Lately, I have been thinking a lot about love.
Probably through some combination of Buddhist practice and reading a whole lot of bell hooks books, I’ve started to see love as the essence of what it is we’re really looking for and trying to express when we talk about ending oppression.
In my life at least, gender oppression has been most toxic in the ways that it has created barriers to me building genuine, loving relationships with other people. I suspect that this is true for a lot of other people, too.
How many kids have grown up feeling like they weren’t good enough because their fathers were absent or unloving? How many women have spent their lives bone lonely because their male partners were unable to see them as equals or engage in real intimacy? How many men spend their lives completely isolated because they are surrounded by people who can’t accept any male emotion other than anger?
This stuff cuts so close to the bone that it’s almost embarrassing to talk about, and we usually don’t.
After a lot of years of just accepting that silence, I’m starting to see it as part of something systemic. I’m starting to think that it needs to be challenged. In short, there is a reason that talking about love leads to ridicule and marginalization in this culture, and the reason is patriarchy.
To quote bell hooks:
The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem. [The] feminist movement offered men and women the information needed to challenge this psychic slaughter, but that challenge never became a widespread aspect of the struggle for gender equality. Women demanded of men that they give more emotionally, but most men really could not understand what was being asked of them. Having cut away the parts of themselves that could feel a wide range of emotional response, they were too disconnected. (pg 66, The Will To Change)
Abusing the ability to develop emotional intimacy and love out of boys is step one in ensuring that they will be able to enact the violence necessary to maintain patriarchy and other forms of oppression. It’s a well-known fact of human psychology that isolation will break a person’s spirit more effectively than just about anything else. How better to control men than to create an isolation that they can never escape from, because it has been internalized? How better to control women than to promise them that if they are just pretty and compliant enough, they will be loved?
The humiliation of anyone who dares to talk about wanting love is also key to maintaining patriarchy. It’s no coincidence that it’s such a common anti-feminist trope to claim that women who challenge gender oppression are just upset because they can’t find a fulfilling romantic relationship with a man.
There’s so much contained in that criticism. It implies that women are defined by their relationships to men, and that women have no purpose unless a man deems them to have sexual value. It implies that feminist complaints are invalid and unimportant. Those sentiments have been thoroughly challenged by feminists. But it also implies something else, which I think feminists have largely ignored: it implies that large numbers of women not being able to find loving partnerships is not an acceptable reason to organize politically. It implies that love is just not terribly important.
The devaluation of love is a feminist issue if I ever saw one. To the extent that we love ourselves, we recognize that we don’t deserve violence or mistreatment, and we resist it. To the extent that we love others, we want them to be free from fear and pain. Love is pretty much the only reason political organizing ever happens. It’s also one of the most essential aspects of a happy and fulfilling life. It’s both the impetus to organize against oppression and the goal of efforts against oppression. It’s not a secondary issue. It is the central issue.
I think it’s time for those of us concerned with social justice to start taking love seriously.
I don’t know if it’s a societal taboo to admit you want love but it’s certainly one to admit that you’re lonely, or that you need more love than you currently receive. Probably everyone agrees that one of, if not the most offputting thing about a potential partner is desperation.
But you’re definitely right when you say that admitting love is important to you is seen as being synonymous with a weakness or lack of ambition and dedication in other areas. That attitude’s definitely an offshoot of patriarchy but we shouldn’t forget that although it can also be present in feminist movements, that’s at least equally due to the long history of women being mistreated in relationships (and not just romantic relationships) due to their dependent status in an unequal society.
What a beautiful and needed post.
Rockit: I do think there’s an existing taboo against admitting that you want love. My intuition is that love is one of those intangible, “soft” things that are seen as unnecessary indulgences in a patriarchal, capitalist culture, something that people will say they can get along without if asked, and scoff at you if you state the plain truth: Everyone needs love. Everyone needs positive human interaction. And yet we speak of love as a gift.
I find myself thinking of the way we criticize children who state their desires too plainly. “Don’t tell Grandma what you want for Christmas unless she asks. It’s rude.”
The kind of love being talked about in this post, though, is larger than any one person or any one relationship. It’s a cultural shift that’s needed. Something revolutionary. Although I know this is a feminist blog, I think this goes way beyond feminism. It’s a core-of-our-culture thing that needs to be revamped, and the way to do it isn’t through legislation, or protest marches, or letter-writing campaigns. Love makes more love. It’s as simple as that, and as hard.
