Patrick Stewart discusses his experience as a child in violent home

Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2009-12-11 05:17

Thanks to Jeremy S. for the heads-up. The video is here. What an incredibly moving video. Clearly this man is very deeply traumatized in multiple ways. Those of you with a clinical background are certain to catch on to these ways.

What bowls me over about him is his courage in discussing publicly what happened to him. At his age, undoubtedly even after many years of therapy, he will never be over what happened to him.

As for the topic, it is unlikely he will ever see that DV in its both mildest to worst forms, happens to men as well as women. Despite our urge as MRAs to get angry at him or men like him because we can clearly see that he is not acknowledging the whole truth about DV, nor how the sex role stereotypes that men are indoctrinated into and often forced into (for example, was his father drafted into the British Army?), contribute to the state his father got into - which is not at all to excuse his behavior - nonetheless, it is entirely praiseworthy that he acknowledge what happened to him as a boy and how it affected him. This is a large piece of the kind of work that men as individuals need to do - we cannot get over our own personal demons, whatever they be, if we do not have the courage to face them and strive to understand how they came into being, and how they affect us as individuals. It is the difference between living life on auto-pilot, like so many people do, and living it with self-awareness and thus, with purpose.

I have no dislike for Patrick Stewart. Indeed, I could not care less if he continued advocating for DV programs for women only, as much as I utterly disagree with such a thing. That he has set this kind of example not just to men but to everyone in having the courage to discuss publicly such intimate and sensitive matters and showing us his feelings in this way makes me want to just plain kiss the guy.

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Comments

It is okay for celebs to be against dv directed toward women just as long as they can conceptualize that men are just as much the victims of dv and probably even more so because this culture generally does not allow men to complain about or protest their abuse by a female. And if they do even more social abuse is piled on to them.

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Submitted by Luek on Fri, 2009-12-11 18:33

I don't ever recall an MRA or MRA leader say that DV doesn't happen to women. The recurring complaint MRAs seem to have is that people on so many levels of society - individuals, groups, cultures, gov'ts, legal systems, and on and on - just cannot seem to bring themselves to acknowledge the reality about DV as it occurs vs. men, or among people of the same sex in homosexual relationships. It also seems people generally cannot seem to link the prevalence of men as routine targets of violence (as well as expected perpetrators thereof) to the problems many men have dealing with the adversities these things bring up or of reconciling their own individual natures to society's expectations of them.

Alas, good men like Patrick Stewart are a lost cause. I doubt very much he will ever be able to see the whole truth about things. But I cannot say I begrudge him his lack of binocular vision. I think if I endured the grief he did as a boy, I may well have turned out the same way. I only can sympathize with the brother and hope that he finds some measure of peace one day before he meets the same fate we all must.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2009-12-11 22:29