Last week, I attended the St. Louis Green Confluence which was held at St. Louis University. Advertised as an event that "connects employers, educators, public policy makers and citizens for the future of our region's green economy", throughout the morning the speakers talked about bringing 'green jobs' (i.e. employment that is environmentally friendly) to the St. Louis metropolitan area that could boost the local economy and make St. Louis the 'national center for the green economy'. The information was quite educational and illuminating. Just knowing who the 'local players' are in the expanding green jobs economy was, alone, worth the effort to attend the conference, and the methodologies that are being proposed for achieving lower costs and less energy use will be extremely helpful to know for future reference.
But all day long, the speakers kept emphasizing the concept of 'more is less': that we can have 'more' commodities, more jobs, a better lifestyle, for 'less' cost in resource use and 'less' pollution of the environment by engaging in more efficient use of those resources. Which, by itself, was very positive. Yet, the nagging question in the back of my mind, all during the symposium, was "When are we, as a society, going to stop wanting more stuff?" Because if we keep acquiring more stuff, we are going to use more energy, not less!
I've been reading a number of articles lately about the 'environmental cost' to our planet of the capitalist economic model that encourages people in the United States and western Europe to continue buying more items of production. In the last decade, China and India have jumped on that bandwagon as well, and now energy use -- and environmental pollution -- are reaching record levels around the world. One report I read noted that, in order for the 'rest of the world' to have the kind of lifestyle that Americans maintain, we would have to have another 2.5 Earths available for resource depletion.
The continual 'stuff acquisition' of First World and developing economies is simply unsustainable. And the other countries, which have been poor relative to the First World economies for at least the past three hundred years, are simply not going to back away from their desire to have the kind of lifestyle enjoyed by Americans since at least 1900 and definitely since the end of WWII.
Hence, Americans are going to have to learn to live on less, not more. We can't continue to burn up the resources of the planet to support our profligate lifestyle, even if we engage in more efficient use of the resources that are available. Under present circumstances, Americans are 6% of the world's populations and we use 50% of it's natural resources; western Europe constitutes another 6% of the world's population and uses [more efficiently] another 30% of the planet's natural resources. Which leaves 20% of the resources for the remaining 88% of the world's population. That is clearly unsustainable, as well as being frightfully unfair to everyone else on the planet. And whether or not one worries about 'fairness', that inequitable distribution and use of resources creates a security concern, since the rest of the people on our planet are increasingly aware of and angry about the level and extent of the inequity. The critical question, though, is: Can we restructure our economy in such a way that it is sustainable without continually growing larger?
Our 'more is less' mentality reminds me of something my intimate partner recently told me about an article she had read. Apparently, the obesity epidemic in America has not been much affected by the expansion in the availability of low-fat foods. Americans appear to believe that since many foods are lower in fat content, they can simply eat more food, rather than eating the same amount for less caloric intake. Additionally, many of the fast food outlets offer bigger portions for less money, since they are supplementing the meat content with low-cost soy-based substitutes and using greater quantities of factory-raised cows, pigs, and chickens, thereby giving the customers the ability to purchase even more food than they ate before. This isn't helping to counteract the obesity epidemic -- clearly, it's making it worse. It is also negatively impacting our healthcare costs.
Of course, in many ways, eating more food, or buying more stuff, or using more resources is avoiding the more important issue. We live in a culture where people feel empty in their souls, and they are trying to fill that emotional emptiness with external commodities. It won't work, it is unsustainable, and it is destroying the world in which we live. There is no point in trying to fill the empty place in your heart if the world in which your heart thrives is being polluted to the point of causing your heart (and the planet's heart) to fail.
It's all an addictive cycle -- a concept that many authors have written about, none more persuasively than Anne Wilson Schaef in When Society Becomes An Addict. As she notes, we as a society have become addicted to our 'stuff', to having more 'stuff'. As a society, we have reached a point whereby conspicuous consumption is an end, in and of itself. This is not to ignore the fact that many people really don't even have the basic survival needs covered, but rather to point out that survival, once achieved, is insufficient to satisfy the craving. It's sort of like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs gone berserk. As an American society, we are addicted to more and more and more 'things', bigger houses, more land, more substances, more food, more power.
For the last several millennium, the focus has been on "man's conquest and control of nature" -- supposedly, that's what the rise of civilizations is all about. But, with global warming causing melting polar caps, rising sea levels, hotter summers and colder winters, more tornadoes, hurricanes and typhoons, and generally more freakish weather patterns, nature is clearly fighting back. Unless we, as a society, can learn to live on less and be satisfied with less, we are going to have more problems, including more environmental crises.
Hence, I propose that instead of focusing our efficient use of resources on 'more is less', we begin aiming for 'less is less'. Use less resources more efficiently and be satisfied with 'less' -- and construct an economic model based on those changed realities that, indeed, is sustainable.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Growing Up and Healing from Sexual Trauma
Last night, I watched the HBO documentary Twist of Faith. It is a very powerful and intensely painful story about the sexual abuse of children (primarily boys) by Catholic priests, with a specific emphasis on Tony Comes, an individual sexual trauma survivor, and the effects that the abuse has had on his life. Tony had the courage (with the support of his family) to challenge the Diocese of Toledo, Ohio in a lawsuit. He was willing to go through the pain of forcing the Catholic Church officials to publicly admit to the abuse and start the process of manifesting a policy which will hopefully stop the abuse of other children by priests. As the documentary portrays, his courageous action very nearly tore his family apart and it surely challenged his faith and that of his community.
