Man to man

He was in my kitchen, hands deep in ingredients. Though we’d known each other several years, it was the very first time we’d spent alone together. We’d been arguing online, about a picture—well, really about something he said. A comment about power, sex and role play that had this distinct judgemental flavour, but he insisted wasn’t, because he didn’t intend it to be. No matter how it tasted. And it got heated. So I pivoted to food. And that’s how he ended up in my Sunday kitchen, after the supermarket, in full domesticity. It was his idea.

“Man to man,” the video pitch about domestic violence I’d recorded the day before had begun. It’s a slogan we’ve often been asked to use in Caribbean campaigns and programmes, where men have told each other that hitting women is bad. Messages we’ve delivered through barbershops and other social spaces that brood masculinity, in order to legitimate them. Not kitchens, which aren’t the usual settings where men hold forth or unpack.

If men tell men intimate partner violence is wrong, the same way women do unequivocally, then we’ll reach them.

My “man to man” pitch was a little different, though. I talked about the way state policies on domestic violence fail “man-to-man” domestic violence, don’t pay attention to the specifics of our lives; but I offered that we can still find solutions in thoughtful legal and service responses.

It’s exactly what we’ve always done with HIV. Long ago we recognised that neither telling gay men to have safe sex nor punishing them for failing to was ever going to end HIV.

But that’s precisely what we’re doing with men and domestic violence.

In HIV, we’ve stood in the shoes, feelings and worlds of the people involved in transmitting HIV, and learned lessons. We learned how to make people living with HIV uninfectious; and that we have to find them to do so. We encouraged everyone to take responsibility for their own safety; while we also learned that, for black gay men for instance, susceptibility is more a factor of the community you live and have sex in than what you do; that a single lapse carries way more risk for some than several do for others. And we offered those at heightened risk simpler things they could do to make themselves safer. True, many HIV responses continue to disregard these core lessons—our health minister still withholds the drugs that prevent HIV from people most likely to get it, so they will be morally responsible in their behaviour.

But fundamentally, we learned that even if we didn’t end homophobia, we had to work to end HIV. Similarly, perhaps preventing domestic violence is more about public health than it is about patriarchy. Perhaps attending to the sites where it happens and what is going on there is a powerful way to intervene. Perhaps paying attention to the men who are the perpetrators is essential to any effort to prevent.

My make-a-cook friend shared a catalogue of graphic life stories over my stove and counter. Stories in which violence figured. Several times. A man whom argument had brought, with his kitchen knives, into my house. We didn’t argue cooking, but the argument that led him there was not our first. I tried to recall our first meeting. What I forgot was that I hit him, and he had cautioned me. He talked about hitting a woman, about accidentally sharing that story once, but with such insight it sparked the admiration of others.

I bridled, but I asked him to tell it, wondering if it would do more good than the dim hope of the PSA I had recorded. He argued too much in it. But out of it we pulled a story that is so resonant of my own intimate experiences with men. And I wonder if it holds some keys to how violence happens, and how we intervene.

Man to man, I hit my girlfriend. I’d done something wrong, and she confronted me. I apologised. But she just wouldn’t let me be with my guilt and shame. She kept insisting I get into my feelings. I wasn’t ready. When I tried to walk away, she cornered me, like she thought my being wrong made me weak or vulnerable.

Domestic violence isn’t black and white. But when I hit, it hurts. Returning pain is never a good option in a relationship. We have to mend situations without violence. Sometimes that means for both of us walking away before coming back. I need to own my part in it, learn new skills. Just being sorry isn’t enough. Let’s raise our kids to understand expressing pain or anger doesn’t need to cause pain. It’s not easy work, but let’s start doing it.