Abominable "fauxman" an insult to moderate evolved masculinity

There is a clear divide, not only among voters in North America and in Europe, but also between competing models of masculinity. Whether these divides overlap, or provide any valid explanation of the recent voting patterns is a matter for some debate. However, given the cultural fixation with gender, sexuality and individual rights, it is timely to reflect on the differences in perception, appreciation and validation of different masculinities.

Sociology and its sister, demographic politics, groups people, for the purpose of attempting to determine public attitudes, and the scope of relative acceptance/rejection of policy and process proposals. For our purpose, there are some archetypes that might be helpful here. The warrior archetype, for example, has served as the traditional, conventional and possibly even dominant role model for young men in North America for centuries. Although there have been several worthy initiatives to break out of this “mould’ (not a mis-spell), for many, both men and women, the archetype has provided “guidance” and direction, for men about how to “be a man” and for women, about how to “perceive masculinity”. And while there is and as always been a place of honour for some exercise of the warrior, (both for men and for women), as the only cookie-cutter to shape young boys and young men, this warrior model is highly reductionistic and restrictive.

 Old adages like a parent telling a young son, when he complains about being bullied at school or on the way home from school, “Go back and punch him out!” have been the norm, and they have been supported by both mothers and fathers. The idea behind the instruction is that, once the bully sees and feels the wrath returned upon his body, the bullying will stop. Don Cherry, former hockey coach, has made a rather profitable career espousing, cheerleading and trumpeting this retaliatory injunction, especially in regards to the “protection” it offers to the star players, from their ‘protectors’. Being a simple game, stars are expected to score goals, and pugilists to protect those who sell  tickets and fill arenas.

Physical muscle, as a symbol of all things masculine, is a sine qua non for some seeking to achieve respectability as “real men”. However, physical muscle, and the urge to deploy it, are a minimal expression, perhaps one on which to build a repertoire of additional ‘instruments’ including a vocabulary, a range of facial expressions, a series of body gestures and a reservoir of communication devices that carry a different but nevertheless also effective (sometimes even more effective) instrument of self-advocacy as the physical muscle. And here is where the rubber meets the road, in an evolving concept like masculinity.

And evolving is what is happening to masculinity, although not without its serious and perhaps even dangerous blow-back!

With the rise of feminism several decades back, and its own continuing evolution from radical to moderate and oscillating on that continuum, and its early “blaming” men for all things wrong with the lives of women, especially in North America, men quite literally vacated the playing field, in so far as gender politics is concerned. Both by default of men and by the aggressive assertion of women into public leadership roles, several institutions have evolved into a situation now almost dominated by women. Schools, for the most part, now proudly display female principals, and a large majority of teachers who are female. Graduate schools now proudly proclaim the majority of their students are female, in most North American universities. Female students have demonstrated their capacity to learn complex details, their capacity to withstand rigorous demands to continue and complete their education, and then to withstand the rigors of the professions. The world is  better place for this part of the evolution. Michelle Obama’s “live out loud” and “I am not coy, if I wanted (to run for political office) I would say it” approach in her recent interview with Oprah Winfrey demonstrates the value of much of this evolution.

And there is the president-elect. (It seems almost a denigration of the office to write that phrase!)

As a symbol of everything that is wrong with the masculinity he expresses, Trump incarnates lying and deception as one of the weapons in his arsenal of attack (and he attacks everything that moves, especially if it disagrees with him). He gropes women, and then hubristically boasts about his “conquests” (because I am a star and they will let you do anything), he projects himself and his “warrior” archetype into each and every global incident, without having the maturity and the patience and the trust to wait for the official investigations to determine the source of the terror incidents, in Berlin and in Ankara, just this week. As the epitome of masculine domination, tyranny and absolute power, he again hubristically rejects the daily intelligence brief, so essential in a complex and every-changing dynamic world, disparages the intelligence of American allies, and surrounds himself with men who, also “macho” examples of masculinity (Gen. Mike Flynn, Ambassador John Bolton, are just two examples,) prefer their own “conspiracy theories” to the truth of a situation.

After all, if one’s identity depends on absolute power, one cannot, must not, tolerate any truth that contradicts the theory of the personally-concocted conspiracy. Sitting alone on an island of self-generated “reality” renders one, ironically and paradoxically, disempowered, and not empowered, and these people want to believe.

So their (Flynn’s and Trump’s) self-generated “reality” and their absolute dependence on this thalidomide of real power is now about to be sitting in the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Oval Office respectively.

And the world complains merely about how the truth is subverted, aborted and denied by this gang of dictators. It is their assumption of a kind of masculinity that drugs them, and if they have their way, the rest of the world. However, we must not be deluded into thinking that their “brand” or definition of power is authentic.

The deepest and most dangerous irony is that this incarnation of masculinity is fundamentally based on deep and profound neurosis, perhaps even psychosis. Make no mistake, the great ruse of this past presidential election is that faux masculinity has triumphed, pandering to all the angry white men who, themselves, were so frightened and so weak and so neurotic, perhaps even psychotic, that they showed up in droves to vote for Trump. First, they were voting AGAINST Hillary.  How could they permit any woman and especially THAT woman to serve as their president. Trump maligned her character, through painting her as “crooked” and “weak” and “not up to the office” and “secretive”…these are the code words for the immature male expression of all things “girly”. And every man has either heard them or uttered them repeatedly. (I once purchased a Toyota  Rav 4 and American males dubbed the car, “the girly car.”)

And young impressionable men, and also many young women, will be deeply imprinted with this “model” of masculinity as one that is both normal and exemplary. And they will be misguided, just is the one living in this phony blue suit with the mandatory red tie.

