Recently I listened
to a few talks from a series of interviews on men’s
issues that were offered on the internet as “The Ultimate
Men’s Summit: Activating 21st Century Masculinity” by
the organizers and hosts Stephan Dinan and Lion Goodman.{1}
While in most cases I am in full agreement with the
content of the talks, which I will incompletely summarize
as a need for a development in men’s consciousness that
moves towards collaboration, acknowledgement in community
of one’s woundedness, and a move away from a dominating,
power-over dynamic, I am concerned about the structure
and the way in which these qualities are being promoted.
As a child of the British Empire – my father was employed
in the British Colonial Service and I was educated in
all-male British boarding schools – I have been well
indoctrinated in the ways of patriarchy, empire and
domination, and repeatedly subjected to the rationalization
that colonization brought all the benefits of British
education, the British parliamentary system, and democracy
to the colonized people, and that we did it for their
good. Indeed without us they would still be primitive
savages. George Orwell’s doublespeak was inherent in
the imperial messages of that time, as it still is in
the orations of George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Barack
Obama. In my own development, instances of unconscious,
dominating thinking and behaviour, at odds with my declared
philosophy, have often surprised me.
Stephen Dinan’s talk with Terry Patten entitled “Growing
Altruistic Balls” raised some of my concerns in this
respect. Although I have focused on Terry’s talk, many
of my comments apply to other talks and to my own thought
processes. His was the first one I listened to and showed
many examples of the issues I am looking at. I bring
them up as I think it is essential that we look at the
cultural constructs that direct our way of thinking
and acting, often in contradiction to the very goals
that we aspire to, and that often reveal themselves
in doublespeak and contradictory language.
While this 21st century men’s movement is seeking a
change in power structure away from men being associated
with domination, and a move toward collaboration, Terry
Patten has a very competitive edge, almost an ‘us versus
them’, which I hear when he talks about women. Thus
men need a men’s movement to gain liberation, and be
powerful and strong like women:
“This is a time in which the women’s movement is strong
and are feeling very excited about the new power they
are bringing in. And it’s time for us guys to find our
own liberation, our own voice and our own way of coming
together.”
I wonder how Terry, and other men, would respond to
Chief Robert Smallboy, a Cree Elder who led a return
of his people in 1969 to their traditional values and
way of living in Alberta, Canada. Lorraine Sinclair,
a local activist, asked him in the early 1980s what
she could do. His reply: “Teach the women to heal so
that they can teach the men.” And what do men think
of a woman bringing teachings and ceremonies to the
Lakota nation in North America, as White Buffalo Calf
woman did? (John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks, 1972,
p292) Can men or women really find liberation without
each other?
Terry says later on in the talk: “What we haven’t got
much of a model for is doing that whole array of things,
in the end rising up in the way that the Founding Fathers
in the American Revolution did. Rising up the way the
guys who founded the philosophs [sic] and the enlightenment
did. The way that conscious, historically it was men
– we do this with our sisters too today – but there
is a piece of it that we do with other men that draws
on that incredible lineage that was always men alone
who turned these great corners in history.” [My emphasis]
This looks like an instance of patriarchal selective
blindness. The suggestion that men did it ‘alone’ is
a remarkable statement, dismissing any influence women
had. This reminds me of Donna Haraway commenting in
Primate Visions on how
a National Geographic documentary could describe Dian
Fossey, famous for her study of gorillas, as working
alone in Africa while at the same time showing a black
African man playing a wind instrument for her and his
wife.{2} Men
seemed to be doing it alone because of patriarchal social
structures where women were not acknowledged, did not
have a voice, were not published, or used male pseudonyms.
Democracy in Ancient Greece, that great change in consciousness,
referred only to free men – women, children and slaves
were excluded. I don’t know if there is any account
of women having an influence in the creation of Greek
democracy. Similarly, the founding of democracy in the
U.S. only referred to free men – women, children, slaves
and Native Americans were excluded - and was carried
out by the ‘Founding Fathers’ and did not include any
‘Founding Mothers.’ Ironically, the Six Nations Iroquois
Confederacy on which some of the U.S. constitution was
modeled, was a federal democracy that fully included
women.
