The Appropriation of Male PTSD

And Victim Exclusivity Entitlement

When I wrote the piece on Trauma and Recovery by Dr. Judith Herman last night, I just let it roll out of me, when I saw that Dr. Herman, who professed to be following feminists and the women’s liberation movement in this writing, would present so clearly that the origin of PTSD with men who came back mentally hammered from war were, in fact, appropriated by the feminist movement.

I can rationalize that, according to societal demands, this observation seems very counter-intuitive, and I’ve spent my entire life trying to reconcile the dance between the feminine and the masculine, and this pursuit has made me somewhat raw and brusque along the way.

More so when I realized, just last night, that the book Trauma and Recovery, in my opinion, harms men, by the abandonment of men and their PTSD in the book.

Men - those men who fought wars, needed an envelope, a frame, in which to classify their pain, so that it could come out and be healed without shame or judgment. The silent screams of those who are told to man up were impossible to hear before the development of PTSD as a diagnosis. All of a sudden, they weren’t alone, and there were other men who had this and couldn’t deal with it without help.

And instead of offering it to everyone, as it IS available to everyone, Herman wrote a book appropriating this to women. Do women deserve to be upheld and healed? YES.

Hell, I’ve done my share of work in this field and other fields to do so.

I’ve written and spoke about “Victim Exclusivity Entitlement”, and to me, the frame of PTSD affects us all, and it was very affronting to see this frame crafted in the way Herman does in her book.

We’re all hurting. We’re all actually experiencing some level of PTSD on the daily. The constant use of fear as a motivator is palpable and distinct with the rising of the son, and the going down of the same.

Neither men nor women are more important when it comes to this discussion.

Neither men nor women are more entitled to have PTSD as a life marker.

Victim Exclusivity Entitlement says “My trauma is more important than your trauma”.

Herman’s book seemed to do that, because it was titled generally, and then gender restricted to women.

Trauma and Recovery is not a title that gives any sort of full disclosure that it is about the trauma of women (and children, to be fair), while excluding men, albeit a brief mention of how PTSD came into being.

I’m just here to call it out, because we all deserve the opportunity to be heard, to be seen, to cry, to heal, and to be embraced by something that resembles love or kindness.

I’m still looking. Thus far, this “something” has been a slippery fucker.

Next post, I should move on from this…

P.D., Jay V. Shore