Fearing immigrants, refugees, a woman president, the black vote (witness the campaign of state laws to making voting virtually impossible for the poor and black voters), and fearing government support through Obamacare, providing health care coverage to another 20+ million, even those with pre-existing conditions, because government can only screw up….and of course, fearing ISIS (but clearly not Putin, another incarnation of the “abominable fauxman” drowning in his own lies, while pumping his and his country’s pride with bombs, missiles and military misadventures (as a foreshadowing of what the world can expect from his mentee, Trump?), this fossilized form of masculinity, loud brash hollow promises, deceptions, shifting positions on anything and everything with the concentration span of a gnat, and the arrogance of a Pharoah, (not only by Trump himself but also among his ‘choir’ of acolytes)….this new masculinity can also be compared to the extremely vulnerable Goliath, heavily armed, and so caught up in his own “version” of the coming battle with a mere child, David, who held back, and terminated his life with a single shot.

Which David and which single shot will end this flirtation of the frivolous as they, drowning in their own fears, enhance the potential of ISIS attacks and enriched recruitment, following every vacuous tweet on every miniscule issue. How can one like Trump who is drunk on his own hubris, possibly distinguish between what matters and what doesn’t matter, when the only thing he can and will ever see is his own narcisstic reflection in his many mirrors?

Sadly, there are millions of men (and some women) who remain blind to the vacuity behind the golden locks, the hollowness of the “I alone can make America great again” cadence, repeated so often (as instructed by all previous propagandists and tyrant-pretenders) that most simply have to change the channel, or leave the room.

And the sycophants like Kellyann Conway, Rance Priebus, Newt Gingrich ( he could pardon anyone who needs it, to serve as part of his ‘court) are so enamoured with the mask of power, they echo the “master’s” chant.

Compared to what has to be the most evolved, mature, balanced and tempered president perhaps in U.S. history, Barack Obama, Trump is so unfit as to be unworthy of serving as president of the local chamber of commerce in any town or city in the nation.

However, cheered on by a mass of frightened and dangerous mostly male voters, this example of retrograde and repulsive masculinity in about to move into the oval office.

Setting manhood back at least a century, Trump will continue to frighten American allies, American enemies, and all those in between who are profoundly confused.

As for the men and women who are trying to explain healthy role models of masculinity and femininity to their students, all we can do is send our best wishes and hope they can provide enough distraction to keep their charges from imitating the new “leader”.

Reflections on Male Self-sabotage

Guys have a level of insecurity and vulnerability that’s exponentially bigger than you think. With the primal urge to be alpha comes extreme heartbreak. The harder we fight, the harder we fall." (John Krasinski, film maker, actor in The Office)

Masks of various kinds camouflage our male vulnerability and our softness: 

·      a studied taciturn quality that refuses to engage in intensive conversations especially about how we feel;

·      a deliberate burying of our hands and our minds in our latest fix-it challenge

·      an early and profound resistance to physical touch

·      an even earlier distaste for all girls and anything associated with the feminine

·      an impatience with micromanaging, whether expected of us, or practiced by others

·      resistance to romantic movies, novels, television shows 

·      refusal even to consider attending fashion shows

·      resistance to formal attire unless dictated by our accomplishment like a graduation, or a formal passage into another professional realm

·      any admission or acknowledgement of our vulnerability, softness, tendency to cry, or any specific fear

Clear exceptions to these “hard-assed” and “hard-nosed” preferences include:

·      all new dads are literally “putty” in their sons’ and daughters’ hands, and somewhat ironically, softer putty with our daughters;

·      a deep and profound expression of compassion at a tragic event that injures, maims or kills even a single person;

·      a profound and protracted silence and period of solitude when we have been deeply hurt by the death of a family member, a divorce, a firing, a termination even through “downsizing” where no demonstrated “fault” is evident;

·      any evidence of injustice, clearly a wrong judgement of anyone close to us, when while we deeply want to set the world right, we bite our lips, often so hard we make them bleed;

·      the moment when we are rejected especially by someone we believe we have fallen in love with, or even one with whom we have envisaged spending the rest of our life;

·      the moment we see someone in distress….

Over the last couple of decades, we have often heard the phrase “an evolved man” as an expression, often by females, to indicate a man who has begun to emerge from his “hard-assed” cocoon, and has shown signs of his “butterfly” wings. Almost without exception, such a man is more attractive to many women, especially those who have been suffocating in a relationship with the macho stereotype.

And how did that stereotype come about?

It started very early in our lives. Our mothers, for starters spent much less time holding us and looking into our eyes than they spent with their daughters. Our mothers, you see were also conditioned not to raise boys who would be considered “wimps” or more gutterally “fags” …..that would be the most offensive result of a mother’s parenting, at least for much of the last century in North America. Hockey equipment was on the Christmas wish list for many young boys, at least in Canada where hockey is considered the ‘national sport’. Learning to skate, on “hockey skates” was an imperative for all parents to foster, encourage and fund. Piano lessons on the other hand, were for their daughters, as were dance lessons, dolls, make-up, tea parties, and finely embroidered dresses. The roots of these stereotypes spilled over into the family’s choice of movies and television shows. 

I recall  months if not years of Friday evenings when I escaped to the grocery store for the week’s supplies, while three daughters and their mother sat glued to the television and the soap, Dallas. I did not approve then and, being outnumbered and preferring not to cause another scene, chose to let the issue go. Was I being impotent, emasculated or merely realistic? My real issue was that one of those daughters was a mere fir or six years old, while her  sisters were pre-teen and adolescent respectively.

“The harder we fight, the harder we fall”.

Fighting, once we have graduated from the school yard, and even the high school gym and football field, takes on a different complexion. Rather than our fists, or our shoulders, or the speed of our feet and the dexterity of our hands, our latter fights are frequently focused on winning a competition for a chosen female partner, winning a competition for a coveted job, winning a competition for class president, or perhaps taking on the local council about some perceived injustice. We are, it seems, more willing and able to take a rational, measured and detached approach in matters that do not impact our personal relationships, matters that we have some training, modelling and experience in pursuing. 

It is in the arena of personal relationships, where we believe everything we are, everything we believe, everything we hope and dream for, everything we have ever imagined for our future that is encapsulated in our pursuit of a life partner. This is also the area of our lives in which we have the least formal education and the least full and frank discussion with our fathers, who themselves burdened with having to have made their own mistakes (of which they are not proud). “Every guy has to find his own way and to make his own mistakes” is a mantra that hangs in the unconscious of most North American men. Not interfering in the life choices of another is another prominent, if reprehensible, trait of our “individualistic” culture.

