I never could figure out why you don't ban me, but here goes.
I'm on the side of the devils, but I think the main problem is what I call 'uncompensated intersectionality'. Certainly there are areas where men have advantages over women, particularly in more conservative industries, but the whole society is so unequal that if you give women a leg up in hiring lots of men from third-tier colleges are going to have problems finding jobs at all. Also most of the DEI-stuff works at the entry level, so rich guys are happy to 'diversify' their underlings (if their son has a problem he'll still get into Harvard etc. because daddy donated) and throw less-privileged white men to the wolves, where Trump starts to sound attractive.
As for the messaging issue Mitch mentions...I've grown up with a lot of feminism around me, believe it or not--blue city, lefty school and college, left-leaning industry--and the effect has been to make me *less* sympathetic to women's sufferings. You constantly hear how bad you are, well, you can internalize it as I did and hate yourself (and guilt over your sexuality causes problems in relationships), but if you ever break free you are going to be very angry at the people who made you that way.
So I'm saying misandry and attacks on male ego can backfire. That's the problem. What's the solution? Beats me.
For my part I don't feel comfortable on either the left or right; I'm not macho enough for the right and not quite submissive enough for the left. Well, maybe my people don't exist. Nobody said the world had to be good.
I don’t block you because you have never been antagonistic. It’s that simple. I don’t mind disagreement, that’s part of the human condition.
We’ve spoken about DEI before and I have argued that its supposed effects on white men specifically have been widely misconstrued and blown out of proportion. There is no evidence that this is as wide of a problem as pundits on the right have made it out to be, though it’s a really tasty carrot on a stick for say, someone who needs a reason for why their life sucks so bad.
I’m not going to knock on your experiences because hearing the constant tribulations of men has also made me quite desensitized to their problems as well. But I acknowledge that’s a problem with my character, not that the things happening to others are not legit. This is what I mean by grace. You, you can absolutely be fatigued by hearing about the plight of others and also acknowledge that these problems exist and shouldn’t be happening.
What I have a problem with is the immediate desire to throw in the towel rather than sit with discomfort. We all need to learn to sit with discomfort, we can’t reject it forever because it doesn’t make us feel good.
I am deeply honored that you quoted my ramblings. In its entirety no less!
Second,
This was excellent. As usual, you bring the fire, and I love it.
You ask a hard question,
"How do women give grace to the very people trying to hurt them?"
That's the key to all of this, really. How do you forgive the abuser and give them a second chance? The man in me wants to prescribe a solution. A pithy answer. Which is part of the problem.
I can only speak from my experience with my own demons. It takes time, and I stumble along the way. Some days, I hold a grudge that hold back a tsunami. Other days, it rolls off my back.
But I'm a man. As you so beautifully pointed out, I have a choice. I have not experienced a lifetime of trying to be forced into a box that didn’t fit.
I think what you're doing, this post, is a form of grace.
Curiosity, is a form of grace.
I think your work is the beginning of the bridge. The willingness to ask instead of condemn is a path to healing.
No man should ever ask a woman to gloss over what we've done. It is on us to grow and change. To repair the damage. But women like you who ask questions, give men like me the fire to do the work.
Thanks Mitch, our convo was a huge inspiration. I think the important thing to understand is that we are all human, and as such, we should want to care for one another not seek out mutual destruction. But anger and resentment are hard emotions to navigate and I don’t think men have the words for it nor the tools. I’m not going to cut them too much slack though, the onus on receiving help relies on them asking for it.
Recognizing we're human, is a beautiful first step. It disarms ourselves enough to listen.
"the onus on receiving help relies on them asking for it."
100% agree. Arrogance poisons the spirit of men. And we're collectively full of it.
But you're so right. We don't have the language. It was taken from us as boys.
I'm trying to relearn it, and share it whenever I can. It's a long, slow, painful at times process. Your work and all the other amazing women willing to put themselves out there, inspires me to keep going.
As always, I'm so grateful for you, and your willingness to share and learn from each other!
