Such a clear synthesis of many threads of inquiry. I felt, at the time, that Al Franken's forced resignation (without process) was a very bad sign of what was to come. I wrote a letter to Senator Warren (my then-senator) for explanation, with (of course) no response. My sense, from personal inquiry into my own blind spots, that there was/is a collective tendency to project our own hypocrisies outward: NOBODY is without hypocrisy, but it is very comforting to pin the label on someone else. I see myself complaining (internally and out loud) about inconsistencies and imperfections I perceive in others, even as I paper over my own. "Forgiveness" is a word I usually dislike, in spiritual contexts, probably because it's harder than I think—and mostly because it's hardest to forgive onesself, which is the real basis of all true forgiveness. We are all kind of a mess!
As for the boy crisis, I could not agree more. I know a not-insignificant number sons of very liberal families who voted for Trump, or at least sympathized. It's real.
I have been harboring a fantasy for about a decade now, that we could take a page out of Iceland's playbook and train young men (not only young men, of course - any/all would be welcome!) in the art of rescue to prepare for the many incoming climate crises: "Iceland has demonstrated that it is possible to create a culture in which heroism—even heroism of the tough-guy-archetype—is still possible. As global warming threatens—no, promises—to wreak havoc on our communities with geological trauma that has been commonplace in Iceland for centuries, we are going to need an international squad of highly-trained dedicated rescuers to respond. In Iceland, “The teams have a fetish for vehicles; each seems to have a shiny souped-up fleet. In many cases, it’s the supercharged trucks with the floodlights and monster tires...or the Ski-Doos and Zodiacs, that lure young people to volunteer. They undergo eighteen to twenty-four months of basic training and then do further work in whatever discipline is to become theirs”. We need to harness the misdirected passion of those very youth who, at least in the United States, often look left, at best, at a mind-numbing job and look right towards notoriety and membership of a different sort, and let their pent-up fires steer them increasingly more often toward the latter."
and this one, about how young men were/are groomed for ISIS: “He was a charismatic father figure. It was exciting and there was an energy. I was an activist, never an extremist. For me I always had an inner voice telling me that a lot of this is not right. “But I was angry. I had a very violent dad. I had a lot of racism. I was angry and frustrated. So we planted this virus. And the kids today have caught it. “It’s the same attraction then as it is for young people now. A range of factors that is the same for Muslims and non-Muslims. Young people want to change the world, to feel loved and have a sense of belonging, a sense of attachment. That might just be in a foreign field.” Speaking to the Observer, Karmani said that to tackle the numbers of young people leaving the UK for Syria, Iraq and Libya, it was important that the debate should change to understanding the human elements at play. “It’s not about ideals – 90% of them never subscribe to the ideals – it’s other factors that are a draw. This is the new rock and roll; jihad is sexy. The kid who was not very good-looking now looks good holding a gun. He can get a bride now, he’s powerful. The ISIS gun is as much a penis extension as the stockbroker with his Ferrari. “There is a fundamental disconnect with our young people. Youth work used to be a brilliant vehicle but that’s all gone in the cuts, so who connects with young people now?” “If they have to be repressed about sex, about their friendships, who are they going to talk to? It makes them exposed and vulnerable. We have to stop seeing Muslims as ‘other’. They’re not. See them as the same.”
Fantastic idea! So how do we actively launch this program? Could it be a trade school option following high school? Could it be part of the National Guard training program? Is it an expansion of current search and rescue trainings? If government programs are actively being cut, how do we fund these trainings? How can we take advantage of knowledge and programs already in place?
Oh I’m so beyond overjoyed that this is landing! You have no idea! All fabulous questions and I’m so grateful to have people willing to actually think them through with me!
Love the rescue idea Allison. I spent some time in my 20 s volunteering in rural Kenya where it was very clear the loss of traditional ways of life was felt most deeply by the men. The women in the community had a saying there about men that was something like “all men do is walk around from house to house drinking” - having lost their roles as warriors and hunters, the men in the community were aimless, refused to take on what they saw as women’s roles (carrying water, cooking, raising kids), and turned to alcohol in their aimlessness. And the disgust the women felt towards the men’s aimlessness and uselessness only reinforced it.
I think about this all the time as I look at boys and young men today - their DNA is wired for a different world.
Omg yes! That’s exactly it. That’s a really powerful portrait of what seems like a global phenomenon, and a wellspring of so many other social problems and collective miseries. I’ll also tell you about my observation from spending a year working in Cairo (which I will spare this public thread)! I really feel like this is a pretty elegant match-up of needs which, of course, would also generate more widespread interest in the urgency of climate issues.
Daniel - thank you for opening up this central conversation. It is central because it is a primal - if not THE primal - driver of life on our planet. But we humans, especially in America, have lost touch with primal mysteries. Sex is a primal mystery. It is sacred. Loss of this awareness has generated tragedy.
Many prior comments include key insights:
- Susan Meeker-Lowry tells us that earth-based cultures have had initiations for males and females to channel sacred energies. Her own personal tragedy gives great weight to her insight.
- Allison Gustavson tells us of Iceland’s intelligent approach to channeling youthful energies into skilled rescue squads. We have much to learn from Iceland.
- Many others have relevant ideas on this huge subject.
Anyone who has ever fallen in love at first sight knows the mystery of spontaneous attraction. If you’re lucky, the attraction is mutual and consensual. If you’re not lucky, tragedy can result. Many exploitive forces have combined to separate boys, girls, men and women from our inherent connection to nature’s mysteries.
As a wise teacher once said - “Corporations are parasites that will ride the back of anything.”
- Schools and teachers were attacked under Reagan and boys were victimized. Corporations saw profits ahead in the 1980s by demonizing boys’ behaviors in elementary schools and marketing Ritalin. Usage increased dramatically in the 1990s and ever since. We used to provide a variety of creative activities, recess and sports in elementary schools that gave boys natural outlets, but funding cuts and privatization made “teach to the test” a prison for boys as well as beleaguered teachers.
- Consider how 4,000%+ increases in young boys being diagnosed with ADHD and drugged into stillness in schools has impacted them as teens and adults? Is it any wonder that the psychosis which Ritalin and other meds can cause may result in violent behaviors? The pharmaceutical industry has suppressed the truth to protect profits over the lives of boys.
- Corporations saw profits ahead in riding the back of feminism, and marketed cigarettes to young women - twice: in 1929 as “torches of freedom”, created by Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays; and in the 1968 Phillip Morris campaign for Virginia Slims ads - “You’ve come a long way, Baby!”. Lung cancer in women increased dramatically from these campaigns. Smokers know it is the hardest addiction to break, and it quells the sex drive in women and men. Corporate control of our libido on many levels.
