WHAT DO MEN
WANT? A sequel to “What do Women Want?”
Rev. Kit Ketcham,
PUUF, May 13, 2018
As the
#MeToo wave swept across the globe and thousands, even millions of women came forward
to reveal the incidents of harassment, assault, misogyny, and sexism that they
had dealt with for much of their lives, I reached out to the women in our
Fellowship to ask what their lives had been like.
Had they experienced the kinds of
things that other women had dealt with?
Would they like to talk about it?
Several women came forward and we spent some good time talking about the
ways actions by some men had affected our lives.
Our
conversations were painful and revealing.
And in a follow-up to the conversations, I asked them to answer the
question “What do you as a woman want?”
I spoke to you on that topic a couple of months ago and conveyed the
essence of their wants and needs to you all.
It seemed
only fair then to ask the men in our Fellowship a similar question: “what do men want?” And several men wrote back varying responses,
which I will share with you this morning.
Since that time, I’ve done some
reading about some of the dangerous things that some men want, particularly
sexual violence, a want that is emerging in some of the neo-Nazi groups. There is a movement, in fact, among
disaffected young men which could qualify as terrorism; it is the movement
dubbed “InCel”.
How many of us have heard of InCel?
InCel is a combination of two
words: Involuntary Celibacy.
If asked
the question “what do you want, angry young men?” many, perhaps most,
men affiliated with InCel would answer “I want to get laid and nobody will have
sex with me and I’m angry about it.”
In other words, these men believe
that women owe them sexual favors and they are angry that nobody will sleep
with them. This was apparently the
reasoning of Alek Minassian, the young man who drove a cargo van into a crowd
in Toronto recently, killing several women and injuring many others.
Here’s something published recently
by the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Incels
"have taken this moniker as almost a badge of honor for men who feel like
women are not being the docile sex toys for them that they think they should
be."
In
other words, for incels, it's not just about sex. It's about the women supposedly
withholding it. (The SPLC defines as
hate groups) organizations
that attack or malign an entire class of people for their immutable
characteristics. Incels like … Minassian target women in violent attacks
because of what they see as the most immutable female characteristic of all:
women's sexuality.
It
cannot be women's job to pacify men who hate them because of their gender —
just like it cannot be the job of people of color to (pacify) white
supremacists. We began tracking male
supremacy in 2012. In the wake of the 2016 election, we saw how essential
male supremacist ideas were to the rise of the so-called "alt-right"
and formally added male supremacist groups to our hate map the following
year.
Now
more than ever, it's clear that we ignore male supremacy at our peril.
Interesting, isn’t
it? And scary, to think of what some men
want. I wonder, too, how the murders of
transwomen fit into this scenario.
Anger and depression are not
uncommon among human beings who long for physical intimacy and don’t get
it. I even heard a therapist, one time,
say that he believed that sexual frustration was occasionally a cause of
suicide in some vulnerable men. He did
not offer evidence, simply stated his belief. I wonder how he views the InCel
movement.
As a counselor in a suburban junior
high in Colorado in the 90’s, I heard the stories of boys who had been sexually
violated, forced to perform sex acts by threats of injury or even death, anally
raped, sometimes romantically seduced by a teacher or other adult in power.
For boys, sexual violation is
painful and humiliating, as it is for girls and women, but perhaps not
completely similar. For boys in a
patriarchal culture, the shame of being overpowered has a different effect,
perhaps, than it has for girls.
Girls grow up with the
understanding that they are less physically powerful than boys and must always
be on the lookout in order to stay safe.
I’ll bet the women here today grew up hearing the adage “boys only want one
thing---sex—and you have to protect yourself from that.” Girls may develop into women with that
underlying message of having less physical power than boys.
What is the message boys grow up with
in a patriarchal culture? They learn
that males are stronger, more powerful, more deserving of certain roles and
responsibilities, more destined to have privilege than females in the same
roles.
When these assumptions turn out to
be short-circuited by a sexual assault or other overpowering and humiliating
acts toward them, there’s confusion in hearing “boys are tough, boys mustn’t be
like girls, boys don’t cry, boys are not vulnerable to the same things girls
are” –and that message can be difficult to comprehend for a young boy who has
been violated.
Females learn to use different
strategies to stay safe than boys learn.
