The #MeToo Movement has raised our awareness about sexual harassment and abuse, but it has also triggered conflict and fears between men and women. In our current political climate, women are afraid that the strides made on behalf of sex and gender equality will be lost. Men are afraid that maleness itself is being seen as a bad and all men are being lumped together with rapists and abusers.
In The Little #MeToo Book for Men, Mark Greene asks, “How is it that men are challenged by a movement which says, ‘Don’t rape, sexually harass or abuse other human beings?’” The answer, I believe, will be found in recognizing that we are all caught up in a dominator culture that cuts us all off from our humanity and pits one group against the other.
Riane Eisler, the world-renowned Austrian-born American systems scientist, social activist, and author of The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future has proposed that we ought to understand human cultures and societies in terms of two fundamental categories: “dominator” and “partnership.”
In the domination system, Eisler says,
“Somebody has to be on top and somebody has to be on the bottom. People learn, starting in early childhood, to obey orders without question. They learn to carry a harsh voice in their heads telling them they’re no good, they don’t deserve love, they need to be punished. Families and societies are based on control that is explicitly or implicitly backed up by guilt, fear, and force.”
In contrast, Eisler says,
“The partnership system supports mutually respectful and caring relations. Because there is no need to maintain rigid rankings of control, there is also no built-in need for abuse and violence. Partnership relations free our innate capacity to feel joy, to play. They enable us to grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. This is true for individuals, families, and whole societies. Conflict is an opportunity to learn and to be creative, and power is exercised in ways that empower rather than disempower others.”
I met Eisler years ago after she wrote the Chalice and the Blade. I was impressed that she didn’t fall into the trap that divides men and women by talking about the dominator system as “patriarchy.” It’s true that in the dominator culture men in power can cause harm to women. But it’s also true that men in power also harm less powerful men as well.
She reminds us that the real conflicts we are experiencing are not between the left and right, men and women, “but everywhere between those who believe our only alternatives are dominating or being dominated and those working for partnership relations of mutual respect, accountability, and caring.”
Language is important. When we see the problem as “patriarchy,” we divide men and women. When we see the conflict between “dominator culture” and “partnership culture” we bring people together. The dominator culture restricts what men can be and tries to force us into a Man Box. But the things we demand that men must be (strong, powerful, outspoken, etc.) are the very things we demand that women must not be. The things the culture demands that women must be (Nurturing, tender, passive, etc.) are the same things that we demand that men must not be. The same cultural beliefs that produce a Man Box, inevitably create its mirror image, the Woman Box.
The only way we can break free is to help each other out. I agree with Mark Greene when he says, “#MeToo will go down in history as one of the most powerful cultural/political flashpoints in American history.” But it will do so when men recognize that #MeToo also means MenToo.
We have to come out and talk about our own wounds, times we were abused physically, sexually, and emotionally. We have to recognize that a dominator culture that condones the rape and abuse of women at home and in the workplace also condones the incarceration of millions of men, many of whom are abused and raped in prison. Studies show that 200,000 rapes of men in prison occur annually with only 10 percent being reported.
It took me a long time to acknowledge that the bullying and sexual abuse I experienced at the hands of older boys when I was in junior high school had contributed to my anger and sexual problems in my marriage. It took me even longer to recognize that growing up with an absent father had also contributed to my anger and depression as an adult.
I call on men and women to quit blaming ourselves and each other, to break out of the restrictive boxes that separate us, and commit our lives to creating, in the words of Charles Eisenstein, “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.”
I look forward to partnering with you and hearing your own stories.
I like these points. My ex husband and my current husband’s ex wife were both controlling and abusive. Together, my husband and I encourage each other’s growth which is wonderful; we’re no longer stifled.
How does one help a child with OCD, which can contribute to this problem? An anxious grandson wants to control his life, his parents, his brothers. My daughter is starting to take him to therapy. We don’t want his genetic, inherited need for control to cause the same behavior his mother and I experienced from her father. I would think OCD presents special challenges here.