He says “we haven’t got much of a model for doing a
whole array of things.” I think there are many models
of egalitarian, non-dominator, societies – not least
on his own doorstep - and collaborating with women to
achieve this is essential.
Terry seems very muddled about competition. At one
point he describes a hunter-gatherer myth which has
been convincingly challenged:
“What I mean is that we have evolved over time, human
beings have gone from a very ballsy survival level way
of orienting and men have been . . . their identities
have been honed in their abilities as warriors and hunters
and providers and enter into the competitive survival
of the fittest fray to really succeed and so strengthen
our capacity, so associated with our balls.”
Besides the fact that ‘survival of the fittest’ is
an imperial interpretation uttered by Herbert Spencer,
a nineteenth century British philosopher and promoter
of the British Empire, and not by Charles Darwin who
said “survival of the fit”, hunters are not competitive
– they collaborate to kill large prey, much like wolves
do. The structure of human social groups being organized
around the “man-the-hunter” model, was heavily promoted
by the primatologist Sherborn Washington and his students
in the 1950s, a projection of North American society
at that time and a model that still influences many
constructions of modern society. More recent studies
summarized in Sarah Hrdy’s Mothers and Others
(2009) support the saying “It
takes a village to raise a child,” that is, of cooperative
societies in prehistoric cultures, and in foraging and
hunter-gatherer cultures still existing in various parts
of the globe.{3}
Maturana and Varela, referring to early hominids living
in small groups, state “Through conservation of food
sharing and male participation in the care of the young,
this led to a biology of cooperation and linguistic
coordination of actions.”{4}
Child-birth, child-raising, gathering and hunting all
require cooperation.
Terry continues with men needing to be competitive
with the current [old] model: “We need to be smarter
and less wedded to our own impulses and therefore able
to out-compete the old model;” not recognizing that
‘out-competing’ is the old model and is wedded to our
impulses. He then goes on to produce a stunning oxymoron:
“Cooperation needs to out-compete competitiveness.”
Actually, I agreed with a lot of what he had to say,
especially about owning one’s vulnerability and fears.
I found it fascinating that he exemplifies this concern
I have of continuing a patriarchal model quite unconsciously
while promoting a different cooperative one.
There is a tendency to associate “balls” with assertiveness
and courage, as in “he’s got balls,” even to the extent
of ascribing “balls” to assertive women. I don’t know
of any equivalent description of being a woman, such
as “she’s got ovaries,” or “she needs to have more vagina,”
or “she’s a clitoral gal.” Assertiveness, courage, bravery,
strength, compassion, cooperation, empathy, caring,
nurturance, sensitivity, intuition are human qualities
shared by both men and women. These qualities are differentially
assigned to men and women by different cultures. Rigidly
patriarchal cultures tend to assign assertiveness, courage,
strength, and particularly, domination to the masculine;
and compassion, empathy, cooperation, caring, nurturance,
sensitivity, intuition and submission to the feminine.
I did get irritated by the equivalence of dominating
male behaviour with ‘unmediated testosterone’ and of
male behaviour in general being ascribed to testosterone
– as if one hormone describes the vast variance in male
social behaviour. Is a man who has suffered an orchiectomy,
the removal of his testicles, due to cancer or a landmine,
say, no longer a man? No longer assertive? This may
well be another example of how patriarchal/hierarchical
thinking tends towards simplifying the complex to either/or
thinking. And I think the name “Ultimate Men’s Summit”
falls into the same trap. “Ultimate” suggests the end
of the line – no further development, not evolutionary
– rather like “the war to end all wars.”
To classify men, to put them in boxes labeled “Sensitive
New Age Guy,” “Conscious Men,” and now “Twenty-first
Century Masculinity,” is to create images that men who
are not empowered, who do not have an embodied sense
of who they are, will adapt to in order to fit in. Such
fashions in male identity can easily be manipulated
and recycled for commercial purposes, in the same way
that women’s dress and body-image fashions are managed.