@Rockit–
As literarycritic articulated very beautifully, the kind of love I’m talking about is bigger than one person or relationship (though it encompasses that too). More of a global thing. All kinds of love. Especially love for the collective whole, which is pretty much totally devalued in our individualistic culture.
@literarycritic–
Thanks!
Yes, in a way, it does “go beyond” feminism. But I also think feminism led me to it. I think that ultimately, since all forms of oppression are interconnected, and since we are all interconnected, if you work deeply enough into any one liberation movement you’ll come to more expansive perspective. And if you start at the micro level and work hard enough to love yourself and the people around you, political action for the collective whole isn’t far off.
This is exactly the conversation we should be having! When I was still seeing my Jungian therapist (I miss her!), we often discussed why I was so unhappy in my (former) position as an office administrator. I enjoyed the job and my coworkers, but hated my boss and deeply resented that this person had power over me, in that he could just up and decide to fire me (though I would have certainly gone to the Labour Board, but would still have had to find a new job, which is always a pain).
Anyway, my therapist asked me what the opposite of power was. And, despite my vocabulary and education, I didn’t know. Her answer: “Love.” Love is the opposite of all the petty and not-so-petty power dynamics inherent in a patriarchal society – a society which relies on hierarchical order and the subordination of half the world’s population in order to continue.
I don’t know how a love-based society would look like, but I’d sure like to find out.
er, I mean ‘how a love-based society would look.” Grammar fail.
Great post! I’ve also been reading a lot of bell hooks lately, so this really hit home with what I’ve been pondering (Will to Change is on my list, haven’t gotten to it yet though). It’s really heartbreaking, and I think speaks the need for feminist parenting of boy children (obviously girls too). Now I have something to discuss with my (male) spouse when I get home!
This reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about for a while…
I’m aromantic asexual, meaning I have absolutely no desire for a sexual or romantic relationship with anyone. Telling people this tends to net me a lot of shock, horror and comments along the lines of “that’s so horrible! How can you not want love?” (which is probably why I can’t really relate to what you say about wanting love being a societal taboo, as I usually get the other end of the stick) or speculating about how damaged I must be-
But hey, I never said anything about not wanting love. I just don’t want it in the context of a romantic relationship. I’m looking for a best friend, not a boy- or girlfriend.
Our culture has promoted one specific type of relationship (romantic) above pretty much all others; your romantic partner is supposed to be the most important thing in the world (bar possibly children) and your sole source for various types of intimacy – not just sexual. Friendships are automatically seen as less-than and there are limits placed on how important or deep friendships can be to still be considered normal by society. It strikes me how very bounded our notion of love has become, how we want it to fit into strict patterns and conform to our expectations – to the point that me saying “hey, I’m not interested in this particular expression of love” is interpreted as “hey, I’m not interested in love at all”.
That was a beautiful, articulate, and honest love letter.
The devaluation of love is a feminist issue if I ever saw one.
THIS. Absolutely this.
Zailyn,
I’m right there with you. I find it really problematic that romantic/sexual love is celebrated as the “highest” or “most important” kind of love. Part of this may be because of the limitations of the English language only having one word for love. But I think it’s also part of the patriarchy—to elevate the heterosexual marriage bond is an important part of maintaining patriarchal control.
Thus, focusing the feminist movement on love generally, in all it’s variety and diversity of manifestations, will not just about loving and living fully into ourselves by resisting violence of all forms, but it also becomes a way to subvert the patriarchy’s grip on kinship networks.
…let me emphasize that the original post, titled “Love”, touched my heart in a special manner which is far beyond the power of mere words to convey…
Delurking just to say: beautiful, amazing post. I want more!
Thank you so much for writing this
Interesting point. No, make that a good point.
As part of my growing up I’ve been interested in paganism, and especially Starhawk’s writings have had a major influence on my moral development. (I’m sorry if that sounds pompous, but she really tied together all sorts of strands of things I found important, and showed me how they fit together. However, I’m not a pagan, as I’m not a religious person)
If you’re interested in these questions you may also want to read her Truth or Dare, which deals with issues of power, patriarchy and getting rid of it.
