These are specific resources for individuals facing their patterns of gendered violence such as manipulation, domestic violence, and sexual violence, and communities working to help individuals address those patterns. While the principles here will have relevance for many other forms of conflict resolution, this focus is because there are so few resources available for addressing these types of harm. Despite, or perhaps in part because of, the social taboos against discussing these issues openly, these patterns are widespread in every community today. Addressing these truths in ourselves and each other is extremely hard, emotionally taxing work, and good resources and support can be very hard to come by. As you likely know, most Restorative Justice and other peer-mediation services won’t work with conflicts of sexual and domestic violence; it’s too heated, dangerous and volatile.
While their reasons are understandable, it leaves those of us who find ourselves navigating these waters out in the cold. I claim no expertise in this work. If you have the capacity to seek professional support, I strongly recommend that you do so. That said, I understand the barriers to that, so I offer these in the hopes that they will help your community. I’ve been on both sides of many processes around these issues, and I am happy to share what insight I’ve picked up in fifteen years of learning to see and heal my own patterns of harm, and supporting many other men and communities in seeing and addressing their patterns. The resources here are just reflections of what I have seen work, there is no silver bullet for any of this. Success rates are very, very low, and people who successfully look at their learned patterns of harm and shift those patterns towards health and wellness remain the extreme exception. Communities implimenting effective strategies to address harm remain almost equally rare- most attempts to address harm, while well-intentioned, go about it in ways that further divide and fracture the communities they are attempting to heal.
Which brings us to the question- who do you want to be?