- Billions made on video games, harnessing boys’ fleeting attention spans for points and fans while killing animated characters - the prequel to being trained for the military and firing drones at faceless living beings.
- Billions more made on pornography, harnessing boys’ and mens’ mysterious feelings into compulsions they cannot stop.
These are only a few of countless examples of corporations harnessing human beings’ natural energies and subverting them. We have been duped to betray our own natures.
Regarding “Me too”, the movement unleashed torrents of rage. That it was rage reveals its primal nature, rooted in a depth of female experience that could not be expressed nor contained by social media. Women need to speak to and listen to other women in sacred ceremonies that allow for pain and horror to be expressed and heard without attack or criticism. And without public, or male, affront at what is spoken by women. That women used social media for such sacred conversations reflects the deterioration of sacred space among women and within American society as a whole. Women’s horror stories that should have been supported by legal action got diluted by other women’s stories of slights. Attempts by women to draw these key distinctions were also attacked.
If everything a man does that makes any woman uncomfortable is “sexist” then language and women’s stories are meaningless. Sacred space and deeper understanding must prevail to help women work through layers of personal trauma, family trauma, and social trauma.
Decades of feminist events have tried but still not found the ways to unite women across racial and class identities.
The fact that identity politics, competition and censure prevailed on social media while ALL American women lost the legal right to control our own bodies, increasing risk of death, says EVERYTHING about how misguided the women’s movement has become. Without achieving and protecting civil rights, we have no rights. Let’s get our heads back on our shoulders and understand we’re fighting corporate greed, not each other.
Just as women must help other women and girls, so men must help other men and boys.
I’m reminded of the misguided attacks from certain feminists in 1990 on Robert Bly for his book “Iron John: a book about Men”. He focused on the archetype of the Wild Man in nature, and led groups in natural settings for men to experience their own archetypal wild man. Men found these retreats very healing.
I recall feeling happy for these men, and I have been a feminist for over 50 years. I was upset that women were attacking Bly for stupid reasons, claiming these “wild man” qualities were the problem. Reactionary women, ignorant of their own “wild women” qualities.
Our only hope is to help young boys and girls to love Nature and love their own nature as sacred, as primary - AND to teach them how to protect themselves against tomfoolery in this superficial society.
I agree about the need for sacred spaces and ritual to process the pain and wounding caused by the immature masculine. I am a Ritual Elder in the Mankind Project, where we do offer a healing weekend for men modeled on some of the work of Robert Bly. Over 70,000 men have done the training. Right now, we are working on developing new programs for socially-isolated (and angry) younger men.
take a look at MKP.ORG. I'd love to have a discussion about what a 21st Century young male (identified) initiation process should look like. Mankind Project work still has some hooks to the 20th Century issues.
email me and let's discuss... Daniel.pinchbeck@gmail.com ... I have a very sincere idea which is that men need training in dialectical reasoning... in public debate. I saw this in Dharamsala in India, where the monks have dialectical debate in the public squares on fine points of Buddhist scripture, which is a fully rational system and a philosophy not a faith. We desperately need this in the West as people have lost their capacity to think clearly and to reason. I would be happy to organize this or help lead this for the men's groups. I definitely feel it is imperative. The tendency has been to focus on male feelings, which is important but men also need to be trained in clear and coherent thinking. At the moment that is utterly gone in our society.
First of all, a trigger warning for those who need it… This comment details an incident from my life which may be considered sexual assault.
Yes, I agree with you. Trumpism is in part a reaction to #Metoo. There’s one man I know who I believe that’s the only reason he went dark and voted MAGA. There was a woman who accused him of sexual assault and he wound up getting cancelled and losing a future teaching position because of it. The circumstances around the accusation were murky, to put it mildly. At the time the man was a practicing alcoholic, and given to inappropriate comments and behavior. This man and his accuser did have a consensual romantic and sexual relationship once upon a time, but I think at one point, they were up for the same job, and the woman brought up his past drunken inappropriate behavior to get an edge over him. So while what she said may have been true, her reasons for coming forward at the time she did were suspect. At any rate: the guy’s been anti-woke mind virus ever since, and has managed to leverage his experience of cancelation into a successful writing career.
But I don’t think the problem started with #Metoo. The dominant Judeo-Christian spiritual paradigm of the West has contributed to a fundamental dis-ease with sex and sexual desire for both men and women. Sex, desire, and carnal lust are our strongest links to the “beasts”, and frankly, it makes a lot of us uncomfortable. Since the Judeo-Christian god is primarily non-corporeal, anything involving the body is of the Devil, so we repress a lot. And that which is forced underground tends to mutate into an ugly caricature of itself.
When I was in high school, there was a male bus driver I used to discuss X-rated movies with. My Catholic high school was way across town and for the last half hour or so, I was the only passenger on the bus.
I think the conversations started when I mentioned I was reading Delta of Venus. (I was at the time an undiagnosed neurospicy kid who had no filter.) He asked if I had read Story of O. I said: “Isn’t that a movie?” And when he answered yes, I asked him what the movie was about and he answered my question. “Have you seen Deep Throat?” I then asked. He said that he had, so I asked him to tell me about that one too. We discussed erotic media every afternoon for an entire semester. At no point did this man make me uncomfortable. In fact, I looked forward to our conversations because he didn’t shame me for being curious, like the priests or my parents would have.
Now: was he “grooming” me? Perhaps. I don’t know. What I do know is that at no point did he make me uncomfortable. He never suggested we get physical, nor did he do anything gross like expose himself to me.
Did I sense at the time our conversations were inappropriate? Well, I knew I shouldn’t blab about them, but at no point did he threaten me or swear me to secrecy. He was just the guy who answered my questions, and I remember thinking at the time I wished I had more adults in my life like him.
If I had the chance, would I report him now, as there are some that would characterize what he did as a form of assault? No. I wasn’t traumatized and he did me no harm. Besides: why fuck up someone’s life over something that happened a lifetime ago?
Frankly, while #Metoo did expose some true monsters, as well as the unnerving prevalence of such, certain aspects of it made me uncomfortable, like, for instance, the swift cancellation of people without due process, and the slippery definition of what was considered assault. I don’t think a micro-aggression, or a lewd comment, in itself, counts as assault. And throughout history, women have been known to lie about such things. (I’m thinking here of the countless examples of White women falsely accusing Black men or boys of rape.) An accusation of sexual assault is a serious thing, and it’s not something I would wield unless I was absolutely sure.
I don’t think traditionally masculine traits or toxic in and of themselves, just as I don’t think traditionally feminine traits are automatically oppressive. But within a sexually repressed culture, they certainly can be.
