TWLOHA and whoa, Men care!

I had the fortuitous opportunity to hear Jamie Tworkowski, founder of the non-profit To Write Love on Her Arms speak at Rutgers University yesterday night.  I literally wandered into the student center while waiting for a friend, noticed the even flyer, and realized that he was going to be speaking in 1 hours, and that I was actually available to go!

I'd been aware of the organization loosely as it had come up a few times when I was working for a research project on self-injury at Cornell, but the real mission of the organization still seemed a bit illusive and vague to me, so I was really chuffed to go hear, from the horse's mouth as they say, what it was all about.

While one could describe TWLOHA as a non-profit organization that works to support recovery for those struggling with suicidal thoughts, depression, addiction, and/or self-injury, after hearing Tworkowski speak, I think the real mission of the org. is something deeper and even more beautiful.  More than anything else Tworkowski spoke about hope, love, and speaking . . . speaking to other people about problems and struggles, sharing our stories with each other, and telling others that we are listening, that they are love, and that their stories are important and that it is ok to have questions and to ask for help.  From this philosophy, the drive to help people with serious, stigmatized, and unspoken struggles like depression or addiction springs, but the real foundation is this place of frankly profound love and fellow-feeling.

This message is what makes finding TWLOHA's 'mission' so difficult to pin-down the way we often want when we want to understand what someone/something 'does,' and to understand quickly.  They don't give us the traditional sound-bite about preventing suicide or debunking myths about self-injury, for example.  What they really want us to 'get' is this idea about loving, hoping, sharing, and truly living whether we are living through the good and the bad, and knowing that we are never living alone.  This concept is so powerful yet so amazingly simple, and maybe even more amazingly tough to actually do!

But the other thing I took away from this talk was how great it was to see a man up on a stage talking to people about loving and caring for other people and for ourselves.

In a lot of discourses about gender and empowering women/girls, you can hear a lot of us vs. them talk, and this talk is not always readily obvious, but usually counterproductive.  One of the ways that this happens a lot 'under-the-radar' is the assumption/claim/belief/assertion that women somehow have a monopoly on things like loving, feeling . . . caring, is often the word used.

Of course it stands that women do most of the official work that typically falls into the category of what scholars/policy analysts etc. call 'care work' but I think it is pretty ridiculous to assert that somehow women are intrinsically good at 'caring,' and men don't really care about anything (and stumble around the world obsessed with competing with each other, impressing females, and trying to have sex . . . is usually the other half of this story.)  I mean, when you take a millisecond to think about this, how absurd is this?  Of course, men care about stuff: men are passionate about many things (and not just sex, beating each other up, and video games).  Men love their parents, siblings, children, friends, countries, idols, god(s), whatever just as well as women do.  The difference I would assert is that in this gendered society, it is just not ok for men to really transparently acknowledge this reality . . . but that doesn't mean that they don't care or don't know how to care . . . and that women are expected to be perfect at/obsessed with caring and doing 'care work'.

The real problem for both men and women is that women are not allowed to do much without doing carework and making it known that they love doing carework, and that we berate and ridicule men who are brave enough to be transparent about their caring.  Feminists who gloat over how much better women are at caring than the stupid men don't help to solve this problem; rather they reproduce it--- further cementing women in their subjugated role and implying that certain ways of being belong to certain genders, and preventing men from being open about their caring and debunking masculine stereotypes . . . not to mention alienating the very men willing to be their allies.

This is why it was so great to hear Jamie Tworkowski talk about this organization and its foundational philosophy.  Here was a man who was not only doing caring, but who the world was letting share this gift of sensitivity and deep caring, and maybe more importantly, who was not ashamed of his caring.  I mean, this is serious progress happening right in front of our eyes!  Witnessing this, on top of an already profound message, was a inspiring and beautiful privilege.

I can't wait to see more men claiming their caring and showing other men (and women) that its ok for them to do that.  There really is hope! Lots of it!