This week at my day job, I’ve been working with a woman who has survived horrific intimate partner violence. She doesn’t speak English, but her actions and body language are clear: She’s DONE with men telling her what to do. Family, medical professionals, members of our staff: She is not having it, not from any of them. Her scowl is fierce and her biting words need no translation whenever a man approaches her with a directive of any kind.
It’s my job to help this woman cope with her anger and fear, and hopefully aid her in arriving at a place in which she feels safe enough to cooperate with the folks who are trying to assist her, even when they’re men. But honestly, I completely understand her fierce response. I’ve been professionally trained to recognize and treat the lifelong effects of intense trauma. And my own experiences as a survivor have left me wary of men, too.
There is one man in the building that this client will listen to: A quiet guy on our maintenance team who is from the same country as she is. He’s gentle with her, and asks her what she needs instead of telling her what he thinks she should do. My client usually saves her sweet smiles for the women on our team, but her face lights up whenever she spots the maintenance guy.
I wish that gentleness wasn’t something that surprises me when I see it in men. It often does, though. Of course, the systemic reasons for that could (and do) inform entire gender studies programs, and my personal experiences with terrible men could (and probably will, someday) shape a memoir.
I keep an eye out for men who sidestep our culture’s gender programming and choose to be kind, and I deeply appreciate them: The male artist who seeks to collaborate instead of demanding the spotlight. The guy who doesn’t try to mansplain me out of my negative opinion of a comic or a band that he likes. All the dudes I’ve met who only needed to be told “no” once.
And the man in maintenance who takes time out of his workday to ease the apprehension of a woman — make that two women — he doesn’t really know.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd5bdc4f5-9fab-4efc-aa1a-187379f84a95_314x401.png)