With amazing synchronicity, immediately after writing
the above paragraph, I received an email introducing
“The Ultimate Man,” an internet course for men.{5}
The host Lion Goodman tells the reader, an “ally,” “You
may not know this, but you’re a member of a new
breed of human being: Homo Novus”
[Lion’s emphasis]. Later, referring to descriptions
of men as the rugged individualist, the
macho guy, the corporate drone and the
1950s family provider, he writes that “being
stuck inside a particular identity isn’t just self-limiting
– it’s actually dangerous.” Aren’t “Ultimate Man” and
“Homo Novus” self-limiting, and dangerous, identities?
Being given an identity like “Ultimate Man” and “Homo
Novus” will attract those men who do not have a sense
of their own identity, do not have an embodied sense
of self. Rather than face the emptiness within, often
a result of disconnection from, or rejection of, their
parents, these men are being encouraged to pay for an
assumed identity. Yes, “being stuck inside a particular
identity” is dangerous . . . and expensive. I think
courses like “The Ultimate Man” are selling a salvation
mythology that is endemic in patriarchal culture.
The course promotes the qualities of integrity, purpose,
authenticity, connection, passion, leadership, brotherhood,
service; all qualities I am fully in accord with. My
concern is how they are promoted and the doublespeak.
For instance, authenticity comes out of being who you
are, not from being told who you are, such as “Homo
Novus.” Is “Ultimate Man” the latest hero in a long
line of comic book heroes including Captain America,
Superman, Batman, and X Men?
Of course, there is a commercial motive behind this
promotion of the latest product, Ultimate Man. Identity
and (lack of) consciousness are now commodities. Indeed,
to quote Lion Goodman: “In business terms, we are practicing
what’s called ‘Continuous Quality Improvement.’” Now
I can pay to become a new, improved me. I am the buyer
and the product. That suggests that someone is selling
me to me. I consume myself. That feels almost incestuous,
or maybe it’s ego masturbation, especially if I can
be persuaded that I need to continue to improve and
buy more of myself. And I can’t set the price. If I
don’t improve, can I get my money back? In a few years’
time will I be offered a service pack at a discount
price to update my identity to “2020 Man” with enhanced
spiritual vision?
One of the essential strategies of consumer commercialism
is to persuade potential customers that they need what
is being sold by appealing to a feeling of lack or sense
of inadequacy. For anyone who feels they are not good
enough the prospect of practicing “Continuous Quality
Improvement” could prove irresistible and addictive.
Telling men that they “belong to a new breed of human
being, ‘Homo Novus’,” is a form of branding, encouraging
loyalty to the producer of the brand, the Shift Network
in this case. The origin of branding is to claim ownership,
as in the branding of cattle. When a man identifies
himself as being “Homo Novus” is he now the property
of the producer of the brand? In a weird twist on the
slavery dynamic, is he paying to be owned?
The rumours started flying about water into wine
Giving sight to the blind and that he’d even raised
the dead.
The biggest miracle was that everyone believed it;
And that’s why Jesus wept.{6}
While being stuck inside an identity is self-limiting
and dangerous, being placed inside an identity by someone
else, especially without your permission, as in “you
may not know this, but you are a member of a new breed
of human being,” is also limiting and one of the first
steps in depersonalizing a person. This is a form of
dominance. Someone else is telling you who you are.
In the desire of many men and women to move toward
a more egalitarian way of relating in intimate, social
and political relationships, there is a great danger
of not looking at the structures, or social constructs,
that direct the way this movement toward a more equal
society is made, and hindered. I get concerned when
patriarchal myths are used as models for this change.
