Dr. Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston, an internationally acclaimed speaker and author, and a feminist activist. Her writing and lectures focus on the hypersexualization of the culture and the ways that porn images filter down into mainstream pop culture.
Gail’s work on media and pornography has appeared in academic journals, magazines such as Time and Newsweek, and newspapers across the country. She is a frequent guest on radio and television and is a recipient of the Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights.
Gail is a founding member of Stop Porn Culture – an educational and activist group made up of academics, anti-violence experts, community organizers and anyone who is concerned about the increasing pornification of the culture.( http://stoppornculture.org/) (from Dr.Gail Dines website)
Dr. Dines appeared on a recent edition of On Point with Tom Ashbrook, from NPR in Boston. The program focused on the increasing numbers of aggressive sexual incidents including rape, on American college campuses where the evidence suggests that one in five women have been victims of sexual assault or rape. According to Dr. Dines, boys are being educated in sexuality almost exclusively through pornography, and they begin at around 11 years of age in both their education and their first sexual experience.
Also according to Dr. Dines, the American culture teaches young girls to dress in an extremely provocative manner, in order to be noticed.Her research also suggests that in common rooms on many if not all U.S. campuses, male students are using the internet to access porn websites and that dating as a form of respectful relationship development has been replaced by "hook-up's" or what another generation called "one-night-stands".
Naturally, in any "hook-up" neither party assumes the other wants a more premanent relationship.
So from the perspective of this scribe, it appears that, at least from this researcher, the American culture has been extremely successful in commodifying both male and female genders, at a very early age, in a reduction to "bare essentials" of the encounter between male and female when the biology of both is exploding.
When the society exists for the profit of those generating the business models, and
when that same society depends, for 70% of its economic activity, on the purchases made by consumers
and when the engine drving those consumer sales of both products and services is sexuality (blatant and somewhat less so)
and when the offspring of that society find themselves alone with their laptops and blackberries, I-pads and Ipods, surfing the porn sites that excite them
and when those same offspring "party" with excessive binge drinking, to the point where students are dying from alcohol poisoning
and those same students, both male and female now intoxicated, fall into some form of "bed" together,
on the "morning after" there are bound to be deep and profound regrets...
and the officials, administration, dorm proctors who are charged with the responsibility of "protecting" students from such tragedies are in a quandry about their appropriate and fair rulings (who wouldn't be?)...
This is another pot of a perfect storm boiling without adequate control measures, guidelines and punishments.
As the other guest on the On Point program pointed out, however, if one in five laptop computers were being stolen on every campus, the President of the University and the Chief of Police of the city or town where the university is located would be holding a press conference to announce stern measures to stop the theft and to return the computers to their rightful owners and to punish the offenders. Also the parents would be demanding action.
Unfortunately, a young woman's chastity and virginity are not as easily or as clearly "recoverable"...and her life may be dramatically and negatively impacted for the rest of her life.
However, the universities themselves, have permitted their own programs to suffer a reduction from the original template of liberal arts courses for those seeking to explore new and challenging and challengeable ideas to a virtual technical school for the training of job-fillers. This is another of the many reductionisms that education has undergone, as another of the many ways by which the commercial, corporate, consumer culture has conquered the landscape, including the university campuses.
So long as the only thing that matters is the "brand" of the university education our sons and daughters are receiving (obviously only available from the "best" names like Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, etc.) so that the corporations who are hiring their graduates can boast of the pedigree in their staff stable, so that they can generate the most dividends for their investors, all participants will be pawns to the Kings and Queens of corporate design and control.
We need to take back not only the curricula in our universities, but also the flow of cash, and the idolatry of cash and profit that reduces human beings to serfs in a master-slave relationship to money, power and the idolatry of those with the biggest bank accounts, as the end goal of the university education....and then, perhaps both men and women will be able to see more than sex and orgasms and conquest and notches on a belt as the purpose and the gift and the blessing and grace of the relationships to which we all aspire.
And then, perhaps, both men and women will re-occupy the appropriate terrain of healthy respectful and mutually committed relationship(s), with the support of their mentors, their universities and the culture in which those institutions reclaim their original role and purpose.
And that will take a radical renovation of the existing landscape by all of us!
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
A sign of the TImes: Scholarships for White MALES (TEXAS)
Texas-based Group Offers Scholarships Only to White MALE Students
Former Majority Association for Equality claims to "fill in the gap"
Written by Ryan Leclaire, from STUDY magazine website, March 9, 2011
A new group is awarding scholarships of $500 to five students who meet some controversial qualifications.
The Former Majority Association for Equality is offering their grants to male Caucasian students, as their group feels that demographic is underrepresented.
To qualify you must:
■Be male
■Be no less than 25% Caucasian
■Be currently enrolled in college, university or high school
■Hold a GAP of at least 3.0
Despite the organization’s aggressive name, they reject the idea of being a hateful or racist group. In their mission statement, they state “We do not advocate white supremacy, nor do we enable any individual that does. We do not accept donations from organizations affiliated with any sort of white supremacy or hate group.”
The group currently has 491 friends on Facebook, as they try to rally support via social media. Their Facebook wall contains supportive posts, such as “bill gates gave 1,000,000,000 dollors to minority schlorships, that white people are not eligable for. i say boycott microsoft,” from Jeff Thompson of Bluffton College
It also contains chatter, such as Hellen Allegras’ wall posting that reads: “Prejudice is always a problem in every civilization in every age, and our job as rational humans is to help those who are downtrodden. And right now, in this country, that means helping white males who are sneered at almost incessantly.”