As a Gay Man, I felt challenged by aspects of this piece - namely the argument that biology is above culture in regards to how men are raised or express emotion. My experience of the world has shown me that it's actually 90 % culture. All the gay men i've met, even ones who present as fiercely masculine have access towards emotional expression and empathy (namely due to bias and suffering growing up.) Because we are forced to reconcile this - and our inner feminity so young, it doesn't surprise me that straight men likely are delayed in working through the suffering placed upon them. I fully believe that if we lived in a true culture of equality - straight men would not have the issues they have. I have a hard time believing in the idea of biology or evolution designing men a certain way when there's no theory or evolutionary explanation for my existence.
" women, as a whole, have a much greater tendency toward emotional expression while men often suppress their feelings or lack language to explore them. Biology doesn’t determine destiny, but it tilts the scales."
point taken. I should have expanded on this more... Richard Reeves' book on the boy crisis goes into it. I thought this quote was helpful: "According to neuropsychologist Lise Eliot: “The truth is, there is no such thing as a ‘male brain’ or a ‘female brain’ — there are individual brains, with vast overlap in all their features.”" - So there are tendencies which can be seen, but there is also a lot of overlap, and certainly, biological men can develop the full emotional range that women have, if given space for it and if it is encouraged instead of castigated.
yes! and that's why I believe queer men have a lot of advice and soul seeking we can guide our straight brothers in :) Because we can less easily "hide" our emotional range - I'm pretty sure all men can have access to it.
This is such an important topic to talk about. Division between the sexes only leads to horribly sad outcomes. Allow me to contribute a perspective that I’ve been mulling over for a long time.
I subscribe to a YouTuber named Patrick Boyle, who covers global financial trends with humor as dry as the surface of Mars. His latest essay covers the global decline in birth rates.
What’s causing it? According to his research, it’s the “uncoupling” of younger people, driven by the isolation caused by smartphone usage. I agree.
This may be why we see such a divergence between the political ideologies of young women and men. This is not just an American issue. The “bubbles” men or women gravitate towards tend to self-reinforce certain beliefs and attitudes. Whether reactionary or not, men tend towards traditionally male activities that emphasize external development: hunting, fighting, and fornicating. Women tend towards activities that emphasize internal development: college degrees, healing arts, social communication.
These are perfectly natural and complementary tendencies. Traditionally these differences were celebrated and encouraged, for the most part. But since the mid twentieth century, traditional roles have been turned on their head by economic and political pressures. The modern world, beginning with grade school, is far more suited to female characteristics (as Daniel alluded to). The boys struggle to adapt. They become attracted to ideological positions that give them a sense of purpose and power. They want to be useful, but not merely cogs in a vast machine.
If you agree with me so far, great! If you think there’s nothing good about traditional gender roles and I’m speaking from a position of privilege, you’re welcome to keep that to yourself. I’m not interested in debating on those terms.
Yes - I do agree with you, and learned a lot about the differences between male and female as a teacher. Our school system isn't good for either, but especially fails in meeting the needs of boys. As a teacher (in a Waldorf school, which addresses this problem quite a bit more than mainstream schools do) I noticed that girls were prone to tending to the emotional needs of others, but boys, feeling trapped and bored with no "sense of purpose or power" could easily become disruptive or even destructive. I found myself taking the class outside as much as possible, which helped, but didn't solve the underlying lack in their lives. There was a time when most school children had real work to do at home, so maybe time spent sitting on a bench and learning the 3Rs was a welcome counterbalance to farm work. But even since my 1950s childhood, our culture has moved away from giving our young meaningful opportunities to contribute to the real world (paper routes, safety patrols etc.) I would like to see education that focused on all kinds of real world engagement, with the desk time kept to minimum. We are boring our kids to death, and it is the boys who are the canaries.
also there is a real decline in fertility due to pollution - coupled with people waiting until later in life to have kids, which sometimes means it is just too late.
A central thesis to all this, to give your myriad ideas thrust, might be online porn and how it's bifurcated man's perceptions: Our virtual control over the sexual vs our ceding power in society. This dichotomy lengthens our shadow and makes us fight for light.
Thank you for addressing this huge problem. It seems clear that any adequate response to this crisis will have to be founded on a recognition of the importance of connection and relationship, but there is also the issue of meaningful work that offers a real experience of giving back through some kind of service to the world. For reasons that have to do with the differences between male and female that you pointed out, the situation is particularly challenging for boys.
Then there is the problem of those media influences you mentioned. Yesterday I saw an article in the Guardian that addressed the issue of smartphones as toxic for teenage boys. (They are toxic for girls too of course.) I have been worried about my very sweet, nerdy, grandson, who at 14 ½ has just gotten his first Iphone. Since then, I have noticed a dramatic shift in his personality, especially in his level of connection with the people around him. Only a year ago he was entertaining me with his fantasies of what he would do if he were president, and while his ideas were not particularly grounded in practical considerations, they were built around a kernal of real understanding of what ails the world and what needs to be addressed. Now he is withdrawn into a world I know nothing about, and seems depressed and confused by the world he finds himself in.
You write: “My goal is to help men and women unite against this force of destruction that threatens our collective future, not only in the US but globally, when we consider the ecological crisis, which the Right Wing disregards.” The fact that you are writing about the problem is an important first step. I’m looking forward to whatever will come next.
Thank you for this thoughtful, insightful and well researched piece. The line that sticks with me , in amazement today though is:
"With Trump, we now see what an activist President with an agenda can accomplish with the support of his party in Congress."
As horrendous as Trump's agenda is...if we get a chance to swing back to sanity, I only hope that the lesson of the dynamics of how Trumps agenda was accomplished does not go unlearned.
This is an important conversation. I really like how you’ve framed it in a more neutral, informative context. One would hope that instead of shouting at each other on the Internet, folks could take a beat and reflect on potential answers that are respectful to all concerned parties. Righteous indignation at this point is just spinning our wheels. We literally need think tanks devoted to helping young men more effectively meet the challenges of defining their value and purpose in our fast-changing world… instead of tuning out, acting out, self-harming and/or subjugating others.
As the mother of three boys, two grown with families, one died of an opioid overdose 12 years ago, leaving 2 young sons - the youngest of whom took his own life last September at 21, I have a lot of feelings and ideas about this issue. Not sure about needing think tanks . . . I don’t think there’s time for that actually. In every earth-based culture there were coming of age initiations for both girls and boys. In capitalism, we are simply consumers. There is no cultural/social awareness on a large scale to help children navigate adolescence. At least girls have menstration. We are initiated by our bodies. And some of us have or had mothers who were helpful. Boys to men? Not so much. This is a huge lack. There are many other dimensions to this schism between men and women that feels so huge today it’s unfathomable. Daniel does an excellent job opening up this discussion.
First of all, I am so sorry to hear of the tragic losses within your family.
