#31forRAY is a month long letter writing campaign starting October 1st inviting men to write letters to Ray Rice dealing with violence, masculinity, accountability. Each day throughout October, we will upload a letter written by black, brown, red, yellow, white men to this ‘emotional justice’ Tumblr. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.                    Want to join this campaign? Want to write a letter?
Here’s how:- Address your letter: 'Dear Ray.’ Answer 1 or more of the following questions;- 1) Talk about an experience of domestic violence you witnessed as a boy? 2) What impact did witnessing the violence have on you? 3) What action did the men in your family or community take towards that men? 4) Why do you think men say domestic violence is 'none of my business’ 5) How do men contribute to a culture that blames, judges, accuses women for intimate partner violence? 6) What would you say to Ray about accountability, not 'making a mistake’ but engaging in 'a deliberate act? 7) What other points do you want to make? Sign your letter as you choose - with your name, initial, pls include location THEN: Email: theswagspot7@gmail.com

Ray Rice, Janay Palmer Rice

I’m a dad too. The most difficult thing to accept for me as a parent is the limits of my own powerlessness.

I want to raise my son to reject interpersonal violence. I want to raise my son to see women as potential friends not potential conquests or objects to project upon his hostility or frustrations,  I want to raise my son to never find himself at 30 years old and having to unpack all the patriarchal bullshit handed down to him like some kind of toxic family heirloom. And yet at the same time I also don’t want my son to see me as some kind of all-seeing God who he is always trying to please. (We’ve had enough of that in previous generations of my family)

I want to give him the space and the freedom to figure out who he wants to be in this world. and this is where the powerlessness comes in. Even if I was a 24-7 helicopter parent, there are no “nuclear family” solutions to intimate partner violence. This is our culture. This is about how that culture affects my son’s peer group, his sports teams, his music, and the other adults who undoubtedly will impact his life.

This is a culture in desperate need of changing or all the possible work I do with my son can be for nothing. At the same time, I don’t want to undersell how important it is to communicate with my boy about the kind of person he might want to be. It’s easier said than done- profoundly easier said than done - but we have to do both: stand with women’s liberation and take the time with our children to listen to their issues with a world that can seem - no matter your gender, sexuality or skin color - as instinctually unjust.

My son - he’s six - recently asked me why there was such a thing as International Women’s Day but not International Men’s Day for him to celebrate. I told him that we also celebrate International Women’s Day because we want his mom, his sister, his cousin, and all his friends to be able to get the most out of life. That was our first ever discussion about what solidarity is all about. It won’t be the last.

1 dad to another
Dave Zirin