Men Are Screwed by Kavanaugh Pick Too
It's over now. And like many women across the country, I'm feeling bitter and betrayed. I didn't even watch the Kavanaugh hearing. I couldn't put myself through it. I knew how it would go. We've seen it before: a woman is sexually abused; she calls out her abuser; she's publicly shamed and he walks free.
Being in the midst of the #MeToo Movement gave me the tiniest smidgen of hope that things might go otherwise this time. But I knew it was stupid to hope. And now we have a man on the Supreme Court who showed the country on television that he's deeply biased and an easy liar with the temperament of a spoiled child.
So, yeah… It feels like business as usual in America, and by "business," I mean that women get screwed. But there's a lie in that — a really big lie that keeps us treading sludge in this toxic status quo. Because it's not only women who are screwed in a society that allows powerful men to do as they like without fear of repercussion. Men also are screwed in a culture that teaches power over others as a masculine ideal. And we need men to see that if we're going to change.
I didn't come to that conclusion on my own. I'm not that smart. I read it in The Will to Change; Men, Masculinity and Love by feminist thinker bell hooks.
And hooks' brilliant book was exactly what I needed to read right now; it's exactly what America needs to read. Because it shows that the fight isn't women against men. It isn't liberals against conservatives, or blue states against red states, or red hats against no hats, or Democrats against Republicans. The real fight is every man, woman and child against a destructive social system that is eating us alive.
What is patriarchy? It's the male-dominated culture we live in, the one that shuts down the emotions of loving little boys and teaches them they can't become "real men" unless they learn not to feel.
Patriarchy was responsible for the sexual assault that happened to Dr. Ford 36 years ago; it was responsible for the 50 senators ignoring her credible allegations; and it's responsible for the 1.2 million violent crimes that occur in the United States every single year. It's the "dominator" spirit behind racism, war, and environmental collapse.
It's easy to see how patriarchy hurts women. Violence against women is the world's most pervasive form of human rights abuse, according to the United Nations. One out of 12 American women will be stalked at some point in her life, according to the U.S. Justice Department. And a woman in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every 45 seconds, according to the American Medical Association.
What's harder to see is how it hurts men. But in addition to experiencing trauma and death in almost-perpetual wars, men in our patriarchal system are "dying of heart attacks in early middle age, killing themselves with liver and lung disease via the manly pursuits of drinking and smoking, committing suicide at roughly four times the rate of women, becoming victims of homicide (generally at the hands of other men) three times as often as women, and therefore living about eight years less than women," according to one of many experts hooks cites in her book: Olga Silverstein, who wrote "The Courage to Raise Good Men."
Since heterosexual men have the status and privilege in a patriarchy, it feels right to blame them for the status quo. But women and gay men also defend the culture we live in, only to realize too late — if ever — that they've propped up a system that threatens the planet and denies them love. Because at its center is an ethos that delegitimizes male emotion — except one. Rage is the lifeblood that fuels patriarchy, and violence the tactic that keeps it in place.
"Poor and working class male children and grown men often embody the worst strains of patriarchal masculinity, acting out violently because it is the easiest, cheapest way to declare one's 'manhood,'" hooks writes.
"If you cannot prove you are 'much of a man' by becoming president, or becoming rich, or becoming a public leader, or becoming a boss, then violence is your ticket in to the patriarchal manhood contest, and your ability to do violence levels the playing field."
English actor and writer Robert Webb calls patriarchy "The Trick" in his memoir, ""How Not to Be a Boy" which has the subtitle "Rules for Being a Man: Don't Cry; Love Sport; Play Rough; Drink Beer; Don't Talk About Feelings." And what an evil trick it is! Patriarchy grants men status and privilege while turning them into "emotional cripples," rendering them unloving and unlovable, hooks writes. It's a devil's bargain.
Patriarchy is "the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation," according to hooks. It "demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off emotional parts of themselves." Yet most men do not consciously choose to live under the patriarchal system, and all lives would improve if they threw off its yoke.
If patriarchy is the problem, gender equity is the solution. But hooks says that we're approaching it in the wrong way.
"Teachers of children see gender equality mostly in terms of ensuring that girls get to have the same privileges and rights as boys within the existing social structure; they do not see it in terms of granting boys the same rights as girls — for instance, the right to choose not to engage in aggressive or violent play, the right to play with dolls, to play dress up, or to wear costumes of either gender, the right to choose," hooks writes.