I was using the term “think tank’ more loosely than the more formal interpretation. “The term "think tank" is often used colloquially to describe any group or organization that engages in similar activities, even if they don't have the formal structure or name of a traditional think tank.”
Meaning exactly what you are saying. Groups of people coming together to explore this subject and propose actionable steps. I know in some indigenous cultures there is the Vision Quest: “a traditional Native American spiritual ritual, often a rite of passage, where individuals seek guidance and connection with the spiritual world through solitude, fasting, and prayer in nature, aiming to receive a vision or understanding for their life's purpose.”
Young males isolated in their rooms playing video games, perusing social media, watching porn, ingesting podcasts, and going down the rabbit hole of online forums have contributed to an epidemic of youth in emotional pain. How do we begin to invite them out into the world again?
I have just read "Wisdom of the Shamans" by Don Jose Ruiz. He and his father Don Miguel Ruiz speak about "domestication" of children; i.e. learned traits. There is a magical/spiritual initiation ceremony related, given by the father Ruiz to his sons.
I have shared the wisdom of his 4 Agreements book in my adolescent therapy practice for over 20 years now. It’s a wonderful introduction for young people to greater self-awareness and personal responsibility. I have downloaded your book suggestion onto my Kindle and will be exploring it this week. Thank you, kindly, for that suggestion.
So in other words the blowback from electing the black guy and women telling their stories of sexual harassment is what caused fascism to flourish, okay.
Hi Maria, Do you think the lack of nuance in separating violent offenders from more gray-area offenders was a problem in any way? Should men like Al Franken, Joss Whedon, Louis CK have forfeited so much of their career success for what they did? Also what happened is all of those liberal men (and many more) got kicked to the street, while the Right Wing chose to embrace its accused sex offenders, even seeing their misconduct as a sign of rebellion against feminist conformity or liberal orthodoxy. And now they are running the Dept of Defense, etc.
Had to look up Joss Whedon because I’m a year short of being Gen X. I tend to not write long so I will begin saying that intimidation through sexually humiliating or bullying is not a liberal or conservative behavior. And it is not relegated to only erotic situations or environments.
Any kindergarten teacher will back me when I mention that a 5 year old girl will shrug when a classmate calls her a boy, and a 5 year old boy will physically attack the classmate who insults him by calling him a girl. That’s when it starts. Right around middle school the testing to see if she has a bra by snapping the back joke starts, and heck by freshman year both guys and young women are familiar with the danger of attending a frat party and being the participant or the victim in a rape train.
Do right wing nationalist want to normalize sexual harassment, assault, and domination? Yes. Will it be hard? No. Why? Because of what both liberal and conservative men internalized at a very early age.
By now you’re probably regretting that I took this in this direction but I thank you and I appreciate your activism.
It's interesting that powerful avowed feminists like Al Franken were taken down by the MeToo movement, though that cause was never taken up by the patriarchy-protecting segment of society. You write, correctly, that men "need to do the difficult inner work of initiation, define new archetypes for positive masculinity, and align around redefined goals and values." But that is precisely what is now condemned and targeted as woke. "New archetypes for positive masculinity" are precisely what the new regime campaigned against. Of course we should all continue the work of evolving. Maybe one day a compelling new archetype will catch hold with the greater society.
You’ve articulated something important here, Daniel: while we are certainly more than our biology, true embodiment also asks us to acknowledge that we are, at some fundamental level, also that. Honoring both truths - not as opposites, but as parts of a larger whole - is the kind of nuance that invites healing and resonciliation rather than polarization and despair. I coincidently wrote about fair and care today on my Substack that illustrates this very point.
Another thought that comes to me is that our current public education system is increasingly disembodied, with a lot of emphasis on testing and on-line so-called "learning". Some schools have even eliminated recess! This is unhealthy for all students, but is especially problematical for boys. When you consider that the bulk of childhood is spent in school, it's pretty horrifying to realize that most of the time is spent sitting at a desk, doing busy work, regurgitating facts, or even scrolling on a phone. And this is supposed to be preparation for adulthood! AI may be replacing most physical labor, but the needs of children to develop themselves as whole human beings have not changed. No changes in society can be effective unless we also drastically rethink education.
The #metoo movement was simply the systemic and individual abuses made visible given a platform to do so. The accountability called for can only be done in large numbers like that in this system. It's an inevitable outcome that there would be backlash to calls for accountability, and no woman anywhere is surprised. The framing, respectfully, should be the continued impact of gendered violence and suppression of women, not the impact of #metoo as if that started something. The origin of the issue continues to be violence perpetuated by men. That being said, this is a great start and also one framed through a white lens. White feminism is a small but most visible part of feminism in general and your critiques here are better identified as issues with white supremacy inside of the women's movement. Supremacist feminism is very different than abolitionist feminism and it would be good to understand the nuance before building an assessment. The issue is inherent supremacy, wherever it resides, which dehumanizes others. I've long been critical of this supremacist feminism and it's impacts on boys and men, but let's make sure we are pointing the finger at supremacy itself every time.
You write: "The origin of the issue continues to be violence perpetuated by men." Agreed: How do we deal with that in a systemic, comprehensive way at this point? What are your ideas on this? I feel women need to be part of any attempt at resolution.
"That being said, this is a great start" - thank you! - " and also one framed through a white lens. White feminism is a small but most visible part of feminism in general and your critiques here are better identified as issues with white supremacy inside of the women's movement. Supremacist feminism is very different than abolitionist feminism and it would be good to understand the nuance before building an assessment."
I am trying to understand your ideas here and would love to learn more. Many minorities unfortunately voted for Trump, so I am not sure if it is just an issue of white supremacy although you could argue they were all suffering from some level of "false consciousness," I guess.
Abolition feminism (Angela Davis): "Abolition Feminism is a branch of feminism that calls for the elimination of the prison industrial complex." Is that what you mean?
I am not finding a definition for "Supramecist Feminism" but perhaps you mean "White Feminism:"
"White feminism is a term which is used to describe expressions of feminism which are perceived as focusing on white women while failing to address the existence of distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges. Whiteness is crucial in structuring the lived experiences of white women across a variety of contexts." - Wiki
Such a clear synthesis of many threads of inquiry. I felt, at the time, that Al Franken's forced resignation (without process) was a very bad sign of what was to come. I wrote a letter to Senator Warren (my then-senator) for explanation, with (of course) no response. My sense, from personal inquiry into my own blind spots, that there was/is a collective tendency to project our own hypocrisies outward: NOBODY is without hypocrisy, but it is very comforting to pin the label on someone else. I see myself complaining (internally and out loud) about inconsistencies and imperfections I perceive in others, even as I paper over my own. "Forgiveness" is a word I usually dislike, in spiritual contexts, probably because it's harder than I think—and mostly because it's hardest to forgive onesself, which is the real basis of all true forgiveness. We are all kind of a mess!