Fascinating post– I hadn’t thought about love in this way, and now I have a lot to think about. Building on the theme that love is the opposite of power, I was telling my therapist about someone I loved (not romantically). He asked me “Are you afraid of them?” and when I said yes– he said– it’s not love if you fear someone. What does love look like without fear?
Friendships are automatically seen as less-than and there are limits placed on how important or deep friendships can be to still be considered normal by society.
Zailyn/Katie, that’s a fascinating point. And in support of the theory that it’s patriarchy devaluing friendship, it’s highly misogynistic men who are most threatened by close friendships between women (even to the point of believing that friendships between women are impossible because we’re all jealous of each other) and of course they are usually just as threatened in a different way by closeness between men. (I’m saying “usually” because I’ve seen misogynistic gay guys who think that women can’t be friends with each other.)
So much to think about in this post. I really like it. I think patriarchy or any other system of social subordination is highly dependent on everyone sticking to their ordained social roles, projecting the forbidden parts of their personality onto other groups. Othering. And genuine love demands exactly the opposite, that we be our whole, authentic selves, and take responsibility for all of our own thoughts, words and actions. So love is a threat to patriarchy, (roses, diamonds and fancy weddings notwithstanding.)
[...] Reclaiming love for the feminist agenda is as good a cause as any: read the full post over at Feministe for a veraciously profound insight into the influence of patriarchy on contemporary perceptions of [...]
@Miss Minx–
Since power is another obsession of mine, I’ve thought a lot about what it means. I disagree that love stands in opposition to power. I’m a believer in Martin Luther King’s definition:
As with love, I think we lack appropriate language for power (this is no coincidence!) There is a difference between legitimate and illegitimate power. Consent is the big difference, for me. I definitely do not think power is necessarily bad, or necessarily in opposition to love. Illegitimate, coercive power is. But there is another kind of power.
Thanks!
@Zailyn:
Yes. I agree with this so much. On the one hand, it forces people to try to find all the varieties of intimacy and love we all need in one relationship, often leaving one or both partners frustrated and unhappy. Simultaneously, it works to keep friendships ultimately superficial and unsatisfying because it’s considered inappropriate to celebrate deep love or connection in a relationship that isn’t sexual. Our sexual partners are threatened by it, people make snide or hurtful comments about it, and often the people in the friendship don’t even understand it, because we don’t have frameworks that allow us to talk about it truthfully or accurately. It’s really antisocial, even anti-love, when you think about it, this fantasy of all-encompassing and self-contained romantic love.
Germaine Greer wrote a lot about this fantasy in The Female Eunuch (great book, btw — highly recommended reading on this exact topic).
There are certainly pressures on men not to express love, or even affection as anything more than a joke. That’s why there is so much emphasis on sex. Asking for, or even demanding, sex is socially acceptable. Asking for affection isn’t. Even expressing affection tends to be interpreted as asking for sex.
OK, my experience is possibly extreme in that I went to an all boys secondary school. Nor did my father express affection much. At the same time I absorbed the idea that a marriage should be based on love and affection because that was the basis of my parents marriage. I realise now that I never had a clue about how to identify a partner
who shared that view. A lot of women of my generation had the view that marriage was about having kids and the husband was part of the deal.
It appears some feminists have adopted the same behaviour pattern, probably to avoid appearing weak when competing against men.
@Donald–
A thousand times yes! Especially for men, it is considered completely normal to “need” sex. But needing love? Totally taboo! And from my own relationships, I can certainly say that many men have a really hard time knowing any other way to express love.
I don’t think your experience is extreme, or much different from what most men experience.
I absolutely agree that some women have adopted a very patriarchal way of looking at sex and love… For myself, I can say that my first expressions of feminism were more about trying to have access to the same privileges men do than they were about liberating everyone, which is more my interest now. Women having access to the same resources and power that men do is very important, but it is also important that we all (especially men) start valuing emotional work and childcare and peacemaking, and all those positive “feminine” values that have been devalued in patriarchy.
I think the idea that women will find liberation through access to patriarchal power comes out of a sort of incomplete decolonization of our minds, where we’ve realized that we are equal to men but are still falling into a patriarchal system of assigning value to things. So since sex without caring=”masculine” and therefore “good”, we want access to that too. There’s no questioning of the basic premise that life is better that way, or of the idea that what is masculine is better.