Although gender roles are harmful to all people, they're more rigid for boys and the punishment more severe if they violate the norms. You know it's true. If your daughter wants to be batman for Halloween, she can do that and no one will blink an eye. But your son better not walk the neighborhood in a princess dress or he'll pay a steep price. But our patriarchal system is doing a lot more damage than limiting clothing choices.
According to psychologist Terrence Real, it is poisoning sex via a "perverse form of connection that replaces true intimacy with complex, covert layers of dominance and submission, collusion and manipulation…deforming both sexes, and destroying the passionate bond between them," hooks quotes.
The old axiom that women give sex to get love and men give love to get sex is patriarchal hogwash, according to hooks. All people want to be loved. Instead, the dominant-submissive model for sexual interaction fuels addiction, pornography, and deep dissatisfaction, because there can be no love when there is fear.
Patriarchy limits thought, according to psychotherapist John Bradshaw, who cites "blind obedience" as the "foundation upon which patriarchy stands" and calls "the repression of thinking whenever it departs from the authority figure's way of thinking" one of its most damaging aspects.
Patriarchy is linked to widespread depression. "Most males have low self-esteem because they are constantly lying and dissimulating (taking on false appearances) in order to perform the male sexist role," hooks writes.
And though "rituals of domination help mediate the pain," poet and farmer Wendell Berry says patriarchy makes happiness impossible. "If we removed the status and compensation from the destructive exploits we classify as 'manly,' men would be found to be suffering as much as women. They would be found to be suffering for the same reason: they are in exile from the communion of men and women, which is the deepest connection with the communion of all creatures."
The "might makes right" ethic underlying patriarchy fuels imperialism, racism, sexism, genocide, child abuse, animal cruelty and every other kind of oppression imaginable. War veteran Shepherd Bliss connects patriarchy to environmental destruction, saying "the warrior's way has led men in the direction of an impoverishment of the spirit so profound that it threatens all life on planet Earth."
So what can we do besides letting our sons wear fingernail polish? Hooks says we must grant men the same inherent spiritual value that women are granted, for starters. "Work of spiritual restoration — of seeing the souls of men as sacred — is essential if we are to create a culture in which men can love."
Changing the way we value men includes placing less emphasis on production. "In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an antipatriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved."
Another part of the work is "envisioning alternative ways of thinking about maleness."
According to psychologist Robert Levant, modern male identity involves "avoiding femininity, restrictive emotionality, seeking achievement and status, self-reliance, aggression, homophobia, and nonrelational attitudes toward sexuality" — all of which must be challenged and changed.
"Patriarchal masculinity teaches males to be pathologically narcissistic, infantile, and psychologically dependent for self-definition on the privileges (however relative) that they receive from having been born male. Hence many males feel that their very existence is threatened if these privileges are taken away," hooks writes, in a sentence that brings to mind Kavanaugh's rageful tears.
"In a partnership model male identity, like its female counterpart, would be centered around the notion of an essential goodness that is inherently relationally oriented. Rather than assuming that males are born with the will to aggress, the culture would assume that males are born with the inherent will to connect."
Hooks' suggestions are abstract and might seem impossible to achieve, but as Shepherd Bliss points out, our life depends on this change. "If we are to survive on this planet, so threatened by war and warriors, we must get beyond the obsolete archetype of the warrior and value images such as the peacemaker, the partner, and the husbandman who cares for the earth and animals."
And changing the status quo isn't just the work of powerful men. It's the work of the people who endeavor to love them, who must value interdependency in their male partners and not turn away when vulnerability is expressed.
It's the work of media makers, who must stop writing stories that glorify violence. (Can the superhero franchises just stop?)
It's the work of voters and candidates and corporate boards of directors, who must insist on gender equity in our social and political institutions. (This California law moves us in the right direction.)
It's the work of parents, who must respect the rights of children, and couples, who must work to make equality a valued element in their relationship.
And it's the work of powerful women, who must not be seduced by the dominator model, but practice feminist ideals of cooperation instead.
So yes, the results of the Kavanaugh hearing are disheartening. It feels like business as usual in America, and by "business," I mean that women get screwed. But instead of feeling bitter and betrayed, why not pity the poor senators who lack empathy and understanding? We can help them. We must help them to embrace their humanity.
#MeToo shows that the patriarchal system is changing. The 1991 Anita Hill hearings were followed by the "Year of the Woman," which saw the number of women senators jump from two to seven in 1992. Today, we have 23 women in the 100-person body. Maybe the Kavanaugh hearing can inspire a similar movement. Maybe it can inspire both men and women to work for gender equity in our social, familial, and political institutions, bringing us closer to a better, safer, happier, and more sustainable world.
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