Inner Work and Gender
Justice ~ Page 5
Bert: You had another quote in your book. "The wellspring of renewal
and nurturance that runs through an intact community is relatively dry
in our current culture. Driven by thirst, women and men jostle for
position at the few available waterholes rather than cooperate in
digging deeper wells, capable of sustaining everyone."
Elizabeth: That’s the conflict we’ve been talking about in our gender
justice conferences, in really beginning to work together as women and
men. If we were to go into the workplace and work together, the
changes that could be made would be far more extensive than anything
we’ve seen so far. And that’s true for our family systems, our
educational systems, our political systems, every aspect of our
society.
In our book we quote from Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth, that if we
we're to stop being divided by gender conflict, the enormous political
power and the spiritual force that would come out would be enormous.
We don't even have a glimmer of what would happen if we stopped the
gender way.
Aaron: We should not be naive about the forces that are trying to
perpetuate the gender conflict. Advertising, The role of the media.
The power structure is run by the producers of products. What
advertisers have realized is that the best way to get people to buy
products is to get them to feel that they lack something. To create a
sense of insuifficiency.
Feminists have done a pretty good job of analyzing what’s happened to
women, that the media has made women feel insufficient around their
beauty. The other message is that if you consume these products, you
will become beautiful enough, and you’ll feel good about yourself as a
person.
But what are you becoming beautiful enough for? To attract a certain
kind of man, a wealthy and powerful man. Men are being told by the
advertisers that they are insufficient as men. You need this Lexus in
order to attract a beautiful woman. We’re constantly being bombarded
with these messages that say that you are not enough, you don’t have
enough, you don’t do enough, who you are is not enough. If you consume
these products you will be enough. The way that you know that you are
enough is that you will attract someone from the other sex who is
enough. You will attract the alpha male or the alpha female. That’s
really driving us all nuts.
Bernetta: Right, because there never is enough.
Aaron: The guy with the Lexus also has an ulcer and an alcohol
problem. What we want is a man who is totally focused on his work, who
works 12 to 14 hours a day and can't be there for his kids. Who
doesn’t even have enough energy to make love to his wife. That’s the
shadow of the alpha male.
What guy really wants to be with a woman who spends her whole day in
front of a mirror, who has to constantly visit the plastic surgeon,
and who spends all of her money on clothes. When you get right down to
it, there’s this enormous shadow to the beauty thing. But we’re all
heavily addicted to the beautiful woman. There’s a part of us that
never feels whole unless we have what Warren Farrell calls the
"genetic celebrity."
Women are just as addicted to men’s productive power. We hear all the
time that women never feel valued as a woman unless the man is
producing, making more money than they are. There are all of these
social forces that push us into these stereotypes, so we will consume
more. Those are powerful influences that we see in every newspaper and
magazine, on television and in the movies.
Gloria Steinem and other feminists say they really want men who will
be schoolteachers and homemakers, but who are they going for?
Multi-millionaire businessmen. Jane Fonda is with Ted Turner, not the
kind nurturer down the street who might be a fine schoolteacher or
reforesting the planet. Those kinds of men get very little
celebration, praise or admiration. Women reinforce men being jerks
when they admire how much money a man makes. Men reinforce women to be
witches when the only thing they reinforce or admire in women is how
well they sharpen their beauty power. We drive one another crazy by
reinforcing these stereotypes. To the degree that we can work on
ourselves and free ourselves of these stereotypes, we can heal
ourselves by looking at the intrinsic worth of people rather than the
superficial images.
In our gender diplomacy conferences men can reveal themselves as who
they are to women, and women can reveal who they really are to men. We
get different mirrorings in the community. We start to get a sense of
what it’s like to be living in a community with one another, and helps
to break down these stereotypes that we’re conditioned to.
Bernetta: If we don’t heal our personal wounds, then we reflect the
wounds of the community. It’s like being a victim. But if we heal our
wounds, we have a chance to develop community.
Bernetta: The man feels the woman is responsible for the relationship.
Aaron: That’s right. But if the guy can make connection with six or
eight other guys, that he shares intimacy with, and in the group they
have a sense of beauty and magic, mystery and play, those guys can be
his confidants, his friends, his allies. That takes a lot of pressure
off of the personal relationship.
Then he’s not coming to her empty, half a person. He can say, "I’m
getting nourished by my relationships with other men. Maybe things
aren’t going well in my relationship with my woman. I have someone
else to talk to. I’m having trouble in my work. Slipping in my
recovery Just having a bad day. I’m afraid." There's someone else to
talk to. So it’s a great blessing for women. He comes to the table
more full. The relationship is not so much about filling our
emptiness, but about sharing our fullness.
Women need to realize that this is also threatening to them. On the
one hand, women love to see the man being more emotionally
independent. But there’s also a power that women have over men. That
power is lost. That’s why there’s such a backlash against the men’s
movement. Not because the men are a bunch of Neanderthals running
around in the woods, but because men are learning how to get some of
their emotional needs met from other men. That diminishes women’s
negative power, their hold over men.
The same thing is true of women moving into the workplace. On the one
hand, it takes a lot of pressure off of the relationship if women are
not so dependent on men economically. They can hold their own in the
relationship and make the same amount of money as the man. Fix the
car. Fix the roof. Do dangerous work. Learn martial arts, so if a
burglar comes in it’s not just the man that’s expected to face him.
That’s wonderful for men, for women to claim their assertiveness and
their abilities in the world. The men don't have to be heroes and
full-time bodyguards and breadwinners. But it’s also threatening. Men
think the same thing that women think. If he doesn’t need me so much
emotionally, maybe he’ll leave. Maybe if she doesn't need me so much
economically, she may leave. So men lose some of their power in the
relationship.
But we need to understand that this way of holding relationships
together is very dysfunctional. It’s about power. Women’s emotional
power over men, and men’s economic power over women. There are
definitely risks involved in this healing process. The way people come
together is not so much in taking hostages as it is with a sense of
mutual respect, shared interests, love, and mutual appreciation, in
which men have an equal level of emotional and nurturing power, and
women have an equal degree of political and economic power in the
relationship. We’re talking about a whole new organization for
relationships between women and men.
But if we’re going to talk about equality, it’s got to be this kind of
conversation. Equality is not just women taking on the privileges that
men have, but none of the responsibilities. It’s not just women saying
"We want to fly jets and get the big salaries that come with being
officers," but not being subject to the draft the way men are. That’s
not justice. That’s not equality. That’s just trading one set of
privileges for another. But this other idea of gender justice, gender
diplomacy, egalitarianism, balance and fairness in relationships
brings about another hope.
Aaron: We can't exist in isolation from one another. Ultimately we
must come together and forge community together. We want to do this
from a position of mutual strength, rather than from weakness.
Bert: Elizabeth sums it up well at the end of the book. "Liz sums up,
"We all started with our anger, and then got in touch with the fear of
one another that was hiding behind the anger. As we worked our way
through the blame and shame, a great deal of grief came up and then,
going to an even deeper layer, we experienced the authentic wellspring
of love and appreciation we have for one an-other. I think that in
every circumstance in life, all those elements are present and that if
we fail to tell the whole truth to one another, not much is going to
happen that is of value."
End
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