From Suppression to Expression: Wholeness and a Rebellion I Can Get Behind

What comes to mind when you hear the world countercultural or rebel? I think of conflict, protest, aggression that is at least verbal or ideological, if not physical at times. Most of life isn’t characterized by rebellion or moving against the dominant culture, unless that’s part of your story and then it would make sense.

I started reading bell hooks’ the will to change: men, masculinity, and love” and her central idea is that patriarchy negatively effects everyone within its domain: women and men. The negative impact to women seems obvious, but how could patriarchy impact men negatively when the word itself implies men in power? hooks’ assertion is that patriarchy teaches and trains men not to feel or expression emotion, except occasionally anger, and this emotion is best expressed in defense of one’s country. Sad, anxious, disappointed aren’t emotions men should feel. Women, in contrast, are encouraged to feel the full range of their emotions, except anger, that seems to be solely the domain of men.

And so, patriarchy hands this mantle on to each generation, reinforcing the status quo and keeping men and women hamstrung by allowing certain emotions and restraining others. This approach effectively divides a person up, forcing them to only show the world the kind of performance associated with their sex or gender. Unable to express the fullness of our humanity—the complete range of human emotion—we begin to cut off and distance ourselves from those parts of ourselves not deemed acceptable in this wider structure. And the most insidious aspect of this reality is the fact that most people don’t know we’re living in this system at all. By most people, I mean men. Because of course women and minorities know the distinct feeling of powerlessness at work or in community life. But many men feel no pain point here because things seem to be working out for them. They work a job or trade, they’re likely married with kids, everything is going well on paper. hooks’ corrective here: “If patriarchy were truly rewarding to men, the violence and addiction in family life that is so all-pervasive” would not exist. This violence was not created by feminism. If patriarchy were rewarding, the overwhelming dissatisfaction most men feel in their work lives…would not exist” (31).

Because for every man who feels like things are working out, or whose actual experience might be of that, a sense of dissatisfaction or discontent often undergirds this experience. I experienced this as a feeling of wanting more, even though I had a good job and a family. My more was centered around meaning and a certain way of working with people to heal or change their lives. But in a patriarchal framework this desire is at least selfish, if not outright self-indulgent.

Which brings me to a quote I heard this week:

Sure, you can focus on the ordinary vs. extraordinary hours piece, but for me the happiness and joy jumped out. Because happiness and joy are both feelings and Sunim asserts that we don’t just happen upon those, rather we find them. Which means the common approach to life of waiting for something outside me to make me happy, means I’ll be waiting for a long time for happiness. But if I can cultivate an attention to happiness and joy, I may be more happy and joyful.

What’s in direct opposition to joy? Work. I don’t mean you can’t enjoy your work nor that you can derive no joy from your work. I mean work in the sense of continuing to try to win some real-life version of Monopoly, an approach to work that views rest and leisure as slothful. The phrase “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” comes to mind. In most of America, which is to say in a patriarchal system, that’s true. Work is praised above all else. Become addicted to drugs or alcohol and you’ll be kicked to the curb in this kind of system; become addicted to work and you’ll be venerated as a god, or goddess. Which is ironic because the teaching inherent (and implicit) in patriarchal systems that men suppress certain areas of emoting and feeling is the very thing that leads people toward the path of addiction.

Not allowing myself to feel my feelings is bad enough, but add on to this the inability to talk to others about my feelings and you get a pressure cooker ready to explode. Because I can’t name the thing, the elephant in the room; I can’t tell the truth. “Keeping males and females from telling the truth about what happens to them in families is one way patriarchal culture is maintained,” hooks writes (24). Much of patriarchy is first experienced at home through a father’s physical or verbal violence. This is obviously not good, but the silence enforced when we can’t talk about the abuse openly deepens its impact. See for example the inability in certain religious or other systems to name the patterns of abuse that take place within?

Because to name those things is to acknowledge our imperfection, to have to own and accept those parts of us that we’ve denied. Which is ironic as it is likely this act of self-denial that led to the perpetrator moving down the path they did, in the first place. If certain feelings can’t be felt, then I’m more apt to express those in unhealthy or other ways in order to find some sense of internal balance or wholenss. A person, like a nation, divided amongst itself cannot stand.

So, what’s the point here? Feel joy. Actively seek out those things, moments, and people that allow to access your joy, this is an act of rebellion in and against a system that would prefer you to be working hard the majority of the time and sufficiently numbed the rest of the time. Ironically, alcohol—the socially acceptable drug of choice within patriarchy—which makes living a life out of alignment endurable lessens our ability to feel joy, because it’s an anesthetic, and anesthetics literally numb, or prevent feeling. And you can’t selectively numb, so if you’re numbing the discontent or pain, you’re also numbing the joy and happiness.

So, get clear about what brings you joy, what makes you happy. And do more of those things in the moments when you can. And little by little, you might find yourself embracing some of those other emotions or feelings that aren’t supposed to be felt by you because you’re a man, or woman. And you may, over time, finding yourself settling back into a sense of wholeness that isn’t new, it’s been there all the time, you’ve just allowed yourself to come home to you. To unearth that which lay hidden, maybe since before you could remember. And while none of us can dismantle patriarchy on our own, if enough of us start choosing this joy, a movement could offer a different way for us all to be in the world. That’s a rebellion I can get behind.