 Even if the culture wishes to think it is offering a blank slate to its young men, there is nothing counter-intuitive, or even contradictory between that goal and the concept of some detailed and interesting biographies of men, to male classes in health and physical education, dedicated specifically to the subject of forming healthy relationships with women. I learned, for example, from my aunts, that their brother, my father, was quite impressed with his future mother-in-law prior to his marriage to my mother. And from their perspective, his was a mis-directed affection and appreciation, because as his life unfolded, he had clearly not married his mother-in-law. On the other hand, our family history abounds with stories about my father’s mother, a kindergarten teacher who, apparently, never discarded her classroom in the rest of her highly controlling attitudes throughout her life. 

And herein lies one of the most dangerous patterns in male pursuit of life partners: the unconscious “marrying your mother” phenomenon. After all, mother is the primary model of WOMAN the young boy experiences, and those experiences are deeply imprinted on his mind, his heart and his spirit. Consequently, it is not surprising that, while transitioning into adulthood, without his even being aware of the roots of his picture of the ideal partner, his mother will play a significant, if silent and absent, role in his choices. The other side of this coin is the modelling of his father, for better or worse.

If his father struggled with a dominant and oppressive wife, without either knowing now to confront such behaviour and attitudes, or perhaps making the choice of “peaceful detachment” (to avoid the hated and despised confrontations) which can and often does morph into the even more detested “passive aggressive” approach.

This passive aggressive approach by the father, faced with a dominatrix, conveys several messages. One is a message of peace-keeping as the role and responsibility of the male adult in the home. Another message is that when confronted with turbulent emotions, the male is clearly well advised to calm the waters so that the family can hold together. Another message is the evident disappointment of the wife/mother in her choice of life partner for his “lack of spine” in his withdrawal from all confrontations, challenges and quarrels, as push-back and as further evidence of his “engagement” with the real emotions and expressed principles that operate in his marriage. Missed for its cogency and relevance when going through adolescence is the concept of “projection” by which at least parent unconsciously projects either or both their worst fears and highest dreams on their child. That dynamic, by itself, is so confounding for an adolescent as to be crazy-making. These are just a few of the potential currents that might shape a young male. In all families, there is a cauldron of emotional currents churning depending on the pattern of dominant and recessive adult and the available escape routes for the child, depending also on whether the child is male or female.

And regardless of the choice of issues, the roles of each respective parent and the outcomes of the “power struggles,” we all know that “power” and how it is worked out, shared, compromised, mediated, moderated, and finally executed is at the heart of the family dynamics. And power is often substituted for “respect” and for “equality” and even for “kindness and love”. I feel more loved if my thoughts, feelings, words, attitudes and beliefs are honoured, engaged with, discussed, reflected upon, and embraced, whether or not those expressions of my being are actually ones with which the other can agree. The same is true for most men and women. 

And yet, it is the women who have, for most of history, engaged with other women in processes that develop the skills and the openness to exploring such personal (and for males emotional) issues. They have hours of engagement with other women, from very early years, in the very processes on which human lives develop, grow and survive. Men, on the other hand, have spent many more hours on their bikes, hunting or fishing, on the athletic practice fields or gymnasia, physically developing a very different set of “muscles” and life patterns. This fundamental difference is not, however, designed by either gender to “better” the other. It is merely a part of the hard wiring of each. And to demean or to ridicule the early patterns of either gender by the other is one of the cultural mis-steps that ripples through the lives of many male-female relationships. For women to disdain the pursuits and the interests of their male counterparts, (unless and until those interests become obsessions) is just as counter-intuitive as for men to turn their noses up at the invitation to a ‘chick flick” from their female friends, lovers or life partners. Competition on these issues between males and females is so destructive to the  “real politic” of gender relationships.

So, let’s look at the glaring gap in our culture that leaves men gasping for guidance and mentoring and leadership and seasoning that could only come from formal and informal structures that make it comfortable and convenient for young men to have access to the wisdom of men of their father’s and their grandfather’s ages. This is such a glaring and deliberate omission from our cultural, political and social structures as to be an indictment on the culture itself.

We are failing our young men in so many ways and we are paying a very high price for our sins of omission. And we are all implicated in the failure. Just to start with the notion that “men do not need mentoring, coaching, leadership and seasoning from other men” is a denial of reality, in which we are all complicit. And although there have been some penetrating initiatives over the last couple of decades to provide young men with senior mentors, primarily through athletic pursuits, young men still face a dry and vacant desert especially when they attempt to “fight” for more than they can achieve.

How would they ever know they were over-reaching? Let’s not forget the over-arching archetype of the “hero” that still hangs from the clouds, both the one’s hanging in the sky “for the poet’s eye” (thanks to Neil Diamond), and the more recent digital storage bin. History is filled with stories of men who fought for decades, if not their whole lives to nurture, sustain and maintain their marriage, without really knowing either their part in its potential crash, or the skills needed for them to play a constructive role in getting it back on track, once it has slipped off. Therapy, while more available and free of the kind of social embarrassment it once evoked, is only as effective as the participants let it be.

And here is the real “rub”….fighting with everything we have for the most important “project” or relationship of our life, however, raises the potential that such intensity is the seed of its own ironic failure.

It is masculine intensity, for my seven-plus decades, that takes the greatest toll on human relationships….especially in circles of education, theology, social service, community building and political parties…..at least in this country. Told elsewhere in this space is a story I recount probably too often: A supervisor when I was a ministry intern once commented, “You are far too intense for me!” to which I blurted, “I am also too bald so deal with it!”