Several statements made in the documentary deeply resonated with my own trauma experiences. Tony's wife, Wendy, talked about how there was encouragement (and not-so-veiled criticism) by people who have not been similarly abused to "just grow up and get over it"; and how the abuse affected 'cycles of relationships' within their family, among their friends, and in the wider community. What struck me as particularly poignant about those statements was that, while sexual abuse survivors often desire to 'have it all go away', it simply doesn't. And even if it somehow miraculously could, the survivor wouldn't be able to help others who have experienced (or are presently experiencing) the same kind of sexual trauma.
It truly isn't that 'simple'. The memory of the trauma just doesn't, and can't, evaporate and allow the survivors to 'move on' in their life. Unfortunately, in order to move beyond the trauma, it is necessary to go through it, to heal from the pain. Stuffing the memory simply does not work and is quite counterproductive. Tony Comes at one point talks about how every time he's making love to his wife the specter of his perpetrator walks across his mental picture. Telling a survivor to 'wake up' and 'grow up', without working through the trauma, ignores the very nature of the original trauma. As he relates, the teenage boys would be encouraged to become intoxicated at the priest's country cottage and then the next day, as he was waking up, the priest was engaging in oral and anal copulation with him. And then an hour later the priest was conducting Mass for the area congregants -- as though nothing had happened, as though the two events were entirely unconnected.
A person would have a difficult time safely falling asleep for the rest of their lives, in fear that upon waking they would be sexually violated and raped by someone they had respected and trusted. How can one 'wake up', in a literal sense, when their experience of 'waking up' was rape?
Wendy Comes' point about how the abuse continued to affect the 'cycles of relationships' around Tony is most illuminating. Sexual abuse survivors can't simply walk away from the memories and 'move on' in their life. Surely they must eventually learn how to 'cope' with the trauma enough to function and love and live a more or less 'normal' life, but until they have the ability (with ample assistance and intervention from a competent therapist, caring friends, and intimate partners) to confront the deep sense of betrayal that they experienced, and time to heal that wound, the trauma is going to continue to affect all the relationships, personal and professional, they have in their lives.
Learning to 'trust again' is a very slow process and one that involves a multiplicity of layers of healing. The healing process reminds me of what one of my therapists mentioned years ago, that "it's like peeling the layers of an onion: you peel one layer at a time and often it provokes tears." And it seems like an infinite onion, like the layers will simply go on forever. But it also reminds me of Baba Ram Dass' observation in Remember, Be Here Now, in his discussion of the 'thirteen pointers to help you keep your perspective along the path of your spiritual journey' (a document which I often re-read and which represents a major 'touchstone' for me in my own healing journey):
Trust is such a deeply integral aspect of human emotion that, without it, living one's life with grace is almost impossible. Wrapped up in trust is also the need for safety. If you can't trust people around you, especially [in Tony Comes' case] people to whom your family and community have delegated so much authority due to their faith tradition, then having a sufficient sense of personal safety is also undermined. An individual in that bind literally has no one to turn to, no one they can depend upon not to hurt them. Such a dilemma tears away at the foundation of one's personal 'sense of emotional solidity' and negatively impacts all the relationships one has, especially those that an individual attempts to construct on an intimate level in the years following the sexual abuse. You have to know, at a deep emotional level, that you can safely 'move beyond the fear of the lion's roar' and continue your journey toward your emotional and spiritual healing.
Each time you peel back another layer and heal from that level of trauma, yet another layer lays before you to be peeled back. First it's necessary to move beyond a sense that others around you will, for truly the slightest minor altercation, betray you with impunity. Then you are amazed that your intimate partner finds you worthy of their love and caring and you start to trust (rather feebly at first, growing stronger over time) that the love they are investing won't be pulled from under your feet without a moment's notice. All the time, you are fighting with your inner voices which tell you that what you are experiencing is only an illusion, nothing more, and that you'll wake up from this dream at any moment. Yet, if the connection is resonant for both parties, the love grows stronger and deeper, rather than fleeting like your past relationships. And the 'new normal' is that this intimate connection (between yourself and your lover, or between yourself and your close friends) won't instantly evaporate.
Of course, each individual sexual trauma survivor's healing journey will look different. The nature of the trauma is different, each survivor has a different 'personal constitution', the personalities of the perpetrators are different. But expecting a sexual trauma survivor to simply 'grow up and get on with life', without extensive and often painful healing, is to ignore the extensive destruction the trauma has wrought in that individual's life. It is possible to heal and have a happy life, but the memories will never go away [short of amnesia], nor will the low level fear that all of one's years of hard emotional work will be obliterated by a 'triggering event', resurfacing the dynamics of the original trauma in later years.
To sum up this discussion, I end with Ram Dass' 13th pointer:
Several statements made in the documentary deeply resonated with my own trauma experiences. Tony's wife, Wendy, talked about how there was encouragement (and not-so-veiled criticism) by people who have not been similarly abused to "just grow up and get over it"; and how the abuse affected 'cycles of relationships' within their family, among their friends, and in the wider community. What struck me as particularly poignant about those statements was that, while sexual abuse survivors often desire to 'have it all go away', it simply doesn't. And even if it somehow miraculously could, the survivor wouldn't be able to help others who have experienced (or are presently experiencing) the same kind of sexual trauma.
