Traumatized Men: School Shooting and Male Rape

The swine flu lunacy has reached a peak: a parent in my school district pulled a gun on the Superintendent at a school my daughter will attend in a few years. Why? Because the district isn't closing the schools in spite of there being a few cases of the swine flu. see article

Reasonable people disagree about whether or not to close the schools. And even if most arguing in favor of keeping the schools open were considered UNreasonable, it is not reasonable to pull a gun on a school official and threaten his life.

The school went into lockdown, the kids were on the floor for an hour, they were crying and frantically texting their parents . . . and the Superintendent was skilled enough to get the gun away from the parent and pin him to the ground until the SWAT team shot the door hinges apart so they could rescue him. The children have forever had their sense of safety and trust compromised. And the Superintendent, in facing death, is being hailed as a hero -- but how is he really feeling? How is he going to feel in a few weeks when the adrenaline has stopped rushing, and people have quieted their praise?

We expect men to be tough, to fight and defend us when necessary, and to not be cowed by frightening situations. That's a lot to live up to when you see your life flash before your eyes. If I were the Superintendent's wife, I'd be worried that he doesn't have much in the way of a socially acceptable "safe space" in which to grieve his vulnerability and the violation of his safety.

As a female, I have to admit that the grieving process regarding my own trauma has been considerably eased by my gender. It's my gender that pretty much made me vulnerable in the first place, so I'm not going to expound much further on the benefits of being female in a misogynistic world. But I am allowed to grieve. Men who are traumatized . . . it's not so easily done.

I am reminded at times like these of an old love. When I was 19 I met him on a Greyhound. He was traveling the country with his backpack, and I was returning home after a solo camping trip in Eastern Washington. He stayed with me and my mom and sister for a while. The next time I saw him was a few months later, after he had returned to his home in Maine. He was changed. He told me after a few days something he hadn't revealed to anyone else: on his way through Chicago he stayed at the home of a man who raped him.

I can still feel how shocked and humiliated and scared he was. And I feel shame now, especially after having been raped myself, for how inadequate I was in helping him. I was of course horrified and tried to be a comfort. But I didn't understand how deeply such trauma flows into all aspects of a person's personality and actions. I got mad at him because he took us on a road trip to Boston in a van with all his friends and I just sort of faded into the background. I got mad that everyone was doing shrooms and acid, including him. Now I know he wanted the distraction, the escape, the protection of a crowd, the laughter, the obliteration of reality. Now I know he didn't have a whole lot of options for dealing with his fear and grief.

And so we talk and write and blog about it. It makes people uncomfortable. It brings up ugly stuff that I know my husband for one sometimes wishes I would let lie. But being quiet doesn't actually bring any peace. Not talking is what gets us into the dark hole in the first place. We have to talk . . . so that at some point in the future we will all -- including men -- have a safer space in which to grieve and heal.