So I think some of your problem is that you seem to expect and even demand collective action on the part of men— but even in the beginning of this article, walk away from collective action for women.
As a man, I have no more power to hold the Andrew Tates and Donald Trumps of the world responsible than you have power over Pam Bondi or Kristi Noem. Yet you write a permission slip for yourself in dismissing any responsibility for calling them to accountability, then turn around and hold men collectively responsible for not holding the bad men to accountability.
What this generally is dismissing women from collective accountability, while holding men responsible to a demand for collective accountability.
Later, you write:
“All this to say that women can’t really pick up our toys and go play somewhere else. We have to work with what we have. But men don’t have that constraint, they have the privilege to decide. And they have decided that making the lives of others more miserable is actually the better option whether they are aware of it or not.”
Most men DO have that constraint, and DO NOT ‘have the privilege to decide.’ They have not decided anything, they lack the agency to control the decisions of other people. ‘The privilege to decide’ is otherwise known as power, and most men do not wield power in any appreciable sense.
You are evincing a construction of patriarchy in which men collectively hold power over women, and act collectively to maintain it, and thus are collectively responsible for fixing the ills of patriarchy. But that’s a model of patriarchy that is busted just looking at the real world. Power is not collectively held by men— there is a clear social hierarchy. Patriarchy concentrates power at the top of that hierarchy. Also, men are not the sole beneficiaries of that concentration of power. Patriarchy perpetuates this hierarchy by concentrating generational wealth and power in the hands of the already wealthy and powerful. It is not just men collectively who hold ‘the privilege to decide,’ it is specifically the wealthy and powerful who hold that privilege.
And also— this is not all and only men who benefit; the Pam Bondis and Kristy Norms of the world may not be at the top of that hierarchy, but they are significantly more above most men and most women. They were both genuinely invested with ‘the power to decide.’
Step one to building grace is recognizing that this is not a ‘women, collectively’ verses ‘men, collectively’ argument. If you are actually interested in deconstructing patriarchy, step one is having an accurate model of how patriarchy operates. And part of that is recognizing that most men are as powerless as most women in the hierarchy of patriarchy.
Which then makes it a lot easier to understand why being held collectively responsible for a structure of oppression they have no power over tends to irritate many men. Do you as an American citizen feel responsible for Donald Trump? Would it irritate you to be held accountable for his actions as American? What about being held collectively accountable as a woman for the actions of Pam Bondi?
“Perhaps there are many men who do not feel responsible for the their forefathers actions and so hearing or reading such derision is probably akin to a fatal blow. Yet the uncomfortable truth is that they are. All of us who have something to gain from an exploitative system are always complicit in its cruelty. No one is off the hook simply because they were not present when the markers were set, the foundation poured, and columns erected; they were born and raised in the finished product.”
This is a sins of the father argument; but again, you do not make a sins of the mother argument either. Because it’s not just men who have perpetuated patriarchy through the ages; it’s plenty of women too. Not just the Donald Trumps of the past, but also the Kristy Noems. And it’s not just been women who were the victims of patriarchy; it’s men too.
So where’s your collective responsibility for the women of the past who had the privilege to choose?
The ‘sins of the father’ logic is just as bad applied collectively as it is applied individually.
No, I’m asking you to recognize that the people in the next cell over are not the guards, but prisoners themselves. Which is why it’s a little unhinged to keep insisting they’re as complicit as the guards themselves.
Well, prison breaks generally require multiple people in multiple cells working together. That generally requires trust and coordination. So building trust is generally step one. But you generally will find that hard to achieve if you go around accusing everyone of collaborating with the guards.
Also, yes, there will be collaborators and snitches, and people who comply with the system because they’ve just lost hope. If there are 8 people in a cell and 4 of them are collaborators, holding the 4 who aren’t collaborators responsible for the 4 who are is not a winning strategy. Particularly if they occupy a cell that may turn out to be critical to the plan to jail break everyone.