It truly isn't that 'simple'. The memory of the trauma just doesn't, and can't, evaporate and allow the survivors to 'move on' in their life. Unfortunately, in order to move beyond the trauma, it is necessary to go through it, to heal from the pain. Stuffing the memory simply does not work and is quite counterproductive. Tony Comes at one point talks about how every time he's making love to his wife the specter of his perpetrator walks across his mental picture. Telling a survivor to 'wake up' and 'grow up', without working through the trauma, ignores the very nature of the original trauma. As he relates, the teenage boys would be encouraged to become intoxicated at the priest's country cottage and then the next day, as he was waking up, the priest was engaging in oral and anal copulation with him. And then an hour later the priest was conducting Mass for the area congregants -- as though nothing had happened, as though the two events were entirely unconnected.
A person would have a difficult time safely falling asleep for the rest of their lives, in fear that upon waking they would be sexually violated and raped by someone they had respected and trusted. How can one 'wake up', in a literal sense, when their experience of 'waking up' was rape?
Wendy Comes' point about how the abuse continued to affect the 'cycles of relationships' around Tony is most illuminating. Sexual abuse survivors can't simply walk away from the memories and 'move on' in their life. Surely they must eventually learn how to 'cope' with the trauma enough to function and love and live a more or less 'normal' life, but until they have the ability (with ample assistance and intervention from a competent therapist, caring friends, and intimate partners) to confront the deep sense of betrayal that they experienced, and time to heal that wound, the trauma is going to continue to affect all the relationships, personal and professional, they have in their lives.
Learning to 'trust again' is a very slow process and one that involves a multiplicity of layers of healing. The healing process reminds me of what one of my therapists mentioned years ago, that "it's like peeling the layers of an onion: you peel one layer at a time and often it provokes tears." And it seems like an infinite onion, like the layers will simply go on forever. But it also reminds me of Baba Ram Dass' observation in Remember, Be Here Now, in his discussion of the 'thirteen pointers to help you keep your perspective along the path of your spiritual journey' (a document which I often re-read and which represents a major 'touchstone' for me in my own healing journey):
As you further purify yourself, your impurities will seem grosser and larger. Understand that it's not that you are getting more caught in the illusion, it's just that you are seeing more clearly. The lions guarding the gates of the temples [of truth] get fiercer as you proceed toward each inner temple. But of course the light is brighter also. It all become more intense because of the additional energy involved at each stage of 'sadhana' [spiritual practice].
Trust is such a deeply integral aspect of human emotion that, without it, living one's life with grace is almost impossible. Wrapped up in trust is also the need for safety. If you can't trust people around you, especially [in Tony Comes' case] people to whom your family and community have delegated so much authority due to their faith tradition, then having a sufficient sense of personal safety is also undermined. An individual in that bind literally has no one to turn to, no one they can depend upon not to hurt them. Such a dilemma tears away at the foundation of one's personal 'sense of emotional solidity' and negatively impacts all the relationships one has, especially those that an individual attempts to construct on an intimate level in the years following the sexual abuse. You have to know, at a deep emotional level, that you can safely 'move beyond the fear of the lion's roar' and continue your journey toward your emotional and spiritual healing.
Each time you peel back another layer and heal from that level of trauma, yet another layer lays before you to be peeled back. First it's necessary to move beyond a sense that others around you will, for truly the slightest minor altercation, betray you with impunity. Then you are amazed that your intimate partner finds you worthy of their love and caring and you start to trust (rather feebly at first, growing stronger over time) that the love they are investing won't be pulled from under your feet without a moment's notice. All the time, you are fighting with your inner voices which tell you that what you are experiencing is only an illusion, nothing more, and that you'll wake up from this dream at any moment. Yet, if the connection is resonant for both parties, the love grows stronger and deeper, rather than fleeting like your past relationships. And the 'new normal' is that this intimate connection (between yourself and your lover, or between yourself and your close friends) won't instantly evaporate.
Of course, each individual sexual trauma survivor's healing journey will look different. The nature of the trauma is different, each survivor has a different 'personal constitution', the personalities of the perpetrators are different. But expecting a sexual trauma survivor to simply 'grow up and get on with life', without extensive and often painful healing, is to ignore the extensive destruction the trauma has wrought in that individual's life. It is possible to heal and have a happy life, but the memories will never go away [short of amnesia], nor will the low level fear that all of one's years of hard emotional work will be obliterated by a 'triggering event', resurfacing the dynamics of the original trauma in later years.
To sum up this discussion, I end with Ram Dass' 13th pointer:
What is happening to you is nothing less than death and rebirth. What is dying is the entire way in which you understood "who you are" and "how it all is". What is being reborn is the child of the Spirit for whom all things are new. This process of attending an ego that is dying at the same time as you are going through a birth process is awesome. Be gentle and honor him/her (self) who is dying, as well as him/her (Self) who is being born.
Monday, January 17, 2011
American Culture Suffers From Gender Constipation
This morning, on one of the local television 'morning shows', there was a short segment that talked about a new website that focuses on The Art of Manliness. The website gives all kinds of advice on 'how to be a manly man' in modern culture. Much of the material on the site relates to grooming, dating, and other rather 'standard fare' which helps men to have a certain level of comfort with 'what it takes to be a man' and for that I have no objection (nor am I taking specific aim at this website, instead only using it as an example of the larger cultural pattern). What I find problematic is the very notion of 'manliness' as a gender role 'that separates the men from the boys' and 'the boys from the girls' in a diametrically opposite portrayal of gender. After 40 years of feminism in our culture, in a great many ways gender roles are as rigid as they were before the advent of the women's, men's, and LGBT movements. From my perspective, our culture continues to suffer, to a profound degree, from gender constipation.