I use the word myth as a cultural template that guides,
usually unconsciously, the behaviour and beliefs of
the members of that culture. In this respect, there
are many healing and self-development systems based
on the Greek god and goddess myths, the characteristics
of the gods and goddesses reflecting corresponding personality
qualities. This applies equally to systems based on
the myths of Ancient Rome. However, these very archetypes
are derived from an aggressively patriarchal Greek culture,
itself informed by the spread of mid-Eastern patriarchy,
in which the female was totally dominated, excluded
from representation in the political sphere, and whose
essential participation in the procreation of human
life was denied. In Greek mythology this domination
and exclusion is represented by the many rapes of ancient
Greek women and goddesses; the execution of the female,
earth-centered qualities, as when the ‘heroic’ Perseus
decapitates the snake-headed Medusa using the tactic
of looking at her mirror image in his polished shield
and not looking directly at her; and the denial of the
natural process of procreation as in the birth of Athena
from the head of Zeus, to name a few examples. Is it
possible to view the personality qualities of any ancient
Greek god or goddess in isolation, such as the quality
of creativity associated with Zeus, without also being
influenced by the culture that underlies and informs
the images, especially as Zeus was the dominant god
and the most active rapist in the pantheon of the Greek
gods? In other words, using images from patriarchal
culture to heal the traumas engendered by patriarchal
culture is another oxymoron.
Zeus, the god of thunder, is a perfect representation
of current western imperialism that is facilitated by
a brilliant creativity in its weapons. In the modern
era his thunderstorms, with names like “blitzkrieg”
and “shock and awe,” rain down “precision” and “smart”
bombs and missiles on the just and the unjust in Libya,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, Dresden, London, and so many more. His ardent
apologist was the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who
proclaimed war as “the father of all.” This is a creativity
that is disconnected from life, from women, from children,
creating a surreal language of euphemisms such as “collateral
damage.” This is a creativity without compassion, without
caring, disconnected from the heart, as revealed in
the words of the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, Colin Powell, of Iraqi casualties at the end
of the First Gulf War: “That is really not a matter
I am terribly interested in;”{7}
and in the words of General William Westmoreland, commander
of the U.S. military in the Vietnam War, “Life is plentiful,
life is cheap in the Orient;”{8}
and of Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, "Saviour
of the Punjab" and defender of the British Raj,
after killing 379 and leaving over 1,500 wounded men,
women and children in Amritsar on April 13, 1919, who
defended his actions as teaching “a moral lesson to
the Punjab.”{9}
To return to Perseus’ killing of the Medusa: snakes
in ancient mythologies often refer to the female principle
of procreation, giving birth, the cycle of life and
death, the intelligence of the natural world; and the
killing of snakes (and dragons) represents the overcoming
and domination of these principles by men. In ancient
Greece the ultimate love was between a man and a boy
(another dominance relationship), not a man and a woman.
Thus the danger of forming a relationship with a woman,
a bonding that would honor her and threaten the domination
of men over women. To look into a woman’s eyes, to see
her and be seen, is to be invited into relationship
with a consequent loss of dominance. One of the necessary
conditions for dominating another person or peoples
is not to see or hear them, and/or dehumanize them,
to not reveal one’s inner self and to present a hardened
exterior.
Perseus’ mirror is now a computer screen in a military
base somewhere in the U.S.A. The monitor reveals the
view of a camera on a remote drone flying over a country
somewhere in the Middle East. His sword is a missile
released by a command from the computer controlling
the drone. Sometimes his sword misses and strikes an
innocent bystander. No matter, you can’t make an omelet
without breaking an egg. He no longer needs even to
dress for war and his biggest danger is the drive to
and from work. And Perseus, disguised as semi-detached
suburban Mr. James, never reveals himself, not even
to his wife and 1.9 children.
Referring to robot strikes, strategic bombing, and
usable nuclear weapons, Chalmers Johnson quotes a 2002
article in the Boston Globe Online, “All of this represents
a failure of the American imagination to grasp the real
effect on real people of such assaults. We wage war
without knowing war.”{10}
The imagination that is promoted is the imagination
of the disconnected mind; it lacks the imagination of
the heart, the imagination of compassion and empathy
that can relate to the experience and feelings of others.
