AFTERSHOCK: CONFRONTING TRAUMA IN A VIOLENT WORLD: A GUIDE FOR ACTIVISTS AND THEIR ALLIES
by pattrice jones
Publisher: New York, Lantern Books
Reviewer: Rheya Linden, Campaign Director, Animal Active.

This is a book, a guide, a set of strategies that is long overdue.

pattrice jones’ Aftershock addresses a well-visited but formerly unidentified syndrome that afflicts all activist organisations and, arguably, none more so than the animal movement:’ At particularly high risk are those who encounter injurious violence as well as those whose work involves repetitive or ongoing upsetting experiences’(p.44)

The author, herself a longtime activist and therapist, has coined ‘aftershock’ to refer to ‘post traumatic reactions experienced by activists (xi) that include ‘the physical and emotional reverberations of frightening, horrifying or otherwise traumatizing experiences endured in the course of their activism’(p.4); activists may find themselves ‘aftershocked not by what has been done to them but by what they have seen’ (p.93).

Recognise the territory? We all do. It begins with endless fatigue and a generalised loss of hope grinding against a background of unresolved interpersonal conflicts amongst fellow activists that become endemic and can frequently result in the demise of the activist organisation itself.

pattrice jones goes further, however, much much further that merely identifying and analyzing the conditions that produce activist burn out. She provides the tools for understanding the causes and symptoms of aftershock and the strategies for preventing or overcoming it, asserting that like ‘athletes activists need teammates, coaches,and supporters who will cheer us on during engagements,celebrate with us in victory, and help us rebuild morale in defeat’(p.61).

Aftershock is without doubt an essential stepping stone for all activists looking to survive and make a difference; it won’t do the work for us but it reveals effective pathways out of the emotional and interpersonal impasse, or fracture, that depletes our vital energy and thwarts our political effectiveness.

AFTERSHOCK - THE PATTRICE JONES INTERVIEW
BY Claudette Vaughan

Co-founder of the Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center, pattrice jones is known for her animal liberation work, her feminist work and her anti-racism work. Jones coordinates the Global Hunger Alliance, which unites animal, environmental, and social justice organisations to promote plant-based solutions to the worldwide hunger and water crises. An activist since age 15, when she gave up meat and joined the gay liberation movement, jones has organised rent strikes, kiss-ins, street theatres, and extremely unlikely coalitions. At the Baker-Mandela Center for Anti-Racist Education, she designed programs concerning racism, sexism, and economic exploitation. She’s taught at the University of Michigan a course on social change activism. A founding member of Global Boycott for Peace, jones agitates for economic direct action against war in the same spirit in which she advocates for veganism. Her articles linking animal and social justice issues have appeared in Bangladesh, Italy, Pakistan, and South Africa as well as in the US, Australia and Canada. She has written for the Abolitionist before. Please see her essay on Rehabilitating Fighting Roosters. We now proudly present this interview with her.

Abolitionist: What is "AfterShock"? And what is "Trauma" and is it based upon structural inequalities?

pattrice jones: A trauma is an injury or shock. The stress of experiencing, witnessing, or even learning about an injurious, shocking, or frightening event can trigger cognitive, emotional, or physical reactions. The cumulative pile-up of emotion from a long series of trying, although not individually traumatic, events also can trigger traumatic stress.

Signs of traumatic stress include nightmares, intrusive memories, flashbacks, insomnia, anxiety, feelings of numbness, phobias, and troublesome behavior changes. Trauma is also strongly associated with depression. Both traumatic stress and depression are associated with changes in brain chemistry, brain structure, and metabolism.

"Aftershock" is my term for the physical and emotional reverberations of traumatic events endured by activists. These can include depression and post-traumatic stress as experienced by survivors of other kinds of trauma but also may include reactions specifically related to activism.

In the natural world, an aftershock is a secondary convulsion or series of shake-ups following a major earthquake. Earthquakes are caused by ruptures. Afterhshocks often create further rifts. They are often unpredictable and sometimes can cause more damage than the original quake.

That's exactly why I chose that word for the feelings that can follow one or a series of traumatic shocks. They are jolting, can shake up everything, and can leave people feeling like they are in ruins.

The hallmark of aftershock is breakage. Gaps in memory, broken sleep, interrupted concentration, feelings that seem to come out of nowhere, aches and pains that don't seem to be related to any physical injury... all of these and other disconnections leave aftershocked activists feeling estranged from themselves and from other people. Work becomes more difficult and relationships become strained. Feelings of alienation or hopelessness make it hard to do the things that would make things better: Take care of your body. Talk to other people about what's happening. Reconnect with the natural world.