I really love this idea of viewing social constructs as domination versus partnership. My wife and I embrace partnership, and it’s been a key foundation to our relationship. Interestingly, I sometimes wonder where it came from. My parents were “partners” in what I feel was a dysfunctional, verbally abusive partnership (with my father being the main source, my mother retaliating, and the two of them heaping an unhealthy load of it on their children). But they were still more equal than some of my friends who – per the Bible’s prompting, or at least their interpretation of it – woman will obey her husband (making man the master).
One fear I have about the movements we have today is that, while they certainly help to bring the symptoms of the underlying problems to the surface, believing they ARE the identity of the problems is something people easily confuse and thus act on. There is an implicit accusation levied when you tell someone who is innocent (or potentially so) “Don’t rape.” If you walk up to a stranger and say, “You shouldn’t murder,” or “you shouldn’t beat your spouse,” there is an implicit accusation, and the recipient has an instinctive response to get defensive. Imagine even more mundane examples, or try a few out with people: “You shouldn’t leave store-bought eggs on the counter” and “you really should eat healthy.” These are obvious and undeniable statements, but when repeated over and over they become perceived as abusive and controlling. Even more so when we don’t leave our eggs on the counter, we do not beat our spouses, and most of us have never raped. (In response to the Gillette ad that ran, my wife mused “What if Tampax came out with an ad for women to stop being toxic bitches?
‘Sure, SOME women are OK, but WE can do better…’ “)
Partnership means also that both partners can acknowledge their own shortcomings without being prompted or reminded by the other. At least, that is a valuable aspect to my relationship with my wife. “I’m getting chubby…” one of us might say. “I know, I/we need to work out” the other might reply. And believe me when I say the interchange might start with either of us, and no evil looks given in either direction. Maybe because we believe that neither of us is here to judge one another, both of us want the best for one another, neither of us is better than the other, and both of us together are better than the two of us apart.
The indignation and abuses men often suffer at the hands of women are too regularly ignored, or swept away with blanket statements like, “women have it worse,” or more acidic revelations like, “women have had it worse for centuries.” It’s like a who’s-the-most-victimized-victim game, a race to the bottom, for what almost (after a long time of looking at it) seems like bragging and restitution rights. But moreover, it becomes a method of domination. The victim in a victim-centric culture exerts an amazing and ever-increasing amount of control. There was a time when a purported victim had no voice, no power, nothing. Now a purported victim only needs a platform and a time to blossom, and the ravages of a mob will quickly manifest to “help” them. I say “purported” very intentionally – the actual victims of abuses, and there are many, absolutely need our support and belief. However, the headlines drip with false accusations and libelous narratives spun to an agenda, with the purported “victims” playing along. Once the whole truth comes out, few publications have the wherewithal to admit their own faults – as evidenced by the most recent set of protests and hate. This damages the credibility of real victims, damages the system as a whole, turns us against one another, and facilitates this growing divide. Of course, any system can be abused and misused – this is just a fact of nature. Somehow, we need to inoculate ourselves from the sources of these malignancies – I believe that it starts with a healthy dose of skepticism and patience. A willingness to wait for all the facts.
Unfortunately, that very idea itself is often presented as toxic to and inside the victims-centric movements. “Don’t doubt the victim” becomes a method to squelch honest and needed questioning of the details. I would rather “Believe the victim’s beliefs, but leave no stone unturned” be our mindset. Maybe some of it has to do with a need for justice: the evil must be purged, the wrongs must be righted. Would we, for instance, rather sentence innocent men and women if it guaranteed that 100% of the guilty would also be locked away? I’ve asked that question, and to my surprised “yes” is an answer I have often received. But, if we lock away the innocent, how certain can we be that we actually are capturing the guilty? And what of the rights of the innocent, after all? Their lives destroyed? Their families ruined? The flip-side is that if some of the guilty escape in favor of protecting the innocent, then not only is the victim left without recompense, but the guilty could go do more of the same.
All this, turned back toward the #MeToo movement and even, say, the recent Gillette commercial, seem to work to say (or men hear it as) “Most men are guilty.” Without trial, without even a moment of consideration. Under the theory of domination, then, “Most women are victims.” That, too, is a narrative being played out again and again, and if there isn’t an immediate crime to point to, “centuries of abuse” becomes the go-to crime. How do we get to a partnership from here?
