When Earle Birney told an audience of grade twelve students in an
auditorium in northern Ontario back in the 1970’s, when commenting on the
dangers of pollution, “We’re going to drown in our own shit!” (although the mic
died on the last word) he was making a literal statement, in his prophetic
voice.
Not only has that specific risk not abated, but now we risk
drowning in the “effluent” of our own culture war. The notion, previously
considered nearly sacrosanct, that one’s innocence must prevail until his guilt
is proven and he is given some ambiguous and dying concept known as “due
process” is in grave danger.
Having been raised in a home that was fraught with physical,
emotional and psychic violence perpetrated by my mother, I know something of
“not having due process”…and also something of the wrath of the female psyche.
The fact that she hated her father, and by extension her spouse was not then,
is not now and will not be in the future any responsibility of either my sister
or me. Nevertheless, her venomous behaviour, today considered extreme abuse,
was kept hidden from the public in a small town where most people knew more
than a little about everybody.
Accusations, based primarily on what can now be seen as her own
psychosis, her self-loathing, projected onto both her father and her spouse and
then onto her children, were both viscious and unappealable. Of course, other
family members were familiar with the abuse, but were afraid of the
repercussions from the perpetrator if they should dare to report her ‘to the
authorities.’
So, we buried our anger, our resentment, our fears and our revenge
motive in silence, and in over-achieving in the misguided belief that somehow
we could satisfy her illicit expectations, imposed as they were, both
viscerally and indirectly. We simply never knew what would ‘set her off’ again
so lived with the prospect everyday that she would “explode”.
Statistically, our family was hardly alone, in that physical
punishment was employed and tolerated, accepted and considered somewhat normal
in our generation, especially as compared with today.
This story, however, pales in comparison with the decades of
physical, emotional and sexual abuse perpetrated by males on females over
centuries of silence. Male dominance, linked inextricably with female recessiveness,
has plagued human culture from the beginning. Dominant influences on this
pattern, including male and female archetypes, comes from the early Christian
church, from the military, from the Roman Senate and the Greek public square,
spreading like ink from a spilled bottle
into the blotter of succeeding cultures, including writing, historical,
philosophical and literary, as well as all other forms of artistic expression.
A few women even took male names, as pseudonyms, to mask and achieve their
access to publishers and readers. Not a few women even went so far as to wear
restrictive garments, and to perform both domestic tasks and sexual favours for
their partners, with barely a whisper of complaint, and certainly without
“going public”. There were, for centuries, no technologies that facilitated
public flow of information, except by word of mouth. And public morality
centred around such large chunks of unacceptable behaviour like treason. Wife-swapping
and family loyalty was, for a long time, “resolved” by individuals taking
action on their own behalf and much blood was spilled and many lives were lost.
Male dominance, including the shame of the cuckold husband, was permitted, even
expected, without retribution from the state. Traditions developed such as
courtly love,* one of many dances/cultural norms that grew up around the always
potent, unpredictable and untameable relationship between men and women. For
many male nobility, including kings, princes, potentates and even modern
presidents, “affairs” outside of and contiguous with a public marriage were
considered normal, and multiple forms of intrigue were designed and deployed to
“protect” the secret. For many women, power and the symbols of power, have
been, and continue to be, magnets attracting them, especially away from what
they considered weak, spineless, inept or simply embarrassing male partners.
Poetry, concertos, plays, operas and art works have all been
created as expressions of love, requited or not, by men whose sensibility and
creativity exceeded the social norms and boundaries of respectability, and
public morality. And the female “objects” of these works basked in the light of
their own magnetism for the artists, writers and composers.
Of course, no specific social system or religious dogma, even the
monastic orders of chastity, ever fully succeeded in preventing or eliminating
behaviour that centred on human biology and sexuality. The church tried vainly
and valiantly to bring this raging impulse under ‘control’ by forbidding sexual
relations outside of marriage. Not amenable to either legal or religious dogma
and enforcement, humans continued to behave “irresponsibly” and most of the
irresponsibility was laid at the feet of men, who throughout history have
exhibited an aggression and a sense of identity that included one or more
female “trophies” that has usually not served anyone very well, especially the
perpetrators. Of course, the inverse is also true for many women, whose pursuits
were deemed more sophisticated, subtle and less openly aggressive, especially
when compared with the male dominant physicality. Men “rape” women; women “seduce”
men. And the difference is not incidental; it is monumental. The former is a crime; the latter is a much less dangerous and therefore tolerable(?) 'norm'. Men, almost all
men it would seem, are vulnerable to the active, vigorous, sensual and
persistent pursuit by a woman whether the situation “fits” with social norms or
not, while women, on the other hand, are much more disciplined and restrained
in their emotional vulnerability to the advances of most men. Today’s vernacular
speaks often about the nuclear option, in political terms. And throughout history,
the ‘nuclear option’ operating both under and frontally on the radar screen of
history has been, is, and will continue to be the tensions, frustrations,
anxieties, disputes, conflicts, and life and death struggles over relationships
between men and women. And this pulsating energy gives “life” to many
individuals, while also serving as a temptation nearly drowning for others.