“How better to control men than to create an isolation that they can never escape from, because it has been internalized? How better to control women than to promise them that if they are just pretty and compliant enough, they will be loved?”
Thank you so much for saying this, and for the whole post. At the risk of violating shameless self-promotion rules, I encourage folks interested in a bunch of men who are working on this stuff to check out the Men’s Story Project–many of the men in the project (full disclosure, this includes me!) do pieces exactly about some of what y’all are discussing.
The Men’s Story Project youtube page.
I’ll de-lurk to say thank you for this post. And Donald, I think that “extreme” experiences are actually pretty common; I know mine was pretty bad … I can remember even as a boy of five or six, having it hammered into me by my peers that I had no “Need” of affection once I left diapers; that I had to be “Tough”(rage and lust were the only “acceptable” emotions in my admittedly backwoods peer group, and violence was glorified). Thankfully, I resisted, but I paid heavily for it by being bullied mercilessly (there were other factors as well, but this was near the top of their list).
I just wish more people of every sex, gender, race , class and creed had the ability to confidently seek the affection that all – or at least nearly all – of us crave in some form or another.
I’m actually surprised you didn’t go more in depth into how men who don’t fit the standard are isolated from other men and persecuted relentlessly (with the tacit approval of authorities, naturally. And often approval from your female peers, who them add fuel to the fire by treating the persecutors as desirable, doubtlessly due to the same processes wearing a woman’s face. This may in fact be the source of most Nice Guy(tm) rhetoric.), until they give in, become pariahs, or kill themselves. Any self-esteem or confidence you have is stripped viciously from you, making you believe yourself worthless and undesirable.
If you haven’t guessed already, school was Hell on Earth for me…
Tiktaalik– That was a space issue, but maybe in a later post. It is certainly true that men and boys are terrorized and isolated for resisting patriarchal masculinity, just as women are terrorized for being women. My take is that men who refuse to play their patriarchal role are essentially “demoted” to female status (just think of the insults such men generally face, and how many of them indicate an association with femininity).
Thank you for this, Ashley. It’s so necessary. Lately I’ve also done a lot of thinking about why love and politics, or love and “Serious Issues,” are generally considered so separate. Despite so many of the most inspiring social justice leaders — from Ida B. Wells to Thich Nhat Hanh to Gandhi, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Malalai Joya, MLK (and so many civil rights activists) — being motivated by Love in the highest sense.
How wonderful that your Buddhist practice has brought up some of these thoughts. The same thing happened to me, and of course the path has influenced bell hooks, too. (What kind of lineage are you involved with, if you don’t mind my asking?) Buddhism, and many wisdom traditions that get to the heart of radical interconnectedness, actually fuse love and politics through the practice of ahimsa — non-harming. A.k.a. non-patriarchy, non-racism, non-war, non-greed, non-self-hatred, and on and on.
Personally, I’m still working on finding a middle path, as it were, between love and politics, as traditionally understood in my own middle-class American society (though at this point in my mind love and politics are essentially one and the same). Basically, people think we are selfish, lazy, unserious navel-gazers when we work on Love — work on expanding our own capacity to love all beings and situations. And I think this view stems from a couple of beliefs. Both have to do with scarcity.
On one hand, there’s the scarcity of allies. Politics (and many forms of feminism) is so often about struggle, fighting the enemy, becoming aggravated with the ignorance and evil of the oppressor, or of the systemic injustices…someone who suggests accepting and loving all beings (including rapists, war criminals, the most sexist of the sexist) seems at best naïve, and at worst like a traitor and an apologist. Unreliable as an ally, if only because someone who advocates such expansive love might be seen as incapable of relating to the deep pain and trauma inflicted on so many people in the world. How could anyone see such harm and still talk about ‘loving’ the perpetrators? Aren’t irritation, exasperation, dismissal, anger, and rage warranted–if not appropriate–if not necessary responses to such atrocities?
And secondly, there’s a perceived scarcity of time. So you’re going to spend an hour a day sitting on your ass meditating (or doing whatever practice you do to promote your own lovingness), while people (let’s say women) are starving and being raped and bombed and slaughtered? Wait — you’re going to spend more than an hour a day? What in God’s name is wrong with you? Can’t you see there’s real work to be done?
