation. And what an awful shock for women. It is so hard for women to feel safe, but at least I hoped they could feel a degree of safety in their own homes. These recent revelations seriously undermine even that minimum level of safety.
Women are the victims here, and the responsibility for that lies squarely with the men who perpetrate this abuse.
And what are we men to do about this?
As many women ask, the first step is to call out this behaviour when we see it. I have seen men openly abusing women on three occasions in my life, and each time I stepped in and brought a stop to it. I believe it is men’s responsibility to protect women and children.
The difficulty most of us men face is that we don’t see this behaviour. It is easy to call out disrespect, but apart from these occasions, I have not seen abuse, and certainly never seen sexual abuse of women by men.
I want to make it clear that, because I have not seen it happen, I do not in any way doubt that it is happening. I work with women around their woundings at the hands of men, and I have some idea of the extent to which men damage women. And that is just what I have seen in the healing arena. I have found the same to be true in ordinary life. Women, as a whole, have suffered multiple woundings at the hands of men.
I am so sad about this. I am very sorry to all women who have been hurt or abused by men. I apologise to you, as a man, for the pain men have caused you. I am deeply sorry for this.
I believe that our world should be safe for women, so that they can relax and not have to be on their guard all the time. I am so sorry you live in a world where you have to protect yourself from men—the very men who should be protecting you.
Returning to us men, how do we change this?
My way, for myself and for the men I work with on the Sovereign’s Journey, is to turn inwards to understand and own the parts of ourselves that were built by a childhood dominated by patriarchy. In my experience, all men have the following inner characters:
An inner tyrant who wants to control and use others for our own benefit.
An inner predator who wants to prey on and abuse others, particularly those who are weaker than we are.
An inner bully who wants to force and bully others to do what we want.
An inner addict who will do anything to feed his addiction to sex, substances, etc.
I have found that all men have these inner characters, and that they are part of being a man. They are encouraged in us by a harsh, masculine upbringing, where boys are taught that they cannot be gentle and vulnerable, and must not in any way show any of the more feminine attributes that we all have.
Our first effort should be to know these parts of ourselves, come to terms with them, and restrain them so that we do not operate blindly or unconsciously in these ways. Once we know these parts of ourselves, we can stop ourselves from acting them out because we are aware when we feel this way.
The second step we can take is to love, honour, and bring our own inner feminine to life. We can encourage our own feelings, our gentleness, and our loving care of others. We can bring this more feminine side of ourselves to life alongside our more masculine nature, tempering ourselves and ensuring that we are fully human.
This is not about telling us men off. It is about highlighting the urgency of men doing their own work so we don’t unconsciously cause harm.
Self-aware men is what our world urgently needs.