Do male initiation rites based on epics such as the
Odyssey, as suggested on the cover of Robert Bly’s
Iron John: A Book About Men,{11}
support respectful relationships between men and men,
and men and women? When Odysseus returns from his heroic
travels he kills the suitors of his wife, Penelope,
then deals with the twelve women servants, i.e. slaves,
who have shamed him by sleeping with (more accurately,
being raped by) the slain suitors. He commands these
twelve women to carry out the dead, clean up the mess,
and then orders his young son, Telemachus, to murder
the women. Rather than kill them quickly by the sword,
Telemachus strangles them because they have dishonored
him and his mother. The blurb on the front flap suggests
that ancient stories and legends will “remind men and
women of welcome images long forgotten, images of a
vigorous masculinity both protective and emotionally
centered.” While I am all in favor of a ‘vigorous masculinity,’
and a ‘vigorous femininity,’ I don’t see The Odyssey
promoting an emotionally centered masculinity; rather,
it promotes a revengeful reactive response to property
damage, the property being the women, the damage being
rape or sexual intercourse with another man. The damaged
goods are destroyed. In the patriarchal scheme, protection
is one of protecting a man’s property (his women) from
other men.
And what of the Iron John story interpreted by Robert
Bly, introduced as a ‘luminary’ in the first interview
of the Ultimate Men’s Summit, a story taken on by many
in what could be loosely called the “Men’s Movement”
– what cultural paradigm does it perpetuate? How is
the society constructed? In part, the story narrates
the relationship between a young boy and the Wild Man
who the boy learns that he can call on in times of need.
The Wild Man bestows invincibility on him such that
the boy and his iron band defeat the army that was close
to defeating the king. “The enemy turned to flee, but
the boy kept after them and pursued them to the last
man.” That suggests to me that he killed them. Even
single handedly.{12}
As Terry Patten and other speakers reiterate, men need
to embrace their own vulnerability; in Terry’s words
“to see all the shame and wounding and all the complexity
inside us – that old model of simply having . . . being
identified with our strength is no longer enough.” The
story of Iron John perpetuates the illusion of invulnerability
when allied with the Wild Man. The story is also one
of class, i.e. dominance ranking. When the young boy,
who has been seen as the gardener’s boy, is revealed
as the true hero and saviour of the kingdom, the king’s
daughter agrees to be his wife by kissing him and saying:
“I already knew he was no gardener’s boy from his golden
hair.”{13} Besides
suggesting that a gardener’s boy couldn’t have the necessary
manly heroic qualities, it also suggests that women
want invincible men.
The hero is an essential component of a salvation mythology
that has accompanied the progression of patriarchy for
at least the last 4,000 years. For people who are oppressed
in a system of domination like patriarchy, the promise
of a saviour gives hope for a better future. Usually
the saviour is a single man like Jesus, whose egalitarian
message was co-opted by the dominator system, or Adolph
Hitler, who epitomized that system. More recently comic
book heroes have filled the role including Superman,
briefly and tragically embodied in Barack Obama by a
disheartened population who projected their need for
relief on a single mortal human; a projection that was
skillfully managed by the PR industry until he was elected
president. Over the last few hundred years we have been
given salvation visions of utopias promised by a science
and technology that produces its own collateral damage
of radiation and chemical poisoning, species extinction,
oceans and seas with anoxic ‘dead zones’ and devastated
fish populations, and global warming, a damage we may
not recover from.
Current narratives continue the theme of the hero and
of war, and thus dominance, as the solution to problems
of ‘good’ and ‘evil’: Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings,
George Lucas’ Star Wars series, which Joseph
Campbell approvingly related to the great hero myths,
and now James Cameron’s Avatar. Men in modern
spiritual systems are encouraged to use this warrior
energy for peaceful means, yet the very descriptions
are confusing if not contradictory as in Dan Millman’s
Peaceful Warrior. A statement attributed to
Dan Millman, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but
the conquering of it," perpetuates a theme of domination,
this time over an internal experience or emotion. This
has much in common with a Christian hymn I grew up with:
“Onward! Christian Soldiers marching as to war” spreading
Jesus’ message of peace by conquering the unfaithful.
The military-religious complex is still with us.
