A Decolonized Guide to Accountability, Shame, and Becoming Someone Safe
Trigger Warning
The following writing explores trauma, survival responses, power dynamics, gendered violence, political themes, and the emotional impact of unsafe societies and relationships.
Please, check in with your body and nervous system before reading. Step away at any time if you feel overwhelmed.
Preface
This piece is not an accusation — it is an invitation.
An invitation for men to sit in a place culture rarely allows them to enter: honest self-examination without defensiveness, distortion, or denial. “What if I’m the bad guy?” is a question many men feel but almost none will say out loud, because the world taught you that admitting harm makes you weak, and ignoring it makes you strong. But strength is not the absence of accountability. Strength is the willingness to confront the ways you’ve absorbed, inherited, or benefitted from patterns that hurt the women you care about — even when you didn’t intend to.
This essay asks you to look inward not to punish yourself, but to free yourself from the scripts that were handed to you long before you knew you were following them. To see the difference between masculinity that protects and masculinity that dominates. To notice the subtle behaviors that fracture trust, shape intimacy, and turn love into a battleground.
If you choose to read this, read with courage. Read with curiosity instead of shame. Read with the understanding that accountability is not a verdict — it is a doorway. And on the other side of that doorway is a version of you that is more grounded, more self-aware, more capable of real connection, and more powerful than the one who avoids the mirror.
This isn’t about being “the bad guy.”
It’s about deciding who you want to be next.
Homicide Patterns
While men commit most homicides against women—often intimate partners or family members—women still represent a smaller share of total homicide victims compared to men.
In 2021 US data, 34% of female murder victims were killed by intimate partners, versus just 6% of male victims.
Globally, over half of female homicides (58%) involve intimate partners or family, but men dominate overall homicide rates due to other violence like gang activity.
Canadian Context
In Canada, women and girls face disproportionate risk from known perpetrators, with 77% of cleared female homicides by males classified as gender-related (e.g., intimate partners).
It’s obvious why that trend is bad for women. But what about the system is shaping the brains of large scale violence in men?
A man sexually hurting or spying on a woman inflicts profound, self-destructive damage to his own brain, creating a vicious cycle of neurological deterioration, emotional dysregulation, and escalating familial and interpersonal dysfunction.[1][2][3][5][6]
The Neurological Rewiring: Amygdala Shrinkage and Prefrontal Atrophy
Violent acts shrink the amygdala (fear/empathy center) while eroding prefrontal cortex (moral reasoning, impulse control), mimicking psychopathic brain patterns. fMRI studies show perpetrators exhibit reduced gray matter in empathy regions, blunted oxytocin response, and hyperactive reward circuits hijacked for dominance highs—turning violation into addiction. Spying (voyeurism) floods dopamine pathways like porn, desensitzing pleasure centers, requiring escalation to real harm for arousal.[6][11][12][1]
Trauma Backfire: Perpetrator PTSD and Dissociation
Perpetrators develop “perpetrator PTSD”: flashbacks, hypervigilance, dissociation, and intrusive guilt/shame loops, as violence confronts their own unresolved trauma.
Longitudinal data reveals 30-50% experience chronic anxiety/depression post-act, with cortisol dysregulation mirroring victims’. Spying creates paranoia (fear of exposure), eroding trust networks and fostering isolation.[2][3][5][1][6]
The research shows that trauma creates and recreates trauma through epigenetics and socialization.
Perpetrators in this vicious cycle may eventually reach a moment of collapse, clarity, or reckoning where the question hits:
“What if I’m the bad guy?”
Not the misunderstood one.
Not the traumatized one.
Not the flawed-but-trying one.
The actual one who caused harm —
maybe even to women or children, the people society should protect first.
Now, what!?
If you’re asking this question, you’re already further along the path of transformation than you think is possible— because real villains never self-reflect.
But the question is still real.
And the fear underneath it — fear of judgment, exposure, shame, punishment, retribution — is real too.
So here is the truth, without softness and without cruelty:
You may have caused harm.
You may have acted from addiction, ego, trauma, ignorance, or cowardice.
You may have hurt people who deserved safety, not pain.
But that doesn’t mean the story is over.
It means the story is beginning.
The only real danger is refusing to look.
⸻
1. Yes — harming women or children is seriously significant psychologically, epigenetically, politically, spiritually, and culturally.
But avoidance keeps you stuck in the old self.
This isn’t something to downplay.
Harm is harm.
Impact is impact.
But the point is not whether you are “good” or “bad.”
The point is whether you will stay the version of yourself who did that, or whether you will dismantle him piece by piece.
Avoidance keeps harm in motion.
Accountability ends it. That means facing fear and trauma head on.
⸻
2. The question “Am I the bad guy?” is a sign you’re waking up — not an admission of evil.
People who are truly dangerous:
• don’t question themselves
• don’t feel guilt
• don’t self-reflect
• don’t confront their own patterns
If you are even asking this question, it means your conscience is alive.
It means you are capable of transformation.
It means the part of you that wants to be better is louder than the part that wants to hide.
That matters.
⸻
3. Your harmful behavior didn’t come from nowhere — it came from unexamined wounds.
This does not excuse harm.
But it explains its roots so you can prevent it from happening again.
People do hurtful things when they feel:
• angry
• powerless
• unseen
• dysregulated
• addicted
• ashamed
• lonely
• traumatized
• confused
• afraid
Most harmful actions are survival strategies that outlived their usefulness and became destructive.
Understanding their origin is the first step toward disarming them.