Former Majority Association for Equality claims to "fill in the gap"
Written by Ryan Leclaire, from STUDY magazine website, March 9, 2011
A new group is awarding scholarships of $500 to five students who meet some controversial qualifications.
The Former Majority Association for Equality is offering their grants to male Caucasian students, as their group feels that demographic is underrepresented.
To qualify you must:
■Be male
■Be no less than 25% Caucasian
■Be currently enrolled in college, university or high school
■Hold a GAP of at least 3.0
Despite the organization’s aggressive name, they reject the idea of being a hateful or racist group. In their mission statement, they state “We do not advocate white supremacy, nor do we enable any individual that does. We do not accept donations from organizations affiliated with any sort of white supremacy or hate group.”
The group currently has 491 friends on Facebook, as they try to rally support via social media. Their Facebook wall contains supportive posts, such as “bill gates gave 1,000,000,000 dollors to minority schlorships, that white people are not eligable for. i say boycott microsoft,” from Jeff Thompson of Bluffton College
It also contains chatter, such as Hellen Allegras’ wall posting that reads: “Prejudice is always a problem in every civilization in every age, and our job as rational humans is to help those who are downtrodden. And right now, in this country, that means helping white males who are sneered at almost incessantly.”
Friday, February 4, 2011
Seeds of Relationship-building curriculum (#4)..Ashes Time
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)
Eliade was educated as a philosopher. He published extensively in the history of religions and acted as editor-in-chief of Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Religion. The influence of his thought, through these works and through thirty years as director of History of Religions department at the University of Chicago, is considerable.
Eliade's analysis of religion assumes the existence of "the sacred" as the object of worship of religious humanity. It appears as the source of power, significance, and value. Humanity apprehends "hierophanies"--physical manifestations or revelations of the sacred--often, but not only, in the form of symbols, myths, and ritual. Any phenomenal entity is a potential hierophany and can give access to non-historical time: what Eliade calls illud tempus (Latin for 'that time,' I tend to think of it as 'yon time'). The apprehension of this sacred time is a constitutive feature of the religious aspect of humanity. www.westminster.edu/staff/brennie/eliade/mebio.htm
Mircea Eliade recounts in his books the brilliant use of ashes made by old men initiators in Australia, Africa, the Near East, South America, the Pacific. Initiation says that before a boy can become a man, some infantile being in him must die. Ashes Time is a time set aside for the death of that ego-bound boy. The boy between eight and twelve years of age, having been taken away from the mother, passes into the hands of the old men guides who cover his face and sometimes his whole body with ashes to make him the color of dead people and to remind him of the inner death about to come. He may be put into the dark for hours or maybe days, introduced to spirits of dead ancestors. Then he may crawl through a tunnel-or vagina- made of brush and branches. The old men are waiting for him at the other end, only now he has a new name. The mothers in some cultures feel so strongly about the importance of the ritual that when reunited to their sons, they pretend not to recognize them and have to be reintroduced. The mothers participate joyfully in this initiation.
The gold-obsessed man, whether a New Age man or a Dow Jones man, can be said to be the man who hasn't yet handled ashes.
The word ashes contains in it a dark feeling for death; ashes when put on the face whiten it as death does. Job covered himself with ashes to say that the earlier omfortable Job was dead; and that the living Hob mourned the dead Job. But for us, how can we get a look at the cinders side of things when the society is determinded to create a world of shopping malls and entertainment complexes in which we are made to believe that there is no death, disfigurement, illness, insanity, poverty, lethargy or misery? Disneyland means "no ashes."
Despite our Disneyland culture, some men around thrity five or forty will begin to experience ashes privately, without ritual, even without old men. They begin to notice how many of ther dreams have turned to ashes. A young man in high school dreams that he will be a race driver, a mountain climber, he will marry Miss America, he will be a millionaire by thirty, he will get a Nobel Prize in physics by thirty-five, he will be an architect and build the tallest building ever. He will get out of his hick town and live in Paris. He will have fabulous friends...and by thirty five, all these dreams are ashes.
At thirty -five his inner stove begins to produce ashes as well. All through his twenties, his stove burned with such a good draft that he threw in whole nights until dawn, drinking parties, sexual extravagance, enthusiasm, madness, excitement. Then one day he notices that his stove doesn't take such big chunks anymore. He opens the stove door and ashes fall out on the floor. It's time for him to buy a small black shovel at the hardware store and get down on his knees. The ashes fall off the shovel and onto the floor, and he can see the print of his bootsoles in the ashes.
Robert Frost said of the "Oven Bird":
The question that he frames in all but words
is what to make of a diminshed thing
Some habitual error we keep making in our relationships produces more ash than heat. A number of men around thirty-five have told me that they are afraid to go into a new relationship for fear it will end as the last ten or twelve have ended, in "ashes." But young men can't get enough ashes. Enlightenment addicts think they want ecstacy from their association with their guru, but they may really want the ashes. Having no kitchen fire to sit beside and no Wild Man to send us there, the young man smears soot on his face and hopes that his own mother will not recognize him.
Pablo Neruda says:
Out of everything I've done, everything I've lost
everything I've gotten unexpectedly,
I can give you a little in leaves, in sour iron...
here I am with the thing that loses stars, like a vegetable, alone. (from "Brussels, Trans. by Robert Bly)
Ashes present a great diminishment away from the living tree with its huge crown and its abundant shade. The recognition of this dminishment is a proper experience for men who are over thirty. If the man doesn't experience that diminishment sharply, he will retain his inflation, and continue to identify himself with all in him that can fly: his sexual drive, his minds, his refusal to commit himself, his addiction, his transcendence, his coolness. The coolness of some American men means that they have skipped ashes.
