Diana's Share: Why Women Emasculate Men

When I first listened to Alison Armstrong a while ago I heard a lot of things that resonated with my experiences as a man navigating a world that included feminism. I am old enough to have lived as a teenager and young man prior to modern feminism becoming more mainstream. When I first heard the assertions of this ideology my initial response was to feel anxious and uncertain about the course of relationships. My life as a young man began with the expectation of finding work, getting married, kids and living my life more or less as my parents had. I never thought that divorce was an option and I valued old fashioned heroes like John Wayne!

My second response to feminism was to buy into it. I listened to the assertions that were being made and agreed with many of the propositions and I still do. Simple things like women expecting equal pay, the validity of sharing housework (though in every relationship I have ever been in save one, the women I have been with had much higher standards than I! )

As time passed I began to see the effects of feminism on my life and my future. Women choosing to leave, divorce, several divorces at first did not seem related, but over time I began to realize that we all live in a cultural milieu of suppositions and some of those suppositions work while others do not and I needed to open my mind to question everything that I thought. This occurred in and around my later 30s and 40s.

I went to counselling about some of these things and at first I felt that it helped a lot. I learned to express my feelings more adequately and became willing to examine my back stories that have led me to believe what I believed. I sat there through this time watching the media begin to assert the foulness of men and portray men as buffoons. I understood earlier comments by my father during the 70s and 80s when he would watch Archie Bunker or The Flintstones...saying things like " They always treat the men as the idiots or bad guys!".

I started a business in the 90s, It was called the "Kootenay School of Experiential Education" and later on "Discovery". I taught workshops in experiential education for teachers...how to do it courses. In one of these workshops I gave the students a task to build a catamaran sailboat out of two canoes, some staves, rope and sail cloth. My intention was to stop periodically and examine the process and to extract from the experience advice about how to get kids to think critically and to have more faith in their capacities.

As the class members began to assemble their craft, I noticed that the men of the group were having a blast while the women were holding themselves at the periphery of the building, hands folded and passive. I called a halt and brought this to the attention of the group.

The group and I worked through this and decided to actively include the women. "This is great" I thought. But as this happened, I noticed a chilling phenomenon. The men's role has shifted from active participant to assistor to the women and as the women's energy began to rise...their demeanor brightened and they began to feel happier and lighter, the men's energy began to diminish until it was they who were standing back, somber and quiet.

This disturbed me. It still disturbs me. "Why can't men and women both be in ascension at the same time? I wondered.

Over the years I have seen this phenomenon establish itself more firmly in our global western societies both close to home and far away.

In the early 90s I became aware of Men's Groups. This was the mythopoetic movement and a figurehead in the movement was Robert Bly. His thoughts resonated with me. He wrote a book called "Iron John, A Book about Men." I ate it up. I began to think about this relative to my business and decided to go to grad school once again to earn a degree in counselling psychology. I thought it would be good to learn more about the human development side of things if we were going to entertain Outward Bound like experiences in the woods intending to help people to grow.

When I got there I discovered that I was the only man among 30 grad students in the department. When I announced that my interest was in Men and Boys, I could see the female professors wince. In one class, the professor described the differences between older men and women when their spouses died. "The men" she said, "would often wither and die in the absence of their partner while the women would bloom and flower." She said this with what seemed to me to be no sensitivity to the plight of those men and no interest in asking why that might be.

I decided to go to the First International Men's Conference in Austin Texas. I was in Anchorage Alaska at the time. I flew down and happened to sit next to one of the speakers, Warren Farrell who wrote "The Myth of Make Power". Of course we talked. The men's movement was actually small at that time though lots of men were interested. I went there hoping to meet Robert Bly himself but he had declined to go to the thing saying that men were not yet ready to do the work.

I believe this proved true. At the workshops various leaders postured to fill Bly's shoes instead of focusing on the exploration. They were all pontificating without substance I thought. I felt alone.

There were interesting things though. I struck up a friendly chat with the fellow seated next to me. He said he was an NFL football player. I did not follow football so that was interesting but not extremely so and I like him. A speaker got up to say that the conference included gay men. That they indeed were part of the male community and their insights were valuable. I listened and thought "Well OK!" At this time, Gay people were still hidden. At the end of that talk he invited gay members of the group to stand and be counted.

TO my surprise the NFL football player stood up next to me. When he did so he looked down at me and his eyes, looking fearful of the potential loss of friendship, looked with mine. I looked up and felt compassion for him, realizing how even more lonely he might have felt at that moment. I had met other Gay people prior to this and I wondered about them but this was a singular and personal experience. I did my best to let him see that I was still there. We parted as friends after the conference.