I'm surely not against males having a distinct amount of confidence with their own sexuality or in their gender differentiation from females. I see nothing inherently wrong with males enjoying being men and females enjoying being women. The problem is in the way that plays out in the larger cultural fabric, and how we define 'what it means to be a man (or a woman)'. The traditional rigid gender role structures, of past generations, seem quaintly anachronistic to me and I, for one, wish they could die a natural and clear death. There have been any articles written about how assigning one group of 'gender attributes' to men and a quite different set to women doesn't really make a lot of sense, because most of the attributes are shared, in the 'real world', by members of both sexes -- or at least, in pursuit of 'humanness' as opposed to a strict demarcation of the genders, such shared attribution would be a more progressive development. In order to be an emotionally healthy man, it is important to develop more nurturing and gentle qualities, and to be an emotionally healthy woman, it is important to develop more strength (both emotional and physical) and a willingness to fight, if necessary. I would argue -- and many writers have proposed such as well -- that being human is about each sex having 'traditional gender attributes' of both sexes in spades, of men developing and promoting their feminine energy and women their masculine energy.
This is, of course (as noted in previous blogs), problematic for male and female sexual abuse survivors. Simply living in a world where they have a 'stable sense of their gender identity' is often quite difficult, much less having a comfort with traditionally differentiated gender roles. Depending on the sex of the people who sexually molested them (in addition to whatever sexual confusion those perpetrators exhibited), sexual abuse survivors often have no clear sense about what their gender identity was before the abuse -- or what it comfortably will be in the years following the abuse. However, that's not the focus of this week's blog (I talked about that extensively last week). I only mention it, once again, to note how at least one group has major problems with strictly defined gender roles -- and I would further note that they are hardly the only group with that conflict.
We live in a culture that has a certain bemused comfort with young girls exhibiting 'tomboy' behaviors, but which has no corresponding word for young boys who exhibit 'girlish' behaviors. There isn't, to the best of my knowledge, a term like 'sue-girl' or such for boys (and surely not one which is not viewed as being an insult) -- although rare examples like the Princess Boy are a positive cultural development from the view of this writer. The mainstream media is rife with movies portraying males rescuing damsels in distress, but there are few, if any, movies portraying women rescuing males who are down and out or in need of protection (and there are many such males in 'real life'). We are constantly bombarded with Cinderella-like stories of powerful men sweeping tender women off their feet and carrying them off to Never-Never Land, but few, if any, stories about high-powered female corporate attorneys sweeping tender and nurturing unemployed men off their feet and supporting them in a style to which they'd like to become accustomed. In many ways, this is because the media roles for men and women are still based on heterosexual role structures [which, in many movies, tend toward 'sexist dynamics', in that they view men as 'one-up' and women as 'one-down' -- and therefore portray men as having to be the rescuers and women as needing to be rescued], rather than gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender possibilities or potentialities. Even feminist directors (the few that there are) fail to explore such alternate gender avenues.
With the repeal of DADT (Don't Ask Don't Tell) in the military, it is going to be interesting to see if slogans like the Marines' "we're looking for a few good men" will wither away. Misogynistic behavior toward females hasn't disappeared with the admission of women in the military. The Tailhook conventions are still in the news almost yearly for the alcohol-soaked abuse of female entertainers or female military personnel by the men present and the periodic rape of females in the military by guys 'proving their manhood' has not substantially diminished. I'm hardly expecting a 'kinder, gentler military' as a result of the repeal of DADT; it hasn't occurred with the admission of women and, frankly, the business of warfare doesn't really have a place for such a changed behavior. It is true that there's greater 'lip service' paid to innocent civilians who are killed in battles -- they are now referred to as 'collateral damage' -- but how one incorporates transgender roles into the art of battling ones opponents is problematic (not the least because other cultures may or may not share our culture's stumbling attempts to move beyond binary gender roles). It's not that there aren't examples of different approaches -- the military services of the Netherlands is one possibility -- but those examples don't seem to be actively followed by many of the combatants in most countries and aren't likely to be soon.
Frankly, I'm much more comfortable with a more androgynous culture, with the differences between men and women being 'toned down' rather than ratcheted up. Appeals to 'the art of manliness' appear to be a reaction to the demands of feminism and the 'feminization of American culture', as Ann Douglas and others have written about. Personally, as a heterosexual man who has always had far more comfort with (as well as felt more empowered by) his feminine energy than his masculine energy, I would encourage such a cultural shift. That 'kindler, gentler, more nurturing side' of masculinity is exactly what I'm trying to promote via the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute version of men's emotional wellness. It's not that feminism doesn't have it's negative aspects -- seeing males as 'the only real problem', while ignoring the aggressive, abusive side of female behavior is one major issue I continually combat -- but in general I believe it's to our cultural advantage to move in a more 'trans-gender' direction (i.e. moving beyond a strict demarcation between the traditional binary gender roles). It will only be by such a process that we can finally, if ever, 'let our inhibitions loose' and stop emotionally harming males and females with abusive expectations that are predicated on a rather prudish [and archaic] anxiety about gender fluidity.