Franklin Roosevelt found his ashes in his polio; Anwar Sadat in his prison; Solzhenitsyn in the gulag. Some of our liveliest writers--John Steinbeck, William Faulker, Thomas McGrath, Tillie Olson, David Ignatow, Kenneth Rexroth--found their ashes in the poverty of the Depression.
Katabasis and ashes are a little different. We could say that a man finds katabasis only through dropping, poverty, abrupt change in social class; and prison is a traditional place to experience both katabasis and ashes. But a man may keep his job and famly and still experience ashes if he knowns what he is doing. From Robert Bly, Iron John, Vintage Books, New York, 1992, p. 80ff(To be continued)
Eliade was educated as a philosopher. He published extensively in the history of religions and acted as editor-in-chief of Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Religion. The influence of his thought, through these works and through thirty years as director of History of Religions department at the University of Chicago, is considerable.
Eliade's analysis of religion assumes the existence of "the sacred" as the object of worship of religious humanity. It appears as the source of power, significance, and value. Humanity apprehends "hierophanies"--physical manifestations or revelations of the sacred--often, but not only, in the form of symbols, myths, and ritual. Any phenomenal entity is a potential hierophany and can give access to non-historical time: what Eliade calls illud tempus (Latin for 'that time,' I tend to think of it as 'yon time'). The apprehension of this sacred time is a constitutive feature of the religious aspect of humanity. www.westminster.edu/staff/brennie/eliade/mebio.htm
Mircea Eliade recounts in his books the brilliant use of ashes made by old men initiators in Australia, Africa, the Near East, South America, the Pacific. Initiation says that before a boy can become a man, some infantile being in him must die. Ashes Time is a time set aside for the death of that ego-bound boy. The boy between eight and twelve years of age, having been taken away from the mother, passes into the hands of the old men guides who cover his face and sometimes his whole body with ashes to make him the color of dead people and to remind him of the inner death about to come. He may be put into the dark for hours or maybe days, introduced to spirits of dead ancestors. Then he may crawl through a tunnel-or vagina- made of brush and branches. The old men are waiting for him at the other end, only now he has a new name. The mothers in some cultures feel so strongly about the importance of the ritual that when reunited to their sons, they pretend not to recognize them and have to be reintroduced. The mothers participate joyfully in this initiation.
The gold-obsessed man, whether a New Age man or a Dow Jones man, can be said to be the man who hasn't yet handled ashes.
The word ashes contains in it a dark feeling for death; ashes when put on the face whiten it as death does. Job covered himself with ashes to say that the earlier omfortable Job was dead; and that the living Hob mourned the dead Job. But for us, how can we get a look at the cinders side of things when the society is determinded to create a world of shopping malls and entertainment complexes in which we are made to believe that there is no death, disfigurement, illness, insanity, poverty, lethargy or misery? Disneyland means "no ashes."
Despite our Disneyland culture, some men around thrity five or forty will begin to experience ashes privately, without ritual, even without old men. They begin to notice how many of ther dreams have turned to ashes. A young man in high school dreams that he will be a race driver, a mountain climber, he will marry Miss America, he will be a millionaire by thirty, he will get a Nobel Prize in physics by thirty-five, he will be an architect and build the tallest building ever. He will get out of his hick town and live in Paris. He will have fabulous friends...and by thirty five, all these dreams are ashes.
At thirty -five his inner stove begins to produce ashes as well. All through his twenties, his stove burned with such a good draft that he threw in whole nights until dawn, drinking parties, sexual extravagance, enthusiasm, madness, excitement. Then one day he notices that his stove doesn't take such big chunks anymore. He opens the stove door and ashes fall out on the floor. It's time for him to buy a small black shovel at the hardware store and get down on his knees. The ashes fall off the shovel and onto the floor, and he can see the print of his bootsoles in the ashes.
Robert Frost said of the "Oven Bird":
The question that he frames in all but words
is what to make of a diminshed thing
Some habitual error we keep making in our relationships produces more ash than heat. A number of men around thirty-five have told me that they are afraid to go into a new relationship for fear it will end as the last ten or twelve have ended, in "ashes." But young men can't get enough ashes. Enlightenment addicts think they want ecstacy from their association with their guru, but they may really want the ashes. Having no kitchen fire to sit beside and no Wild Man to send us there, the young man smears soot on his face and hopes that his own mother will not recognize him.
Pablo Neruda says:
Out of everything I've done, everything I've lost
everything I've gotten unexpectedly,
I can give you a little in leaves, in sour iron...
here I am with the thing that loses stars, like a vegetable, alone. (from "Brussels, Trans. by Robert Bly)
Ashes present a great diminishment away from the living tree with its huge crown and its abundant shade. The recognition of this dminishment is a proper experience for men who are over thirty. If the man doesn't experience that diminishment sharply, he will retain his inflation, and continue to identify himself with all in him that can fly: his sexual drive, his minds, his refusal to commit himself, his addiction, his transcendence, his coolness. The coolness of some American men means that they have skipped ashes.
Franklin Roosevelt found his ashes in his polio; Anwar Sadat in his prison; Solzhenitsyn in the gulag. Some of our liveliest writers--John Steinbeck, William Faulker, Thomas McGrath, Tillie Olson, David Ignatow, Kenneth Rexroth--found their ashes in the poverty of the Depression.