You need to win over a critical mass of the prisoners with leadership and earning trust. And you can’t do that if you believe the only prisoners are the people assigned the same color jumpsuit as you.
Sure, but what if those 4 that aren’t collaborators are going to bat for the 4 that are because “they’re my friends and they would never do that.” Because that’s exactly whats happening.
Again, do you care more about busting out the prison with enough people to tear it down, or sticking it to the collaborators?
Because to bust out of the prison— you’re likely gonna need to work some collaborators too. Not to say you gotta be friends with them and forget what they did. But if you can’t empathize a little with the people who go along to get along, or even dance a little to get a few extra biscuits and a nicer cell, you’re not going to get very far in your prison break scheme.
I'm saying a prison break is impossible if those who are not collaborators go to bat for those who are. We're not winning anything here if there is a surplus of people unwilling to see the facts laid out in front of them. Men will run interference for men they've never even met before attempting to listen to what women are saying.
If men want the negative press to cease, then they need to do something about it. That comes in holding other men accountable, such as their friends, relatives, etc.
I write constantly about the women who would so quickly throw other women under the bus for a morsel of power. The funny thing about the Bondis and Noems of the world is that, in a patriarchy, they are always the first tokens to get spent. Notice how they were both fired the second their usefulness was up and immediately replaced by men.
Let me be clear, men don’t have to do anything. They can steelman the “not all men” argument into the ground. I don’t see that being very fruitful as of late, so perhaps a different approach should be considered.
Unfortunately, men do hold collective power. Men could’ve voted liberal this last election and spared us a war and state sanctioned terror campaigns dispatched amongst their compatriots, but, overwhelmingly, they decided that the ideology of the left was not inclusive enough, so they voted right. That’s a choice. Again, I’m not letting the women off the hook as a good amount of them made the same idiotic and shortsighted decision, I’ve written about them before and will continue to write about them in the future.
I stated we are all responsible, men and women alike, he difference is men believe they are not, and that’s a problem. A man does not exist as an individual, his decisions are not made in a vacuum, everything he does as a ripple effect, he is responsible for those ripples. The same applies to women.
That’s again, holding individuals collectively responsible for what members of their demographic group have done or are doing.
That’s pretty much what Smotrich and Netanyahu do with Palestinians— whatever Hamas does, all Palestinians are responsible.
This collective framing just does not work; it will not convince anyone that they hold personal responsibility for decisions made by others. If anything, it’s actively alienating to the least powerful people scooped up in your collective summary judgment.
Sure, a majority of men voted Trump. So did a majority of white women. Are all white women, regardless of who they voted for, therefore complicit in Trump’s actions? Did they not talk to their mothers, sisters,aunts and daughters enough? Are all Hispanic collectively responsible for that demographic’s shift toward voting for Trump, regardless of how they personally voted? Presumably, you voted. Does that make you complicit?
This is just guilt by association. And much like the sins of the father, it doesn’t get better when you collectivize the guilt you’re assigning.
Yes they are. They are complicit. We can't claim collectivism when things are good and individualism when things are bad. We are all responsible for our choices and how those choices reverberate.
That is not really a workable framework for a political movement which needs to build a coalition of support to effect social change. Guilt by association is not really a great recruitment tool. Shaming people is not a great technique for convincing people to join your movement or adopt your moral or ethical outlook.
Which do you care about more, deconstructing patriarchy or holding people accountable for the complicity you assign them by collective association?
I would prefer to deconstruct to patriarchy without catering to it. If others having equal rights and protections is not compelling enough as a political strategy then we have a much bigger problem.
Giving up shaming people by assigning guilt by association is in no way catering to patriarchy. Patriarchy is a system, one which we are all caught up in.
Ceasing to bash your head against the bars of the prison is not catering to the prison. The prison is an object, a thing. It cannot be catered to, because it has no consciousness; it is not a person. Patriarchy is a thing, it is not a person or group of people.
I never could figure out why you don't ban me, but here goes.
