Transcript:

0:00

SHANNON: I've started to make this framework for how to think about people who do harm. And I truly believe having you know, done anti-violence work as an advocate for 12 years, the majority of people who do harm are people who, if they could truly get grounded and see the impacts of the harm they do, they would experience the pain of that. They'd experience that as very, something that they did not want to do and would want to attend to that harm. And that there's a lot of things that get in the way of people's ability to do that. Being numbed out, I just, there's a whole you know, all the things in the world that make it hard for people to be in touch with what is going on for them and the impacts of their behavior. But that if we could support those people in figuring out like what was going on for them? What is, what do they need to move forward to like, both heal whatever is the part of them they cannot like, that doesn't allow them to get grounded and in touch with themselves, and then to attend to the harm that they've done. That would take us really far, I mean that's generations of work right there just to do that. Just like not all experiences of surviving are all the same, not all people who do harm are the same. And so just making one monolith monster-person is actually getting in the way of us understanding the nuances of people who do harm, and then also what would be then appropriate consequences and appropriate support for them to change the behavior.

01:22

KIYOMI: Absolutely. And not to in any way minimize the impact of harm, but I do think when we paint all batterers as monsters it does sometimes create a disconnect for survivors, where they're like, oh I'm not experiencing violence because this person is not... and then we bring up all of the ableist, all of the racist, all of the classist visions of who this monster is that is creating violence.

01:48

SHANNON: Yeah seeing people who do harm, seeing batterers or people that rape folks as monsters, I do actually think does a disservice to survivors, because I've seen this with survivors of domestic violence time after time is that one of the biggest myths of domestic violence is that survivors don't love their partners. Most survivors that I know deeply love the person who they were in a relationship or are in a relationship with and that is part of the complexity of surviving. That if something was just bad all the time people wouldn't stick around for that. It's the complexity of feeling love and care and harm that is so profoundly affecting and so profoundly harmful to people. And so many survivors feel very protective of the people who are battering them or were battering them. And you feel like please do not mess with that person, I care about that person. I want them to knock it off, but I don't want them to be harmed. And so when we make batterers monsters, it actually doesn't create the spaciousness for survivors to talk about their experiences. And so, the same experience where people who batter, they're not monsters. They are human beings in our communities. They are our brothers, sisters, friends, cousins, persons, coworkers. And so we have to deal with the humanity of people who batter, actually. And that the harm that they are doing is real, profound harm. We don't want to lessen that in any way because it is crushing people. But that, we have to hold that balance. And that I think is the hardest part of the task. It's really hard to see someone as a human being and hold them in their full humanity and see the harm they've done. That's a very hard task. That each of us have to be increasing our ability to hold complexity to do that task.

03:30

KIYOMI: Any tips for how to do that?

03:32

SHANNON: I mean I think engagement. I think that it's really easy, and often preferable for me to just want to not have to deal with people who do harm, and just to be like alright, that person did harm, now they're dead to me. And I think a moving towards that person, getting really comfortable with conflict, and seeing conflict as a necessary part of moving forward in communities, a necessary part of healing, actually a necessary part of of intimacy and growing and connection, can help. Sometimes I think people are really afraid of like, what a lot of questions about safety will come up, that I think are really important questions that people should be thinking about and people should be, you know, getting supports around like what is the plan for physical, emotional, other kinds of safety. But also sometimes I think people use safety as a broad thing to not try, to not actually have to move towards someone, especially someone who's not, hasn't been particularly physically, that there's not a physical threat to engaging that person. Sometimes it's just for friends and family, for other people who aren't the person who's surviving, to try to engage that person. It's uncomfortability, right? And so it's getting really comfortable with conflict. It's getting comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations. Or at least getting more familiar with it and more practiced, I think, is one of the things that I really practice and I would say is it's gotten more familiar, but not easier.

05:06

(Music)