There is a kind of biochemistry for some men, including this scribe, that bursts through the haze and the fog of social normalcy and decorum when we are inspired, surprised, welcomed and embraced. We have experienced so few such moments that, when one erupts, we simply and unconsciously let “fly” with our emotions. Similarly, when we witness an injustice, even if we are in a “new” situation, we are “undisciplined” enough to express our perceptions, often to the shock and chagrin of those in the room. Unschooled in the easy use of diplomatic discourse, having witnessed it mostly from the television screen, or in lectures at college, and not from our family of origin, we are “rough-hewn like the pine that forms the structure for valued and beautiful furniture. However, unlike the pine, we are not regarded as either valued or beautiful, but rather uncouth, ill-bred and “too intense”.

This kind of “over-shooting” our target, is a kind of hubristic blindness, given our total commitment to the cause and our intimate complicity in the absolute opposite result to our initial intent, purpose and dream. 

There is a kind of kernel of insight here, that pertains to so many situations faced by men: self-acceptance, self-confidence, self-belief and a firmness in our ability to do the thing that needs to be done as it can only be done by us at this moment, would see more strike-outs by baseball pitchers, more goals by rookies in the NHL, more contracts from salesmen, more judicial victories in the courtroom, and fewer lost instruments in the O.R. It is the lack of these traits that invariably pushes men too far, and subverts their authentic and legitimate and worthy ambition. And it happens on every street in every town and city every day….and the more we work to reduce its impact, the more relationships we will preserve and protect.

Could we have learned the language and the timing and the discernment needed to know when and how to use them when the relationships went “south”? We will never know, for our lives. 

Nevertheless, we can and do hope that those young boys and young men who follow us will be equipped with the perceptions, attitudes, self-images and the skills to search for and to find, and then to nurture relationships of mutual respect, mutual adoration and mutual vulnerability.

That kind of shared vulnerability holds much promise for a healthy collaborative resolution to most if not all conflicts. And it is qualitatively different from the kind of vulnerability that is exposed when we “fight for all we’re worth” and fall flat on our face, invariably and inevitably.

As Red Green reminds us, “We all in this together, and we’re pulling for you!” (to all the men who participated in their own sabotage!)

Shades of emasculation

Complying with betrayals

He said, ‘it never happened’ when confronted with

the betrayal

                   just as she secretly schemed the end

of piano lessons and then

               blithely suggested I tell her how proud of her

I was

and demanded I never confront the conspiracy

               and lamely, and calmly I complied

for decades….

               Only now is the blood of the

emasculation starting to drip

                                              in my nightmares

scenes of impotence born of role modelling

by forefathers…..

                              one hung from a belt in the shed

another threatened with a .22 at his head

at three a.m.

apparently their spines and larynxes

                            betrayed them

and all the generations that followed while

           their partners stripped their dignity

and their masculinity into dust

                   left in notes in diaries and memories

and empty beds and long lonely walks

       on Yonge Street after rejection following

the all-night train-ride to spend the

only ‘day off’ with his fiancé….and then

             hear a kindly invitation to stroll from her classmate

whose name he could not recall

            when recounting the details decades

later to his children….

coupling, it seems, for some is more corrosive

            than celebacy

especially for those whose spine and larynx

            and will

either atrophied or failed to develop. 

Reflections on the report on family violence in Canada

There is a report making headlines across our country about the details of reported cases of family violence. Portraying a tragic set of circumstances in a “developed” country,” where the levels of poverty and hunger and homelessness and military violence are, compared to many other less favoured countries, significantly lower, the report asks out loud the question of what are the roots, motives and causes of this pattern.

Of course, by far the majority of the perpetrators of this family violence is perpetrated by Canadian men and so any analysis that attempts to discern the roots and causes of this violence has to look at the failure among men to deal with their volcanic emotions, their hatreds, their failure to command the tools and skills of negotiation, mediation, even including the capacity to first believe that there are options and there are others who can and will help before the violence is committed.

“Dealing with emotions” is a cliché that is so detested by so many men that it is not an exaggeration to suggest many men simply consider such an observation or recommendation to be insulting and to ask men to be more like women, something many men find revolting. This kind of detachment, disinterest and even contempt for “emotions” is evident in little scenarios like the Honda Civic television commercial in which the young black man is still resisting a mother’s hug. (Capturing the nature of the culture is one of the ways for big car companies to secure the attention and the “like” of the target audience.)

This “emotions” question, or issue, starts very early in a baby boy’s life. From an early age, we know that mothers spend fewer seconds in face-to-face embrace with their sons than with their daughters, unconsciously connecting at least differently, if not more negatively, with their sons than their daughters.

Research revels that we generally top touching boys when they reach the age of 8, and we teach them to reject access to feelings, emotions and emotional vocabulary because these are deemed “too feminine.” So they end up mostly being able to express themselves through sex, violence, sports or work. (Dr. Joe Kort, Top Ten Myths of Male Sexuality, in The Good Men Project, October 20, 2016)

For men to begin to “deal with their emotions,” they (we) first have to come to the point of resistance, the point at which they recognize, accept and acknowledge that their emotions are an integral component of our nature just as they are for women.  (The “existential moment” is that moment when an individual comes to the conscious awareness of the meaningless of his/her own existence and thereby requires him/her to take responsibility for the meaning of that life.) Similarly, although seemingly less momentous, the moment of “resistance” to the existence of and the significance of a man’s emotions holds the potential to open our minds to another gift, a signal system that is like an early warning system built into our hard wiring. Rather than consider emotions to be “feminine” or “girly” or something to be avoided because to acknowledge their importance is to surrender one’s masculinity, men could begin to see those emotions as an important arrow in their quiver in orienting them (us) to the reality they are experiencing. Just like the points on a compass men use when they are wandering through the bush in search of game like deer or moose, our emotions are signals that detect the imprints on our psyche coming from the environment. And those emotions point ‘north’ for a cold feeling, ‘south’ for a feeling of heat, ‘east’ or ‘west’ for a less intense but perhaps even more interesting experience worthy of additional investigation. And there are at least as many different emotions in both men and women as there are points on the compass. Instead of using the words from the directions on the compass, people tend to use more conventional words that do not have the exclusivity of a technical instrument. For all people (men and women) know instantly when they experience a sense of the coldness of a situation or another person, or the warmth of the situation or other person….and these experiences are indicative of our “feelings” about that person or situation. This sounds so obvious that is hardly needs to be uttered. However, perhaps the compass could help men to consider an exploration and acceptance and then an appreciation of the kinds of emotions we are experiencing without finding the experience either threatening or emasculating. (Warning: men do have more emotions than “hot” signifying anger or arousal and “cold” signifying rejection, frustration, dismissal and avoidance. We also feel dozens, if not hundreds, of nuances between the extremes, and it is this middle ground that needs to be identified, accepted and explored as more moderate, more nuanced and more complex and therefore potentially more interesting.)