⸻
4. Shame feels like death — but running from it keeps you dangerous.
Shame tells you:
• “You’re irredeemable.”
• “You deserve to disappear.”
• “If people knew, you’d be destroyed.”
• “Better to hide than to face it.”
Shame convinces people to:
• deny
• blame
• minimize
• justify
• collapse
• avoid accountability
But shame doesn’t make you safer.
Shame makes you stagnant.
When you face shame instead of running from it, you become able to change.
⸻
5. Accountability is not self-punishment — it’s self-reconstruction.
People confuse accountability with humiliation.
But real accountability is not about destroying yourself.
It is about rebuilding yourself.
Accountability includes:
• telling the truth (to yourself, possibly to others)
• acknowledging impact without defensiveness
• accepting legal, relational, and financial consequences
• seeking treatment or professional support
• identifying the beliefs that enabled the harm
• committing to new behavioral standards
• rebuilding trust through consistent action
You don’t become better by hating yourself.
You become better by confronting yourself.
Karma is a seed that grows. Dysfunction breeds further dysfunction.
⸻
6. Fear of judgment and retribution is natural — but it cannot be the driver.
If you’ve caused harm, especially to women or children, fear will rise up like a tidal wave:
• fear of being seen
• fear of being exposed
• fear of being punished
• fear of losing love
• fear of being labeled forever
• fear of becoming the monster in people’s minds
These fears are real — but they cannot guide your decisions.
Fear-based avoidance only deepens the harm and prolongs the suffering.
Facing the truth hurts once.
Avoiding it hurts forever.
⸻
7. You can become someone safe — but only if you choose the path of transformation.
Becoming someone decent is not theoretical.
It is practical.
It looks like:
• enrolling in trauma-informed therapy
• entering perpetrator-focused treatment (yes, it exists)
• joining accountability programs
• removing yourself from environments where harm can repeat
• regulating your nervous system
• learning nonviolent communication
• building emotional intelligence
• practicing empathy through action, not words
You cannot undo the past.
You can prevent its repetition.
⸻
8. Redemption is not instant — it is earned through changed behavior over time.
Not:
• apologies
• promises
• tears
• guilt
• explanations
But:
• consistency
• humility
• boundaries
• responsibility
• transformation
• repair when possible and safe
• a new way of relating to others
• a new way of relating to yourself
Redemption is not given.
It is built.
Slowly.
Daily.
Deliberately.
The truth:
You’re not the bad guy.
You’re the version of yourself who hasn’t finished transforming yet.
There is no growth without reckoning.
There is no integration without shadow work.
There is no transformation without accountability.
If you’ve harmed someone, your path is not to disappear.
Your path is to evolve into someone who cannot — and will not — do that again.
This is not about self-forgiveness.
It’s about self-creation.
You are not defined by the worst thing you have done.
You are defined by what you do next.
You don’t need to be witnessed to do it.
She doesn’t need to know. She doesn’t need to forgive you. Just be better now.
8 Steps to decolonize as a healthy man
Sources
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health[1]
Title: “The Colonial Roots of Violence Against Native American Women”
URL: https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/colonial-roots-violence-against-native-american-women
Date: 2025-08-17
Relevance: Links colonial trauma to intergenerational violence cycles, perpetrator mental health erosion, and empathy deficits from historical abuse patterns.[1]
PMC / Medical Journal[2]
Title: “Patterns and dynamics of conflict-related sexual violence”
URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12505701/
Date: 2025-10-07
Relevance: Details perpetrator trauma backfire (PTSD-like symptoms, dissociation) and neurochemical dysregulation (cortisol, adrenaline) in conflict abusers.[2]
European University Institute, Centre for Media Pluralism[3]
Title: “Freedom of Expression and Pluralism in the Digital Age”
URL: https://cmpf.eui.eu/freedom-of-expression-and-pluralism-in-the-digital-age-the-role-of-national-media-watchdogs/
Date: 2018-10-09
Relevance: Discusses surveillance-induced paranoia/isolation in power dynamics, paralleling spying’s trust erosion.[3]
The Conversation[4]
Title: “How colonialism is a major cause of domestic abuse against women around the world”
URL: https://theconversation.com/how-colonialism-is-a-major-cause-of-domestic-abuse-against-women-around-the-world-179257
Date: 2022-04-24
Relevance: Perpetrator longitudinal mental health decline (anxiety/depression) from colonial violence reenactment.[4]
Wiley / Journal of Business Finance & Accounting[5]
Title: “Press Freedom and Systemic Risk”
URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jbfa.12855
Date: 2025-02-09
Relevance: Systemic stress (cortisol dysregulation) in high-stakes control environments, extended to dominance addiction.[5]
The Bridgehead[6]
Title: “Even remote Indigenous peoples are getting addicted to porn”
URL: https://thebridgehead.ca/2024/06/27/even-remote-indigenous-peoples-are-getting-addicted-to-porn/
Date: 2024-06-26
Relevance: Dopamine desensitization/escalation from voyeuristic content, mirroring spying-to-harm progression.[6]
Australian Institute of Criminology[7]
Title: “Pornography awareness: A process of engagement with Northern Territory Indigenous communities”
URL: https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/tbp034.pdf
Relevance: Reward circuit hijacking in addiction models, linking visual surveillance to prefrontal atrophy.[7]
These sources substantiate neurological (amygdala/prefrontal), trauma (PTSD/dissociation), and addiction claims via conflict studies, epigenetics, and behavioral data on abusers/perpetrators.[2][3][4][5][6]
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