The last few decades have seen a long line of wars
that have included “The War on Cancer,” “The War on
Poverty,” “The War on AIDS,” “The War on Drugs,” not
forgetting the many military wars including Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya and others, subsumed under the eternal “War on
Terror,” renamed now though ever-present, that are prosecuted
by terrorizing civilian populations. O, I did forget
one . . . “The War of the Sexes.” While Heraclitus might
claim war to be the father of all, James Madison, one
of the authors of the U.S. Constitution, recognized
war to be the parent of the most dreaded enemies of
public liberty: “Of all enemies to public liberty, war
is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises
and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent
of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes, and debts,
and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the
many under the domination of the few.”{14}
Military discipline and military values that are promoted
in wars, whether military of otherwise, are “incompatible
with the openness of civilian life.”{15}
According to Chalmers Johnston these military values
include “loyalty, esprit de corps, tradition, male bonding,
discipline, and action.”{16}
The danger of all these war myths and actual wars,
past and current, is of repeating the domination theme
of patriarchy, by men and women, for a particular ‘good’,
rather than seeking balance within oneself and in relationships
between women and men, men and men, women and women,
within and between our societies, and within the ecosystem
of the earth.
Images from myths are extremely powerful. Colonel Lawrence
Wilkerson suggests, in an interview with Paul Jay on
TheRealNews.com{17},
of going to fight in the Vietnam War that “Everybody
goes in, I think, or most people go in with this naive
aspiration of being a knight errant, you know, . . .
on a white charger or whatever.” This was before he
learned that the Vietnam War and subsequent wars had
nothing to do with “Truth, Justice and the American
Way.” Daniel Ellsberg describing the myth of U.S. military
culture in his autobiography Secrets: A Memoir of
Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, writes: “I came
from a culture in which the concept of enemy was central,
seemingly indispensable – the culture of Rand, the U.S.
Marine Corps, the Defense and State departments, international
and domestic politics, game theory and bargaining theory.
. . . To try to operate in the world of men and nations
without the concept of enemy would have seemed as difficult,
as nearly inconceivable as doing arithmetic, like the
Romans, without a zero.”{18}
This was in contrast to a woman, Janaki, from India
that Daniel Ellsberg overheard saying, “I come from
a culture in which there is no concept of enemy.” Later
he refers to his earlier “tacit, unquestioned belief
that we had a right to ‘win,’ in ways defined by us
(that is, by the president).”{19}
This continuation of the myth of Manifest Destiny, of
a chosen people, is not peculiar to U.S. military culture,
it is the mainstay of imperialism, colonialism and the
domination of one group over another throughout recorded
history.
I fully agree with Robert Bly that many men in modern
Western culture are separated from their fathers, disconnected
from them, rejecting them or seeking to dominate them;
and that the father-son relationship is more harmonious
and strengthening in traditional societies where disrespect
of a parent is unheard of. When a man loses connection
with his father, when he doesn’t have a father or male
ancestor to stand behind him, he loses strength. For
a woman, rejection and loss of connection with her mother
has a similar effect. Also very common in Western culture.
In recent years, rejection of parents has been abetted
by many psychological and psychiatric clinicians who
have encouraged blaming and disowning parents and family.
Rather than looking for father in a king-as-father-in-law
or king-as-Wild-Man, as suggested by Robert Bly’s interpretation
of Iron John, my experience is that a man’s strength
comes through bonding to his own biological father,
however flawed, even for a man who was adopted at birth
and never knew his father. In this respect I find the
approach of Bert Hellinger who originated the Family
Constellations systemic work to be the most promising.
In the patriarchal institutional system, a man’s power
is determined by his ranking: dominant over those below
him, and submissive to those above him. Such a power
is not an empowered one, it is an assigned power. Thus,
Stephen and Ondrea Levine in Embracing the Beloved
can ask who would want the authority of being the President
“except one who has a profound sense of powerlessness?”
Such a person requires “power in order to maintain their
fragile self-image.”{20}
By empowered I mean an ability to express oneself authentically
without a dominating (power-over) or submissive (power-under)
stance. The increase of women’s empowerment in many
of today’s Western societies is a threat to men who
depend on this assigned power of dominance and who do
not have an embodied connection to their own empowerment.