There is a strong myth among both men and women that men experience only hot (anger or sexual arousal) or cold (avoidance, rejection) emotions. And that myth is both a denial of reality and a sabotage of masculinity and often leads to such common and detestable epithets like “all men are jerks” or “all men want only one thing” or “all men are little boys and will never grow up” that are so often blurted out in anger, frustration and rejection of men by women, and then they become an accepted depiction of men in too many situations.

Nevertheless, while pointing men to the sensibility and the sensitivity that are involved in “dealing with their emotions” there is the continuing and persistent threat that many men will either ignore the invitation of pieces like this, or more dangerously, outright throw out any suggestion of a new way of perceiving their emotions.

And, if the patterns of history are anything on which to base an estimate of the future, the report about the incidents of family violence, at least of the documented and therefore reported incidents, will only indicate a growth in those numbers, and for many, they are already astounding and very tragic.

 Every day, just over 230 Canadians are reported as victims of family violence.

·       In 2014, 57,835 girls and women were victims of family violence, accounting for seven out of every 10 reported cases.

·       Every four days a woman is killed by a family member.

·       Population surveys tell us that a third of Canadians, that is 9 million people, have reported experiencing abuse before they were 15 years old.

·        About 760,000 Canadians reported experiencing unhealthy spousal conflict, abuse or violence in the last five years.

·       In 2014, Indigenous people were murdered at a rate six times higher than non-Indigenous Canadians, with Indigenous women being three times more likely to report spousal abuse than nonindigenous women.

·       Every day, eight seniors are victims of family violence. (CBC, October 21, 2016)

There will be the inevitable public outcry for men to change their ways, to refuse to use violence to “express” themselves and to get their needs met. And that outcry will undoubtedly focus on the need for men to learn how to “articulate” their emotions in words. “I feel” statements will be proposed as the starting point of that change. “I feel” statements are considered by the therapeutic community as a place where all men and women can begin to “own” their emotions. However, many men, especially men who have already been punished for their violent expression of their very strong feelings, will already have deeply imprinted messages that tell them “your feelings are too dangerous and too threatening to be expressed” and the punishment you have received, (inside and outside the legal system) is to separate you from the violence you have inflicted, and make you think about your ‘crime’. Too often the expression of strong emotions leads to a crossing of boundaries: ethical boundaries, social boundaries and criminal boundaries. And for those men, numbering in the millions, who have crossed those boundaries, the retracing of their steps, through shame, guilt, embarrassment and loss and potentially to healing and self-acceptance will be long and hard. For others not yet caught in the web of the entanglements of their emotional needs, they will have the opportunity at least to consider how they might approach the issue of how to express their feelings.

Talking about frustrations, disappointments and losses with a good friend could be a good place to begin. Finding and nurturing such a friend will obviously precede such “man talk”. Starting with the mind set that one is never alone, and that there are always other options than the one that jumps into mind, of pounding the “crap” out of someone who does not agree with or comply with an expressed wish, need or aspiration, could replace the instant “resort” to physical anger. Recognizing, too, that often the anger a man feels is not directed at another person but, perhaps unconsciously at himself, is another “reality check” to have with himself. Not becoming aware of the mis-directed nature of his anger, (at another rather than himself) can point him in the wrong direction. And of course, the consequents of such an act are just as indefensible as an act in which the target of the anger is precisely the one who has “made me so mad”.

At the base of violence too is the unmentioned and often unacknowledged self-loathing, lack of respect and self-acceptance that has already failed the man. Having experienced so little “approval” and “respect” and “affirmation” in his early life, there is a central core of self-talk, like a repeating audio loop that replays itself over and over in his head, “you are no good”… “you are nothing” … “you are just like you father, a no good”….. “you will never amount to anything”...or any of the other versions of this condemnation. The repercussions of such “jabs” especially those administered by an insensitive mother or father will be heard long after puberty has come and gone, and long after the offending parent is dead. Too often the mother is unconsciously giving vent to a contempt for men (misandry) the origins of which she has not even begun to unpack. The father, on the other hand, is often repeating a “brand” of parenting (hard nosed and hard assed) just like the kind of parenting he experienced from his father, or even his grandfather.

Clearly, anyone who thinks one’s complete biography is not essential to a comprehensive understanding of the violence evidenced by this, and other, reports is living in la-la-land. Furthermore, most public systems, including our medical system, our social service agencies like Family and Children’s Services, and our courts operate without a full reporting, study, reflection and ethical consideration of the biographical details of our patients, clients and our criminals. For various reasons, among them the prominence of budgetary restrictions, these professional agents are dealing with “collations” of numbers of types, diagnostic labels and deterministic, behaviouristic “treatments” meted out with impunity and without detailed and compassionate reflection by groups of professional peers. However, here as in so many other situations, band-aids of classical conditioning, behavioural therapy, medications, and incarcerations are not the principal answer, if we are really serious about how much violence is being experienced and reported. Short-term fixes, of the kind that can be easily parametered by budget allocations, staffing insurgencies (like the current infusion of support in Northern Saskatchewan where four girls under the age of fifteen have taken their lives in the last two weeks), and political headlines are not going to work.