As for the boy crisis, I could not agree more. I know a not-insignificant number sons of very liberal families who voted for Trump, or at least sympathized. It's real.
I have been harboring a fantasy for about a decade now, that we could take a page out of Iceland's playbook and train young men (not only young men, of course - any/all would be welcome!) in the art of rescue to prepare for the many incoming climate crises: "Iceland has demonstrated that it is possible to create a culture in which heroism—even heroism of the tough-guy-archetype—is still possible. As global warming threatens—no, promises—to wreak havoc on our communities with geological trauma that has been commonplace in Iceland for centuries, we are going to need an international squad of highly-trained dedicated rescuers to respond. In Iceland, “The teams have a fetish for vehicles; each seems to have a shiny souped-up fleet. In many cases, it’s the supercharged trucks with the floodlights and monster tires...or the Ski-Doos and Zodiacs, that lure young people to volunteer. They undergo eighteen to twenty-four months of basic training and then do further work in whatever discipline is to become theirs”. We need to harness the misdirected passion of those very youth who, at least in the United States, often look left, at best, at a mind-numbing job and look right towards notoriety and membership of a different sort, and let their pent-up fires steer them increasingly more often toward the latter."
I can say more if anyone's interested.
It was inspired by two articles: This one, about rescuers in Iceland: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/09/life-is-rescues
and this one, about how young men were/are groomed for ISIS: “He was a charismatic father figure. It was exciting and there was an energy. I was an activist, never an extremist. For me I always had an inner voice telling me that a lot of this is not right. “But I was angry. I had a very violent dad. I had a lot of racism. I was angry and frustrated. So we planted this virus. And the kids today have caught it. “It’s the same attraction then as it is for young people now. A range of factors that is the same for Muslims and non-Muslims. Young people want to change the world, to feel loved and have a sense of belonging, a sense of attachment. That might just be in a foreign field.” Speaking to the Observer, Karmani said that to tackle the numbers of young people leaving the UK for Syria, Iraq and Libya, it was important that the debate should change to understanding the human elements at play. “It’s not about ideals – 90% of them never subscribe to the ideals – it’s other factors that are a draw. This is the new rock and roll; jihad is sexy. The kid who was not very good-looking now looks good holding a gun. He can get a bride now, he’s powerful. The ISIS gun is as much a penis extension as the stockbroker with his Ferrari. “There is a fundamental disconnect with our young people. Youth work used to be a brilliant vehicle but that’s all gone in the cuts, so who connects with young people now?” “If they have to be repressed about sex, about their friendships, who are they going to talk to? It makes them exposed and vulnerable. We have to stop seeing Muslims as ‘other’. They’re not. See them as the same.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/13/godfather-of-british-jihadists-admits-we-opened-to-way-to-join-isis
good links, thank you... yes to rescue idea
Yay! I'm so glad you like that idea. I've been thinking about it for about ten years!
Fantastic idea! So how do we actively launch this program? Could it be a trade school option following high school? Could it be part of the National Guard training program? Is it an expansion of current search and rescue trainings? If government programs are actively being cut, how do we fund these trainings? How can we take advantage of knowledge and programs already in place?
Oh I’m so beyond overjoyed that this is landing! You have no idea! All fabulous questions and I’m so grateful to have people willing to actually think them through with me!
Allison - I LOVE the rescue idea, and had not heard of it before. Thank you!
This makes me so happy! I always thought it was such a great idea and could never find a way to get it out there! ❤️
Love the rescue idea Allison. I spent some time in my 20 s volunteering in rural Kenya where it was very clear the loss of traditional ways of life was felt most deeply by the men. The women in the community had a saying there about men that was something like “all men do is walk around from house to house drinking” - having lost their roles as warriors and hunters, the men in the community were aimless, refused to take on what they saw as women’s roles (carrying water, cooking, raising kids), and turned to alcohol in their aimlessness. And the disgust the women felt towards the men’s aimlessness and uselessness only reinforced it.
I think about this all the time as I look at boys and young men today - their DNA is wired for a different world.
Omg yes! That’s exactly it. That’s a really powerful portrait of what seems like a global phenomenon, and a wellspring of so many other social problems and collective miseries. I’ll also tell you about my observation from spending a year working in Cairo (which I will spare this public thread)! I really feel like this is a pretty elegant match-up of needs which, of course, would also generate more widespread interest in the urgency of climate issues.
Wow! Love the Icelandic rescue model as well.
Yay! Let’s make it happen! There must be a way!
Daniel - thank you for opening up this central conversation. It is central because it is a primal - if not THE primal - driver of life on our planet. But we humans, especially in America, have lost touch with primal mysteries. Sex is a primal mystery. It is sacred. Loss of this awareness has generated tragedy.
Many prior comments include key insights:
- Susan Meeker-Lowry tells us that earth-based cultures have had initiations for males and females to channel sacred energies. Her own personal tragedy gives great weight to her insight.
- Allison Gustavson tells us of Iceland’s intelligent approach to channeling youthful energies into skilled rescue squads. We have much to learn from Iceland.
- Many others have relevant ideas on this huge subject.
Anyone who has ever fallen in love at first sight knows the mystery of spontaneous attraction. If you’re lucky, the attraction is mutual and consensual. If you’re not lucky, tragedy can result. Many exploitive forces have combined to separate boys, girls, men and women from our inherent connection to nature’s mysteries.
As a wise teacher once said - “Corporations are parasites that will ride the back of anything.”
- Schools and teachers were attacked under Reagan and boys were victimized. Corporations saw profits ahead in the 1980s by demonizing boys’ behaviors in elementary schools and marketing Ritalin. Usage increased dramatically in the 1990s and ever since. We used to provide a variety of creative activities, recess and sports in elementary schools that gave boys natural outlets, but funding cuts and privatization made “teach to the test” a prison for boys as well as beleaguered teachers.
- Consider how 4,000%+ increases in young boys being diagnosed with ADHD and drugged into stillness in schools has impacted them as teens and adults? Is it any wonder that the psychosis which Ritalin and other meds can cause may result in violent behaviors? The pharmaceutical industry has suppressed the truth to protect profits over the lives of boys.
- Corporations saw profits ahead in riding the back of feminism, and marketed cigarettes to young women - twice: in 1929 as “torches of freedom”, created by Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays; and in the 1968 Phillip Morris campaign for Virginia Slims ads - “You’ve come a long way, Baby!”. Lung cancer in women increased dramatically from these campaigns. Smokers know it is the hardest addiction to break, and it quells the sex drive in women and men. Corporate control of our libido on many levels.