Of course, activists aren't the only ones who experience trauma. But activism does tend to make recovery from traumatic injury more tricky because activists tend to subordinate their own needs to their activism. Such self-sacrifice is altruistic but can be counter-productive. Neither stress nor depression dutifully disappear if ignored. Indeed, they tend to get worse. The best way to deal with them is directly. Luckily, doing so not only leaves you more productive but teaches you skills that you need anyway, since we're all ultimately in the business of healing the traumatic injuries of our communities and ecosystems.

Is trauma related to structural inequality. Yes, absolutely. While anybody can by traumatized by something like a car accident or an avalanche, people from subordinated groups are much more likely to face traumatic life circumstances. Children living in urban poverty are much more likely to witness gun violence. Women are much more likely to be battered by their intimate partners. People of color are much more likely to experience police abuse.

But let me also say that we've all been traumatized in some way by living in this violent and violated world, if only because we've been breathing poisoned air and drinking polluted water all of our lives. We've got lead in our brains and pesticide residues in our veins. Our heads are filled with received ideas and our hearts are clogged with accumulated hurt. None of us are all we might have been if our physical and social environments weren't so dangerously deranged.

Abolitionist: Why did you write AfterShock Confronting Trauma in A Violent World?

pattrice jones: It wasn't my idea! It all started with a late night kitchen table conversation about stress and depression among activists, during which I mentioned some of the things I learned during my training and practice in clinical psychology. The next week, Cat Clyne of Satya magazine asked me if I could write up some of the things I'd said for that magazine. So I wrote an article called "Fear of Feeling: Trauma and Recovery in the Animal Liberation Movement." I was very nervous about it, because I knew that some people would take my advice and I wanted to make sure that what I said was true and useful. I guess it was, because quite a few activists wrote to tell me that the article had been helpful to them.

So, when Lantern Books publisher Martin Rowe asked me to expand the article into a book for all kinds of activists, not just animal liberationists, I said yes, even though I was in the middle of writing a very different kind of book. There's always so much -- too much! -- for everybody to do. So we all have an obligation, I think, to do the things we're in the best position to do. It's not every day that a publisher asks you to write a book. I realized that there probably aren't too many people who happen to have both training in clinical psychology and decades of experience in activism. So, maybe I was the person who had to write this book.

I'm glad I did. Already, some activists -- including people who are doing work that I really admire -- have let me know that it's been helpful to them. That alone makes all of the work that I put into the book worthwhile!

Plus, the process of writing the book forced me to think deeply about a subject that's been on my mind for a long time: the ways that traumatic ruptures create and maintain the problems that we activists are trying to solve. It turned out that I couldn't write the book without talking about those kinds of trauma too. Because, as long as we are violating the earth and other animals, we'll never heal our own traumatic injuries. But, we're unlikely to stop violating the earth and other animals (including other people) until we recover our personal and interpersonal integrity.

The book is, first and foremost, a practical handbook for activists. But it also includes a short section addressed to therapists and other helping professionals, in which I not only offer tips for working with activists, but also strongly suggest that issues like global warming and the violence inherent in meat consumption ought to be addressed with all of their clients.

About a third of the book is devoted to what I call "trauma culture." There, I'm hoping to bring some new ideas into the dialogue about what all of us need to do to reduce the amount of violence in the world. I don't think I have all the answers there, of course. But I do hope that my thoughts will spark other people to think and then maybe together we can talk about some ways to get past some of the impasses that have so-far prevented us from making a real difference in some areas. Meat eating is at an all-time high despite decades of pro-vegan activism. Even more years of feminist activism have failed to make a dent in rates of rape. I'm hoping that some of the ideas and questions I raise in the book will help us get at the roots of such seemingly intractable problems.

Abolitionist: You asked the question: What must we do to repair the social and physical fractures that threaten to kill us all by means of climate change, nuclear holocaust, or the irrevocable poisoning of the water and air we need to drink and breathe? How did you answer it?

pattrice jones: I live at a sanctuary for chickens. The roosters are very loud. They crow to keep track of each other and send out alarm cries whenever they spot a potential predator. Whenever a rooster shouts that he's seen a hawk, everybody runs for cover and joins the squawking. Nobody shuts up or wanders out into the open until the rooster who gave the alarm gives the "all clear" signal.

If only people were so sensible! The tides are rising around us and we do nothing! Even those of us who are active on climate change tend not to act with an urgency equal to the degree of the emergency.

