The Solution to Violent Men Isn’t Other Violent Men
There has to be a better way
Three years ago, when I first moved out of my house and ended my eighteen year marriage, my youngest daughter began exhibiting a lot of fears. One of her worst fears during this time was that a “bad man” would break into our new home and harm us.
No matter how many times I told her that even if someone did manage to break into our house, I would protect her and I would call the police, she insisted that we wouldn’t be safe without a man. After a few months her fears subsided as she realized that she, her sister, and I were just as safe on our own as we had been living with her father. Maybe more so.
Let’s take a moment to really about her fear and how such a fear was so firmly implanted in a six-year-old who had never experienced a home invasion. First of all, she wasn’t scared of just any stranger breaking into our home — she was scared of a man breaking into our home. Women were not threatening to her at all. Secondly, in her mind, a “good” man was the only remedy for a “bad” man. Only another man could protect us.
Even though we lived in a low crime neighborhood, we knew our neighbors, and we locked our doors at night, the fear of someone attacking us was something that terrified her. Even though her father was rarely home at night when we did live…