I'm surely not against males having a distinct amount of confidence with their own sexuality or in their gender differentiation from females. I see nothing inherently wrong with males enjoying being men and females enjoying being women. The problem is in the way that plays out in the larger cultural fabric, and how we define 'what it means to be a man (or a woman)'. The traditional rigid gender role structures, of past generations, seem quaintly anachronistic to me and I, for one, wish they could die a natural and clear death. There have been any articles written about how assigning one group of 'gender attributes' to men and a quite different set to women doesn't really make a lot of sense, because most of the attributes are shared, in the 'real world', by members of both sexes -- or at least, in pursuit of 'humanness' as opposed to a strict demarcation of the genders, such shared attribution would be a more progressive development. In order to be an emotionally healthy man, it is important to develop more nurturing and gentle qualities, and to be an emotionally healthy woman, it is important to develop more strength (both emotional and physical) and a willingness to fight, if necessary. I would argue -- and many writers have proposed such as well -- that being human is about each sex having 'traditional gender attributes' of both sexes in spades, of men developing and promoting their feminine energy and women their masculine energy.
This is, of course (as noted in previous blogs), problematic for male and female sexual abuse survivors. Simply living in a world where they have a 'stable sense of their gender identity' is often quite difficult, much less having a comfort with traditionally differentiated gender roles. Depending on the sex of the people who sexually molested them (in addition to whatever sexual confusion those perpetrators exhibited), sexual abuse survivors often have no clear sense about what their gender identity was before the abuse -- or what it comfortably will be in the years following the abuse. However, that's not the focus of this week's blog (I talked about that extensively last week). I only mention it, once again, to note how at least one group has major problems with strictly defined gender roles -- and I would further note that they are hardly the only group with that conflict.
We live in a culture that has a certain bemused comfort with young girls exhibiting 'tomboy' behaviors, but which has no corresponding word for young boys who exhibit 'girlish' behaviors. There isn't, to the best of my knowledge, a term like 'sue-girl' or such for boys (and surely not one which is not viewed as being an insult) -- although rare examples like the Princess Boy are a positive cultural development from the view of this writer. The mainstream media is rife with movies portraying males rescuing damsels in distress, but there are few, if any, movies portraying women rescuing males who are down and out or in need of protection (and there are many such males in 'real life'). We are constantly bombarded with Cinderella-like stories of powerful men sweeping tender women off their feet and carrying them off to Never-Never Land, but few, if any, stories about high-powered female corporate attorneys sweeping tender and nurturing unemployed men off their feet and supporting them in a style to which they'd like to become accustomed. In many ways, this is because the media roles for men and women are still based on heterosexual role structures [which, in many movies, tend toward 'sexist dynamics', in that they view men as 'one-up' and women as 'one-down' -- and therefore portray men as having to be the rescuers and women as needing to be rescued], rather than gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender possibilities or potentialities. Even feminist directors (the few that there are) fail to explore such alternate gender avenues.
With the repeal of DADT (Don't Ask Don't Tell) in the military, it is going to be interesting to see if slogans like the Marines' "we're looking for a few good men" will wither away. Misogynistic behavior toward females hasn't disappeared with the admission of women in the military. The Tailhook conventions are still in the news almost yearly for the alcohol-soaked abuse of female entertainers or female military personnel by the men present and the periodic rape of females in the military by guys 'proving their manhood' has not substantially diminished. I'm hardly expecting a 'kinder, gentler military' as a result of the repeal of DADT; it hasn't occurred with the admission of women and, frankly, the business of warfare doesn't really have a place for such a changed behavior. It is true that there's greater 'lip service' paid to innocent civilians who are killed in battles -- they are now referred to as 'collateral damage' -- but how one incorporates transgender roles into the art of battling ones opponents is problematic (not the least because other cultures may or may not share our culture's stumbling attempts to move beyond binary gender roles). It's not that there aren't examples of different approaches -- the military services of the Netherlands is one possibility -- but those examples don't seem to be actively followed by many of the combatants in most countries and aren't likely to be soon.
Frankly, I'm much more comfortable with a more androgynous culture, with the differences between men and women being 'toned down' rather than ratcheted up. Appeals to 'the art of manliness' appear to be a reaction to the demands of feminism and the 'feminization of American culture', as Ann Douglas and others have written about. Personally, as a heterosexual man who has always had far more comfort with (as well as felt more empowered by) his feminine energy than his masculine energy, I would encourage such a cultural shift. That 'kindler, gentler, more nurturing side' of masculinity is exactly what I'm trying to promote via the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute version of men's emotional wellness. It's not that feminism doesn't have it's negative aspects -- seeing males as 'the only real problem', while ignoring the aggressive, abusive side of female behavior is one major issue I continually combat -- but in general I believe it's to our cultural advantage to move in a more 'trans-gender' direction (i.e. moving beyond a strict demarcation between the traditional binary gender roles). It will only be by such a process that we can finally, if ever, 'let our inhibitions loose' and stop emotionally harming males and females with abusive expectations that are predicated on a rather prudish [and archaic] anxiety about gender fluidity.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Clearly Knowing One's Sexual Preference and/or Gender Identity is Greatly Complicated by Sexual Abuse
I've already discussed, in several of my previous blogs, how sexual abuse negatively affects an individual's 'sense of self', how it makes survivors want to 'peel off their skin' and not 'live in their bodies', and how it greatly increases the fear of intimacy with another person. What I want to talk about today is how sexual abuse complicates and 'muddies the waters' of an individual's sexual preference and gender identity.
First, it is important to define these two issues and distinguish the difference between them.
Sexual preference is focused upon whether an individual is sexually and intimately attracted to men or women.
