The Aftermath of 60s Sexist Propaganda, the Direction of Recovery
I bought an untrue story about men and women myself back in the 60s when I was coming of age. It caused me a lot of trouble. At the root of it was the story that women were oppressed victims and men like me were the oppressors. As a young man I integrated this story into deep layers of my being and went forward to try and live with that being true.
The women in my progressive hippy-ish circles all entirely subscribed to this story. I remember a chat in the bar with a number of the women I lived with in a co-op house in which they shared their sense of male oppression. I was included among the economic oppressors even though of the whole bunch I was the least employed. (At the time I was an “art model.”) Some years later one of my close female friends was a woman’s rights person at a local university - she laughed when I asked her about men’s rights. She was right to do so; in the context of the time, the idea that men could be other than perpetrator in the social arena was laughable.
Even when I could see deep problems with the story, I was afraid to challenge the roots of it. I unconsciously played to it because I didn’t want to be a pariah. It’s not breaking news but here’s a fact that’s seldom understood as deeply as it’s true: Men have a deep need for woman’s approval and untill they reach a considerable level of maturity will do almost anything do get it. (Many or most fail to get there; I’ll share more about this with you later.)
Early in the 90s I tried to explore the issue publicy and was the first driver in a magazine dedicated to the exploration (Everman Men’s Journal - a print publication that is no more.) We questioned everything about women and me, and tried to show there were two sides to the issue. Over 10 years a lot happened there - we did 10 or 11 national Canadian conferences for women and men on women and men. But our work had little influence on the culture as a whole.
I often felt intimidated by the mass compliance in the culture to the false story surroundng men. I didn’t have the courage to speak up loudly and uneqivocally. This for fear of losing feminine approval, or respect within the community. I was part of a generation of silent males. The fact that now the whole society is split in the most basic understandings about sex and gender is not unrelated.
I did much healing of my own issues with women and men. Much of it centred on my own family. Not because my family was abnormal but because that’s where the work of growing up happens. Working with Family Constellations and the work of Bert Hellinger and others to re-understand the foundations of how we are in the world, I was able to do face basics that had eluded me. Decades of other inner work had failed to touch the inner stuff.
Speaking more about men (and I’ll get around to sharing about women soon), manhood is the root of a man’s identity. His moral or truth commitment is based on his sense of authenticity as a man. It’s from that foundation that he’s able to stand in his place, find his own voice and speak it in the world. Somewhere a man has to go down into the well and bring back water from the own source in his own life, Mum, Dad, the ancestors. It’s one thing to attempt this in a workshop but another do do in the middle of a life and a world that doesn’t want to hear about it.
Finding and claiming the God-given ancient manhood that’s already there continues to be a work in progress. I’m in manhood recovery myself.
I’m a coach trained in working in this area and will be saying much more about recovering the strengths of ourselves as men, women and family here on Substack, illuminating the field as practically as I can. I’ll also offer prescriptive opportunities from what I’ve learned in the form of small groups and one-on-one work to understand all this better. Reader input will help a great deal to bring the conversation to life.
The way forward isn’t made up of mere concepts or slogans and it’s not limited to the arena of women and men. Social control, censorship and propaganda can’t be understood abstractly. Coming to grips with them mean coming to grips with ourselves and is always a work in progress. For me it’s the hardest work I’ve done and also the most helpful - speaking as a one-time self-help junkie.
I’m still recovering. I’d learned stories about the fundamental truths of men and families and my family that were just not true.
And I think that this is broadly true of everyone in western society.
We bought into a false story about women and men and the family. Related to that was a false story about tradition, the past, and our place in the world. Those stories are not only wrong; they’re dangerous. Over generations, family life and social life have become much more confused here in Canada and overall in the west. So has our political life.
The loss of clarity about what is a man and woman, not just biologically but spiritually and psychologically, is part of a widespread corruption and moral confusion. We’re going to reap what we’ve sown but our own clairity we can make it much better.
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Have you had trouble speaking up as a man, woman or citizen for fear of censure? I’d like to hear your experience. Adding a comment helps this post to thrive and do well.
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