We are some very sick animals, so cut off from our senses that we don't even notice the pollution in our air and water. Often what we think, what we feel, and what we do don't match each other. We're estranged from the earth, other animals, other people, and ourselves. That disconnection allows us to do terrible things to the earth, other animals, other people, and ourselves. Doing those terrible things increases the distance between and within us, making it even easier to do even more terrible things. And the cycle of traumatic disconnection continues.

I think that the things we need to do to heal ourselves are the same things we need to do to heal our communities and ecosystems. The elements of what I call "rescue" -- sanctuary, remembering, connection, and making peace -- are equally applicable to individual, social, and ecosystemic trauma. In the book, I explain each of those elements first in relation to individual aftershock and then in relation to trauma culture. Again, while I do have some expert knowledge when it comes to trauma, I don't think I have all the answers when it comes to saving the world. I just want to start a conversation. And, a lot of readers have told me that the book feels like exactly that: a conversation. I hope that any Abolitionist readers who read the book will feel free to share their thoughts with me.

Abolitionist: Activists against the corporate culture conglomerates, anti-globalisation activists, Students Against Sweat Shops, Anti White-Supremacy activists, Gay Activists, Anti-Poverty activists, Eliminating Slavery in Agricultural Labor activists, Organising in El Salvador activists …Who are the high-risk activists that you identify in Chapter 2?

pattrice jones: Yes, all of these and other activists may engage in activities that place them at high risk for aftershock. Anybody, working on any issue over a long period of time, is at risk of depression due to demoralisation at lack of progress, which is why we ought to organise our campaigns to include some achievable short-term goals that can be recognised and celebrated as we are working towards our more elusive ultimate aims.

As to aftershock related to post-traumatic stress, that depends on what tactics you use rather than the focus of your activism. Some tactics entail a high risk of arrest, imprisonment, or police abuse. Others bring activists into contact with potentially violent opponents or expose them to degradation or discrimination. Still others expose activists to sights, sounds, and smells that will haunt them for life. War zones, vivisection labs, brothels, areas of extreme poverty, sites of extreme environmental devastation... just going into such places can provoke the combination of horror and helplessness that is the hallmark of traumatic shock. And, of course, there are also highly individual situations. Imagine the feelings of a tree-sitter when the tree she has been trying to save is cut down or the mixed emotions of an anti-slavery activist who has been able to save one child but had to leave another behind.

And, let's not forget the people who take action outside of organisations and who may or may not consider themselves "activists." They're at risk too, especially so since they cannot depend on institutional resources. We have to construct our communities so that they get more support.

Abolitionist: International Womens Day 2007 was celebrated a few days ago in Australia (March 8th). Does it bother you that what feminists fought – nothing less than women's liberation - for has been reduced to a Day of Observance? Should it affect us that more than half a million women worldwide will die this year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth and one in three women throughout the world is likely to experience sexual assault during her lifetime? That in Afghanistan right now women are suffering the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world with 1,600 deaths per 100,000 live births. And what is "trauma culture" you speak of in the book?

pattrice jones: That's a lot of questions! Let me work backwards. "Trauma culture" is my way of talking about the fact that our social and physical worlds are marked by unnatural fractures ranging from the artificial division of people into "races" to the very real cracks in polar ice caused by global warming. We erect and use violence to defend the fences called national borders. Within those borders, we cut up the earth into bits and pieces of private property, which police and other armed forces use violence to defend. We use pretexts such as religious beliefs to justify aggression against people of other faiths as well as the violation of women and children within our own communities. We slice the tops off of mountains to get more coal, the burning of which will further pollute our biosphere and our bodies.

As I said before, all of us have been traumatized by this in some way, if only because we've been breathing polluted air all of our lives. Even if we were lucky enough to grow up in happy families, our minds were marked by violence and terror around which almost all human cultures are now organised.

It all goes back to prehistory when, in different places at different times, patriarchy (male rule) and pastoralism (animal herding) appeared and then spread by violent conquest. It may be that climate change -- desertification and resulting famine -- created the conditions for patriarchy and pastoralism to emerge. What is certainly true is that the process of expansion by cultures that subjugated both women and animals -- you can read all about it in the biblical account of the conquest of Canaan or records of the European conquest of the Americas -- repeatedly visited violence all over the world. In cultures as in families, trauma tends to reproduce itself across generations if active steps are not taken to repair the ruptures within and between people.