I'm on the side of the devils, but I think the main problem is what I call 'uncompensated intersectionality'. Certainly there are areas where men have advantages over women, particularly in more conservative industries, but the whole society is so unequal that if you give women a leg up in hiring lots of men from third-tier colleges are going to have problems finding jobs at all. Also most of the DEI-stuff works at the entry level, so rich guys are happy to 'diversify' their underlings (if their son has a problem he'll still get into Harvard etc. because daddy donated) and throw less-privileged white men to the wolves, where Trump starts to sound attractive.
As for the messaging issue Mitch mentions...I've grown up with a lot of feminism around me, believe it or not--blue city, lefty school and college, left-leaning industry--and the effect has been to make me *less* sympathetic to women's sufferings. You constantly hear how bad you are, well, you can internalize it as I did and hate yourself (and guilt over your sexuality causes problems in relationships), but if you ever break free you are going to be very angry at the people who made you that way.
So I'm saying misandry and attacks on male ego can backfire. That's the problem. What's the solution? Beats me.
For my part I don't feel comfortable on either the left or right; I'm not macho enough for the right and not quite submissive enough for the left. Well, maybe my people don't exist. Nobody said the world had to be good.
I don’t block you because you have never been antagonistic. It’s that simple. I don’t mind disagreement, that’s part of the human condition.
We’ve spoken about DEI before and I have argued that its supposed effects on white men specifically have been widely misconstrued and blown out of proportion. There is no evidence that this is as wide of a problem as pundits on the right have made it out to be, though it’s a really tasty carrot on a stick for say, someone who needs a reason for why their life sucks so bad.
I’m not going to knock on your experiences because hearing the constant tribulations of men has also made me quite desensitized to their problems as well. But I acknowledge that’s a problem with my character, not that the things happening to others are not legit. This is what I mean by grace. You, you can absolutely be fatigued by hearing about the plight of others and also acknowledge that these problems exist and shouldn’t be happening.
What I have a problem with is the immediate desire to throw in the towel rather than sit with discomfort. We all need to learn to sit with discomfort, we can’t reject it forever because it doesn’t make us feel good.
You are a good person imo
Thank you, I appreciate it. I have my own blind spots though.
First,
I am deeply honored that you quoted my ramblings. In its entirety no less!
Second,
This was excellent. As usual, you bring the fire, and I love it.
You ask a hard question,
"How do women give grace to the very people trying to hurt them?"
That's the key to all of this, really. How do you forgive the abuser and give them a second chance? The man in me wants to prescribe a solution. A pithy answer. Which is part of the problem.
I can only speak from my experience with my own demons. It takes time, and I stumble along the way. Some days, I hold a grudge that hold back a tsunami. Other days, it rolls off my back.
But I'm a man. As you so beautifully pointed out, I have a choice. I have not experienced a lifetime of trying to be forced into a box that didn’t fit.
I think what you're doing, this post, is a form of grace.
Curiosity, is a form of grace.
I think your work is the beginning of the bridge. The willingness to ask instead of condemn is a path to healing.
No man should ever ask a woman to gloss over what we've done. It is on us to grow and change. To repair the damage. But women like you who ask questions, give men like me the fire to do the work.
To build the bridge of repair back to you.
Thanks Mitch, our convo was a huge inspiration. I think the important thing to understand is that we are all human, and as such, we should want to care for one another not seek out mutual destruction. But anger and resentment are hard emotions to navigate and I don’t think men have the words for it nor the tools. I’m not going to cut them too much slack though, the onus on receiving help relies on them asking for it.
Recognizing we're human, is a beautiful first step. It disarms ourselves enough to listen.
"the onus on receiving help relies on them asking for it."
100% agree. Arrogance poisons the spirit of men. And we're collectively full of it.
But you're so right. We don't have the language. It was taken from us as boys.
I'm trying to relearn it, and share it whenever I can. It's a long, slow, painful at times process. Your work and all the other amazing women willing to put themselves out there, inspires me to keep going.
As always, I'm so grateful for you, and your willingness to share and learn from each other!
