Last Tuesday night, we did a performance at ASU that was both disappointing and enlightening for me. There were a group of fraternity men who were forced to attend our performance—and to our credit and theirs—they stayed engaged throughout. Afterwards, one of the moderators felt that something we had said in a monologue wasn’t accurate and she felt the need to clear it up. As an educator, it was her responsibility to do exactly that. She didn’t want these men walking out with any misinformation or something that could be misconstrued.

Unfortunately, what could have been two-minute factual fix to set the record straight, collapsed into an 15 minute attack on these men, as they were singled out. I saw them shutdown and squirm, and finally walk out.

In college, when I had attended lectures about sexual and gender violence, I could feel my arms fold and my walls go up. Inside, I said, “This is not my problem. Because I’m not the problem. Other guys do that shit, not me.” The statement that “all (frat) men are potential rapists” will polarize a room faster than anything.

There’s Got To Be A Better Way.

So, this whole thing got me thinking on how to reach these men. Because the way it’s being done now is pretty much a failure. It can’t come from monologuing, statistics, finger-pointing, shaming or blaming. In the MENding Monologues, we have had lot of conversation around gender violence and I believe our formula works and I offer it here for anyone who wants to give it a try. We come to this conversation not trying to change men, but as an honest inquiry. There’s no agenda here and no judgement. However, the process of inquiry itself will create an opening for a conversation so that statistics, facts and codes of conduct can land when offered.

STEP 1: MAKE VIOLENCE RELEVANT, WITHOUT GETTING PERSONAL.

Ask young men to write down three names of women who have been harmed by men. From date rape, incest, verbal abuse, harassment, beatings, domestic violence, etc. The fact that one in three women have suffered some kind trauma, odds are very good EVERY man knows somebody who has suffered abuse and they know her story. Mother, sister, friend, daughter, girlfriend, wife, etc.

STEP 2: ASK THEM HOW IT MADE THEM FEEL.

Get young men to pick a women’s name off his list and relate how it made him feel when that woman in his life was hurt or abused. Also, get them to speculate and brainstorm about how this trauma might or has affected these woman for the rest of their lives.

STEP 3: ASK WHAT’S THE COST VIOLENCE TO THEM?

This may seem strange, but most young people,  men and woman, are pretty self-absorbed. Asking what this past violence cost them is a relevant question, even thought they weren’t directly affected by the violence itself. In my case, I was in relationship with a woman who was molested by her father. Whenever her father would call, I was the one who had to watch her shutdown and was helpless to help her through it. Her drug and alcohol addiction, which she used to cope with the pain of incest, eventually became my problem and ultimately destroyed our relationship. I have been with other women who have sexually shutdown on me few month into the relationship because of the abuse in their life. Once, I raised my voice to a woman I was dating. It was a simple spat in the car over which route to take to a party. But what I said to her were the exact same words and tone another boyfriend used before she was beaten. That trigger ruined our evening and our relationship.

Why do this? This gets men to see that this problem of violence towards women is THEIR problem, too. Because they have women in their lives, and these hurts often surface in their relationships. This gets them to see that there is a problem. And that there is a ripple effect to violence.

STEP 4: HOW DOES THE MASCULINE CULTURE IN GENERAL PERPETUATE THIS PROBLEM?

Here’s where we broaden the conversation. Now, men know there is a problem, and they are also present to the cost of this problem in their lives and to the women in their lives. Next, get men to brainstorm the causes. From unhealthy role models to alcohol to sexual objectification to unclear signals, etc. we layout the contributing causes of this problem.

STEP 5: WHAT HAVE I DONE TO STOP IT?

We ask men to start thinking for themselves of ways to stop this trend. Again, the ideas have to come from the guys. If we as facilitators start jamming it down their throats, they will only regurgitate what we tell them and there will be no transformation in consciousness.

STEP 6: WHAT HAVEN’T I DONE IN THE PAST TO STOP IT?

This is tricky. But at this point we ask men to own up to where they have added to the problem (in their own judgement). In my case, I didn’t confront a friend who had date raped another friend of mine in college. The rape occurred one year before I knew either of them. When I found out, I simply stopped being the guy’s friend. Yet, because I didn’t confront him, who’s to say he didn’t do it again. I added to the problem. Questions could be, “Have any of you ever plied a woman with alcohol so she would have sex with you?”, “Have you ever let a friend have sex with woman who was passed out?” These questions could be put onto piece of paper and put into a hat and then counted, so each man can remain anonymous, but also honest in their answers.

Would this work?

Why do it this way? I believe the number one problem with having a conversation with frat men around sexual violence is shame. Shaming and judging men is not going to get them to take an honest look at themselves or their behaviors. If you noticed, nothing in here was about telling men what to do or not to do. It was simply a conversation. I believe that the vast majority of men want to do the right thing, but they haven’t EVER had an honest conversation about it.

Let’s start one…

A Quiet Voice

Written and lived by Tom Puetz

I remember when I was a little boy back on the farm in Indiana I just wanted to know what made the corn grow. You might say I had a loving reverence for life. Somewhere along the way I lost sight of that. I must have because I dropped out of my second year of collage and volunteered for Vietnam.