Because of that learned fear of male aggression, women may lie to stay
safe, to protect themselves from the possibility of injury or abandonment, for
example. This is not a particularly
healthy strategy, obviously, because it causes distrust between partners and is
a difficult façade to maintain and will likely backfire.
What strategies do boys learn to
deal with aggression? My experience with
sexual assault victims, both young boys and adult men, is that it is hard for
males with this experience to find a way to deal with the anger that arises out
of the helplessness which is an outcome of humiliation and pain.
Boys and men I counseled were often
angry and aggressive themselves, not allowing themselves to get close to peers,
striking out physically, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, withdrawing,
and often considering suicide. Many
wondered if they were gay, if abused by a male.
Many teenage boys who were seduced by older adults, both male and
female, weren’t sure if they should feel flattered by the attention from a teacher
or admired adult or devastated by being used for someone else’s gratification.
So the way boys become men often
has some backstory, backstory which is sometimes humiliating and difficult to
reveal. And underneath the visible
behavior, just as with women, many men deal with memories of experiences that
shape their behavior today.
And so it is on that note that I
would like to turn to the responses I received from eight of our PUUF men in
answer to the question “What do men want?” I also got responses from other male acquaintances
and from my son Mike, during conversations while I was working on this sermon.
You’ll be glad to know that we have
some wonderful guys in this congregation.
They care about how they come across.
They are concerned about how to show affection to platonic women friends
and aware of the biological power differential as well as the cultural male
supremacy reality active in our society.
Some of them have also had some negative experiences which have shaped
their lives.
Let me read to you some of their
responses in a few different threads; their responses revealed some major
themes. During my reading of them, I was
strongly reminded of how often men’s and women’s thinking is quite different,
even about the same question.
I found that the responses fell
into three major categories: what men
want in a relationship with a woman (platonic or romantic); what men want for
all humankind in general; and what men want for themselves.
Let me paraphrase some of their
answers to each category. In what they
want in relationship to women, here’s what a few said:
“I want companionship, someone to
talk to, someone to be mutually supportive and encouraging with, to share a
pillow with, and to have enough solitude when I need it.”
Another
said this: “I need clear signals about
hugs and physical affection; I enjoy platonic affection but am not sure of the
boundaries, so I tend to hang back.”
Others said
these things: “I maintain business-like
relationships with most women, because anything else is too easily
misunderstood.” And “I think women need
to bring overbearing men to account, that is, bring attention to misbehavior so
that our society can overcome our instinctual reactions to our biological impulses.”
Another
response: “I like women who are
interesting, honest, responsible, who let me be myself, who listen before answering,
and who are as considerate as I try to be.”
One man
mentioned his hope that “testosterone-influenced, stupid behavior is on the
wane because of growing understanding and awareness.” He wants to encourage women’s strength, their
abilities, and their empowerment.
What did these men want for all
humankind?
One mentioned health care and humane
treatment for all who struggle with poverty, with housing, with violence,
addiction, and mental illness.
Another man said “Men appear to want
similar things to women: Respect, Honor,
Stability, Love, Longevity, Good Health and good Humor…Violence, misogyny,
cheating and attempts to control women’s rights have never been okay and still
need to be strongly opposed… Real men recognize this as a way of improving life
for all humankind…”
And yet another stated: “A cultural shift is definitely overdue… Each
society must define the rules of behavior so that it can function smoothly and
the #MeToo movement is helping to make this definition clear.”
What do men want for themselves?
Here’s a summary of what they said: I
want to be my real self and to have the freedom to change and grow at my own
speed. I want companionship, I want
peace of mind, I want a greater understanding of others, I want to be slow to
anger and free from depression. I want
to feel less awkward about casual affection and touch. I want to be recognized for what I have done,
the sacrifices I have made, and I’d like appreciation from those I love.”
Women and men answered the same
question in different ways. Women’s
backstory has often had the shadow of mistreatment by men coloring what they
want from men and from life in general.
Men’s backstory often has a different shadow coloring what they
want---sometimes it’s been discord and dysfunction in the home, sometimes it’s
been abuse, sometimes it’s been an awareness of their male privilege---or a
lack of awareness of the privilege of being male.
My son Mike, in a recent phone
conversation in which I asked him to answer the question, hemmed and hawed a
bit about what he wants in his relationships (I can understand that---he was
talking to his mother, after all), but came out with a valuable statement: “I,
as a straight white male, already have about as much of what I want as I can
possibly get. I’m not missing out on
much
-----
because of my inborn privilege. Women,
on the other hand, do not have that same privilege because of gender.”
