Have you ever had that dream where something bad is happening to you, but when you try to ask for help, you can’t speak? You try to scream for help but you just can’t get the words out? This doesn’t only happen in dreams. It happens in real life as well. Survivors of gendered violence experience this […]
Read more "Psychological Harm is Physical Harm 2: Why Survivors Lose Their Voice"The presidential debates, horrific as their results were, provided survivors everywhere with a strange, backwards gift. A recent piece notes: “It’s remarkable how many female viewers report feeling physically ill.” Trout has not touched any of them, not directly. Yet what survivors are reporting, watching him enter their living rooms via their TV screens, is that this kind […]
Read more "Psychological Harm is Physical Harm 1: Abuse Shapes the Brain"Attunement is not a ‘task’ that can be carried out. You can provide physical care in a connected or a disconnected way. The cues that tell the limbic brain ‘I’m with you; we are connected,’ are tremendously subtle. Connection isn’t forced through willpower or memorization; rather, it occurs when you allow your true self to […]
Read more "Nurturance is about more than ‘tasks’"Out of the Attic: dissociation and social justice This is a workshop created to help increase the general level of public knowledge about the spectrum of dissociative experiences and their connection to systemic oppression. Dissociative experiences are very common. Increasing awareness about how they feel and look, their causes, and how people can help or […]
Read more "Out of the Attic: dissociation and social justice"My first book, Turn This World Inside Out (AK Press 2019), which Vanity Fair called “slim but transfixing,” sold out its first print run in six months and has sold over 10,000 copies. My writing is listed on college syllabi at McGill, UBC, UC Berkeley, and universities across North America and Europe, and has appeared or been mentioned […]
Read more "Someplace Better"Why the World Said Yes to Nurturance Culture: Five Responses Last week, “The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture” blew up on the internet. The global response is astonishing: 360 000 people visited the page in a week. Clearly the idea that we can craft a masculine “Nurturance Culture” touched a chord. Comments and mail poured in from well nigh every single […]
Read more "Why the World Said ‘Yes!’ to #NurturanceCulture: Five Responses"There are two kinds of boundary violations: overt and covert. We know a lot about one half of boundary violations: the kind acted out in an anxious way. This first kind of boundary violation is hopefully already obvious. This is when you say no, or are unable to consent, and someone goes ahead and touches […]
Read more "There is another kind of boundary violation: the covert cross"The opposite of masculine rape culture is masculine nurturance culture: men* increasing their capacity to nurture, and becoming whole. The Ghomeshi trial is back in the news, and it brings violent sexual assault back into people’s minds and daily conversations. Of course violence is wrong, even when the court system for handling it is a disaster. That part seems […]
Read more "The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture"This post is the most troubling I’ve ever written. I don’t have the answers, and I hope we can think this through together. But this needs saying. What hit me in the Isla Vista shooter’s murderous tirade on virginity was not the entitlement, the misogyny, or the cold calculation. What hit me, what has stayed […]
Read more "We Need Allies, Not Gentlemen"This post is in honour of male feminists and their dating rituals. You’re a straight cismale who identifies as a leftie. Maybe you’re a Marxist or a socialist; maybe you’re an anarchist. You respect women. You would never act like a player. You fall in love with strong, smart, feminist women. You believe that our […]
Read more "Dating Tips for the Feminist Man"