Katabasis and ashes are a little different. We could say that a man finds katabasis only through dropping, poverty, abrupt change in social class; and prison is a traditional place to experience both katabasis and ashes. But a man may keep his job and famly and still experience ashes if he knowns what he is doing. From Robert Bly, Iron John, Vintage Books, New York, 1992, p. 80ff(To be continued)
Thursday, February 3, 2011
"Dirtier" Boys have healthier immune systems (Researcher)
By Whitney Blair Wyckoff, on SHOTS, NPR's Health Blog, February 3, 2011
There's a growing body of research showing that children exposed to lots of germs early in life are less likely to develop allergies, asthma or autoimmune disorders as they grow up.
But now there's a new twist on the theory, known as the hygiene hypothesis in scientific circles, and it's about little girls in cute little dresses.
In an article in the peer-reviewed journal Social Science and Medicine, Sharyn Clough, a philosopher of science at Oregon State University who studies research bias, says young girls are held to a higher standard of cleanliness than young boys, a discrepancy that could help explain later health differences.
Girls are expected to stay squeaky clean while boys are encouraged to play outside, Clough argues. And that might explain why women have higher rates of certain illnesses.
Women have a higher rate of asthma than men — 8.5 percent compared to 7.1 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They're also more likely than men to have allergies. And the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association says autoimmune disorders affect women three times more often than men.
Now there are lots of differences that could account for those discrepancies. But Shots was intrigued by Clough's research and talked about it with her.Our conversation, edited a little for clarity and length, follows.
What makes you think there's a link between cleanliness and rates of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases in women?
I read about a study that was linking these large environmental patterns of hygiene and sanitation with autoimmune disorders. [The researchers] suggested the lack of exposure to parasites may be related to the increased rate of Crohn's disease in industrialized Western nations — and then they generalized to other autoimmune disorders. I happen to know among those who've got these diseases, women are overrepresented. So, it struck me as odd that gender was missing from the analysis.
Why don't girls get exposed to the same germs as boys?
In large populations, you can make generalizations about the differences in the ways we socialize little boys and little girls. We still dress little girls in clothes that are restrictive and not supposed to get dirty. Little girls are still way less likely to play outdoors than little boys. And little girls are supervised more often by their parents during their play, which is likely to keep them from getting dirty.
What exactly is in the dirt?
There are a variety of bacteria even just in soil. A gram of uncontaminated soil contains 10 billion microbial cells. Playing in dirt is a reliable way to ingest dirt. Playing in the dirt is highly correlated with eating it. And when you eat it, you know you're exposed to bacteria — all kinds and in high numbers
So that exposure to dirt makes it less likely to have allergies or asthma later on?
Young boys actually have higher rates of asthma than do girls. So my thinking is that [at a very young age], boys are exposed to more of the allergens and things that inflame their immune systems more often than do girls. So boys will have higher rates of asthma early on. But then after puberty, girls have higher rates of asthma and then for the rest of their lives.
What about the fact that it's becoming more socially acceptable for girls to behave stereotypically like boys? More girls are playing sports, and fewer girls are wearing dresses to go out to play.
You'd think that this is changing but you'd be surprised. In a study from 1998 of American children in preschool, one-third of the 5-year-old girls came to school in dresses each day. Title IX and getting more girls into sports — that's clearly a phenomenon that's changing things. But I think for little girls, things aren't changing much.
Allergies, asthma and autoimmune disorders are increasing for everyone — both men and women in our populations in the North and West. So what that means — if the hygiene hypothesis folks are right — is that we're decreasing our exposure to germs all the time even though we have more girls playing sports. There are competing trends that affect boys and girls, men and women.
What should policy makers and parents take from your research?
I think if you've got a teeny kid — like an infant or a toddler — I think it doesn't hurt to get them dirty. But the jury is still out. We're only beginning to understand the relationship between bacteria and other kinds of organisms in our bodies. And the higher rates of diseases are unintended consequences of policies that are, for the most part, pretty good. It's actually pretty good that we have higher sanitation rates than we used to. But it turns out, we just weren't aware of how complex the ecologies of germs are.
There's a growing body of research showing that children exposed to lots of germs early in life are less likely to develop allergies, asthma or autoimmune disorders as they grow up.
But now there's a new twist on the theory, known as the hygiene hypothesis in scientific circles, and it's about little girls in cute little dresses.
In an article in the peer-reviewed journal Social Science and Medicine, Sharyn Clough, a philosopher of science at Oregon State University who studies research bias, says young girls are held to a higher standard of cleanliness than young boys, a discrepancy that could help explain later health differences.
Girls are expected to stay squeaky clean while boys are encouraged to play outside, Clough argues. And that might explain why women have higher rates of certain illnesses.
Women have a higher rate of asthma than men — 8.5 percent compared to 7.1 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They're also more likely than men to have allergies. And the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association says autoimmune disorders affect women three times more often than men.
Now there are lots of differences that could account for those discrepancies. But Shots was intrigued by Clough's research and talked about it with her.Our conversation, edited a little for clarity and length, follows.
What makes you think there's a link between cleanliness and rates of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases in women?
I read about a study that was linking these large environmental patterns of hygiene and sanitation with autoimmune disorders. [The researchers] suggested the lack of exposure to parasites may be related to the increased rate of Crohn's disease in industrialized Western nations — and then they generalized to other autoimmune disorders. I happen to know among those who've got these diseases, women are overrepresented. So, it struck me as odd that gender was missing from the analysis.