Learning about “love” is one of, if not the most troublesome
learning curves humans try to master. And, beginning in the family of origin,
models of each gender tend to be simplified into stereotypes at first, and
then, over time, and various experiences, morph into the complexities that
require intense scrutiny, discipline and commitment by both partners.
Women have learned some basic, perhaps debatable, yet nevertheless
indisputable expectations of men: they want only one thing; they are easily
offended, proud, even hubristic, and ambitious and highly inarticulate, even clumsy
and awkward about their emotions. And within the parameters of such a
paint-by-number drawing of their prospective male partners, (they also wanted
to procreate) women learned how to please, appease, and how to give “him”
space, and how to find support and comfort from other women. Men, at the same
time, were busy hunting and gathering food, building their little (or not so)
empires as testament to their ambition, and their potential for being
responsible. Above all else, women sought responsible men with whom to have
their children, given the enhanced prospect of a stable, secure and profitable
family life with at least the bare necessities.
Neither gender was either willing or able to become fully familiar
with the deep and profound complexities of the other, except through the lens
of a few basic line drawings that omitted more than they revealed. Ignorance,
bitterness, silence, and a kind of dialogue of the deaf (in the sense that two
very different emotional, spiritual and even intellectual agendas, as well as
characters) talked almost past each other, if they bothered to listen to each
other. Mostly, what conversation was
held, and considered to be effective was about the duties, chores, bills, and
basic needs of the children. As a common focus, children offered a ‘third
party’ on whom to focus, since, from different point of view, each parent has a
different perspective of the child’s needs and their own facility in trying to
meet those needs. And, sadly and too often, an open or masked competition
erupted between the parents for the child’s attention and affection. Children
too, quickly learned to “play one parent against the other” as they easily and
deeply absorbed each parent’s likes, dislikes, biases and blind-spots, and hot
buttons.
Helping to determine a parent’s need for attention/affection from
the child is the degree to which the respective parent feels OK, worthy,
self-content, “comfortable in his/her own skin” as the vernacular has it. And
that variable is also dependent on the level of love and support the parent
received from his/her parents in the previous generation. Similarly, the
concept of “man” and “woman” are derived in part, and first, from the picture
of the parent of each gender. Parents who were absent at school, at war, at
some vocation, are naturally unavailable to their children, and the missing gap
is one lives for generations. “Umbrella”
parents also encumber their children with over-protection, and a level of
personal insecurity that was barely even
known only one generation back from today. Most of these encounters between
parent and child, however, are not documented, discussed or perhaps even
noticed for their long-term implications.
And it is the continuum of dominant/recessive that continues to
play out in various scenes, cumulating in a gestalt of how each child “sees”
members of their own gender and that of the opposite gender. A gentle,
compassionate father, for example, engenders both support and trust in the
child, whereas as domineering, cold and punitive mother engenders fear,
distrust and a sense of worthlessness in the child. Of course, that is only one
of many models of parenting, Yet, if it is the initial model, it has a lasting
impression that takes decades to overcome. Similarly, a dominant, abusive
father, leaves a lasting wound on both sons and daughters, and an
over-compensating mother, in that situation, merely exacerbate the problem.
These early experiences tatoo their vibrations into the psyche of the children
and many of the future entanglements can and are often sourced back to the
family or origin.
Of course, these extreme models need more time, patience and professional
counsel to overcome. Nevertheless, gender definitions, roles, expectations and
their implications play themselves out in personal experiences, many of them
fraught with pain, more distrust, revenge and self-sabotage, on the part of
both men and women.
Models such as “the rescuer” (whether male or female) will tend to
take on a person of the opposite gender, especially if they appear very needy,
as a worthy and all-consuming project, to transform into a self-respecting
person with dignity. (Henry Higgins model extended to the psyche, far beyond
the vocabulary and the status and the wardrobe!) Another model, the
self-righteous warrior, seeks revenge on unsuspecting targets for wrongs they,
or their close friends, have endured. Such revenge, while perhaps unconscious
to the perpetrator, is hardly ever recognized as a motive in public and legal
discussion of cases of gender warfare.
Several decades ago, women began to speak out loud to address their
conviction that not only are they not a subservient gender, but that they are
actually, and ought to have been for centuries, equal to, if not in some ways
superior to their male counterparts. While the ‘movement’ scratched the surface
of the injustices being imposed on western women, they did not make a
significant impact on their goal of achieving full equality with men. And the
movement generated, at first a bemused smirk among too men many, and then some
deep anger that their world was being shattered, with good reason.
For their part, men, generally did not take the opportunity to
evolve into a consciousness that welcomed their own anima (the feminine part of
the unconscious) as had women embraced their animus (the male part of their
unconscious). In fact, it has been articulated argued that many of the open
conflicts between men and women are really battles of the unconscious Shadow,
including the anima/animus. From the public perspective, it seems that women
have embraced their animus through successfully entering and executing senior positions
in mega-corporations, governments and ecclesial institutions, without fully
abandoning their feminine side. However, men are still, for the most part,
walking blind or perhaps more dangerously, defiantly, rejecting all attempts by
many different voices to invite them to embrace their anima.