Beautiful piece. “Grace” is a muscle. It needs to constantly be stretched and worked on. It’s tough.
Thank you!
So I think some of your problem is that you seem to expect and even demand collective action on the part of men— but even in the beginning of this article, walk away from collective action for women.
As a man, I have no more power to hold the Andrew Tates and Donald Trumps of the world responsible than you have power over Pam Bondi or Kristi Noem. Yet you write a permission slip for yourself in dismissing any responsibility for calling them to accountability, then turn around and hold men collectively responsible for not holding the bad men to accountability.
What this generally is dismissing women from collective accountability, while holding men responsible to a demand for collective accountability.
Later, you write:
“All this to say that women can’t really pick up our toys and go play somewhere else. We have to work with what we have. But men don’t have that constraint, they have the privilege to decide. And they have decided that making the lives of others more miserable is actually the better option whether they are aware of it or not.”
Most men DO have that constraint, and DO NOT ‘have the privilege to decide.’ They have not decided anything, they lack the agency to control the decisions of other people. ‘The privilege to decide’ is otherwise known as power, and most men do not wield power in any appreciable sense.
You are evincing a construction of patriarchy in which men collectively hold power over women, and act collectively to maintain it, and thus are collectively responsible for fixing the ills of patriarchy. But that’s a model of patriarchy that is busted just looking at the real world. Power is not collectively held by men— there is a clear social hierarchy. Patriarchy concentrates power at the top of that hierarchy. Also, men are not the sole beneficiaries of that concentration of power. Patriarchy perpetuates this hierarchy by concentrating generational wealth and power in the hands of the already wealthy and powerful. It is not just men collectively who hold ‘the privilege to decide,’ it is specifically the wealthy and powerful who hold that privilege.
And also— this is not all and only men who benefit; the Pam Bondis and Kristy Norms of the world may not be at the top of that hierarchy, but they are significantly more above most men and most women. They were both genuinely invested with ‘the power to decide.’
Step one to building grace is recognizing that this is not a ‘women, collectively’ verses ‘men, collectively’ argument. If you are actually interested in deconstructing patriarchy, step one is having an accurate model of how patriarchy operates. And part of that is recognizing that most men are as powerless as most women in the hierarchy of patriarchy.
Which then makes it a lot easier to understand why being held collectively responsible for a structure of oppression they have no power over tends to irritate many men. Do you as an American citizen feel responsible for Donald Trump? Would it irritate you to be held accountable for his actions as American? What about being held collectively accountable as a woman for the actions of Pam Bondi?
“Perhaps there are many men who do not feel responsible for the their forefathers actions and so hearing or reading such derision is probably akin to a fatal blow. Yet the uncomfortable truth is that they are. All of us who have something to gain from an exploitative system are always complicit in its cruelty. No one is off the hook simply because they were not present when the markers were set, the foundation poured, and columns erected; they were born and raised in the finished product.”
This is a sins of the father argument; but again, you do not make a sins of the mother argument either. Because it’s not just men who have perpetuated patriarchy through the ages; it’s plenty of women too. Not just the Donald Trumps of the past, but also the Kristy Noems. And it’s not just been women who were the victims of patriarchy; it’s men too.
So where’s your collective responsibility for the women of the past who had the privilege to choose?
The ‘sins of the father’ logic is just as bad applied collectively as it is applied individually.
No, I’m asking you to recognize that the people in the next cell over are not the guards, but prisoners themselves. Which is why it’s a little unhinged to keep insisting they’re as complicit as the guards themselves.
So what do you posit we do about it?
Well, prison breaks generally require multiple people in multiple cells working together. That generally requires trust and coordination. So building trust is generally step one. But you generally will find that hard to achieve if you go around accusing everyone of collaborating with the guards.
Also, yes, there will be collaborators and snitches, and people who comply with the system because they’ve just lost hope. If there are 8 people in a cell and 4 of them are collaborators, holding the 4 who aren’t collaborators responsible for the 4 who are is not a winning strategy. Particularly if they occupy a cell that may turn out to be critical to the plan to jail break everyone.