Gender identity is a very different issue. This has more to do with what sex an individual sees themselves to be and whether or not it differs from the sexual organs with which they were born.
First, it is important to define these two issues and distinguish the difference between them.
Sexual preference is focused upon whether an individual is sexually and intimately attracted to men or women.
- If one is heterosexual, generally a person is attracted to members of the 'other sex' (though not always - more later). I'm using 'other sex' rather than 'opposite sex' because it's fairly clear to me that there's far more in common between the sexes than within each sex. In other words, males and females share far more characteristics than is commonly supposed; the greater 'differences' are among members of each sex, rather than with the 'other sex'.
- If one is homosexual (gay or lesbian), an individual is sexually and intimately attracted, by definition, to persons of their own [same] sex.
- If one is bisexual, attraction is for both sexes, though a greater preference for one sex or the other may be more prominent at certain times.
- If one is transgender or transsexual, it becomes even more complex (more on this in Transgender Explained: For Those Who Are Not, by Joanne Herman). Transsexual women who are sexually and intimately attracted to males are defined as heterosexual transsexual women and those attracted to women are defined as gay transsexual women. The same is true for transsexual men (transmen): those attracted to females are defined as heterosexual transsexual men and those attracted to other males are defined as gay transsexual men.
- Defining sexual preference for transgender and questioning individuals sort of pushes the whole issue of sexual preference in a whole different direction, and one that other writers are far more adept at defining than I ever can be (see Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity).
Gender identity is a very different issue. This has more to do with what sex an individual sees themselves to be and whether or not it differs from the sexual organs with which they were born.
- As a 'general rule', the majority of the society is comfortable with their 'birth sex' -- genetic males seeing themselves as males and being fine with that, genetic females feeling a solid sense of themselves as females. Individuals may question whether they 'fulfill the cultural definition' of maleness or femaleness, to a degree with which they are comfortable, and they may be very critical of their body image (females are well known for feeling overweight even if they are well within a healthy weight-to-frame ratio, due to media images of females that have far more to do with 'current fashion' than with a realistic perception of an average female body -- and males are being increasingly affected, as well, by these 'media images', with concurrent body discomfort). But this self-criticism doesn't move beyond the point of "I don't like my body the way it is". Unlike transgender-identified or transsexual-identified individuals, most of the population is comfortable, at a basic level, with the sex of the bodies 'they were born with'.
- Transgender and/or transsexual-identified persons, by contrast, though, have often, since childhood, felt 'at odds' with their birth sex, and their gender identity is expressed by an identification with the 'other sex' (or with neither of the 'cultural definitions of binary sexual groupings'). They often, either since childhood or realized later in adulthood, have a strong and pervasive 'sense of their own gender' as being quite different from the sex to which they were born.
Hopefully, that at least defines the difference, at a basic level, between sexual preference and gender identity.
For sexual abuse survivors, their 'personal sense' of sexual preference or gender identity is profoundly and irreparably compromised by the sexual molestation and/or rape that was perpetrated upon them, often in childhood. The problem is that of the null proposition. In other words, what one's sexual preference or gender identity may have been had the sexual abuse not occurred (the null proposition) is indeterminable. An individual could have been born with a 'natural' inclination for 'other' or 'same' sex preference and could have been born with a 'clear inner sense' that they were the 'sex of birth' or that of the 'other sex', but the sexual abuse profoundly 'muddies the waters' of that clarity (to the extent that it was or was not clear, early in their life journey, what their sexual preference or gender identity was or the direction that it was taking).
Now, one may argue that it really doesn't matter why an individual has this or that sexual preference or what the 'cause' is for an individual to choose a gender identity that differs from their birth sex -- and say that it simply 'is true' and 'valid for that person'. I'm surely not making an argument about the validity of sexual preference or gender identity; as far as I'm concerned, ones choice is valid, in sort of an a priori way. For me, this isn't a political or cultural argument, it is simply a fact. Rather, what I'm talking about here is that the individual, later in their life [in adolescence or in adulthood], when trying to determine a 'stable sense of personal identity' doesn't know and, to some degree, can't know what their sexual preference or gender identity would have been had they not been sexually abused. And for sexual abuse survivors, this question is quite relevant.
There have been arguments made in the popular media that boys who were sexually raped by other boys or by adult males are, due to the molestation, predisposed to becoming gay. For me, this is an outrageous, and in and of itself, an abusive argument. A greater likelihood is the possibility that if one is sexually raped by a member of ones own sex, they will avoid members of that sex like a plague until they have achieved a reasonable degree of mental health intervention (and are able to understand that the trauma is related to a specific individual molester, not all males or females). The same applies to gender identity: the argument is often made that boys who say later that they want to become transsexual females and who were raped as children will either identify with their molester and want to have similar power (hence, if the abuser was female, the gender identification is with being female) or avoid identification as a male because they were raped by a man. (See Mike Lew, Victims No Longer: Men Recovering from Incest and Other Sexual Child Abuse, p. 41, for a discussion of the gender confusion engendered by sexual abuse.)
The problem is that there have not been [to the best of my knowledge] double-blind, longitudinal studies to determine why individuals later want to transition to the 'other sex', other than the stories told by trans-persons in their required psychological pre-screening for hormones and SRS, and those stories are often carbon-copies of what the 'gatekeepers' want to hear. (On the whole bizarre paradoxical nature of that process -- and why it should be discarded altogether -- see Julia Serano, quoted above.) This is not to say that such 'story scripts' are untrue for the individuals involved, rather that the variations in the story of how one acquired one's 'alternate' gender identity, that is true for a particular individual, are often discarded in the interests of fulfilling the 'codified' version required by the psychological pre-screening process.