And the conventional cultural meme of short-term heroic measures, to satisfy the short-term, narcissistic needs of the decision-makers, and not the needs of the perpetrators or the victims of family violence will continue to generate short-term headlines and self-congratulatory celebrations without actually making a dent in the size, the scope or the reduction of the problem. Academic theses too will concentrate on theories of sociology and of traditional family service therapy, much of it generated by documents like the DSM-5 (or is it 6 or 7?) or on the  traditional approaches of criminology, incarceration and segregation and “time to think” about the harm that “YOU” committed, and the injustice that YOU committed against these victims.

The life and importance of the original victim, (the perpetrator) however, will continue to be the missing “x” factor in the operational equation. His life story, and the normal quotient of respect and support and approval needed for a normal child and adolescent development will be missing from the myriad of interventions on behalf of the society. And the public will deem itself to have exercised its responsibility to those victims and those perpetrators, when in fact, the public purse will have perpetuated and even protracted the issue into the next centuries.

Family issues belong on the front page, not relegated to the family page

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home. (Confucius)

One morning in another life a grade twelve student met me at the door of my classroom holding his report card in his hand. As a student whose first language was not English, he had received a grade of 58% in the average of his term work and his examination. He was adamant that such a mark was unacceptable. I listened carefully to his petition; reviewed his work and informed him that the mark would stand.

I later learned that the mark had been “deleted” (back in the non-digital age, ‘white-out’ was the rather obvious choice for deletions) so that his parents could not see the truth. Pride, parental expectations and evidence of personal shame, completely unjustified by the diligence and the persistence the student displayed to learn a new language, were at the root of the situation. Deception was the choice of method to deal with the perceived problem.

There are so many different “reasons” for both children and parents resorting to deception, cover-up, dissembling, and failing to “show up” as we really are.

Basic to the dynamic of deception in the family is the varying reliance on “pride” that accompanies too many situations. If the family is engaged in alcohol dependence, or domestic or child abuse, it is taken as a “given” that family secrets have to be protected, at all costs. Even the closest of friends, neighbours, fellow pew-sitters, co-workers, and classmates must not and do not ever learnt the truth of the tragedy. In fact, too often, even within the family, certain members will not be made aware of the full truth, thereby “protecting” both the abuser and the one kept in the dark from quite literally having a relationship. No relationship is feasible without a full disclosure among close family members. And the refusal to disclose, including the unwillingness, and the incapacity to disclose, as well as the fear of such disclosure (another piece of evidence that is often overlooked in any analysis) lies at the heart of the issue.

While T.S. Eliot reminds us that we cannot stand too much reality, nevertheless, it is the degree of withholding that too often determines the kind of foundation on which family relationships are constructed. For a young twenty-something to drive her car into a snowbank on the way home from a house party, without injuring any of the occupants or damaging the car, without having the courage, and the openness to inform her single mother, as a way of protecting both herself and her mother, is to demonstrate a degree of enmeshment that warrants critical self-examination. For an adolescent male to put long sleeve shirts on every day before leaving for school, to cover up the welts inflicted by his mother, is what many might call a merely incidental incidence, not worthy of consideration as a serious family issue. Those who hold such a view, however, are not, were not, and cannot image being in the “shoes” of the adolescent. For the adolescent, one of the questions is ‘why is this abuse occurring only when my father is not present, and is not being told?’

We do have some examples of public disclosure that, although they are often relegated to the social columns, nevertheless merit a reference. President Obama, for one, stopped smoking cigarettes six years ago, “because he so feared his wife’s response” if he failed to stop. On the other hand, for Trump to have to apologize to his family for having said what he said, and for what he has done, and not said, is loudly displayed as fodder in the current presidential election. So the issue of truth-telling is front and centre in the public discourse in North America, and perhaps around the world.

No child or adolescent can or will tell his or her parents everything about their lives: not the first time a car drives into a ditch, not the first time too much booze renders one intoxicated, not the first time some illicit drug renders him ‘high’…and yet the patterns of disclosure are begun in such situations. For some, it takes a few days, weeks or even months for them to find the confidence to disclose. And, with that time lapse, perhaps they can and do reconcile their fear, and their apprehension about the consequences of full disclosure. And the parents, themselves, are not without responsibility for the kind of family culture they have fostered over the early years. Too much pressure for control, too little relaxation and acceptance of the small “mistakes” and too much rigid discipline, all of these squarely in the purview and the job description of the parent will lead to an inevitable withholding. Parents, too, who operate at such a high performance level, (I was certainly one of these!) will inculcate a fear of not being “good enough” even though their words might be unequivocally supportive of their children.

Fear of not being “good enough,” of not being “up to the perfection” of their parents, of not being willing (or perhaps ever able) to let their parents see their “imperfections” is one of the dynamics, and a very subtle and dangerous dynamic it is) that infiltrates many professional families. How many times have we all heard the story of a young man or woman who spent most of their life trying to life up to the expectations of their parents. And, we all know that those expectations might never have been specifically articulated, but merely inferred from the actions and the attitudes of the parents to their own lives. And these attitudes are extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the child to confront. When, for example, is there time in a busy, fully scheduled, fully engaged, (over-regulated) schedule for children to participate in their various “activities” and then also to have the time and the energy and the composure to say to their parent, “You know, I am getting tired of trying to meet your unrealistic goals for my life! I would like to talk about what I want to do, and what I am willing to do and I would like to get your support for my agenda, not the one that makes you look good in front of your friends!”

Clearly, it is not only the ‘sins’ of the child that need disclosure. So do the attitudes, demands, expectations and even beliefs of the parents also need to be explored, fully and in an unqualified and unrestricted manner, in family circles. And such circles require “strong” parents, open parents, vulnerable parents and the courage to structure time and space for the family to have these conversations. And it is this family culture that I failed to facilitate in my own marriage. I was too busy “performing” on the public stage, drinking in the applause that comes from such performances. I was too dependent on public adulation to be the kind of effective and compassionate and open and vulnerable parent that my children needed and deserved. The temperature inside the home, especially the “heat” of the parental expectations, and also the parental “strength” to take the honest criticism from their children (not the phoney power games, but the real issues of too much pressure that forecloses on open communication) is critical for full disclosure.