- Billions made on video games, harnessing boys’ fleeting attention spans for points and fans while killing animated characters - the prequel to being trained for the military and firing drones at faceless living beings.
- Billions more made on pornography, harnessing boys’ and mens’ mysterious feelings into compulsions they cannot stop.
These are only a few of countless examples of corporations harnessing human beings’ natural energies and subverting them. We have been duped to betray our own natures.
Regarding “Me too”, the movement unleashed torrents of rage. That it was rage reveals its primal nature, rooted in a depth of female experience that could not be expressed nor contained by social media. Women need to speak to and listen to other women in sacred ceremonies that allow for pain and horror to be expressed and heard without attack or criticism. And without public, or male, affront at what is spoken by women. That women used social media for such sacred conversations reflects the deterioration of sacred space among women and within American society as a whole. Women’s horror stories that should have been supported by legal action got diluted by other women’s stories of slights. Attempts by women to draw these key distinctions were also attacked.
If everything a man does that makes any woman uncomfortable is “sexist” then language and women’s stories are meaningless. Sacred space and deeper understanding must prevail to help women work through layers of personal trauma, family trauma, and social trauma.
Decades of feminist events have tried but still not found the ways to unite women across racial and class identities.
The fact that identity politics, competition and censure prevailed on social media while ALL American women lost the legal right to control our own bodies, increasing risk of death, says EVERYTHING about how misguided the women’s movement has become. Without achieving and protecting civil rights, we have no rights. Let’s get our heads back on our shoulders and understand we’re fighting corporate greed, not each other.
Just as women must help other women and girls, so men must help other men and boys.
I’m reminded of the misguided attacks from certain feminists in 1990 on Robert Bly for his book “Iron John: a book about Men”. He focused on the archetype of the Wild Man in nature, and led groups in natural settings for men to experience their own archetypal wild man. Men found these retreats very healing.
I recall feeling happy for these men, and I have been a feminist for over 50 years. I was upset that women were attacking Bly for stupid reasons, claiming these “wild man” qualities were the problem. Reactionary women, ignorant of their own “wild women” qualities.
Our only hope is to help young boys and girls to love Nature and love their own nature as sacred, as primary - AND to teach them how to protect themselves against tomfoolery in this superficial society.
I agree about the need for sacred spaces and ritual to process the pain and wounding caused by the immature masculine. I am a Ritual Elder in the Mankind Project, where we do offer a healing weekend for men modeled on some of the work of Robert Bly. Over 70,000 men have done the training. Right now, we are working on developing new programs for socially-isolated (and angry) younger men.
awesome! would love to learn more.
take a look at MKP.ORG. I'd love to have a discussion about what a 21st Century young male (identified) initiation process should look like. Mankind Project work still has some hooks to the 20th Century issues.
email me and let's discuss... Daniel.pinchbeck@gmail.com ... I have a very sincere idea which is that men need training in dialectical reasoning... in public debate. I saw this in Dharamsala in India, where the monks have dialectical debate in the public squares on fine points of Buddhist scripture, which is a fully rational system and a philosophy not a faith. We desperately need this in the West as people have lost their capacity to think clearly and to reason. I would be happy to organize this or help lead this for the men's groups. I definitely feel it is imperative. The tendency has been to focus on male feelings, which is important but men also need to be trained in clear and coherent thinking. At the moment that is utterly gone in our society.
Wonderful!
First of all, a trigger warning for those who need it… This comment details an incident from my life which may be considered sexual assault.
Yes, I agree with you. Trumpism is in part a reaction to #Metoo. There’s one man I know who I believe that’s the only reason he went dark and voted MAGA. There was a woman who accused him of sexual assault and he wound up getting cancelled and losing a future teaching position because of it. The circumstances around the accusation were murky, to put it mildly. At the time the man was a practicing alcoholic, and given to inappropriate comments and behavior. This man and his accuser did have a consensual romantic and sexual relationship once upon a time, but I think at one point, they were up for the same job, and the woman brought up his past drunken inappropriate behavior to get an edge over him. So while what she said may have been true, her reasons for coming forward at the time she did were suspect. At any rate: the guy’s been anti-woke mind virus ever since, and has managed to leverage his experience of cancelation into a successful writing career.
But I don’t think the problem started with #Metoo. The dominant Judeo-Christian spiritual paradigm of the West has contributed to a fundamental dis-ease with sex and sexual desire for both men and women. Sex, desire, and carnal lust are our strongest links to the “beasts”, and frankly, it makes a lot of us uncomfortable. Since the Judeo-Christian god is primarily non-corporeal, anything involving the body is of the Devil, so we repress a lot. And that which is forced underground tends to mutate into an ugly caricature of itself.
When I was in high school, there was a male bus driver I used to discuss X-rated movies with. My Catholic high school was way across town and for the last half hour or so, I was the only passenger on the bus.
I think the conversations started when I mentioned I was reading Delta of Venus. (I was at the time an undiagnosed neurospicy kid who had no filter.) He asked if I had read Story of O. I said: “Isn’t that a movie?” And when he answered yes, I asked him what the movie was about and he answered my question. “Have you seen Deep Throat?” I then asked. He said that he had, so I asked him to tell me about that one too. We discussed erotic media every afternoon for an entire semester. At no point did this man make me uncomfortable. In fact, I looked forward to our conversations because he didn’t shame me for being curious, like the priests or my parents would have.
Now: was he “grooming” me? Perhaps. I don’t know. What I do know is that at no point did he make me uncomfortable. He never suggested we get physical, nor did he do anything gross like expose himself to me.
Did I sense at the time our conversations were inappropriate? Well, I knew I shouldn’t blab about them, but at no point did he threaten me or swear me to secrecy. He was just the guy who answered my questions, and I remember thinking at the time I wished I had more adults in my life like him.
If I had the chance, would I report him now, as there are some that would characterize what he did as a form of assault? No. I wasn’t traumatized and he did me no harm. Besides: why fuck up someone’s life over something that happened a lifetime ago?
Frankly, while #Metoo did expose some true monsters, as well as the unnerving prevalence of such, certain aspects of it made me uncomfortable, like, for instance, the swift cancellation of people without due process, and the slippery definition of what was considered assault. I don’t think a micro-aggression, or a lewd comment, in itself, counts as assault. And throughout history, women have been known to lie about such things. (I’m thinking here of the countless examples of White women falsely accusing Black men or boys of rape.) An accusation of sexual assault is a serious thing, and it’s not something I would wield unless I was absolutely sure.
I don’t think traditionally masculine traits or toxic in and of themselves, just as I don’t think traditionally feminine traits are automatically oppressive. But within a sexually repressed culture, they certainly can be.
