How Male Therapists Heal Female Patients

The life many women were denied and now wish to lead is one of autonomy, respect and authenticity

My first duty was to sign a paper acknowledging that if a prisoner were to take me hostage, I would not be negotiated for. “Sets a bad precedent,” explained the sheriff. So everyday I went to work, I prayed I would not be raped. And everyday, as I clocked out, I said out loud, “Not today.”

When I finished working at the mental health jail, I realized that I was no longer at risk of being raped. And then it hit me: women never get to feel this.

And then it hit me again: to empathize with a woman’s fear, I had to be in a jail. I was surrounded by larger males, some of whom were unstable, sex offenders, and volatile. That is many women’s experience of our society.

I got to leave jail. Women don’t get to leave an unsafe society.

Men shouldn’t have to work in jail to relate to women outside jail. Men shouldn’t have to realize women get to feel safe only insofar as I did in jail.

Relating to women is a key psychological task for men because women, as James Brown sang, “live in a man’s world,” just as neurotypical clinicians carry the psychological task of relating to individuals with ADHD or…