And the time and patience required to open to our children, really open, really sit and listen, rather than burying our minds and our bodies in our own “professional agendas” as an unconscious way of medicating the pain of our own unworthiness and our determination to prove our value to “whomever” it is that we believe we have to prove ourselves to, is so ephemeral, like a butterfly, and so fleeting. And like the tennis racket that is poised at a certain angle, needing to be shifted only a fraction of an inch to get the ball over the net, parental attitudes, in too many cases, need to be shifted from achievements of power, money, status and public recognition and acknowledgements to getting to really know their children. I failed in this primary parental responsibility, and for that I have profound regrets and for that I apologize to my three daughters.

They are all professionally successful, and for that they have themselves to thank. They did it! They made their parents and their culture proud. And I can only hope that they did not do it at the cost of missing the emotional and the psychic needs of their children.

Confucius tells an important truth. Can we read the deeper implications to our culture and to our families in his observation. For far too long, family issues have been relegated to the social pages of our newspapers, where the majority of readers are women. Education, parenting and the development of a family culture, including the development of family relationships has for far too long been considered “effeminate” and the responsibility of the mother. It is long past time for editors, political leaders and fathers to learn that they obligations do not stop with the proverbial “bring home the bacon” commandment. All the bacon in the world will not feed the soul, the spirits and the hearts of their children. We need to raise the expectations on ourselves, (and to reap the rewards of our determined and disciplined shift of the “racket angle” of our goals and our agendas) and put more of our energy and our imaginations into the kind of atmosphere and the kind of warmth we bring and foster in our kitchens and our television rooms, and in our backyards, and in our camping trips.

Reflections on personal projections....mining their threads of gold

Psychological projection was defined by Jung as an unconscious transfer of subjective psychic elements onto an outer subject—person or object.

Suppose someone perceived-right or wrong-his father as tyrannical. As an adult he may have the tendency not only to act in a tyrannical way but also to project in people with some authority this feature. He will be convinced-again right or wrong- that the subject of his projection is a tyrant. This is a psychological projection.(Happiness Academy Online)

As a son raised by a tyrannical mother (and an emotionally absent father) I have lately become aware that in my youth, it was my mother’s unconscious projections, both negative and positive, onto her only son that both entrapped and exaggerated the potential of my own life. She was determined to put her signature on her offspring so deeply and in 72-point type, that she quite literally forced her absolute will on the number of hours of piano practicing that were required every day from when I was five until I left for university. And within those hours, she also imposed her military marching orders on each piece, slapping the piano case with some hard instrument as an overpowering human metronome. And then, of course, there were the expected recitals, exams, and public command performances. I was convinced then, and am even more so today, that she was living her failed musical career vicariously through her dependent child. Some would refer to her as a “Hollywood mother”, determined to force her child into progeny expectations, whether or not those expectations were achievable. There were certainly situations, such as her nursing practice, in which she functioned as a diligent, compassionate, exacting professional, lauded and much sought after by suffering patients. So, whether my perceptions were right or wrong, they were indeed my indelible perceptions. As an adult, this early experience has coloured many of my perceptions, and thereby my experiences with people in authority, both male and female, but certainly more frequently among women. Projecting, unconsciously, my perception of my “tyrannical mother” onto any attitude, behaviour, belief, body language, verbal expression that even gave a faint scent of the abuse of power, I have become an over-active radar screen for even potential tyranny, whether or not the intentions of the other warrantaed such a reading.

Along with this aspect of my ‘projection’ dynamic, I have also valued, sometimes too highly, those expressions of support, compassion and appreciation that have been directed to me, once again, particularly from women. Having felt starved for such kindness, I have been like a moth to this often flickering light bulb, without actually acknowledging whether or not such attraction was healthy for me, or for the other. Distinguishing between authentic kindness and ‘political manipulation’, naturally, has been quite tentative, if not misinterpreted. Along the way, of course, an ex-spouse, and later a few ‘significant others’ have suffered from my form of psychic entrapment, as I became increasingly conscious that something about my way of being was ‘not working’ to put it mildly. (These early patterns neither clarify themselves, nor do they have developmental lectures and seminars in which to unpack them, in the normal course of seeking and pursuing both an education and a career! Duh!) Experience, blundering mistakes, bitter interactions, repeated reflections, and even immersion in spiritual direction and counsel might provide some light out of a tunnel and then, perhaps only a faint glimmer. Having been immersed in the white water of cascading projections for most of my first decades, like a salmon swimming to the spawning ground, up-stream, I learned that flayling and deep breathing kinds of hard work were necessary just to stay afloat. And often that hard work, including intense encounters that were at best unproductive and at worst, overwhelming, portrayed my person as the most needy nerd on the block.

Complicating my early naivety, in the realm of masculine-feminine relationships, was the daily, almost hourly presence of a father who, while compassionate and tolerant in the extreme, nevertheless, was either fearful of confronting his spouse, or chose what he considered the ‘high road’, silence, agreement, complicity, and then, when he could no longer hold his feelings in, passive aggression. As an adolescent, I was never sure when the complicity and compromise stopped and the passive aggression began. So I learned both: that men, in order to generate peace and harmony in their marriages, were long suffering, tolerant and always the compromiser, and that, if such accommodations were unreachable or unfeasible, then he resorted to P.A.

Mix into this domestic cocktail a puritan ethic that demanded physical work over mental concentration: “Don’t read, do something!” was the rallying cry of the ethic, uttered whenever I recall picking up a book (infrequently) and settling into its adventures. (You have already intuited that it was not the male parent who uttered such black-and –white commands.) An over-bearing female parent, coupled with a still silent river (or was it a swamp?) of a father, fertilized with a protestant, puritan ethic of hard work, and a maternal ambition to polish her public reputation through piano performances of her son, (and later of her only daughter), will generate complex and unresolved feeling and perceptions that are inordinately loaded, at least in my case, with unconscious projections.