Why don't girls get exposed to the same germs as boys?
In large populations, you can make generalizations about the differences in the ways we socialize little boys and little girls. We still dress little girls in clothes that are restrictive and not supposed to get dirty. Little girls are still way less likely to play outdoors than little boys. And little girls are supervised more often by their parents during their play, which is likely to keep them from getting dirty.
What exactly is in the dirt?
There are a variety of bacteria even just in soil. A gram of uncontaminated soil contains 10 billion microbial cells. Playing in dirt is a reliable way to ingest dirt. Playing in the dirt is highly correlated with eating it. And when you eat it, you know you're exposed to bacteria — all kinds and in high numbers
So that exposure to dirt makes it less likely to have allergies or asthma later on?
Young boys actually have higher rates of asthma than do girls. So my thinking is that [at a very young age], boys are exposed to more of the allergens and things that inflame their immune systems more often than do girls. So boys will have higher rates of asthma early on. But then after puberty, girls have higher rates of asthma and then for the rest of their lives.
What about the fact that it's becoming more socially acceptable for girls to behave stereotypically like boys? More girls are playing sports, and fewer girls are wearing dresses to go out to play.
You'd think that this is changing but you'd be surprised. In a study from 1998 of American children in preschool, one-third of the 5-year-old girls came to school in dresses each day. Title IX and getting more girls into sports — that's clearly a phenomenon that's changing things. But I think for little girls, things aren't changing much.
Allergies, asthma and autoimmune disorders are increasing for everyone — both men and women in our populations in the North and West. So what that means — if the hygiene hypothesis folks are right — is that we're decreasing our exposure to germs all the time even though we have more girls playing sports. There are competing trends that affect boys and girls, men and women.
What should policy makers and parents take from your research?
I think if you've got a teeny kid — like an infant or a toddler — I think it doesn't hurt to get them dirty. But the jury is still out. We're only beginning to understand the relationship between bacteria and other kinds of organisms in our bodies. And the higher rates of diseases are unintended consequences of policies that are, for the most part, pretty good. It's actually pretty good that we have higher sanitation rates than we used to. But it turns out, we just weren't aware of how complex the ecologies of germs are.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Seeds of relationship-building curriculum (#3) need for initiation
Notes from Iron John by Robert Blye, Vantage Books, 1990,
Mircea Eliade says of male initiation: 'The puberty initiation represents above all the revelation of the sacred..before initiation, (boys) do not yet fully share in the human condition precisely because they do not yet have access to the religious life.'
Religion here does not mean doctrine, or piety or purity or 'faith,' or 'belief,' or my life given to God. It means a willingness to be a fish in the holy water, to be fished for by Dioysius or one of the other fishermen, to bow the head and take hints from one's own dreams, to live a secret life, praying in a closet, to be lowly, to eat grief as the fish gulps water and lives. It means being both fisherman and fish, not to be the wound but to take hold of the wound. Being a fish is to be active; not with cars or footballs, but with soul....
An ocean of shame sweeps over a child when it is shamed...
In 'The Raven' (Grimm Brothers) a young girl changes into a raven when her mother objects to her behaviour, and remains so enchanted for years; in the 'Six Swans,' six young boys turn into swans when the father, through his cowardice, opens the house to evil, and the boys remain enchanted for years...
The Wild Man's water does not itself heal the wound that led to the escape or ascension; but it gives strength to the part of us that wants to to continue the effort to gain courage and be human. (p.38-39)...
As we know from Phillipe Aries's Centuries of Childhood, before the nineteenth century or so there were no clothes designed especially for children. During and after the Middle Ages the child said, "I am a small- sized adult" and he or she wore clothes similar to those the adults wore. That practice had some drawbacks, but the reversal has been catastrophic. When people identify themselves with their wounded child, or remain children, the whole culture goes to pieces. We learn from teenage pregnancies that children cannot mother their own children or father their own children. People lead lives that radiate destruction to the immediate famly as well as to the neighbourhood. Everyone is in the emergency ward. (p. 35)
The recovery of some form of initiation is essential to the culture....
All wounds threaten our princehood. The shame blows, 'Who do you think you are? You're just a snotty-nosed kid like all the rest,' are like blows to the princes stomach. And there is always something wrong with us. One boy feels too thin, or too short, or too stringy; anothe rhas a stutter or a limp. One is too shy; another is 'not athletic' or can't dance, or has a bad complexion. Another has big ears, or a birthmark, or is 'dumb,' can't hit the ball, and so on. We usually solve the problem by inflating ourselves further. A little ascension takes us above it all.
Perhaps some grandiosity or godlikeness us useful in protecting ourselves when we are very young. Alice Miller remarks that when abuse enters, when the parents do cruelties the child cannot imagine any parent doing, it takes either a grandiose road or a depressed road. If we take the grandiose road, we climb up above the wound and the shame. Perhaps we get good grades, become the one in the family hired to be cheerful, become a short of doctor of our own suffering, take care of others. Something prodigious carries us away. We can be cheerful but not very human.
If we take the depressed road, we live inside the wound and the shame. We are actually closer to the wound than those on the grandiose path, but we are not necessarily more human. The victim is an imposing person, too.The victim accepts the crown of victimhood, because a prince or a princess in another way. Sometimes men with no fathers take this road.
Each of us takes both of these roads, though we use one on Sundays' and holidays, and the other on weekdays. Some take a third road: it is the road of paralysis, robot behaviour, seriously pursued numbness-a hollow at the centre, no affect, no emotion upward or downward, automaton life.
