I am a man. I am a black man. I am raising my son as a single parent and I am unemployed. I parted from my wife because she beat me. The best I could do to be in the relationship was to keep silent, walk away or feel scared or drink to feel 'ok' in her presence. Coming home from work was a nightmare because I felt scared to come home.

I am one of a large group of men that are working on their issues, supported by other men having issues like these. To my knowledge I have not infected a woman with STI let alone HIV-AIDS yet I have been to the clinic several times to clean STI infection that contracted from women that I would have slept with after having negotiated for some time on building trust to eventually stop using the condom. In fact because I have a weak, insecure disposition when I am with a woman, I learnt from a very young age to not speak my mind or stand for myself because as a child each time that I did stand up to my mother I got a whacking and beatings that left neighbours wondering whether I would be alive the next day or not. My father was away in the city working, coming home on leave once, perhaps to make another baby. I remember me being asked a day after the beating by a neighbour, what I had done wrong and no one I remember of stood up to my mother to say what she was doing was impacting me in a negative way, oh! that is a lie, a few times I heard them ask once in a while but in passing. My alternative was to play a "yes" person to my mother and never got to be the man but a submissive one to my mother. I have carried this into all my relationships with women whether intimate or in the work environment. I feel afraid when I am with a woman because I do not know when is what is the right thing to do or to say. Her look intimidates me into submission and to gain my freedom I gave her what I think it is that she wanted. At the moment of writing I am feeling sad after reading some of the replies on this discussion. When I read responses that have an intonation that seems to suggest that the men should decide what happens in an intimate relationship I feel the weight of a burden that is put on the shoulders of the man in an intimate relationship when, in my view, the power to determine what happens is not wholly for the man alone to use.

I have joined a group of men. This group is holding trainings twice a year. The trainings help us men to look at our internal struggles and the issues that we carry in our society, particularly how to accept that we have feelings. As well as the impact of that which we do to ourselves as men and that impact the wife and the child when in I am in my dysfunctional mode. I personally have grown from the silent, ashamed, timid and avoiding man who used manipulation and people pleasing behaviour into one who can see his beauty and admit to the responsibility that which my actions are doing in my family BUT first I had to address that which my pain is doing to me. I could not do it alone and the help I get is fierce challenging facilitation from the men with whom I sit in a circle with and start exploring how to receive and to give love in a healthy way. It is not easy and it is painful work to admit to what is rightly pointed out in some of the replies in the discussion forum here.

Power is with us both. One of us chooses to give away their power and the other uses it dysfunctionally. For me that is where the problem is, among others. When I read that men should decide or are the ones who are doing the wrong and the bad in an intimate relationship hence are solely responsible for spreading HIV-AIDS, I feel sad, angry and ashamed and guilty. I feel singled out, isolated and humiliated. The worst of that is the shame that I carry. I feel afraid to start doing anything about it because I tell myself that I need to have an ally to work with until I met this group of men. I feel isolated as is what anger does and if I happenned to be with other people I forced myself to be invisible in the group and if there was food I would eat more than what is healthy so as to suppress the discomfort of being with other people. When I used to drink, that too was the easiest until it did not work, until the beatings also got worse in the home, and I drank more to cover up for what was going on inside me.

What would work for me is, yes, let us work with young people, yet through conversation and not domination(this is what you should do), How do I negotiate my way through the social pressures to fit in when I do not have or know of a space where I could understand the intricacies of what is going on inside me. "Boys don't cry" does not work for me anymore.

When I read or hear some women speak about that the spreading of HIV-AIDS is mainly because men themselves on the woman therefore it is up to the men to find help, I ask myself "what are you doing in the meantime?In fact, in some responses my reading understanding switches into hearing "You are the one to blame" "You are the cause of this". I shut down in this moment such that I might not 'hear' the meaning of the response fully.

I agree that I am responsible for the way the HIV-AIDS is spreading. I also know that I have power to do something. I can be accountable to my actions. I can keep agreement and promises with my partner. I can let go of the need to fit in. YES I am part of the equation, and would like to invite my partner (If I am heterosexual(which I am) my partner is a woman/If I was gay my partner would be a man) to use your power to say NO. It is not easy to start today saying NO and it does not get switched on in a day yet there is something about it that we both bring into the problem, how can we start to work on respecting each other's wants and needs without coercing, blaming, manipulation, threatening. What is going on for you when you are blaming me? I feel that you are also afraid or perhaps angry but I will not know it until we share a platform for us to share that. One thing that comes up in our trainings is the impact brought about the complex issues leading to the father being absent in the home and the impact of the dysfunctional loving care of the mother. Where in your caring as a mother do you strip off the man's manhood? I am raising these questions so as a way for us to have a conversation and not to 'return' blame. I might side-step the issue by raising the 'mother' role in it and would like us to focus on solution and opportunity that this pandemic is bringing up for us particularly open debate and conversation that brings us closer than separate. How do we do that and where, if when is the issue for me.

Definitely, the patriarchal system of our society can be and need to be interrogated due to the unearned privilege of me being a man, the rank that I have as a social capital investment in society while on the other hand, how does my power help me or destroy me. When I am not powerful I use force, how do I manage myself in such a way that I feel balance inside me.

Article Link:http://www.skills-universe.com/group/hivaidsrelatedissues/forum/top...

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