The complexity of my point is far too involved for me to cover all its aspects in this one blog. But, hopefully, the reader at least has an inkling of how sexual abuse greatly compromises an individual's 'stable sense' of their sexual preference and/or gender identity. Such sexual abuse causes a much greater degree of anxiety for the sexual abuse survivor than the often already great anxiety caused by the cultural repression of the society for persons who are trying to have a clear sense of their sexual and gender preferences, especially when that 'sense' differs from the 'binary sexual demands' of American society.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Repeal of DADT Is A Major Victory, But There's Much More To Do
I was quite surprised and a bit amazed, given the gridlock of the U.S. Congress, that the repeal of DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) was passed a couple of weeks ago. This didn't seem like a collection of legislators who were willing -- or had the courage -- to tackle such a divisive issue, but thankfully I was wrong. This was one time I was only too happy to be proved wrong!! Openly constraining the civil rights of a significant group within the military, people who were only too willing to fight and potentially die for their country, was simply wrong.
On the other hand, saying it's allowable to have another group in America become cannon fodder for the military war machine was sort of a phyrric victory for LGBT folks. They can now join the volunteer armed forces and legally serve -- and indeed, not being kicked out due to one's sexual preference is a major hurdle scaled. Given the paucity of employment elsewhere in the economy, the military is one of the few truly secure jobs left in the country. It carries with it solid pay, good medical and schooling benefits, and a chance to patriotically devote oneself for the nation. But given the two wars in which the nation is mired and the high chance that a person (especially male soldiers, but increasingly female soldiers as well) will be sent 'into harm's way' during multiple tours of duty, whether as members of the National Guard or the regular military, having this rule overturned, while a great step forward, is a victory that carries a lot of potential pain. At least the 'body politic' is more healed with this action, if not the actual 'physical bodies' of the citizens in uniform.
But the larger 'step forward' is that, just before the entrance of a more conservative Congress, the country is having to 'face up to' the larger cultural shift in our society. While a number of states have passed Defense of Marriage Acts, trying to limit marriage to one man and one woman (and thereby excluding LGBT citizens, even while failing to enforce anti-polygamy laws in Utah and Texas), in contrast at least six states have passed civil union legislation, and a few of them allow legal marriage. Illinois is on the verge of becoming another state that allows civil unions, which while not as strong a legal protection as legal marriage, is clearly a step toward that possibility.
The one group, though, that is not being addressed in this legislation are transgender populations. The 'T' in the LGBT coalition is, once again, being shortchanged, though it must be admitted that changing the law only comes after the citizen are educated enough -- and comfortable enough -- to allow the change. The wider population, especially younger voters, have grown up with a fair degree of tolerance for LGBT people (in spite of the hate crimes that are perpetrated periodically or the harassment that same-sex youth experience in secondary school systems) and it is their relative comfort that is allowing this sea-change in the law. Most citizens, though, have not come to grips with -- or really know much about -- the issues facing transgender and transsexual populations.
This lack of knowledge extends to at least some of their gay, lesbian, and bisexual allies in the LGBT, many of whom assume that an individual should be 'either one or the other', not something else entirely. Whereas the issues related to sexual preference are somewhat understood by many in the wider public, the rejection of binary gender categories has a much wider gap to be overcome, both in the straight and gay populations. In contrast to the 5 - 10% of the population who are LGB, more like 1% are transgender or transsexual (or such are the current estimates). That lack of numbers, as well as a lack of 'organized political force' fails, at present, to allow trans-persons the ability to have a prominent impact on the American political and legal system. This is especially true given how many transsexual men and women want to 'successfully pass', 'blend into the society', and not be 'open' about their trans-status (which is hardly surprising, given the horrific hate crimes perpetrated on them and the widespread discrimination they face, even more prominent than for LGB populations).
Change, in the cultural and legal system, at best occurs slowly and incrementally, though clearly and quite understandably people who are the butt of discrimination would wish it to move more expeditiously. The modern civil rights movement, started in 1948, didn't achieve significant national change until 1961 with the outlawing of racial discrimination in interstate transportation and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. And 45 years later, African Americans are still facing widespread discrimination, both in military and civilian life.
The modern gay and lesbian movements began in the 1950's, took a significant turn toward activism following the Stonewall Riots in 1969, and only slowly began to have national impact following the activism related to reactions within the gay community to the advent of AIDS and the devastation it caused. The original DADT, under President Clinton, was seen at the time as a 'step forward', albeit a limited step. It took a further 16 years to move beyond that limitation to the repeal of DADT -- and the acceptance by the military ranks [via Congressional legislation] -- for LGB people to have a 'right' to serve in the military. Least we forget, it was only in 2004 that the Texas law that made consensual relations between same-sex adults a crime (a law that had been replicated in a number of other states) was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) was defeated in 1984, in part, because of the fear that females would be required to serve in military combat units. Yet, in the years since women have slowly, through their own efforts, been able to serve in military police units that have at least quasi-combat roles. This change, however, has not stopped the discrimination to which females are subjected in the ranks, nor has it put an end to periodic rapes in the military services. Passing legislation that recognizes the right of LGB populations, who openly declare their sexual preference, to serve in the military will not overnight stop discrimination against them nor will it assure that they will not be subjected to continued physical abuse. While the impact of discriminatory practices is painful and negatively affects the targeted population, changing those laws requires first a change in the social attitudes by the larger public toward those targeted groups, followed by lobbying for legislative change.
