When helping men helps women

Around the world, in both times of war and times of peace, women face gender based violence (GBV) at the hands of men. Typically, during times of war, the inequity of women during times of peace is exacerbated and violence increases. However when peace time returns, violence towards woman often remains more elevated than previous to war. 

When investigating women's health in times of war, there are many health implications including all the physical complications that arise from rape and violence as well as PTSD and other mental disorders. In many cases the blame is placed on men and militia men in particular as they often perform gruesome acts on the men, women, and children of "the other side." It is also found that following war, the same men that performed such acts of terror and violence return home to their families where more violence is inflicted. This is due to a variety of reasons. One being that as men leave to go to war, women are left behind and sometimes acquire "greater mobility and the opportunity to learn new skills and assume new roles, which may be an empowering experience. This, on the other hand, can lead to increased tensions in gender relations, especially when men find it difficult to cope with their reduced ability to act as the main leader, provider, and protector in the family." 

Furthermore, very few people, whether they be men or women, can perform torturous acts without undergoing traumatic training and torturous acts themselves. Therefore many men whom inflict violence towards others during war face mental trauma of their own including stress, depression, and PTSD. As poor metal health is still stigmatized in many places around the world and mental health services are sometimes severely lacking, it is not surprising that the fallout of the trauma faced by men during war gets manifested in violence towards their partners and families when war ends. One article by Slate entitled "War is Hell and the Hell Rubs Off" discusses the United State's Army's 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry and states that when this group of men returned home, "the murder rate around the Army’s third-largest post had doubled and that the number of rape arrests had tripled. As David Philipps wrote in Lethal Warriors, his 2010 book about the crime spree, “In the year after the battalion returned from Iraq, the per-capita murder rate for this small group of soldiers was a hundred times greater than the national average.” Tellingly, 2-12’s post-traumatic stress disorder rate was more than three times that of an equivalent unit that had served in a less violent part of Iraq." 

Militia patrol in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 

In some places around the world there have been beautiful and creative solutions to help women heal after facing violence during both war and peace, and Eve Ensler discusses the community called City of Joy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. City of Joy was constructed and opened in 2011 following years of regional conflict in the Congo, and it is a place where women can "turn their pain into power" by learning vocational and leadership skills as well as partake in dance, storytelling, and other forms of art and aid. In her one-women play entitled "In the Body of the World," Ensler discusses some of the horrid acts performed by the militia men on some of the women at City of Hope, including a time that a man cut the fetus out of a woman, forced her to partially eat it, and then burned it in front of the community. This and other anecdotes left me trembling in sickness and terror but also in wonder of well, where is the safe haven or City of Hope for that man? Does he not also need healing after years of inflicting violence? Where can he and others go to receive the help they need after performing such a thing? And would helping these men cope with their actions further shield women from the violence inflicted as a result of PTSD after war is over? I do not have an answer to these questions, however I believe that in certain cases, investing in the wellbeing of men can in turn be an investment into the safety and wellbeing of women.   

Resources:

https://www.cityofjoycongo.org/splash/

Torres , Anastasia B. FMO Thematic Guide: Gender and Forced Migration.

Morris, David J. “War Is Hell, and the Hell Rubs off: PTSD Contributes to Violence. Pretending It Doesn't Is No Way to Support the Troops.” Slate Magazine, 17 Apr. 2014, www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/04/ptsd_and_violence_by_veterans_increased_murder_rates_related_to_war_experience.html.