Spence’s NO HARM Story
My whole life has been preparing me for NO HARM. The journey to discover my humanity and find liberation is full of learnings that have been forged in darkness. Much of that darkness was a consequence of me trying to discover what it meant to be a real man. My search was further complicated by my identity as a Black man in America, adding another complex layer of tension to the journey.
The early messages I received about how to be a boy and a man did little to prepare me for healthy relationships. Like many men, I first learned what a man should be by learning what a man shouldn’t be or what a man doesn’t do: a boy who wants to be a man one day, shouldn’t act like a girl; a man shouldn’t cry; a man doesn’t show vulnerability; a man doesn’t express the full range of his emotions, unless that emotion comes from a place of anger; a man doesn’t express fear, publicly grieve, or reveal his pain; and a man doesn’t admit fault or apologize. These messages and more contributed to a man-up mentality – a mentality that was reinforced with rewards from my male peers, and some women.
By all appearances, it seemed as if I enjoyed the rewards of being a “real man.” But the truth is, I was suffering, suffering from an internal tension that I didn’t know how to name. Male socialization taught me to suppress my pain and ignore my well-being, while encouraging me to wear a mask of indifference, as if I was cool and unbothered. For years, I inflicted a tremendous amount of harm on myself, trying to numb, escape, or mask the pain. My inability to acknowledge my pain, along with being a male in a man’s world, afforded me the privilege of not seeing the emotional harm I was inflicting on women with whom I was in intimate relationship.
It took years of healing work and the willingness to see through a lens other than my own, to jumpstart my transformation and facilitate my release from a prison that defined masculinity by toxic terms and practices. As I awakened, I began to see the common elements of oppression. I began to see how violence against women is not disconnected from other forms of violence - violence based on race, class, sexual orientation, gender diversity, or other identifiers. The system that supports these acts of violence is the same patriarchal system that offers men false rewards, if they are willing to forfeit their humanity as a condition of participation. As for me, I am no longer willing to sacrifice my humanity for the sake of manning-up.
At NO HARM, we redefine manhood by impressing upon all men that to be a man is to be fully human. I invite you to join our movement today!