Does this sound familiar? :)
There’s a lot more on my mind but this is getting long. Mainly I just want to thank you for raising the issue here. As I’m sure you’ve found from your practice, far from being frivolous or simple, learning to Love without preference is pretty much the most difficult work a human being can undertake. Keep at it! For all our sakes.
with metta and gratitude,
katie
katie–
Like many Western Buddhists, I’m kind of a mess of lineages. Right now, I practice with a Korean Zen teacher who I love, but I took refuge with Gelugpa and once I’m somewhere where there is a Tibetan teacher, I will probably end up there instead of in a Zendo. But one never knows.
I also don’t see love and politics as separate. Not at all. I’ve definitely heard all the objections you’re talking about. My response is just to say that if someone thinks the ability to think clearly, avoid inaccurate projections, calmly manage time, avoid anger at fellow organizers, and let go of crippling stress are not useful for effective organizing, then yes, I suppose an hour a day is a waste of time!
Ultimately, what I’ve found is that the organizers I’ve worked with over long periods of time have seen that meditation has made me a bit easier to be around and no less radical. The objections drop away because the proof is in what you do.
As for loving perpetrators, I guess people equate loving someone with letting someone treat you like crap, or do any old destructive thing they want to. Those kinds of ideas run pretty deep in a patriarchal culture. This is exactly why we need to talk about love and what it really means!
I do think that anger has its usefulness, in a way. It tells you that something is hurting you, and that you don’t want to hurt. Maybe it points to an unfairness that is causing you pain. As long as you don’t start thinking the anger is all real and solid, it can tell you what’s going on. I think it can get tricky to talk about getting rid of anger with oppressed people, who are routinely taught to suppress and repress anger so they can be controlled. Sort of like “selflessness” for women can be dangerously misinterpreted, given our cultural context… Very skillful means are needed sometimes.
Thank you for your comment!
Metta :)
Yes. To everything, a big yes.
Boy, do I hear this. So often psychological oppression and the invisibility of privilege means saying to oppressed groups: “Quit complaining. Stop making something out of nothing. You’re just being hysterical/self-righteous/politically-correct/a downer.”
I think you’re absolutely right that the way to approach anger isn’t with frustration, like “I shouldn’t be angry; I’m such a schmuck for getting angry,” but instead with — yes — more love, and a view that the emotion has arisen to teach us something. Avoiding identifying with the emotion (like you say, “not thinking that it’s real and solid”) is tricky, though. Can you share an example in your experience where someone used skillful means in a feminist context to acknowledge anger, depression, resentment, etc. without “feeding” it? I do love a good story… :)
Oh, also, to be more specific about the question of identifying with anger, it seems like many of the titles and personalities in the feminist blogosphere do construct personae out of it: Angry Black Bitch; Angry Brown Butch; Fetch Me My Axe; Hate On Me; Diary of an Anxious Black Woman…
What these bloggers write is extremely valuable, and I’m not trying to single them out as “the angry ones,” or to suggest that everything they blog has a raw edge. And I get that reclaiming anger, the right to be human and angry at injustice, is especially important to us feminists, in various ways complicated by intersectional experiences.
Still, I do have these open questions about the roles of love and anger in high-profile feminist blogs.
Is it just me, or do we use a huge amount of snark and sarcasm?
What do we make of this?
Is it simply an effective writing device — deployed for entertainment value, and because humor can often cut through bullshit to the core of an issue? Or is it about seeming smarter, cleverer, wittier than the obtuse opponents? Clearly, it’s not a phenomenon limited to feminist blogs: lots of political sites, not to mention fashion, computer tech, etc., are heavy on the cutting banter. But does it have particular meaning on feminist sites? And how does love play into it?
Maybe I’m blowing the thing out of proportion, and I certainly don’t mean to attack anyone. But as someone who, in my own feminist blogging, has felt somehow pressured by a weird unspoken rule to snark whenever possible, I do wonder about the subtle differences between backbone and defensive posturing. What happens to love in the midst of snark culture? Can snark itself be a form of love? When and how?
Is it somehow related to the emotional self-mutilation among men that bell hooks talks about? Do we (non-men) compensate so much for the repression of female anger that we silence or sever the parts of ourselves that seem tender, vulnerable, or fragile? If so, is this simply a survival technique, in the sense that only by sounding like a man (no matter what gender you are) can you gain credibility?