Exploring Literature with high school students, we continually encountered the recurring theme of  the tension between “appearance and reality”. Delving into the back stories of novels and dramas and mining, with the students, evidence that helped to inform a degree of discernment among them, for me always evoked by a silent and private pursuit of my own, pulling apart the evidence of secrecy, distortion, personal neuroses and projections that blew through our little salt-box brick bungalow, churning the gestation and the development of unknown and unacknowledged origins of my own discomfort. Overtly and almost ostentatiously church-going, scrubbed and clean were our bodies and our clothes, while underneath, there was always a raging torrent of anger, discomfort, embarrassment and even despondency that “our truth” was deeply buried and hidden from public disclosure, through both the complicity of each member of our family, and through the normalizing of secrecy that came to be our family rule. We were not living with alcoholics; we were not living with addicted adults, in the conventional definition of the word. We were not living in extreme poverty, nor were we living in squalor. In fact, our physical environment was sanitized into sterility, comparable to the operating rooms in most small town hospitals. And yet, emotionally, psychically, ethically, and most importantly, spiritually, we were living in a desert wasteland. Conflict, in the form of weeks of extended silence, without a single word being exchanged between each parent, was not unusual, or even irregular; it was so frequent that when there was what one could term normal conversation, we actually breathed differently, wondering just how long the pastoral interlude would last.

Conflicts were resolved through the only method available, apparently, maternal edict. Father did not dare to ask,

“Could we re-think this decision and talk about it some more?”

Nor did he consider, as was the case with all of his peers, seeking counsel outside the home, given the masculine requirement to fulfil the maxim: “You made your bed, now lie in it!” without public compliant or even public discussion among close friends. Questions about the length of piano practice were never a matter of discussion; they were ‘settled’ by a unilateral edict, with which I completely complied. I never recall even once uttering a voice of protest that I really wanted to ‘take a break’ and go outside to play with my friends, who would sometimes knock on our door in their attempt to ‘free’ me. Of course, it was inevitable that our public “mask” would crack, and, also apparently it would be inevitable that I would be the agent of the cracking, unknowingly: Taking my father’s half-ton truck out on a Saturday night, without formal permission, I rolled it into a large immoveable boulder, on our return from the local YWCA, where three of us had been visiting counsellors in training. The next morning, Sunday, the whole town could witness the crushed truck, blazing my father’s name, keeled over on the lot of the most prominent car dealership on the main street in town. Whether walking or driving, everyone rounded that corner almost daily, and my embarrassment was extremely difficult to hide. I doubt I was successful.

In school, I was a generally compliant student, as I found the atmosphere collegial, although I could not have described it that way then. I deeply enjoyed learning, reading, answering questions, and especially discussing the various nuances of a situation, whether in history class or in language class. Teachers, too, were collaborative, collegial, and fair disciplinarians, for the most part. ( The incident in which I was strapped, in grade four, and later punished more severely at home, is told elsewhere in this space. However, another angry, controlling female, this time the teacher, was the agent of the unwarranted punishment. I say, unwarranted, but so do all other witnesses of the event).

Later, in college, I ran up against two notable female professors, one in Child Psychology, the other in Zoology. Both had eminent and laudable credentials; both were engaged in honourable research and both were fully committed to their teaching assignments. Neither, however, even seemed to make it to my list of role model educators. And that reality was the result of no action or omission on the part of the two professors. It was, on deep and long reflection, the sole result of my own unconscious projections, about which neither they nor I were ever fully conscious. As proof of my conviction of my responsibility, I failed in my first attempt in Child Psychology as well as in a supplemental examination. The professor’s memorable quote, on appeal was, “I can only conclude that you know absolutely nothing about Child Psychology!” As far as Zoology goes, I also failed that course, and had to enrol in an alternative science course, before graduation. These were in years when I was just entering my twenties at least chronologically. Emotionally and developmentally however, I was still a very young, naive and innocent adolescent, blinded by my own painting another with a brush that neither of them deserved.

Projections are, almost predictably and universally, at root, agents of self-sabotage. People will neither know cognitively, nor acknowledge psychologically at the time of the encounters, that they are attempting to cope with another’s projection. They will, just as I and many others have done, puzzle over why things do not seem compatible. How could they be? When one comes to the table with an unseen and unknown and unacknowledged impediment to healthy compatibility, one tilts the scales in the direction of turbulence, fractiousness and potentially disappointment, if all parties remain connected.

Seeking to fill the gaps in my own development, especially those in the realm of emotional intelligence and maturity, I have fallen into unhealthy relationships with various women who, themselves, were projecting their own unconscious “hero” or “rescuer” onto me, without their, or my knowing I was the target of their projections. Of course, not only do such encounters take inordinate amounts of psychic energy, rise to inconceivable heights of joy and fall almost immediately to deep and dark caves of disappointment.

It is no surprise then, not only that my father was handicapped and restricted from taking healthy and caring initiatives to confront his spouse’s shadow, but that millions of men and women continue to labour under the clouds of competing projections, seeking shelter where none is available, seeking solace from dried-up sources, seeking companionship from another who is also attempting to break out of her own emotional swamp. However, let’s be very clear!

There are helpful resources, reflective retreats, professional psychological and spiritual guides available and open to entering into professional relationships that can and do lead to enhanced clarity, enhanced self-awareness and thereby enhanced potential for healthy reciprocal, dialogic and collaborative, and most importantly mutually supportive relationships. That is especially not only to be sought, but also attained, with another who also acknowledges her own unconscious projections, and the role they play in her life, and relationships.

I can speak with some considerable confidence about that last statement. For the past fifteen years, I have had the good fortune to participate fully in such a relationship. Michelle has both her inner and physical eyes open to the moments when our projections sand-paper each other, and we continue to identify those moments, and seek the ‘threads of gold’ that inevitably emerge from a loving unpacking of the entanglement. Words are inadequate to express my gratitude to Michelle especially, and also to all of those whose lives have intersected with mine, less than happily and less than in complete fulfilment. Nevertheless, there is no final termination to these explorations, except death, and even after death, these projections, and those of our sons and daughters, will  continue to dance in the universe of their generations.