You need to win over a critical mass of the prisoners with leadership and earning trust. And you can’t do that if you believe the only prisoners are the people assigned the same color jumpsuit as you.
Sure, but what if those 4 that aren’t collaborators are going to bat for the 4 that are because “they’re my friends and they would never do that.” Because that’s exactly whats happening.
Again, do you care more about busting out the prison with enough people to tear it down, or sticking it to the collaborators?
Because to bust out of the prison— you’re likely gonna need to work some collaborators too. Not to say you gotta be friends with them and forget what they did. But if you can’t empathize a little with the people who go along to get along, or even dance a little to get a few extra biscuits and a nicer cell, you’re not going to get very far in your prison break scheme.
I'm saying a prison break is impossible if those who are not collaborators go to bat for those who are. We're not winning anything here if there is a surplus of people unwilling to see the facts laid out in front of them. Men will run interference for men they've never even met before attempting to listen to what women are saying.
If men want the negative press to cease, then they need to do something about it. That comes in holding other men accountable, such as their friends, relatives, etc.
I write constantly about the women who would so quickly throw other women under the bus for a morsel of power. The funny thing about the Bondis and Noems of the world is that, in a patriarchy, they are always the first tokens to get spent. Notice how they were both fired the second their usefulness was up and immediately replaced by men.
Let me be clear, men don’t have to do anything. They can steelman the “not all men” argument into the ground. I don’t see that being very fruitful as of late, so perhaps a different approach should be considered.
Unfortunately, men do hold collective power. Men could’ve voted liberal this last election and spared us a war and state sanctioned terror campaigns dispatched amongst their compatriots, but, overwhelmingly, they decided that the ideology of the left was not inclusive enough, so they voted right. That’s a choice. Again, I’m not letting the women off the hook as a good amount of them made the same idiotic and shortsighted decision, I’ve written about them before and will continue to write about them in the future.
I stated we are all responsible, men and women alike, he difference is men believe they are not, and that’s a problem. A man does not exist as an individual, his decisions are not made in a vacuum, everything he does as a ripple effect, he is responsible for those ripples. The same applies to women.
That’s again, holding individuals collectively responsible for what members of their demographic group have done or are doing.
That’s pretty much what Smotrich and Netanyahu do with Palestinians— whatever Hamas does, all Palestinians are responsible.
This collective framing just does not work; it will not convince anyone that they hold personal responsibility for decisions made by others. If anything, it’s actively alienating to the least powerful people scooped up in your collective summary judgment.
Sure, a majority of men voted Trump. So did a majority of white women. Are all white women, regardless of who they voted for, therefore complicit in Trump’s actions? Did they not talk to their mothers, sisters,aunts and daughters enough? Are all Hispanic collectively responsible for that demographic’s shift toward voting for Trump, regardless of how they personally voted? Presumably, you voted. Does that make you complicit?
This is just guilt by association. And much like the sins of the father, it doesn’t get better when you collectivize the guilt you’re assigning.
Yes they are. They are complicit. We can't claim collectivism when things are good and individualism when things are bad. We are all responsible for our choices and how those choices reverberate.
That is not really a workable framework for a political movement which needs to build a coalition of support to effect social change. Guilt by association is not really a great recruitment tool. Shaming people is not a great technique for convincing people to join your movement or adopt your moral or ethical outlook.
Which do you care about more, deconstructing patriarchy or holding people accountable for the complicity you assign them by collective association?
I would prefer to deconstruct to patriarchy without catering to it. If others having equal rights and protections is not compelling enough as a political strategy then we have a much bigger problem.
Giving up shaming people by assigning guilt by association is in no way catering to patriarchy. Patriarchy is a system, one which we are all caught up in.
Ceasing to bash your head against the bars of the prison is not catering to the prison. The prison is an object, a thing. It cannot be catered to, because it has no consciousness; it is not a person. Patriarchy is a thing, it is not a person or group of people.