Sorry this is rambling and kind of Cultural-Feminism-101…Thanks for putting up with me and my questions. :) I’d love to hear your thoughts. (And anyone else’s, of course!)
Hey Katie,
hmm, a story of not identifying with anger? For me it’s gonna be pretty small potatoes, since I’m no Buddha. But I’ve definitely had times when I’ve felt anger at someone, noted the emotion, recognized what the injustice was that was making me angry, and let the anger go before responding to the problem (or at least tried not to let it dictate my response). For example, I had a friend who was pretty sexist, and when we talked about feminism he gave me every trope in the book. I recognized what was going on, but decided to let the anger go and focus on how much I wanted him to be happy (and how feminist ideas could help him be happier). Over time, he’s become much more feminist, because I didn’t just blow him off or dismiss him. That’s a story, I guess.
As for humor, I think there’s a difference between humor in the service of saving your mental health in the face of an attack on your personhood, and humor in the service of humiliating or showing your superiority to your opponent. Snark can totally be a form of love, I think, when it’s used to help someone. You can tell the difference between good and bad snark by whether it makes you feel good, I think. There’s always an uneasiness if you’re mocking someone else to feel superior. If it’s loving, you just feel genuinely happy.
On the angry blog titles, I think people often substitute the word “anger” when they really mean “resistance”.
And yes, I think women and men try to hide their vulnerability, and in a way, that works. But eventually you’ll get found out, and then you’ll have to defend yourself, and then it’s a mess. Much better to be open about the vulnerability from the start, in my opinion. Nothing left to protect.
I was once involved in a small religious group that was making me intensely miserable. (And I was making many of the other members intensely miserable.)
I did a nine days’ prayer to Kuan Yin, asking for peace. And on day seven I got a very clear, pointed answer: “I cannot give you peace because that is not what you want.” It had the kick of something inarguably true.
I thought about it, and realized that it *was* true. I didn’t want peace with that situation. It would have done me harm to come to peace with it. I wanted to be fairly and decently treated; if I couldn’t have that, I wanted out. So I quit. Some years later, I managed to forgive both myself and the other members for the experience, and, indeed, find some peace with it. But I was never going to do that while still in the situation.
I think that advice to be loving sometimes hits people who are in the same sort of place I was, where accommodation to the situation is just self-mutilation. We need to find a way to teach love in such situations that isn’t asking for accommodation to the intolerable, but also helps people who are stuck that way to avoid scarring themselves with bitterness and hate.
Mary Kaye–
Kuan Yin knows her shit, doesn’t she?
Anger is a perfectly valid response to intolerable situations and experiences. The trick is not to let your response make things worse, especially by hitting out at the wrong person. I suspect men learn to do this better than women because there is greater danger from hitting out and less pressure not to show anger.
The ideal response is to use the anger to target the cause of the problem but that requires a lot of self control.
Unfortunately our society views all things male to be superior to all things considered female and love is considered female. Its an emotion so it is considered weak. This is happening because we have an imbalance of masculine energy on the planet and masculinity is acting out of its most negative position. If masculine energy were balanced with feminine we’d admire and respect the attributes of both and access them both as appropriate. I blog on this topic at http://www.stillettochick.typepad.com
Reactions to “Love” and the quote from Bell Hooks:
One: The assumption that the emotional disconnectedness of men serves no purpose other than to reinforce patriarchy and the oppression of women is two-dimensional. It’s developed for a purpose, whether we like that purpose or not, though I can only speculate on what that purpose it is. The ability to kill is the first thing that comes to mind. The ability to ignore, deny, or disregard another’s right to self-preservation to wound, kill, or otherwise defeat them. This may or may not have always been the case—there may be vast differences among men who fight and kill, over time and in different cultures, in the degree of self-respect or respect of other (including and especially one’s enemy). And men have not necessarily engaged in warfare because they like to or want to, nor is it necessarily an outgrowth of a social system. War has occurred over throughout our existence as a species for a variety of reasons, many of which look a lot like simple—and very real—competition over resources. Many, of course (and probably most in the modern age), are much more political in nature.