And so here we are today, in a world where at a third of all women are beaten or raped by males within their lifetime. In that context, International Women's Day does seem woefully inadequate. At the same time, no single tactic or campaign can do everything. Effective social change strategies generally involve a multiplicity of activists and organizations using a multiplicity of tactics to approach the same problem from a multiplicity of angles. As long as International Women's Day celebrations don't create an illusion of progress that makes further action less likely, I don't see the harm in them. And I know that some women in some places, such as those who promote effective direct action against sexism by organizing the Global Women's Strike on 8 March each year and others who use that day to intensify or draw attention to their yearlong activities, do make good use of International Women's Day each year.

Abolitionist: In the US more than 20 million women live in poverty and out of 173 countries, the US is one of only five countries that has no guaranteed maternity leave. The US is also one of only seven countries that has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Is it appropriate to ask the questions: Are we winning the war against ignorance?

pattrice jones: Well, we certainly are not succeeding in the struggle against sexism, although I don't think that the root cause is ignorance. The roots of sexism are all tangled up with the roots of speciesism, so much so that I tend to think of them as two symptoms of the same underlying problem. Unless we address that problem directly, the best that we can do is make limited progress against the worst abuses endured by women and animals.

But there's another, less subtle, reason for the lack of progress toward the true liberation of girls and women, not to mention animals: People don't like it when you take their power and privileges away. Men enjoy very real, material benefits from the subordination of women. They haven't -- and won't -- give them up without a fight.

The chief complication in the struggle for women's liberation is that the process of socialization occurs within patriarchal families, allying women with the men of their race, class, culture, and religion more strongly than with women of other groups. Meanwhile, within each group, traditions of all kinds conspire to kill solidarity among women. For example, girls in many cultures are encouraged to dream of their weddings as the highlight of their lives, thereby causing them to see marriage as the most valuable relationship and to perceive other females as competitors. All of this makes it very hard to organise women, within or across cultures, for their own liberation.

Meanwhile, men fight back against any insurrection, either directly (as in domestic violence) or covertly (by dragging their feet on actually implementing things like CEDAW). There are, of course, some male allies, just as there are some people who truly work for the liberation of animals. But, whereas most animal advocates understand how important and decisive their solidarity will be in the struggle for animal liberation, very few men who say that they support women's rights (or even call themselves feminists) recognise their affirmative obligation to actively and effectively challenge other men to quit abusing women and divest themselves of their unjust power over women.

So, what we need is both more solidarity among women and more activity by anti-sexist men. That has to happen not just among those for whom women's issues are the primary focus of activism. Just as animal liberationists have a right to ask activists working in other areas to at least be vegan, feminists like us have the right to demand that everybody (including animal advocates) demonstrate solidarity with girls and women. Remember, women are animals too. Any man who consumes pornography, laughs at sexist jokes, or looks the other way when a comrade behaves abusively toward women is not really an animal liberationist. And, any woman who allows herself or other women to be put down or sexually objectified within the movement is also falling short of our mandate to seek the liberation of all animals. We have to have empathy for the many reasons that women have a hard time speaking out against or even seeing our own subjugation. At the same time, we have to stand firm in our understanding that people are animals and that liberation means everybody.

Abolitionist: How does AfterShock address burnout of valuable activists that have left their field of endeavour because of lack of support or depression or just not seeing the results that they thought possible?

pattrice jones: So much of what we call "burnout" is really depression. The book explains the causes and consequences of depression in general and as it may manifest among activists. I offer very practical suggestions about protecting yourself from depression, recognizing depression in yourself or others, and taking care of yourself or others if depression strikes. The good news is that depression often responds very well to simple interventions like taking better care of your body and talking to other people about your feelings.

But, like the struggles for animal rights and social justice, the struggle against depression can't be won alone. As I explain in Aftershock, our emotions are both physical and social processes. So, I also offer suggestions about how we can work together to make our organisations and movements more sustaining (and therefore more sustainable).

Organisations are nothing other than the relationships among the people they comprise. Groups implode, fall apart, or die due to attrition when those relationships are unhealthy. In contrast, groups where the people listen to and look out for each other have the inner strength to do hard work for a long time and are always attracting new members.

Abolitionist: What specific kind of aftershock is experienced by animal activists and how does your book Aftershock address this? Will you also talk about animal terrorism that we inflict upon millions of animals daily, year in and year out. The organised factory farm is a good place to talk about terrorism and its gratuitous violence. How does this abode with your ideas on non-violence pattrice?

pattrice jones: I think that animal activists are especially plagued by the stress and depression associated with witnessing, but feeling helpless to prevent, the suffering of others. Research on post-traumatic stress indicates that witnessing violence done to another often can have a greater traumatic impact than suffering violence oneself.

