A Pointless Struggle

Recently I heard an interview on the radio (yes, the radio), on the topic of feminism versus masculinism. This was NPR, of course. Where else would you hear such an interview on the radio, here in the US?

Anyway, I felt very sad while listening to it. It seems that, at the extremes of the spectrum, if we can call it a spectrum, there are women who want nothing to do with men (and thus only wish to associate with other women), and men who wish to completely avoid women, or, alternatively, wish to be the masters of women in all aspects.

I felt sad because, it seems that these groups of people are essentially hurt, fearful, and angry and are lashing out at each other. How could all this animosity lead to any kind of resolution? Each public statement from one side seems to invoke a more extreme reaction from the other side.

I guess I can understand perhaps how this situation has come about, I just wish we could all get along and find love in this world. And let me be clear, I mean love in the universal sense, not just the romantic or sexual sense. That is, to feel love for oneself and love for all others, as much as possible, regardless of what group or category we may think we or they fall into (sex, race, cultural group, etc.).

I started to wonder, would perhaps folks like me do well to form our own group and start issuing press releases? A group to speak up to recommend a loving collaboration and support between all, instead of “going to our corners and coming out swinging” (to use the prizefight metaphor).

It seems to me that this despising of “the other” stems not so much from our basic human nature, but has something to do with organizational power. By that I mean power exerted by groups or organizations, against other groups or organizations. Without these structures, perhaps there would not be much left to fight about?

Our societies are riddled with traditions and expectations regarding how people should behave, based on what categories we assign each other to. Men should be one way, whereas women should be some other way.

OK, yes, biology is significant, especially when it comes to reproduction and certain other less dramatic physical factors. But beyond these obvious physical differences, we have much in common as human beings.

I think part of the current situation comes from a history trauma and grief, and a lack of outlets to express these feelings in a safe place. By safe, I mean in the presence of others who are committed to being supportive, rather than judgmental or overly critical.

Perhaps this extreme polarization is the last gasp of patriarchy, a set of standards and assumptions that are based on the idea that men are superior beings, compared to women. I happen to think that is nonsense, and I’m not afraid to say so. But such traditions, which have been embedded in culture for centuries by now, are not so easy to dispense with!

I remember back in the early 1990s, John Gray published a book entitled “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.” It made quite a splash at the time. But even though it was a bestseller, other researchers soon found significant fault with the research he referenced and the assumptions he made in the book.1

By 2004, another book came out, entitled, “Same Difference: How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children, and Our Jobs” by Rosalind C. Barnett and Caryl Rivers.2 It was not a bestseller, which I think is too bad. These two women dug deeply into the research cited by Gray and found much of it to be unreliable and of poor quality. They went on to review many more studies and concluded that the idea of an impossible divide in communication between men and women was largely a myth. The apparent differences were more due to social constructs and traditions rather than any inherent inabilities of men and women to communicate on a basic level.

Sadly, most people have heard of the first book, but not the second one.

By now, this “war between the sexes” seems to have reached a fevered pitch.

Or, has it?

It’s hard to determine exactly why the current extreme divide has come to pass, but I believe that our impression of how bad things are is inaccurate, to say the least. I think one of the main reasons is the relationship between news organizations and we, the public, who watch, listen to, or read what they have to offer. The most watched or read news seems to be focused on the most disturbing or distressing stories.

The result is, we hear much more about extreme views than we do about people being tolerant or accepting one another. Each day, millions of couples find ways to communicate, resolve differences, and collaborate on various tasks in life, such as parenting, managing a household, or engaging in other activities together.

Meanwhile, this steady stream of “bad news,” now delivered to digital screens in our pockets, at all hours, easily distorts our view of the world, leaving us in a greater state of worry, fear, and despair than we might otherwise have.

My recommendation is this: The next time you hear of some men saying horrible things about women, or women saying they have given up on men, remember, that you’re only hearing the last desperate voices of patriarchy as it slowly sinks into a puddle of eventual oblivion.

I am firmly convinced that we are inevitably leaving all that “gender superiority” nonsense behind. Our goal is to build a better world from whatever ashes of turmoil are left from what we are experiencing in the present one. I say we will need an “all hands on deck,” attitude. That is, people working not under the command of some “higher ups” but in groups built from mutual respect and dignity for all involved, gathered together not by some outside authority, but by their own collective initiative.