The first time I ever sat in a community hall, beside a dressing-up box and plastic slide—where there were people singing and small children wearing fairy wings and sagging diapers—I felt like I was finally safe. Safe from loneliness, safe from my own exhausted irritation, safe from social isolation and boredom and hunger. I didn’t watch the door, or look for exits; I welcomed these strangers around me as peers. Colleagues, perhaps, in the 24-hour-a-day job that is helping a child grow.
There was no lock on the door, no list, no vetting; we were all welcome and all were welcoming. Of all the things that scared me at that time in my life—SIDS, mastitis, measles—I am lucky to say that male violence did not figure. That is a privilege; one that will never again be felt by some parents, not just of those 12 children in Southport, England, who were injured or killed last week by a boy with a knife, but many other carers, all over the country. Particularly the parents of girls and particularly parents of color. Because the terrible attack that took place at a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga class has sparked a terrifying fire of violence in northern England, perpetrated overwhelmingly by men.
As the parent of a boy, and as a person who cares about the safety and wellbeing of our society, I know that I have an urgent job to do in informing the next generation about the epidemic of male violence we are all living under. Somehow, we have to tread a line between fear and hope. I will never treat violence by men and boys against women and girls as “normal,” even as I know that it is horribly, despicably common. Even when I know that, on average, a woman is killed by a man, in the UK, every three days. Even when I know barely one in 100 reported rapes ever results in a conviction—and that rape is so under-investigated and under-reported that even this is a tiny slice of the overall picture.
How, then, do I talk to my child about male violence? How do I let him know that this is happening, and monstrous, without making him scared? Because I don’t want him to be scared. Just as I do not want to be scared myself. Well, perhaps by making sure that he and I move through our world and our community as widely and as often as we can. I have always loved the collective nature of dance classes and birthday parties and bouncy castles and picnics in the park. I love that my son and I have been welcomed into religious buildings and village halls; into community centers and libraries. By seeing good, decent, gentle examples of men, women, and others, in these places, every day, we can both talk about the problem of male violence and be inoculated against the myths of who “belongs” who is “in charge” and who deserves respect.
Hatred is not a word that has an easy opposite. Is it love? Hope? Kindness? Is the counterpoint to hate perhaps empathy? Or belonging? Or self-esteem? Do we plot hate on one side and understanding on the other? Or does hate creep across the ground unchecked, whenever and wherever we lose faith in one other?
Like many people, I found last week’s violence, aimed specifically at young girls and parents, upsetting, unsettling, and unfamiliar. The subsequent violence, aimed at mosques and muslims and asylum seekers, feels the same. We are all tarnished by the existence of such violence. We all have a duty not to look away. But most of all, I think, we all must listen to the victims of that violence, to find out what they need—above and beyond our own personal reactions and prejudices.