Much of the current epidemic of Western men traveling
to impoverished Global South countries to hire prostitutes
can be seen as a lack of empowerment in those men and
their seeking opportunities to dominate, for a short
or long period of time, a woman or child, so that they
have control over them and what they do; that they submit
to the man. Victor Malarek in his book The John’s:
Sex For Sale And The Men Who Buy It reports statements
of many men who reveal this dominating, disempowered
theme.{21}
In my work with couples I often see that it is the
man who cannot speak for himself in the relationship
even though he may be ‘in charge’ of many employees
at work. The loss of socially condoned dominance in
intimate relationships for many men means facing an
inner lack of empowerment. I don’t think this can be
facilitated by healing modalities that have an institutional
structure of ranking. This can be a great challenge,
as just about all institutional forms in our Western
culture are based on a pyramid with tiers of dominance/submission,
whether actualized by men, women, or both. While the
Catholic Church subscribes most blatantly to an all-male
dominant model, many other Christian sects and religions
act in a similar fashion. The military, the legal system,
the civil service, education (primary, secondary, tertiary),
medicine, science, social services, police, banking
and financial institutions, corporations, most businesses,
are non-democratic forms of this model. Though such
institutions are no longer patriarchal in the sense
that only men have power-over in them and women have
been co-opted into them, the deep frame, to use George
Lakoff’s terminology,{22}
is still the energy of patriarchy, of domination.
One of the most important aspects of feminism has been,
and is, to critique patriarchy and hierarchical structure
in all aspects of our Western culture. Yet such a critique
from within the culture must reflect on, struggle with,
and face being “Pervaded by and reproducing the very
logics of domination and appropriation it struggles
against.”{23}
One step in not reproducing these logics of domination
and appropriation is to examine the stories and language
we use that contribute to domination. Another is to
listen to and learn from those cultures that exist outside
the mainstream patriarchal system, most notably aboriginal
peoples. The danger persists in interpreting their experience
through a patriarchal, hierarchical perspective and
in appropriating teachings and rituals out of context
– a frequent complaint of those cultures. Like Marshall
McLuhan’s famous observation of communications technology,
that “the medium is the message,” the way men’s healing
and change in consciousness is promoted, taught, facilitated,
is the message. Using patriarchal myths, war
metaphors, and dominating relationships to lead us to
a peaceful and egalitarian society, a society that can
live with the earth rather than against it, can result
in yet another oxymoron of “conquering patriarchy,”
or maybe “equality needs to out-dominate domination,”
and the likelihood of continuously repeating the story
of Aldous Huxley’s Animal Farm.
------------------------------
1: The talks are available at: http://ultimatemenssummit.com/calendar
2: Donna Haraway, Primate Visions, 1989, Routledge,
New York & London, p154
3: Sarah Hrdy, Mothers and Others, 2009, Belknap
Press, Cambridge & London, chapter 3
4: Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, The
Tree Of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Understanding,
1987, New Science Library, Boston & London, p222
5: http://ultimatemancourse.com/course/UltimateMan
6: Ralph McTell, “Jesus Wept” from the album Sand
in Your Shoes, 1995
7: Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress,
2007, City Light Books, San Francisco, p80
8: Hearts and Minds, documentary, 1974
9: http://www.amritsar.com/Jallian%20Wala%20Bagh.shtml
(this massacre was vividly portrayed in the movie Gandhi,
1982, starring Ben Kingsley)
10: Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 2004,
Metropolitan Books, New York, p78
11: Iron John: A Book About Men, 1990, Addison-Wesley,
Reading, Mass.
12: ibid, p256
13: ibid, p258
14: quoted by Chalmers Johnson in Sorrows of Empire,
p45
15: ibid
16: ibid, p58
17: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6870
18: Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam
and the Pentagon Papers, 2002, Viking, Penguin
Books, p211
19: ibid, p247
20: Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Embracing the Beloved,
1995, Anchor Books, New York, p272
21: Victor Malarek in his book The John’s: Sex For
Sale And The Men Who Buy It, 2009, Key Porter,
Toronto
22: George Lakoff, Thinking Points: Communicating
our American Values and Vision, 2006, Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, p29.
23: Donna Haraway, Primate Visions, p287
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