Two: What is patriarchy, why does it exist, and what has brought it to power? This is an important question. If we believe that things are as they are for a reason (not a good or bad reason, just a reason) then we have to look into why patriarchy exists. Doing so will inevitably lead us to compassion and take us into the the origins of patriarchy—those forces in our world which have encouraged its development—which must be addressed or undone if the negative attributes of a patriarchal society are to be corrected. Patriarchy has developed as a generally effective means of social control, as warfare has developed as a generally effective means of problem solving—at least in the short-term, and more so in the past than in the modern world. I assume this based on its persistence. “Effective”, again, does not necessarily mean good, and is arguable, particularly as it applies in the modern world.
Three: “…patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.” Why have men been asked to engage in these acts of psychic self-mutilation? The language here is terribly assuming, and could, theoretically, be rephrased: “psychic self-mutilation” might be “psychological re-ordering”, “killing off the emotional parts of themselves” might be “inoculating oneself against the hardships of life with which one must contend”, “emotionally crippling himself” might be “emotionally fortifying himself”. Do you see how these are matters of perspective?
If these are extreme reactions they are nonetheless adaptations, in that they have developed for a reason. And are they extreme? Are they outdated? Unnecessary? Do we live in a world in which security is a given? Certainly aggression appears to threaten our security at least as much as it preserves it. After all, aggression would not serve us if aggression did not exist among others. But in the meantime, understanding that aggression and the emotional crippling (or emotional fortification) of men exists for a reason, we might examine whether or not these adaptations serve us, and if not, how to adjust them properly, healthfully, and realistically.
I have worked with low-income inner-city youth at therapeutic rich-kid programs (per scholarships), and generally been left with the sense that what the program teaches applies is much less useful to them. They will go home and the “I Feel Statements”, the “Emotional Literacy”, the “Self-Discovery” may or may not serve them. It may work against them. The shock between an ideal (and idealized) way that one might live and the reality of their lives may be dislocating, may serve to further relegate therapy and such to the realms of an imaginary way of living, imagined chiefly by affluent white folks insulated from the hardships of the street, the competition and struggle for limited resources. Their situation is, of course, an outgrowth of ways in which patriarchy has ordered the world (as is their response), which is itself an outgrowth of that which the world has forced us to contend with (the world including human beings). Until our inner cities are safe places to live, in which resources are plentiful, opportunities abound, and there is not actual, factual competition to survive, is it realistic or even ethical to ask folks to adjust the aspects of their personalities that have developed in response to real hardship? It is natural for a young man in a tough environment to harden, and, though they may being “killing off the emotional parts of themselves” in some ways or from certain perspectives, they are doing so as a matter of self-preservation. In this context, it is not self-mutilation any more than a ram growing horns is self-mutilation. It is a defensive, useful adaptation.
It is important, too, to realize that these defensive adaptations developed not just to defend individuals, but to defend peoples, whole tribes and societies. Culture developed among men the psychic fortitude (or inurement) to fight and kill so that they might do so as necessary, against attack, first by beast, later (and mostly) by man. Aggression, even, developed out of defensive impulses—preemptive attack as a means of security, of assuring the upper hand. Does this mean that all these impulses still serve us, or are the most appropriate adaptations or responses? Certainly not. But they have existed for a long, long time, undoubtedly for a reason, and should not be ignored or dismissed.
Talking about Patriarchy doing this and that forfeits a necessary deeper analysis. Culture—which perpetuates patriarchy—is an adaptive response to real-world stimuli. Perhaps aspects of it—such as patriarchy—are outdated. Perhaps one can argue that Patriarchy has never served us nor been a useful adaptation. Keep in mind—and I hope this is clear—that I am putting all this out there from a very rudimentary basic needs and survival perspective, which, if you consider Maslow’s heirachy of needs, ranks first and must be secured before higher needs can be adequately addressed. If you bring in Buddhist ideals of non-violence, you are bringing religious philosophy into the picture. The Buddhist tradition, believing a person may undo bad karma through non-violence and thus be born higher next time around, side-steps the most difficult questions that human beings—which are animals concerned with their own well-being—face in times of genuine hardship, struggle, and danger.
The conversation about Love is crucial. The examination of men’s emotional configuration is equally crucial. But what appears to be the absence of Love may in fact be an obscured expression of it, buried under layers of cultural heritance, patriarchy, what have you, and as invisible, at times, to men as it is to women. Without this recognition, we focus our energies against the obvious and the visible while the mechanism continues to operate, unaffected. We risk facing off against the wizard, rather than the man behind the curtain.