JAFARECYesterday was the third lecture of the Men’s Counseling course…my lecture was a slightly more compact version of what I’ll be talking about tomorrow at an university, “Gender and the Law”.
I spoke about various phenomena related to “sex” from a perspective that goes beyond the norm. We accept “sex” as a matter of course, but it is actually not a matter of course, it is just an unconscious value imprinted with a policy intention.
Nowadays, again, there are reports about domestic violence and abuse that distort the truth in Japan, and many people misunderstand the problem and become complicit in a reality that is contrary to their wishes, but they don’t even realize this. But we don’t even notice it until we become a victim or an offender of it.
So many difficulties surrounding the family are caused by the unconsciously imprinted sexual and family awareness, but no therapist can tell you that.
This is because for many therapists, the object of therapy is reduced to the problems of the individual client. However, the pathology of the individual is a symptom of a social pathology, and the root of the problem lies in society, but a therapist who is unaware of the structure of discrimination and oppression in society cannot free the client from that pathology.
So, after chatting about the fiction of the discourse around sex, we chatted about what men’s counseling is all about.
Men’s counseling is based on a different understanding of gender than feminism, which defines the problem as power, not gender. Yes, I’m talking about therapy based on true men’s theory. I don’t mean therapy for or by men. Neither the client nor the therapist can be of any gender.
After the lecture, we did three role-plays… Each role-play is a very convincing and close to an actual counselling session. Participants played it based on their domestic violence experiences in their real lives.
After the role-plays, Shinpei-chan’s carried out his first workshop and I did body language session. Everyone seemed to enjoy the sense of unity and achievement through it.
It was a fruitful day, as if 12 hours had gone by in just a few hours. Everyone’s feedback was that it was a fun day. I’m grateful for that.
At the end of the lecture, I received an urgent phone call from one of my former workshop members. I negotiated with the police for a bit. In order to keep the matter from getting into trouble with the police, we decided to take him to JAFAREC shelter.
Originally posted on August 17, 2020
English text translated with DeepL (Japanese to English) and checked by Mina.