Anyway, life moved on and along the way I did a bit more counselling until one day I realized that this was not working for me. I will sum it up by saying that by that time, the counselling community was largely female and the methods that they were using were an attempt to get men to be more like women. Some of this was valid for both men and women. Some of it was destructive to the self image of men. I never went back.

There are more things to talk about along my path but I really just want you to know a bit of my backstory relative to this video.

Much of the video resonates with me. Not all of it. Sometimes she overstates things and sometimes says what she says as though it were unique to men. But I followed up by listening to more of her podcasts and reading her work and I spent some time, with CHAT GPT's help, summarizing her assertions. I will include this as a pdf.

When I saw the video, I thought that Diana would be interested in it and I thought that this would be a good place to practice Think and Think Again Principles (TTAP) It was with surprise that Diana's initial response to it was negative. When I asked her why she felt that way the first thing she said was that she did not like the woman's behaviour. I don't want to understate Diana's discomfort. It felt pretty intense to me. But we are well practiced in living together and I know that Di is a good hearted and stable partner. So we waited, both of us and then agreed to watch it again together.

I highly recommend this, provided that you can actually follow the TTA principles.

So we stopped the video at each talking point and I asked Diana if this seemed true to her or not and I stated what I thought as well. Some of her assertions I agreed with feeling the same and others I did not. And she and I agreed that more assertions were true than we thought were not true.

one thing was apparent, Diana was looking at things from a different lens than mine. From my perspective, she tended to see the assertions that Alison made more personally than I did. I ignored the mannerisms and where Alison might have a less solid assertion in favour of noting the ideas that I did agree with. This seemed like a big difference to me and one that Alison actually talked about. It was useful and interesting in our shared endeavour to understand one another better.

So I think this is an interesting video to share. The PDF of the assertions of the video follows along with an analysis of the efficacy of the assertions ( I built a protocol for Chat to look at evidence strength....)

I will say that the most valuable part of our recent experience was to take the time to go through the assertions item by item as we watched the video. In the end both Diana and I could see more of each other than before.

Interesting video! From the title alone, I wondered whether there is an equivalent for women. The concept of masculinity seems annoyingly fragile.
I am hesitant to link masculinity to power or strength which only enforces gender stereotypes. I see strength in every person.

I do agree with Alison that we want to be admired and admire our partner. But what I admire about my partner is his character.

Despite my initial knee-jerk reaction, I did take the time to watch this entire video. It was difficult for me, as this is a point of view on the world that is entirely "other" from what I believe and from what I encounter in the people I see throughout my day.

1. My first thought was that the video is using a lot of language such as "estrogen-based brain" and "survival instincts" even in the first few minutes. Such an attempt to boil the human thought process down to such animalistic impulses feels to me like it is avoiding the fact that both men and women are capable of developing emotional intelligence and looking outside of ourselves.

2. My second thought was how the language from both speakers puts the entire burden onto women in an extremely harsh dichotomy. There is no space for nuance in this dichotomy. Women are "sapping men's strength", are to blame for "knocking men off of their masculine pedestal". I also disagree that it is entirely the other way around, but the complete lack of acknowledgement and even the disdain towards the trials that women have had to go through to get the rights that they have seems like an intentional blindness of this video. They scorn women for fearing men raising their voices, they make emotional intelligence in conversations seem like a chore for men. It's just jarring how they describe the two sexes.

3. After these two initial thoughts I sat and tried to understand where my disagreements with them may stem from. And I think that they are speaking from the nature side, and I am a firm and devout believer of the nurture side. Like I said in point 1, we are more than instinctual creatures. We have a great capacity to learn from each other and empathize with each other, and Alison just makes it sound like both of those tasks are burdens to men to perform.

Unanswered Thoughts: How truly different are women and men on a fundamental level? How much of that comes from how we are socialized and how much of that comes from what we are born as? How does this deviate for members of the LGBT community, with gay men often presenting more feminine traits, or trans people identify as different genders than that which they were initially socialized as?

I do not think men and woman are as different as society builds them to be, especially not as different as this video builds them to be.

Can you speak a bit more Leah about your beliefs regarding nature versus nurture within the context of this particular topic? As a biologist I tend to see that both are real. I think that this is interesting especially in light of the fact that people have been wondering about this since Plato. Perhaps this question bleeds into another question about the efficacy of science? Looking forward to your response!