Yet, as a war veteran I’m not special. So many have suffered a different kind of war.  So many have suffered the private degradation of domestic violence or lost a loved one to violent crime. So many have subtracted themselves from society because of violence?  So many are afraid to show their eyes, or feel unable to touch life without tainting it? There will be no welcome home parade for them, no medals for the bravery they show by simply living through another day. I wish I had a healing prayer, or ceremony that would bring them back into the fold, to be alive again.

Perhaps there will never be understanding from those who have not felt emotional or physical violence. The task of making sense of it all, of giving some meaning to the road we have traveled is left entirely up to us, the survivors of trauma.  The responsibility of breaking the chain of violence by showing compassion in return for hatred is ours, the walking wounded.

When I was a soldier in the Vietnam War I was on both ends of the chain of violence. I know what it’s like to live in fear, to be trapped, to fell hopeless and abandoned. I also know what it’s like to give in to fear and hatred and kill a man.

I had a turning point while I was in Nam. It was late afternoon. I was getting my squad together to go out on a typical listening point when the word came down the V. C. were moving into a village near our firebase. So our company was assigned to cordon off that village. By the time we got to the village it was getting dark. My lieutenant was new, he had been in Nam for about a week. I didn’t know where the rest of the company was just my platoon. Sgt. Horn had a third squad on point. I was following his squad. He was in the Nipa palm mangrove along a canal at the far end of the village and then we were ambushed.

We started taking AK-47 and machinegun fire coming from the village. We all hit the dirt. We were in the middle of a rice paddy. The only cover we had was a foot high dike. The new guy beside me was scared shitless. His eyes were as big as saucers. I guess I was scared to but I had learned to cover the fear with anger. I crawled up next to my RTO (radio man) and heard the CO, probably on the other side of the village, calling for gun ships.

The lead squad was in the nipa palm, my Lt. was with the first squad still up by the road. My squad was in the middle of the action so the CO gave me fire direction of the two Cobra gun ships.  It was dark now but I heard the gun ships so I marked my position with a strobe. When the lead cobra called for fire direction I gave him the direction and distance from my position. When he swung around to make his run he saw I had directed the fire right down a row of huts on my side of the village. He called me on the radio and said “Tiger three, Tiger three ARE YOU SURE”? I had only seconds to respond. As I was about to key the mike I heard a quiet voice saying “No, stop, don’t do this”. I keyed the mike and said “Yes. I’m sure. Make the run”.

You can’t imagine what two Cobra gunship can do to a village of grass huts. It did end the firefight but we had to stay in position. I laid out in that rice paddy all night thinking about what I had just done. At dawn we moved in to search the village. I decided to walk point. The first person I saw was a mamasan. She was on her knees sobbing and weeping. She saw me, stood up, looked me in the eyes and said “Why! Why! Why!  I heard the quiet voice again. It said ” Tom, you lost your compassion. You de-humanized them. That’s why you could do this “.

More than eighty villagers were killed that night, men women and children.  That was the turning point for me. After facing what I had done, and what I had become in order to do it, I could no longer kill without hesitation or remorse. Before I left Vietnam I started to feel compassion again.  That is a dangerous thing in a combat zone. Still I looked for an alternative to my usual violent response.

When I got back from Nam, I hung around Oakland and San Francisco for a week. I was afraid to go home to Mom and Dad. I didn’t want them to see how I stared out at the world. I didn’t think they could possibly understand what I had done and endured just to survive.

There are probably women in the audience tonight who are afraid to tell mom and dad “My husband hits me sometimes”. There are probably women here who don’t want anyone to know they were raped. I’m guessing there are men in the audience who have hurt the ones they claim to love. Maybe there are men here who have been physically, sexually or emotionally abused.

As survivors of public and private wars we know how fragile life is.

We know how easily humans can inch towards hatred and death until all is madness, meaningless and pointless. We know wars start at home and on street corners.  We know there is a daily struggle moving towards life or towards death. We, as survivors, are more keenly aware than anyone of that moment-to-moment choice.

We do not have the luxury of waking up in the morning and simply living that day. We must choose to live every day. Some days the choice is not clear, but it is always clear there is a choice.  Since we have eaten from the tree of such terrible knowledge, the paradise of a simple life is denied us.

As survivors, we know every act moves us closer to love and life, or closer to hatred and death. We know that every day we look down the barrel of our weapons and chose to pull the trigger or not. We know the path to the killing ground is all too easy. We know about the small heartless acts which lead us to the point where we abandoned ourselves to the madness and strike out. We must not turn away.  We are stripped of our illusions. We know that everyone, every day, has the choice to act out of love, or turn towards the darkness.

If we open our hearts, we will hear a quiet voice. It will tell us that the pain we have inflicted or endured does not define us. What we have overcome is only the beginning.

Then we will know that we have a duty to break the chain of violence that binds us by making each day an expression of our loving reverence for life.

Copyright Tom Puetz 2008