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Denormalizing the Signs of Impending Disaster
Warning signs can go unheeded because we normalize them. According to some analysts, this is what happened in the case of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. On January 28, 1986, less than two minutes after taking off, the shuttle's solid rocket boosters exploded, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
In her book The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA, sociologist Diane Vaughan asks why NASA managers decided to launch the shuttle, despite warnings from engineers that the mission should be delayed because of potential problems with the solid rocket boosters in the below-normal January cold.
Vaughan's answer points to what was normal in the social world of NASA at that time: minor compromises in design and performance; equipment that deviated slightly from specifications; and pushing ahead with flight schedules, despite engineers' worries over seemingly small technical anomalies.
According to Vaughan, the recommendation to delay the flight was ignored because having problems and anomalies on the shuttle were taken-for-granted aspects of NASA culture. So was the tendency for engineers to worry. Against this backdrop, Vaughan says, signals of danger appeared mixed, weak, and routine, and thus were not taken seriously enough.
So far this year, eight mass shootings have resulted in nearly 60 deaths. As at NASA in the case of the Challenger, there have been ample warning signs. But because these signs are so commonplace in our culture, we have either ignored or failed to see them.
After each shooting, the question has been asked, Why do people do this sort of thing? The experts typically consulted are psychologists, who cite depression, social isolation, anger, and shame as causes. The most often mentioned contextual factor is the easy availability of guns.
But to ask, Why do people do this sort of thing?, is already to ignore the obvious pattern. It is not people of all kinds who kill because they are depressed, isolated, despairing, angry, or feeling shame. The shooters are all men. So the question we should be asking is, Why do men do this sort of thing?
One reason this question is seldom asked is that violence and manhood in U.S. culture are thoroughly normalized. As anti-violence educator Jackson Katz documents in his film "Tough Guise," over the past twenty years violence has come to be the defining feature of manhood in America. Violence and masculinity have become nearly synonymous.
This is not to say that all men are violent, or even that all men go around pretending to be Rambo just beneath the surface. Of course not. Yet all men are judged by a cultural standard that says a real man -- one who deserves all the privileges of being a member of the dominant gender group -- should have a capacity for violence and a willingness to use it when necessary.
The same cultural standard says that real men are able to exert control over the environment, over others, and over themselves. To be a victim of external forces is thus nearly the opposite of what it means to be a man in U.S. culture. It is hard to feel put upon, demeaned, or controlled by others, and still feel worthy of respect as a man.
The great contradiction, however, is that in a capitalist society most men don't have much power. A relative handful of men control vast economic resources, make laws, control the police, and command armies. These men can indeed make decisions, backed by force, that deny most other men and nearly all women control over their own lives.
On the one hand, then, real men are expected to be able to exert control; on the other hand, they lack the resources -- wealth, status, institutional authority -- to do so. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that some men try to compensate for their lack of power by displaying a capacity for violence, or a lack of fear of other men's violence.
Most of the time, most men are not overtly violent. But when a man tries to exert control and then rages against people and circumstances that frustrate these efforts, we are not necessarily alarmed. We are not alarmed because he is doing what we expect men to do.
Fortunately, such frustration does not usually lead to mass killing. Yet this is simply the logical extreme to which violent masculinity leads. When the burden of shame for failing to meet the cultural standards of manhood becomes unbearable, and a man feels there is nothing left to lose, mass killing may be a perverse attempt to restore, with irreversible finality, a sense of control.
As at NASA, the warning signs today are abundant. But they are mixed, weak, and routine.
Not all men are violent. Nor are men who occasionally commit acts of violence always violent; they can often be kind and gentle, too. And because it is possible to point to rare instances when women are violent, we can be misled into thinking there is nothing special about men that should compel our attention.
But the most serious problem is that we normalize the relationship between manhood and violence, and thus we take for granted what should be clear warnings about the potential for violence that our society instills in every man. When men learn to stake their self-worth on having power and being in control, and yet live under conditions that frustrate and humiliate them, we should not be surprised when explosions occur.
It may be strangely comforting to see the problem of mass shootings as a psychological one. If the problem stems from psychopathology, then we don't have to look critically at our culture of manhood or at how our society concentrates power in a few hands. Certainly, men suffering from depression and excessive anger may benefit from support and therapy. But therapy will never solve our collective violence problem.
If we understand the problem in cultural terms, we can see that the dangers go beyond being the victim of a "random" shooting. The logic of violent masculinity puts the whole planet at risk. By this logic, the natural world has no value in itself, but exists mainly to provide resources for expanding one's power. By the same logic, which is also the logic of U.S. imperialism, it is better to destroy the world than to fail to dominate it.