I think that a lot of people when we discuss nature vs nurture disregard the difference between how we treat boys and girls from the get-go. The observable ways we talk to babies, the clothes we give them, the toys we give them, and the interactions of the adults around them all have huge effects. Even if two parents are dedicated to raising kids equally, they will still witness common gender dynamics in school and the world around them.

From that the question becomes "is it their nature? Or is it a continuing cycle of nurturing?". Are boys naturally complete opposites of girls, or do they observe the men around them and then grow up to be observed by the next generation? Of course, this all applies to women too in their own sense.

There is just no way to fully prove the pull of nature against nurturing, because it is true that many mental qualities are inherited genetically, and this COULD apply to gender, but we have no true control group. Most cultures (and I am speaking as somehow who has lived in the US culture my whole life, please feel free to correct) differentiate between men and women in some way with the way they dress and their societal roles, but we have seen these roles change. Men used to be the ones to wear makeup and heels and wigs as a fashion statement, now those are common symbols of femininity. There are so many male authors and poets throughout history who are able to express emotion fluently, even express deep tender care for their male friends that the modern "manosphere" would gawk at.

I appreciate what Helena said in her comment. If masculinity is so easily broken down by the presence of a woman, maybe it was a dangerously fragile system to begin with. The role of woman in society in the past 100 years has evolved rapidly, we've gained access to the ability to vote, own houses, own bank accounts, and so much more. Maybe masculinity simply has to evolve, not vanish, not shrink, but change with the world around it. And that's the whole point of the Nurture side of the argument.

The interweaving of our biological natures with the experience that we accrue over the course of our lives is what makes us human. It is true that we are this blend and we will always be such. Also true is that we have a deep nature, a spiritual depth. Each of us is on a journey to learn things about reality and ourselves in our time here. If I say to you, something resonates within me and I wish to exalt in that, you would not deny me this nor would I you. In this interplay of men and women we are challenged to move further along the journey of discovery I think.

Learning the stories of others is important. Discovering or perhaps creating your own path is also important. All of what I am saying is true of us all.

On the one hand perhaps this is the only thing that is important. On the other, we tend to want to understand the details of how we came to be and why.

I have watched men shift such that they increasingly seem uncertain. Not all, surely, but more than before. There are travailles of men that I can list but why? There are as many travailles for women. In truth all people struggle.

My interest is in helping all people to choose a path with a heart. One that allows the exploration and expression of who they are.

If you say to a person "you are trash and you will always be trash" or "You are the cause of the ills of the world!" or "I can never trust you" and this is all that they hear, some will resist this but many others will succumb. If you generalize this to a people, a group and this is what they hear...all that they hear....then this is prejudice and many will succumb. Such is the dark side of nurture.

But if I wake up in the morning and celebrate my goodness even if I acknowledge and embrace my flaws, the dark skies open and the light fills me. This is the truth. That I am always composed of light and dark, successes and failures, understanding and the lack of it. In this understanding lies the opportunity for grace. This is a high level.

I can celebrate you when you do this and this will feel generous and enlightened to me. I could also feel disturbed that you do this and feel fear. Why is that? Because somehow I have linked your strength with my lack of it perhaps.

Certainly there are worldly conflicts that must be addressed. Sometimes there are limited resources and who might get them? How do we manage this? Who gets what? If I ponder this I can feel fear rising. Its an expression perhaps of an aspect of reality...perhaps survival based. And this is a rub in whatever lofty philosoiphy I may have. So we build structures and agree to things. We invent character values and fair play, or rather we discover them. I think that universal character values exist and their efficacy is embedded in our reality. To have moble virtues helps us to survive.

In all of this right now, are the items that draw our attention. Issues that we focus on as though they are the most important thing. I do not want men or women to feel bad about themselves. I want them to honor who they are. What if there is a true nature for men and for women? To not acknowledge that would be a travesty. Perhaps in some ways we have done just that. What if it is also true that men and women, as human beings have much more in common that they differ? Does that contradict anything?

The sages have said, "The law includes hardness and softness". There is unity as well as duality that is clearly at play in our world. If I say I want men to feel good about being men, it does not, or ought not to challenge that I also want women to feel good about who they are. If someone chooses to focus on unity of conditions rather than to dance in the dualities, I see no contrast. At least theoretically...since I am human with human foibles and sometimes stuff just ticks me off.

The exercise that allows us to grow, I think, is to be willing to listen to the stories of others, past the anger and fear to understand why someone might think as they do. I think that this is what this group is about and this is whjy I support it.

Cheers.

i occasioanlly publish things without reading them...."mobile" was supposed to be "noble"

heh case in point!!