As a Gay Man, I felt challenged by aspects of this piece - namely the argument that biology is above culture in regards to how men are raised or express emotion. My experience of the world has shown me that it's actually 90 % culture. All the gay men i've met, even ones who present as fiercely masculine have access towards emotional expression and empathy (namely due to bias and suffering growing up.) Because we are forced to reconcile this - and our inner feminity so young, it doesn't surprise me that straight men likely are delayed in working through the suffering placed upon them. I fully believe that if we lived in a true culture of equality - straight men would not have the issues they have. I have a hard time believing in the idea of biology or evolution designing men a certain way when there's no theory or evolutionary explanation for my existence.
" women, as a whole, have a much greater tendency toward emotional expression while men often suppress their feelings or lack language to explore them. Biology doesn’t determine destiny, but it tilts the scales."
point taken. I should have expanded on this more... Richard Reeves' book on the boy crisis goes into it. I thought this quote was helpful: "According to neuropsychologist Lise Eliot: “The truth is, there is no such thing as a ‘male brain’ or a ‘female brain’ — there are individual brains, with vast overlap in all their features.”" - So there are tendencies which can be seen, but there is also a lot of overlap, and certainly, biological men can develop the full emotional range that women have, if given space for it and if it is encouraged instead of castigated.
yes! and that's why I believe queer men have a lot of advice and soul seeking we can guide our straight brothers in :) Because we can less easily "hide" our emotional range - I'm pretty sure all men can have access to it.
yes agree!
This is such an important topic to talk about. Division between the sexes only leads to horribly sad outcomes. Allow me to contribute a perspective that I’ve been mulling over for a long time.
I subscribe to a YouTuber named Patrick Boyle, who covers global financial trends with humor as dry as the surface of Mars. His latest essay covers the global decline in birth rates.
What’s causing it? According to his research, it’s the “uncoupling” of younger people, driven by the isolation caused by smartphone usage. I agree.
This may be why we see such a divergence between the political ideologies of young women and men. This is not just an American issue. The “bubbles” men or women gravitate towards tend to self-reinforce certain beliefs and attitudes. Whether reactionary or not, men tend towards traditionally male activities that emphasize external development: hunting, fighting, and fornicating. Women tend towards activities that emphasize internal development: college degrees, healing arts, social communication.
These are perfectly natural and complementary tendencies. Traditionally these differences were celebrated and encouraged, for the most part. But since the mid twentieth century, traditional roles have been turned on their head by economic and political pressures. The modern world, beginning with grade school, is far more suited to female characteristics (as Daniel alluded to). The boys struggle to adapt. They become attracted to ideological positions that give them a sense of purpose and power. They want to be useful, but not merely cogs in a vast machine.
If you agree with me so far, great! If you think there’s nothing good about traditional gender roles and I’m speaking from a position of privilege, you’re welcome to keep that to yourself. I’m not interested in debating on those terms.
So how do we help make things better?
Yes - I do agree with you, and learned a lot about the differences between male and female as a teacher. Our school system isn't good for either, but especially fails in meeting the needs of boys. As a teacher (in a Waldorf school, which addresses this problem quite a bit more than mainstream schools do) I noticed that girls were prone to tending to the emotional needs of others, but boys, feeling trapped and bored with no "sense of purpose or power" could easily become disruptive or even destructive. I found myself taking the class outside as much as possible, which helped, but didn't solve the underlying lack in their lives. There was a time when most school children had real work to do at home, so maybe time spent sitting on a bench and learning the 3Rs was a welcome counterbalance to farm work. But even since my 1950s childhood, our culture has moved away from giving our young meaningful opportunities to contribute to the real world (paper routes, safety patrols etc.) I would like to see education that focused on all kinds of real world engagement, with the desk time kept to minimum. We are boring our kids to death, and it is the boys who are the canaries.
Thank you and agreed 100%! My wife and I decided on a Waldorf for our two daughters' preschools and never regretted it.
also there is a real decline in fertility due to pollution - coupled with people waiting until later in life to have kids, which sometimes means it is just too late.
A central thesis to all this, to give your myriad ideas thrust, might be online porn and how it's bifurcated man's perceptions: Our virtual control over the sexual vs our ceding power in society. This dichotomy lengthens our shadow and makes us fight for light.
nicely put!
Thank you for addressing this huge problem. It seems clear that any adequate response to this crisis will have to be founded on a recognition of the importance of connection and relationship, but there is also the issue of meaningful work that offers a real experience of giving back through some kind of service to the world. For reasons that have to do with the differences between male and female that you pointed out, the situation is particularly challenging for boys.
Then there is the problem of those media influences you mentioned. Yesterday I saw an article in the Guardian that addressed the issue of smartphones as toxic for teenage boys. (They are toxic for girls too of course.) I have been worried about my very sweet, nerdy, grandson, who at 14 ½ has just gotten his first Iphone. Since then, I have noticed a dramatic shift in his personality, especially in his level of connection with the people around him. Only a year ago he was entertaining me with his fantasies of what he would do if he were president, and while his ideas were not particularly grounded in practical considerations, they were built around a kernal of real understanding of what ails the world and what needs to be addressed. Now he is withdrawn into a world I know nothing about, and seems depressed and confused by the world he finds himself in.
You write: “My goal is to help men and women unite against this force of destruction that threatens our collective future, not only in the US but globally, when we consider the ecological crisis, which the Right Wing disregards.” The fact that you are writing about the problem is an important first step. I’m looking forward to whatever will come next.
Thank you for this thoughtful, insightful and well researched piece. The line that sticks with me , in amazement today though is:
"With Trump, we now see what an activist President with an agenda can accomplish with the support of his party in Congress."
As horrendous as Trump's agenda is...if we get a chance to swing back to sanity, I only hope that the lesson of the dynamics of how Trumps agenda was accomplished does not go unlearned.
This is an important conversation. I really like how you’ve framed it in a more neutral, informative context. One would hope that instead of shouting at each other on the Internet, folks could take a beat and reflect on potential answers that are respectful to all concerned parties. Righteous indignation at this point is just spinning our wheels. We literally need think tanks devoted to helping young men more effectively meet the challenges of defining their value and purpose in our fast-changing world… instead of tuning out, acting out, self-harming and/or subjugating others.
As the mother of three boys, two grown with families, one died of an opioid overdose 12 years ago, leaving 2 young sons - the youngest of whom took his own life last September at 21, I have a lot of feelings and ideas about this issue. Not sure about needing think tanks . . . I don’t think there’s time for that actually. In every earth-based culture there were coming of age initiations for both girls and boys. In capitalism, we are simply consumers. There is no cultural/social awareness on a large scale to help children navigate adolescence. At least girls have menstration. We are initiated by our bodies. And some of us have or had mothers who were helpful. Boys to men? Not so much. This is a huge lack. There are many other dimensions to this schism between men and women that feels so huge today it’s unfathomable. Daniel does an excellent job opening up this discussion.