Ancient initiation practice would affect all these responses, since it gives a new wound, or gives a calculatd wound sufficiently pungent and vivid-though minor- so that the young man remembers his inner wounds. The initiation then tells the young man what to do with wounds, the new and the old. (p.33-34)
The recovery of some form of initiation is essential to the culture. The United States has undergone an unmistakable decline since 1950, and I believe that if we do not find a third road besides the two mentioned here, the decline will continue. We have the grandiose road, taken by junk-bond dealers, high rollers, and the owners of private jets; and we have the depressed road, taken by some long-term alcoholics, single mothers below the poverty line, crack addicts and fatherless men. (p. 35)
Clearly, the need to discover, create, re-create, uncover...an appropriate initiation experience for all males entering adolescence, conducted by older men as mentors, who themselves may have been denied this significant experience and will therefore have to, themselves, undergo a similar experience of their own if they are to be effective as mentors for others is the next step, in any curriculum that seeks to develop healthy relationships between the inner and public self, between the young man and his peers, and the young man and his female peers. And while Robert Bly's book may seem both a little dated and written from an American perspective, and therefore not applicable to Canadian young men, there is considerable evidence that similar paths have been taken already by thousands, if not millions of young and not-so-young Canadian men.
Mircea Eliade says of male initiation: 'The puberty initiation represents above all the revelation of the sacred..before initiation, (boys) do not yet fully share in the human condition precisely because they do not yet have access to the religious life.'
Religion here does not mean doctrine, or piety or purity or 'faith,' or 'belief,' or my life given to God. It means a willingness to be a fish in the holy water, to be fished for by Dioysius or one of the other fishermen, to bow the head and take hints from one's own dreams, to live a secret life, praying in a closet, to be lowly, to eat grief as the fish gulps water and lives. It means being both fisherman and fish, not to be the wound but to take hold of the wound. Being a fish is to be active; not with cars or footballs, but with soul....
An ocean of shame sweeps over a child when it is shamed...
In 'The Raven' (Grimm Brothers) a young girl changes into a raven when her mother objects to her behaviour, and remains so enchanted for years; in the 'Six Swans,' six young boys turn into swans when the father, through his cowardice, opens the house to evil, and the boys remain enchanted for years...
The Wild Man's water does not itself heal the wound that led to the escape or ascension; but it gives strength to the part of us that wants to to continue the effort to gain courage and be human. (p.38-39)...
As we know from Phillipe Aries's Centuries of Childhood, before the nineteenth century or so there were no clothes designed especially for children. During and after the Middle Ages the child said, "I am a small- sized adult" and he or she wore clothes similar to those the adults wore. That practice had some drawbacks, but the reversal has been catastrophic. When people identify themselves with their wounded child, or remain children, the whole culture goes to pieces. We learn from teenage pregnancies that children cannot mother their own children or father their own children. People lead lives that radiate destruction to the immediate famly as well as to the neighbourhood. Everyone is in the emergency ward. (p. 35)
The recovery of some form of initiation is essential to the culture....
All wounds threaten our princehood. The shame blows, 'Who do you think you are? You're just a snotty-nosed kid like all the rest,' are like blows to the princes stomach. And there is always something wrong with us. One boy feels too thin, or too short, or too stringy; anothe rhas a stutter or a limp. One is too shy; another is 'not athletic' or can't dance, or has a bad complexion. Another has big ears, or a birthmark, or is 'dumb,' can't hit the ball, and so on. We usually solve the problem by inflating ourselves further. A little ascension takes us above it all.
Perhaps some grandiosity or godlikeness us useful in protecting ourselves when we are very young. Alice Miller remarks that when abuse enters, when the parents do cruelties the child cannot imagine any parent doing, it takes either a grandiose road or a depressed road. If we take the grandiose road, we climb up above the wound and the shame. Perhaps we get good grades, become the one in the family hired to be cheerful, become a short of doctor of our own suffering, take care of others. Something prodigious carries us away. We can be cheerful but not very human.
If we take the depressed road, we live inside the wound and the shame. We are actually closer to the wound than those on the grandiose path, but we are not necessarily more human. The victim is an imposing person, too.The victim accepts the crown of victimhood, because a prince or a princess in another way. Sometimes men with no fathers take this road.
Each of us takes both of these roads, though we use one on Sundays' and holidays, and the other on weekdays. Some take a third road: it is the road of paralysis, robot behaviour, seriously pursued numbness-a hollow at the centre, no affect, no emotion upward or downward, automaton life.
Ancient initiation practice would affect all these responses, since it gives a new wound, or gives a calculatd wound sufficiently pungent and vivid-though minor- so that the young man remembers his inner wounds. The initiation then tells the young man what to do with wounds, the new and the old. (p.33-34)
The recovery of some form of initiation is essential to the culture. The United States has undergone an unmistakable decline since 1950, and I believe that if we do not find a third road besides the two mentioned here, the decline will continue. We have the grandiose road, taken by junk-bond dealers, high rollers, and the owners of private jets; and we have the depressed road, taken by some long-term alcoholics, single mothers below the poverty line, crack addicts and fatherless men. (p. 35)
Clearly, the need to discover, create, re-create, uncover...an appropriate initiation experience for all males entering adolescence, conducted by older men as mentors, who themselves may have been denied this significant experience and will therefore have to, themselves, undergo a similar experience of their own if they are to be effective as mentors for others is the next step, in any curriculum that seeks to develop healthy relationships between the inner and public self, between the young man and his peers, and the young man and his female peers. And while Robert Bly's book may seem both a little dated and written from an American perspective, and therefore not applicable to Canadian young men, there is considerable evidence that similar paths have been taken already by thousands, if not millions of young and not-so-young Canadian men.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
"Canadian Literature still mainly for women" (Frye)
The periodic warping and twisting of life brought about by May examinations has long been accepted (but)...the sheeer magnitude of the injustice involved in asking the hopes of our civilization to stake their most valubale years on the fortunes of a few hours at the end of each is sufficiently appalling in itself to dismay the stoutest, and when this is backed up by a mob psychology of a small college (Victoria College,University of Toronto) centred in residences, in which the leaders are always on the side of panic, the result is a distorted and almost inhuman existence.