Holding on to their victim/bully archetype, however, only
perpetuates a cultural phenomenon that has long since passed into antiquity,
whether men are willing to acknowledge its demise or not. And when the male victim/bully
rears its ugly head (it is the only head it knows or has) and seeks and reeks
havoc against a female, as a mis-directed target of his anger, (or vice-versa,
when a female’s victim/bully seek vengeance against a male) the results are
ugly, tragic and irreconcilable in many cases.
The political/social/cultural/historic moment in which we live is
fraught with the multiple tensions including:
·
around fear of survival of the planet,
·
fear of loss of human rights (women’s rights
ARE human rights),
·
tectonic shifts in economic stability and security,
·
instant global crowd sourcing, and
·
a vacuum
of trust in all public institutions and that includes an impatience with those
institutions that were once trusted to deliver the needed remedies for correction
and amelioration of social injustices
·
Political/social/cultural ‘movements’ such as “Occupy”,
#MeToo, #TimesUp, and certainly in Canada, a mountain of public shame over the hundreds of missing and murdered aboriginal
women waiting for justice
·
Political leaders whose dedication to objective
and verifiable facts and truth is virtually non-existent
·
And impatience that “justice” can or will come
from those institutions traditionally responsible for its delivery
Nevertheless, many of the now barnacled stereotypes of masculinity
and femininity, while openly competing with evolving models of both genders,
continue to rear their ugly heads only now with a vehemence, a vengeance and an
impatience that borders on frightening. The contempt for men, that I grew up
with as an adolescent, is now raging across North America, unleashed as a force
rivaling the tsunami power of mother nature, for which adequate preparations
have not been made.
There are no break walls, no levees, no courts and no norms on which
to base any attempt to redress the wrongs against women that have been a silent
“cancer” in denial for centuries. There are no ‘schools’ (in the formal sense
of that word) in which to enroll successive generations of men, to school them
in the discipline of respectful relationships with women. There are no churches
prepared to undertake spiritual direction programs to reconcile the explosive
and dangerous nuclear ‘spills’ that stomp across the front pages of our dailies
each day. The courts, themselves, are facing a growing number of charges of
sexual misconduct, assault, and rape, in numbers and complexities for which they
are ill-equipped. The screams of injustice, legitimate and overdue, are generating
waves of public media, including the cover of Time, with photos of the women
complainants and the over-arching title, The Avengers.
Previously prominent men are being emasculated, just as the women
seeking justice and revenge believe they were defamed in secret for too long.
There is no doubt that women have “found their collective voice”….and yet the
voice of the male cohort of this moment in history is struggling with how to
affect the changes needed both to the relationship culture and even to what we
previously considered the “hard wiring” of both genders.
Men’s voices, for the most part, will continue to be singular, and
without a cohesive, collective “movement” like that of #MeToo and #TimesUp. Men are much less
willing or able to enter into circles of support, and much of the evidence of
male-initiated sexual abuse pouring across our screens is indefensible anyway.
The time and the patience required to investigate and to detail the charges,
including the costs to the public purse, are neither available nor able to be
mounted in time to address the legal principle of habeus corpus. Guilt is already
imposed by the news media, and the employers of those men whose reputations lie
in ruins, in the ash heap of twenty-first century cultural history. Their woman
accusers already have been imbued with the kind of impunity expressed by Andrea
Horvath, Leader of the NDP in Ontario who uttered these words this week, in reply
to the phrase “Ontario Justice System:” “two words, Gian Gomeshi” …because in
her view the legal system has failed the women of this province.
The “facts” that the justice system that heard the Gomeshi case
found a verdict with which Ms Horvath disagrees is not justification for
slandering the legal system. There were witnesses and there was evidence and a
judge listening carefully to both in that case. And when our political leaders,
in this case one aspiring to become the premier of the province whose legal
system is the equal to, if not the better of, most, publicly defame what protections
are still extant, for both men and women, we are already sliding down a very
slippery slope into a kind of chaos that could provide little or no “justice”
in the “restorative” sense of that word, for anyone under a cloud of suspicion.
Earle Birney likely did not envision a drowning in our own shit, of this
kind or proportions in North America, back in the mid-70’s. And yet, without
both men and women coming to a forest of tables together, airing the legitimate
grievances of women, and designing an individual and a societal redress of
those grievances (reparations are hardly a legitimate response) and seeking to
grow a culture in which both men and women mutually agree to address grievances,
(in a manner modelled by the Good Men Project) we are in for a very long, very
cold and very embittered winter of our shared discontent.
*A highly conventionalized
medieval tradition of love between a knight and a married noblewoman, first
developed by the troubadours of southern France and extensively employed in
European literature of the time. The love of the knight for his lady was
regarded as an ennobling passion and the relationship was typically
unconsummated (From Oxford Dictionaries)