First of all, I am so sorry to hear of the tragic losses within your family.
I was using the term “think tank’ more loosely than the more formal interpretation. “The term "think tank" is often used colloquially to describe any group or organization that engages in similar activities, even if they don't have the formal structure or name of a traditional think tank.”
Meaning exactly what you are saying. Groups of people coming together to explore this subject and propose actionable steps. I know in some indigenous cultures there is the Vision Quest: “a traditional Native American spiritual ritual, often a rite of passage, where individuals seek guidance and connection with the spiritual world through solitude, fasting, and prayer in nature, aiming to receive a vision or understanding for their life's purpose.”
Young males isolated in their rooms playing video games, perusing social media, watching porn, ingesting podcasts, and going down the rabbit hole of online forums have contributed to an epidemic of youth in emotional pain. How do we begin to invite them out into the world again?
I have just read "Wisdom of the Shamans" by Don Jose Ruiz. He and his father Don Miguel Ruiz speak about "domestication" of children; i.e. learned traits. There is a magical/spiritual initiation ceremony related, given by the father Ruiz to his sons.
I have shared the wisdom of his 4 Agreements book in my adolescent therapy practice for over 20 years now. It’s a wonderful introduction for young people to greater self-awareness and personal responsibility. I have downloaded your book suggestion onto my Kindle and will be exploring it this week. Thank you, kindly, for that suggestion.
Fyi: Just received April issue of "The Nation." Cover story: "Are Men OK?"
So in other words the blowback from electing the black guy and women telling their stories of sexual harassment is what caused fascism to flourish, okay.
Hi Maria, Do you think the lack of nuance in separating violent offenders from more gray-area offenders was a problem in any way? Should men like Al Franken, Joss Whedon, Louis CK have forfeited so much of their career success for what they did? Also what happened is all of those liberal men (and many more) got kicked to the street, while the Right Wing chose to embrace its accused sex offenders, even seeing their misconduct as a sign of rebellion against feminist conformity or liberal orthodoxy. And now they are running the Dept of Defense, etc.
Hi Daniel,
Had to look up Joss Whedon because I’m a year short of being Gen X. I tend to not write long so I will begin saying that intimidation through sexually humiliating or bullying is not a liberal or conservative behavior. And it is not relegated to only erotic situations or environments.
Any kindergarten teacher will back me when I mention that a 5 year old girl will shrug when a classmate calls her a boy, and a 5 year old boy will physically attack the classmate who insults him by calling him a girl. That’s when it starts. Right around middle school the testing to see if she has a bra by snapping the back joke starts, and heck by freshman year both guys and young women are familiar with the danger of attending a frat party and being the participant or the victim in a rape train.
Do right wing nationalist want to normalize sexual harassment, assault, and domination? Yes. Will it be hard? No. Why? Because of what both liberal and conservative men internalized at a very early age.
By now you’re probably regretting that I took this in this direction but I thank you and I appreciate your activism.
It's interesting that powerful avowed feminists like Al Franken were taken down by the MeToo movement, though that cause was never taken up by the patriarchy-protecting segment of society. You write, correctly, that men "need to do the difficult inner work of initiation, define new archetypes for positive masculinity, and align around redefined goals and values." But that is precisely what is now condemned and targeted as woke. "New archetypes for positive masculinity" are precisely what the new regime campaigned against. Of course we should all continue the work of evolving. Maybe one day a compelling new archetype will catch hold with the greater society.
You’ve articulated something important here, Daniel: while we are certainly more than our biology, true embodiment also asks us to acknowledge that we are, at some fundamental level, also that. Honoring both truths - not as opposites, but as parts of a larger whole - is the kind of nuance that invites healing and resonciliation rather than polarization and despair. I coincidently wrote about fair and care today on my Substack that illustrates this very point.
Another thought that comes to me is that our current public education system is increasingly disembodied, with a lot of emphasis on testing and on-line so-called "learning". Some schools have even eliminated recess! This is unhealthy for all students, but is especially problematical for boys. When you consider that the bulk of childhood is spent in school, it's pretty horrifying to realize that most of the time is spent sitting at a desk, doing busy work, regurgitating facts, or even scrolling on a phone. And this is supposed to be preparation for adulthood! AI may be replacing most physical labor, but the needs of children to develop themselves as whole human beings have not changed. No changes in society can be effective unless we also drastically rethink education.
I can’t remember if you e commented on the Louis Perry book ‘Against the sexual revolution’. Would be curious of your thought ms on the arguments
I did write about it - do a google search. I think it is interesting and a corrective but an overstatement. I think we need more nuance, not less.
The #metoo movement was simply the systemic and individual abuses made visible given a platform to do so. The accountability called for can only be done in large numbers like that in this system. It's an inevitable outcome that there would be backlash to calls for accountability, and no woman anywhere is surprised. The framing, respectfully, should be the continued impact of gendered violence and suppression of women, not the impact of #metoo as if that started something. The origin of the issue continues to be violence perpetuated by men. That being said, this is a great start and also one framed through a white lens. White feminism is a small but most visible part of feminism in general and your critiques here are better identified as issues with white supremacy inside of the women's movement. Supremacist feminism is very different than abolitionist feminism and it would be good to understand the nuance before building an assessment. The issue is inherent supremacy, wherever it resides, which dehumanizes others. I've long been critical of this supremacist feminism and it's impacts on boys and men, but let's make sure we are pointing the finger at supremacy itself every time.
Hi Julie, Thanks for your comments.
You write: "The origin of the issue continues to be violence perpetuated by men." Agreed: How do we deal with that in a systemic, comprehensive way at this point? What are your ideas on this? I feel women need to be part of any attempt at resolution.
"That being said, this is a great start" - thank you! - " and also one framed through a white lens. White feminism is a small but most visible part of feminism in general and your critiques here are better identified as issues with white supremacy inside of the women's movement. Supremacist feminism is very different than abolitionist feminism and it would be good to understand the nuance before building an assessment."
I am trying to understand your ideas here and would love to learn more. Many minorities unfortunately voted for Trump, so I am not sure if it is just an issue of white supremacy although you could argue they were all suffering from some level of "false consciousness," I guess.
Abolition feminism (Angela Davis): "Abolition Feminism is a branch of feminism that calls for the elimination of the prison industrial complex." Is that what you mean?
I am not finding a definition for "Supramecist Feminism" but perhaps you mean "White Feminism:"
"White feminism is a term which is used to describe expressions of feminism which are perceived as focusing on white women while failing to address the existence of distinct forms of oppression faced by ethnic minority women and women lacking other privileges. Whiteness is crucial in structuring the lived experiences of white women across a variety of contexts." - Wiki