(special thanks to Laura Duvall for sending this song and video my way)
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Blog entries by Bill Patrick
One day this summer I was sitting on the beach watching groups of young men walk up and down the shore. They followed a rigid heterosexual masculine script, strutting along arrogantly, glaring angrily at other groups of men, and eyeing women with undisguised lust.
As I wrote in a previous post, the media these past weeks has been repeatedly playing taped phone conversations where the famous actor/director/producer Mel Gibson can be heard ranting at his ex-partner Oksana Grigorieva. He threatens to bury Grigorieva “in a rose garden,” and the tapes seem to prove that Gibson hit Grigorieva in the face hard enough to damage her teeth – while she was holding their baby in her arms. His rants are full of racist and misogynist slurs, and one of his favourite words seems to be c***.
(This post explores the links between mental illness and abuse. The convoluted link between anger and abuse will be explored in a later post.)
I knew Lucas* to be a great guy. He is popular. Funny. Extremely bright. Totally sweet. Actively involved in civil rights and social justice work. So it was a great pleasure to see him when he stopped by my office one day at the supervised child visitation centre I was running. He asked a whole bunch of questions about the work we did there, and about dealing with the abusive men who were our clients.
“Wow, it’s quite a program you’ve got here, Bill,” he said after I gave him a tour.
“Thanks! How are things going with you?”
You need to calm down.
You are just being emotional.
You are letting your feelings get the better of you.
We need to approach this rationally.
Be reasonable.
How many times have we all heard these phrases – and even used them ourselves? We in North America are pretty good at keeping things dispassionate. And when people begin to express themselves using strong emotions, we work to shut those people down. To bring them back to “sanity.” To push them back toward “balance."