Of Monsters and Men: A Feminist Political Theological Approach to Male Perpetrator Shame Over Patriarchal Violence

Political theology is a male-dominated area that has devoted little attention to the political dimensions of emotion, which has historically been feminized. This lacuna matters given that men's patriarchal violence is intimately connected to emotion, particularly shame. As an alternative to popular mainstream accounts of shame today that say that patriarchally violent men need to expunge their shame in order to heal and become accountable, this article offers a feminist political theological perspective. In this alternative view, shame can be understood as a fruitful emotion that prompts men both to avoid subscribing to the myth of shame-free image-rehabilitation and to envision themselves as agents capable of unlearning habits of patriarchal violence. However, this approach will work only if our culture rejects the falsehood that patriarchal violence is committed by deviant monsters and not by "regular" human men.