Final exams in fact sabotaged real education for both ordinary and serious students. The former "find examinations an insuperable barrier in the way of getting an education"...As for protean scholars, whose work "is necessarily careful, labored and systematic...a random and time-limited quizzing is an impertinence." Using the Spenglerian image of the seasons, Frye saw the blight:"the possessor of a really fine mind who goes to college to have it orientated is at a hopeless disadvantage. If he gets a flash of genius towards the end of April, he might just as well have an attack of measles for all the good it does him. It is probably for this reason that the fine arts, which require real talent, genuine love for the work, careful and properly balanced and regularized study, and to which examinations are consequently fatal, have been so rigidly ruled out of the 'arts' courses. Literature still remains, however, mainly for the benefit of women. As a result Canadian literature is decadent and commonplace, for the literature of a young country needs to be young too, and what is done in Canada, though it may partake of the stifling heat of summer, the cheap gaudiness of autumn, and the sterility of winter, can never reflect the awakening enthusiasm of spring which those educated here have always missed--for the average man brought up on May examinations knows as little about spring as he does about a sunrise.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
#2 Seeds of a relationship-building curriculum for males
(You can find PART 1 on December 10, 2010)
As you can notice, we believe that every opportunity for relationship building, including pen-pal letters, shared interest activities, team sports, especially in a house league, social activities implementing formal lessons on how to be a good guest, and how to be a good host...these are all valid exercises within the school ambience, the family ambience, if relevant the church, synagogue or mosque ambience.
And at the point where the male student has arrived in grade six or seven, specific instructions in the expectations of the opposite gender become important. And these expectations do not start with, or even include, those of a physical or sexual nature.
There are skills in active listening that require formal instruction. Such activities as feed-back, mirroring, interviewing, summarizing, "subbing" (or serving as a substitute for the other's thoughts and feelings), and in general empathy for the other's thoughts, feelings, opinions are extremely important, relevant and useful beyond the arena of formal dating.
Differences in the perceptions of male and female students can be explored in co-ed classes, and formal experimental sessions in learning how to dance, and how to hold another person (in ballroom dancing style) and how to make and sustain eye contact with another person will require considerable planning time and sensitive deliberation from the instructors, hopefully both male and female will be participating.
During these instructional, experimental sessions, which could also include pairings while on field trips, each participant would be expected to keep mental notes about those feelings, both positive and negative, that were generated at various times in the event, and a formal opportunity to present those 'notes' to the partners would follow the event, as an integral part of the exercise.
Early in adolescence, students find part-time jobs, and for males, this might include yard work, shovelling snow (in certain climates), and apprenticeships in various job sites. Prior to the start of this exercise, it is important to teach the expectations of the employer, as an integral part of the building of relationships for the male student.
Here is an opportunity for the teaching of concepts like the meaning and importance of power and authority, how to negotiate within the boundaries of that power and authority, including the power and authority of the parent. Formal classes with both genders and their parents would include negotiating skills for the students, which would then be practiced with the parents, while the process is supervised by the team of instructors.
(Naturally, all instructors would have already participated in their own learning sessions, in such skills as active listening, negotiating, mediating, and the exercise of power and authority, both as a part of this curriculum, and as part of their training as classroom teachers.)
Guidelines for these encounters, classes, interactions, feedback sessions...would include the rejection of any form of abuse, name-calling, bullying, and judgemental statements. Only "I" statements would be permitted.
"When X did (or said) that, I felt ............" is one example of a statement that would pass muster.
"I think (or feel) this about that observation"....is another statement that can be both taught and practiced, during these sessions.
Whn there is a larger conflict, especially between two individuals of the opposite gender (or same gender) it could be an opportunity to teach such interventions (from Adler) as the following:
1) Speaker A expresses a view for an agreed time limit (such as 2 or 3 minutes) while person B remains completely silent, and listens intently taking in each nuance of the statement from person A;
2) Speaker B then feeds back everything that he has heard from person A, in a shorter time frame (such as 1 minute)
3) Speaker A makes some minor alterations, if necessary, in the statement from person B's feedback (again in a 1-minute time)
4) that session is terminated, without additional comversation, comments, observations, retorts of any kind.
(The goal here is that both people come to understand precisely the view, feelings, position of the other, without entering into debate. Time apart, for reflection, is both needed and permitted before any additional contact is contemplated.)
Perhaps the next day, the supervising teacher might ask each person for any reflections, in the presence of the other.
The opportunity for clarification, through both feedback and clarifying questions as part of the relationship-building process could ideally be reinforced by the inclusion of the process in the academic classrooms of the teaching faculty. This is a skill whose need can never be overstated, in many life situations, at work, in the home and in any social relationship.