Animal activists are at particularly high risk right now because of what I can the "terrorisation" of activism. Here in the States, earth and animal liberationists top the government lists of "domestic terrorists" -- ahead of right-wing groups that both advocate and practice violence against people of other races and faiths -- even though we do not advocate violence and never have hurt anyone. And, of course, we've all seen what our government believes it has a right to do to terrorists!

This is going on all over the world. In the UK, in Australia, and elsewhere, government is increasingly intervening on behalf of vivisectors and meat producers, often by applying the label of "terrorism" to non-violent activities such as investigative journalism or the organisation of boycotts.

That's pretty scary, even for animal advocates who work strictly within the law. A couple of years ago, I attended a forum on animal biotechnology attended by meat industry representatives. During one of the discussions, a mild-mannered middle-aged woman -- an animal welfare advocate who isn't even vegetarian! -- was called a "terrorist" for speaking up against extreme forms of cruelty like gestation crates.

Which brings us to your question about terrorism and factory farming. Terror is a central element of trauma culture. Governments use guns to guard borders and grocery stores. It's all so normal that nobody notices the violence. Nobody notices the violence inside the grocery store either. People toss corpses and body parts on the check-out conveyor belts, not even noticing the blood that sometimes leaks out from behind the plastic wrap. Back on the factory farm, violence and terror mark every moment of the lives of animals.

How can we end the violence? Certainly not by adding more violence! But many people call acts of sabotage to property "violence" and I don't agree with that characterisation at all. Fencing off land, bulldozing ground, capturing animals... these are violent acts. Tearing down fences, monkeywrenching bulldozers, or breaking the locks on cages are not. I don't talk about this in Aftershock, but my essay "Stomping with the Elephants" in the Best/Nocella anthology entitled Igniting a Revolution includes a long discussion of the distinction between force and violence. Violence is violation and I'm always against that. But I'm all for nonviolent direct action as a necessary component of a multifaceted strategy for change. I can't do -- or even know about -- those kinds of actions because of my responsibilities to the animals here at the sanctuary. But the people who do risk their own freedom for the earth and other animals have my heart and I hope they know it.

Abolitionist: What actions can be taken to lessen trauma in high-risk activist lives?

pattrice jones: This is an area where knowledge really is power. When we understand how our bodies and emotions work, then we can take care of ourselves daily, plan and prepare for stressful actions so as to minimize their potential traumatic impact, and help ourselves and each other to recuperate when stress or depression do strike. In the long run, this will strengthen our organisations and increase the efficacy of our movements.

Aftershock includes a long chapter of tips for activists, allies, organisations, movements, and communities. These range from keeping yourself hydrated to remembering imprisoned comrades. In addition to everyday self- and group-maintenance tasks like taking your vitamins and really listening to your fellow activists, I include a set of very specific things to do before, during, and after high-risk actions such as open rescues or demonstrations in which confrontations with cops or counter-protesters are likely. These range from using performance visualisation beforehand to taking care of your body afterwards.

Abolitionist: We are witnessing the most ungodly torture and bizarre torturous techniques this world has ever seen at the moment. Australia is following America with its privatization of jails and prisons and then there's the recent pictures released of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib. The human physiology isn't designed to accommodate these forms of torture and I wonder what your views are on it. Where do you think it's coming from?

pattrice jones: Your question goes right to the fault-line running under many of the ruptures that are tearing the world apart, although I disagree that we've not seen this before. I wasn't shocked or even a little bit surprised by the photos from Abu Ghraib. Nothing in those pictures can't be found in relatively mainstream pornography: Women chained or tied up in "stress positions"... bound and naked women with their heads covered... women on leashes... all photographed for fun! That's nothing new. And, of course, many of the women in such photos are captives, either literally enslaved by the international sex industry or putatively free but under the coercive control of violent men. I guess people were shocked by the photos from Iraq because the victims this time were men.

And here we come to the reason why most analyses of these atrocities have been so inadequate: Because they treat sexualized torture as an exceptional event rather than as a logical extension of the regular rules under which women are everywhere and everyday abused. Whenever men want to thoroughly humiliate each other, they treat them like women. Similarly, whenever people want to degrade other people, they treat them like animals. And, because the exploitation of women and animals, originally and continually, revolves around the control of reproduction, the processes of treating men like women and treating people like animals is often highly sexualized.