What’s the takeaway from this
question posed to both men and women, with some answers similar and some
strikingly different because of the cultural milieu in which we live?
And as a straight woman who has been single for the past 40 plus
years, with a couple of long-term relationships interspersed with shorter
experiences, I have gradually come to see how my backstory has shaped my life
as I have made some bad and good choices.
Listening to the experiences recounted by my junior high
students, both male and female, I am powerfully aware of the consequences of
sexual violation at any age, but especially in childhood. And having been in friendships with good men
and women who have told me about having been sexually assaulted in their early
years or seduced by a teacher or other admired adult, I am also aware that
those events have deeply affected their adult lives.
My students often came to me because their friends were worried
that they were suicidal. Sometimes they
came voluntarily; other times I’d ask them to come in. I had a set of questions I’d ask about their
mindset and why they were thinking of suicide, and the most telling of all the
questions was this one: Have you ever
been sexually molested? There was such a
high correlation between inappropriate sexual attention and feelings of low
self-worth that it was nearly always predictable.
While my adult friends and
parishioners might not be currently suicidal, many had considered it at one
time. If seduced by a teacher or other admired
adult into a pseudo-romantic relationship, they felt both flattered by the
attention and yet manipulated for another’s sexual gratification. These were always relationships with a
differing power status---teacher to student, supervisor to intern, boss to
employee, adult to child.
Several
struggled in the years afterwards with drug and alcohol addictions; others with
sexual issues—unfaithfulness to a partner, sexual insecurity, and psychological
impotence. Still others found themselves
unable to commit and used frequent one-night stands instead of partnership,
drifting from one to another.
As I’ve listened to both men’s and
women’s perceptions about what they want and need, I’ve come to see that each
gender—and likely all on the gender spectrum---expresses their wants through a
somewhat different but related lens, the lens of privilege and power.
I have come to believe that a huge,
almost unseeable feature of our cultural milieu is the invisible, pervasive
layer of privilege and power that is bestowed almost automatically upon males
and mostly denied to females. At the
same time, females have power and privilege that males do not.
What powers do men have that most or
all of women do not? The ones I thought
of quickly were male privilege and physical strength.
What powers do women have that males
do not? Into my mind pop certain sexual
attributes and so-called “feminine wiles”, the flirtations that entice males to
respond to females positively and perhaps help women meet their needs.
But what powers do men and women share in common? My own brainstorming produces this idea: each member of the human family can use the very
real power of granting respect, honor, stability, love, and good humor
(I’m quoting here from one man’s statement about what he wants for
humankind). The power is in our
willingness to grant these benefits to others.
It’s not commonly recognized as power, but truly, it is our
human superpower.
Each gender has some strengths or
attributes which can be used for or against the opposite gender. But each gender has the power and privilege
of applying an antidote to our cultural milieu of patriarchy, not from a place
of privilege or from sexual attraction, but out of a just and compassionate
heart.
That potent antidote, it seems to
me, is for each of us to GRANT to those in our lives (both male and female) Respect,
Honor, Stability, Love, and Good Humor, not parceling these gifts out sparingly
but generously. It’s our SUPERPOWER!
To overcome those “instinctual reactions to our biological
impulses” males must consciously look past the biological stimuli to see the person
not as a sexual being but as a human being equally deserving of respect and
honor.
To overcome the temptation to use a flirtatious response to a
man’s attention when it would be inappropriate, I have learned to fall back on
my training to seek more understanding of the person in front of me, so as to
maintain my self-respect and treat them as a person worthy of respect.
Our biology often tempts us to default toward a biological
response. We don’t have to. And we will be a more just society when we
are able to freely grant respect and honor and other such attributes to all
persons without defaulting to our biological or old cultural impulses. May it be so!
Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.
HYMN#
354. “We Laugh, We Cry”
BENEDICTION: Our worship service, our
time of shaping worth together, is ended, but our service to the world begins
again as we leave this place. Let us go
in peace, remembering that each of us and each of our fellow human beings was
born with inherent worth and dignity and that we have promised to affirm and
promote this human attribute in our relationships. May we strive to treat each other with
respect and honor, subverting the age-old paradigm of gender inequality. Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.
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