Another feature of this part of the curriculum is that it is not generated by the school administration to reduce the frequency and severity of conflict in the playground, as a discipline exercise. It is integral specifically to the development of more effective and mutually beneficial relationships first between and among students and only secondarily between students and faculty or administration. In other words, it is not imposed as a means to generate improved discipline statistics for the school.
In this more complicated portion of the curriculum, each student would be assigned a teacher/coach who could be available, in formally assigned time periods, for private consultation, about the issues raised by the relationship-building exercises. In these sessions, the coach would serve as active listener, without providing answers to the questions being asked, or the issues being rasied. This restraint would require special training prior to the commencement of the program to avoid simplifying the situations, and to avoid taking control of the potential options available to the student, in any particular situation.
There might even be occasions when two students who had experienced a pairing activity might seek the intervention of the coach, and in that event, perhaps the coach assigned to each student would be present.
It takes considerable time and much focused energy to develop healthy relationships, and none of this activity should be begun without a full appreciation of the mutilple implications, time requirements and costs involved in making the program successful.
(Part 3 to follow.)
As you can notice, we believe that every opportunity for relationship building, including pen-pal letters, shared interest activities, team sports, especially in a house league, social activities implementing formal lessons on how to be a good guest, and how to be a good host...these are all valid exercises within the school ambience, the family ambience, if relevant the church, synagogue or mosque ambience.
And at the point where the male student has arrived in grade six or seven, specific instructions in the expectations of the opposite gender become important. And these expectations do not start with, or even include, those of a physical or sexual nature.
There are skills in active listening that require formal instruction. Such activities as feed-back, mirroring, interviewing, summarizing, "subbing" (or serving as a substitute for the other's thoughts and feelings), and in general empathy for the other's thoughts, feelings, opinions are extremely important, relevant and useful beyond the arena of formal dating.
Differences in the perceptions of male and female students can be explored in co-ed classes, and formal experimental sessions in learning how to dance, and how to hold another person (in ballroom dancing style) and how to make and sustain eye contact with another person will require considerable planning time and sensitive deliberation from the instructors, hopefully both male and female will be participating.
During these instructional, experimental sessions, which could also include pairings while on field trips, each participant would be expected to keep mental notes about those feelings, both positive and negative, that were generated at various times in the event, and a formal opportunity to present those 'notes' to the partners would follow the event, as an integral part of the exercise.
Early in adolescence, students find part-time jobs, and for males, this might include yard work, shovelling snow (in certain climates), and apprenticeships in various job sites. Prior to the start of this exercise, it is important to teach the expectations of the employer, as an integral part of the building of relationships for the male student.
Here is an opportunity for the teaching of concepts like the meaning and importance of power and authority, how to negotiate within the boundaries of that power and authority, including the power and authority of the parent. Formal classes with both genders and their parents would include negotiating skills for the students, which would then be practiced with the parents, while the process is supervised by the team of instructors.
(Naturally, all instructors would have already participated in their own learning sessions, in such skills as active listening, negotiating, mediating, and the exercise of power and authority, both as a part of this curriculum, and as part of their training as classroom teachers.)
Guidelines for these encounters, classes, interactions, feedback sessions...would include the rejection of any form of abuse, name-calling, bullying, and judgemental statements. Only "I" statements would be permitted.
"When X did (or said) that, I felt ............" is one example of a statement that would pass muster.
"I think (or feel) this about that observation"....is another statement that can be both taught and practiced, during these sessions.
Whn there is a larger conflict, especially between two individuals of the opposite gender (or same gender) it could be an opportunity to teach such interventions (from Adler) as the following:
1) Speaker A expresses a view for an agreed time limit (such as 2 or 3 minutes) while person B remains completely silent, and listens intently taking in each nuance of the statement from person A;
2) Speaker B then feeds back everything that he has heard from person A, in a shorter time frame (such as 1 minute)
3) Speaker A makes some minor alterations, if necessary, in the statement from person B's feedback (again in a 1-minute time)
4) that session is terminated, without additional comversation, comments, observations, retorts of any kind.
(The goal here is that both people come to understand precisely the view, feelings, position of the other, without entering into debate. Time apart, for reflection, is both needed and permitted before any additional contact is contemplated.)
Perhaps the next day, the supervising teacher might ask each person for any reflections, in the presence of the other.
The opportunity for clarification, through both feedback and clarifying questions as part of the relationship-building process could ideally be reinforced by the inclusion of the process in the academic classrooms of the teaching faculty. This is a skill whose need can never be overstated, in many life situations, at work, in the home and in any social relationship.
Another feature of this part of the curriculum is that it is not generated by the school administration to reduce the frequency and severity of conflict in the playground, as a discipline exercise. It is integral specifically to the development of more effective and mutually beneficial relationships first between and among students and only secondarily between students and faculty or administration. In other words, it is not imposed as a means to generate improved discipline statistics for the school.
In this more complicated portion of the curriculum, each student would be assigned a teacher/coach who could be available, in formally assigned time periods, for private consultation, about the issues raised by the relationship-building exercises. In these sessions, the coach would serve as active listener, without providing answers to the questions being asked, or the issues being rasied. This restraint would require special training prior to the commencement of the program to avoid simplifying the situations, and to avoid taking control of the potential options available to the student, in any particular situation.
There might even be occasions when two students who had experienced a pairing activity might seek the intervention of the coach, and in that event, perhaps the coach assigned to each student would be present.
It takes considerable time and much focused energy to develop healthy relationships, and none of this activity should be begun without a full appreciation of the mutilple implications, time requirements and costs involved in making the program successful.
(Part 3 to follow.)
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