I write about this a bit in Aftershock, arguing that we must look deeply and unflinchingly at this intersection of sex and exploitation if we want to heal ourselves and the world that we have so gravely wounded due to our own derangement. Even though it's very, very hard to even begin to talk about the things that we tend to call "unspeakable," we have to force ourselves to do so.

Many men consume violent pornography deliberately and voraciously, for fun. Many more men and women find themselves unwillingly aroused by images of torture and degradation, even though they disapprove of them in theory. We all need, urgently, to understand this.

Animal liberationists, especially, can't afford to ignore these dynamics, however ugly they may be. People eat meat -- the objectified bodies of others -- for pleasure. Milk and eggs are the reproductive products of captive female animals.

Abolitionist: What is it about the nature of capitalism that when it asserts itself, it's never content with just owning some piece of land somewhere, it has to own all of the land, it has to own all of the skies, all of the space programs and be the first, and it has to own all of the resources. Aren't we talking patriarchy and patriarchal violence here upon humans, the animal nations and the earth?

pattrice jones: Capitalism is inherently competitive and exploitive. At the same time, you're right in looking past capitalism to patriarchy, because many communists also see the earth and other animals as mere "resources" to be exploited, with the only difference being that "the people," rather than a select group of people, enjoy the fruits of that exploitation. That's true even of many communists who explicitly reject sexism. Why? Because what we call "patriarchy" is bigger than just male rule over women. Patriarchal cultures see men not only as heads of human households but also the "husbands" of land and animals. That's why they call it "animal husbandry!" So, when we reject male rule over women and society but leave human dominion of land and animals unchallenged, we haven't really undermined patriarchy. Similarly, we'll never free the animals unless we directly confront patriarchy. That's why it's so important for feminists to embrace the earth and animal liberation movements and for earth and animal liberationists to be feminists.

Abolitionist: Will the liberation of all of us (from trauma and terror) depend upon the liberation of men? Now that's a scary thought!

pattrice jones: I guess it all depends on what you mean by "liberation." In cultures defined by the masculine ideal of individualism, "liberation" can seem to mean not only freedom from unjust or unnatural restraints but also freedom from all restraints, including legitimate social and natural restraints on action. It's this idea that underlies the grievances that are so often voiced by affluent, white, Christian men who are outraged at any constraint on their behavior. You hear this idea in the grievances of young male college students who truly feel oppressed by school policies that require them to get verbal consent before engaging in intercourse or prohibit them from using racial slurs in class. You hear it in the resistance to any policies that might mandate reduced fossil fuel use.

Obviously, women and other animals would not be well served if men felt even more free to do whatever they might like to do, regardless of its impact on the earth or other beings.

But it's a false kind of freedom that depends on the separation of the individual from the enveloping ecosystem. People are social animals living within ecosystems. Healthy herds, flocks, and tribes have rules that keep individuals from hurting each other or the group. Those rules are enforced by the group and are not inherently oppressive. Similarly, ecosystems place natural restraints on behaviour, the transgression of which can lead to disaster, as is happening right now.

I see "liberation" differently. Liberation does not mean freedom from all constraint. Liberation means freedom from unjust or unnatural restraints. To achieve that, our systems of relationships -- with each other, with other animals, and with the ecosystems in which we participate -- must be brought back into balance. That means that, rather than "freeing" individuals from the social and environmental systems on which their lives depend, liberation is a process of restoring relationships.

So, while the individualistic viewpoint sees liberation as a process of separation, a more realistic viewpoint recognises liberation as a process of connection.

And, yes, that process will help men too. Everybody is diminished by the unnatural division of the natural spectrum of human behaviour into "masculine" and "feminine" characteristics. While sexism hurts women most of all, some men also are injured by it. Because masculinity is policed so aggressively, gay men are much more likely than lesbians to be gay-bashed. At the other end of the spectrum, African American men are stereotypically perceived as hyper-masculine and thereby dangerous. These stereotypes lead both black and white adults to be afraid of young black men, thereby depriving them of vital social interactions. Even more dangerously, this idea of black male hyper-masculinity often leads white cops to claim -- and juries to believe -- that a group of police officers were so scared of a single black male that they just had to beat him down or shoot him to death!

So, yes, the liberation of all of use from terror and trauma will include the liberation of men. Thinking particularly of the young men at the historically black college where I teach and of the older gay men who nurtured me when I was a young lesbian in flight from an abusive mother, I'm very glad of that!

pattrice jones' website: www.pattricejones.info
pattrice jones' blog: www.pattricejones.info/blog