Hence, it will take a while, yet, before the larger culture is open to widespread acceptance of transgender and transsexual persons, and tolerance for the difference they represent in a socio-cultural system that is so heavily predicated on the traditional gender binary division between male and female. Same sex couples being granted civil unions is a major step forward, but it will take longer (sorry, that is just the nature of incremental cultural change) for the society to come to grips with the further complexity posed by transgender populations who combine changes in gender identity with various combinations of sexual preference.
On the other hand, saying it's allowable to have another group in America become cannon fodder for the military war machine was sort of a phyrric victory for LGBT folks. They can now join the volunteer armed forces and legally serve -- and indeed, not being kicked out due to one's sexual preference is a major hurdle scaled. Given the paucity of employment elsewhere in the economy, the military is one of the few truly secure jobs left in the country. It carries with it solid pay, good medical and schooling benefits, and a chance to patriotically devote oneself for the nation. But given the two wars in which the nation is mired and the high chance that a person (especially male soldiers, but increasingly female soldiers as well) will be sent 'into harm's way' during multiple tours of duty, whether as members of the National Guard or the regular military, having this rule overturned, while a great step forward, is a victory that carries a lot of potential pain. At least the 'body politic' is more healed with this action, if not the actual 'physical bodies' of the citizens in uniform.
But the larger 'step forward' is that, just before the entrance of a more conservative Congress, the country is having to 'face up to' the larger cultural shift in our society. While a number of states have passed Defense of Marriage Acts, trying to limit marriage to one man and one woman (and thereby excluding LGBT citizens, even while failing to enforce anti-polygamy laws in Utah and Texas), in contrast at least six states have passed civil union legislation, and a few of them allow legal marriage. Illinois is on the verge of becoming another state that allows civil unions, which while not as strong a legal protection as legal marriage, is clearly a step toward that possibility.
The one group, though, that is not being addressed in this legislation are transgender populations. The 'T' in the LGBT coalition is, once again, being shortchanged, though it must be admitted that changing the law only comes after the citizen are educated enough -- and comfortable enough -- to allow the change. The wider population, especially younger voters, have grown up with a fair degree of tolerance for LGBT people (in spite of the hate crimes that are perpetrated periodically or the harassment that same-sex youth experience in secondary school systems) and it is their relative comfort that is allowing this sea-change in the law. Most citizens, though, have not come to grips with -- or really know much about -- the issues facing transgender and transsexual populations.
This lack of knowledge extends to at least some of their gay, lesbian, and bisexual allies in the LGBT, many of whom assume that an individual should be 'either one or the other', not something else entirely. Whereas the issues related to sexual preference are somewhat understood by many in the wider public, the rejection of binary gender categories has a much wider gap to be overcome, both in the straight and gay populations. In contrast to the 5 - 10% of the population who are LGB, more like 1% are transgender or transsexual (or such are the current estimates). That lack of numbers, as well as a lack of 'organized political force' fails, at present, to allow trans-persons the ability to have a prominent impact on the American political and legal system. This is especially true given how many transsexual men and women want to 'successfully pass', 'blend into the society', and not be 'open' about their trans-status (which is hardly surprising, given the horrific hate crimes perpetrated on them and the widespread discrimination they face, even more prominent than for LGB populations).
Change, in the cultural and legal system, at best occurs slowly and incrementally, though clearly and quite understandably people who are the butt of discrimination would wish it to move more expeditiously. The modern civil rights movement, started in 1948, didn't achieve significant national change until 1961 with the outlawing of racial discrimination in interstate transportation and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. And 45 years later, African Americans are still facing widespread discrimination, both in military and civilian life.
The modern gay and lesbian movements began in the 1950's, took a significant turn toward activism following the Stonewall Riots in 1969, and only slowly began to have national impact following the activism related to reactions within the gay community to the advent of AIDS and the devastation it caused. The original DADT, under President Clinton, was seen at the time as a 'step forward', albeit a limited step. It took a further 16 years to move beyond that limitation to the repeal of DADT -- and the acceptance by the military ranks [via Congressional legislation] -- for LGB people to have a 'right' to serve in the military. Least we forget, it was only in 2004 that the Texas law that made consensual relations between same-sex adults a crime (a law that had been replicated in a number of other states) was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) was defeated in 1984, in part, because of the fear that females would be required to serve in military combat units. Yet, in the years since women have slowly, through their own efforts, been able to serve in military police units that have at least quasi-combat roles. This change, however, has not stopped the discrimination to which females are subjected in the ranks, nor has it put an end to periodic rapes in the military services. Passing legislation that recognizes the right of LGB populations, who openly declare their sexual preference, to serve in the military will not overnight stop discrimination against them nor will it assure that they will not be subjected to continued physical abuse. While the impact of discriminatory practices is painful and negatively affects the targeted population, changing those laws requires first a change in the social attitudes by the larger public toward those targeted groups, followed by lobbying for legislative change.
Hence, it will take a while, yet, before the larger culture is open to widespread acceptance of transgender and transsexual persons, and tolerance for the difference they represent in a socio-cultural system that is so heavily predicated on the traditional gender binary division between male and female. Same sex couples being granted civil unions is a major step forward, but it will take longer (sorry, that is just the nature of incremental cultural change) for the society to come to grips with the further complexity posed by transgender populations who combine changes in gender identity with various combinations of sexual preference.
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