People Yell in My Face Every Weekend. I Find It Therapeutic

And it exemplifies some of the societal pressures faced by men

Photo by Dmitry Demidov on Pexels

I’m part of a group that hosts protests and other community outreach events. We also work to help other groups that do the same thing. My role at these, outside of being an organizer, is usually to talk to the media and to do what we call “de-escalation.”

For the most part, de-escalation just means that when counterprotestors show up at events, which is becoming increasingly common, I go and make sure that things don’t get too heated between them and the people on our side. In particular, we want to make sure there’s no violence.

I perform this task by just going and standing by the counterprotestors, letting them vituperate me as they see fit, and telling the attending protestors to just go ahead and ignore them. I rarely say a word to the agitators, except perhaps for a forceful, “Watch out for people’s personal space” when the situation calls for it.

They have a First Amendment right to be there, same as us. And if they’re die hard enough to come out and counterprotest, they’re not going to have ears for any opposing viewpoints, so it’s best we just don’t engage, and I basically function like a wall to try to keep it that way.