I don’t know if I can speak for society. But I can speak for myself and my relationship. We start with not blaming out of the gate, not throwing “should” and “shouldn’t” at one another. I think it’s fairly well-known that a person must first admit they have a problem before they can receive help for that problem. So it goes even in a relationship. If, for instance, my wife is concerned about how I talk to our kids, her first statement isn’t, “you shouldn’t yell at them.” Instead, it starts with, “What happened?” The conversation is one of reflection, one of pointing things out. “So and so was really upset after you yelled.” And she might also reply, “I know, it’s frustrating. I lose it, too, sometimes.” We ask ourselves how we could do better – and I do mean “ourselves.” I will go to my wife after a bad day and say, “I’m not happy about the way I responded. What do you think I should have done different?” Luckily those days don’t happen often…but when they do, she doesn’t hold it over my head. If anything, she admits to her own deficiencies, her own short temper, and we work together.
The moment a person says, “yes, you were wrong and you should THIS and shouldn’t THAT,” it shuts down all conversation. It puts the recipient on the defensive, because now they are alone. Now they are afraid. Now the other person has gained a dominant position over them, as someone “who knows better.” Maybe it’s instinctive to do that. Or maybe it’s a lack of humility. What woman in the #MeToo movement, for instance, can claim that they have never done anything to harm another person – man or woman? Interestingly, that very question can be caustic if the underlying assumption is that to look for guilt in another is to exonerate oneself of one’s own crimes. But if a person asks it of his or her self, different outcome altogether. The only problem is that most people don’t seem to want to analyze their own deficiencies and crimes, or don’t see their actions and words as causing damage. They don’t want to be guilty in any way. The response might be, “There is nothing wrong with what I did” or “Yes, but what HE did was WAY WORSE than anything I have done.” As the saying goes, two wrongs don’t make a right, and in a world where men are increasingly being categorically labeled as “aggressors” and women categorically as “abused” – to the point even members of the movement SAY that women who don’t see themselves this way need to be “educated” – we get right back to that race to the bottom for most victimized. Maybe we need to say that admitting your own guilt does not exonerate others of their crimes, even the crimes they commit against you. This idea, perhaps, gets forgotten in the “don’t blame the victim” mindset.
We’ve had the great fortune to watch a friend undergoing changes, though I wish her circumstances were different. The silver-lining is that watching her has confirmed so much of what we’ve come to believe about a healthy relationship: learning to identify the problems you yourself have, learning that it’s OK to make mistakes, learning that as much as the other party is at fault, it does not exonerate you from your own crimes, learning to take blame where blame is due and to learn and heal from it – learning to become a better person on your own. I used to say (and still believe) that my wife has never asked me to be a better person…she has always INSPIRED me to be so. I have, from even before we married, wanted to be better FOR her, not BECAUSE of her. I guess you could say, I wanted to deserve her. Ironically, she says the same about me, and it’s something has only made us stronger as a couple: we take the best of each other and strive for it, rather than looking for the worst in one another and lording over each other.
If there was anything I could ask the #MeToo movement to do, it would be to start looking for the best in Men and striving to become more like that, and asking Men to look for the best in Women and to start becoming more like that. We can stop telling men what not to do, and start glorifying what they ought to do (for which there are many wonderful real-life examples that too easily get overlooked). Maybe we’ve been there and people haven’t been satisfied with the results. Or maybe we haven’t and the easy go-to method is to blame and shame. To change oneself is the most difficult thing, and we calcify the moment we are put on the defensive. That is just human nature.
The #Me Too movement has all the markings of a modern day witch hunt. It makes no differentiation between rape and inadvertent touching. Anything maybe called sexual abuse. A false accusation is sufficient for an arrest or public smearing. We are told,”believe the woman”. We don’t need no stinking evidence. #Me too should be exposed for what it is. It is a highly undemocratic and pernicious movement that sows distrust between the genders in attempt to destroy civilization.