What we need is a cultural shift away from defining manhood and nationhood in terms of a capacity to dominate. We need to reject the worship of power and of "commanders-in-chief," and instead make democracy the primary value by which we judge our social institutions. The warning signs are all around, writ small in every mass shooting and writ large in every war. Our survival depends on denormalizing these signs and heeding them soon.
- Posted in
52 Comments so far
Show AllThere are probably several reasons for these violent acts. Number one is no doubt the extreme financial pressure put on many families because of the insane disparity of income and wealth that has occurred in the last several decades. This causes many problems for a man trying to support a family and when men see other men and women being paid enormous salaries for soft jobs, they are filled with rage at their own condition and may do nearly anything including murder.
Another problem may be our obsession with guns including assault weapons that are only good for killing many people at one time. Unfortunately, some men will avail themselves of these just because they are on sale, and some will be used in these mass killings. Many times the killers have several guns with them when found. Of course, the NRA proclaims that the answer is always more guns with no regulation.
In several cases recently, whole families have been shot and then the killer commits suicide. This suggests we have a serious problem in our country that will only get worse unless we take action to remedy these causes, and that does not seem to be a high priority.
If one life is worthless why not all?
We have homeless men on the street and empty houses. We have people with no medical care and spotless clinics for dogs and cats. There are people who go hungry and malnourished while supermarkets set up special trash handling systems so they can throw away edible food instead of giving it away.
What do these dead men owe you? Respect? The ability to go on with your lives? Who gave that to them?
We should also name soldiers for what they are ------- men and women paid to kill anyone they are ordered to kill.
As a sociologist, Schwalbe should know that "Why do people do this sort of thing?" and "Why do men do this sort of thing?" are the same question. Women are, to quote Simone de Beauvoir, the "second sex." They are defined in terms of men. In our society, "people" equals "men."
If it were all women, and no men, doing the shootings, then the question would be "Why do women do this sort of thing?" And that would be a different question, given prevailing norms. But the first two questions are the same.
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
It's important to use "men" rather than "people" if we really do mean "men". Naming patterns that exist in the real world is important if we ever hope to address this issue. Saying "people" rather than "men" keeps the heat off of men. And it takes gender out of the analysis--people won't ask why "men" are doing it if they think of "people" doing it.
You're right that if it were women doing the shooting, people would absolutely make an issue of it. But when men do it, they just say "oh, people are shooting people." The questions are why does this pattern exist and what does it say about our expectations for men and women in our culture? What does it say about how desensitized we've become to men's violence.
Sioux Rose
Inquisitive: On the word thing, notice these words... MENopause, MENstruation, HYSterectomy, and there are others I can't remember at the moment. Talk about laying claim through language to what is not his. I don't like the way God is taken for a male... I find it ridiculous and insulting to half the huMAN race.
As to your last paragraph: how could a nation serve as arms dealer to the world, give half its collected monies to the military industrial complex, continue to design heinous weapons' systems when it has more than enough on reserve to kill every living things MANY times over if it did not desensitize the population to violence?
It isn't just desensitizing people to violence; it's also keeping them from seeing its side-effects altogether. In the sense of the war in Afghanistan and the situation in Iraq, the media coverage of the actual casualties is essentially zero.
Thus desensitizing the population to violence is perhaps too simple; people are still generally stirred when they see suffering, wounded civilians, dead children, and so on. The problem is that the system now ensures that most people never SEE any of this, and thus are allowed to pretend that it does not exist (for those who know better). What is worrisome about the new generation that grows up in this environment is that they perhaps truly believe that war and violence are as sterile and heroic as they appear on newsreports, in films, and in videogames. Since these real side-effects of violence are never shown by media, and investigative or independent journalism has been really ... castrated, so to speak, it may not be so much an issue of being desensitized to violence as quite simply not knowing what the hell it really is.
Just a thought.
women are exposed to the same culture as men, have the same access to guns, etc., but the fact remains that most criminals are male, and almost all violent criminals are male.
still, all the hand-wringing in the MSM over this stuff gets old fast, precisely b/c they are unwilling to recognize a *social* phenomenon.
they also refuse to recognize the lone, enraged killer is the perfect symbol for the way the US acts in the world.
Great analysis by Schwalbe and earlier commentators. glenn ford cuts right to the heart of it, but that will be the last bastion to fall -- no one in any MSM will ever go near it, unless the soldiers are on the other side à la Nuremburg.
But everything noted in the article is epitomized by the model of the soldier under orders. Most jobs are a diluted version of this: you are under orders and the consequences of disobedience are grave enough that morality is easily compromised. I believe that the implied violence of the everyday workplace is the greatest factor in the normalization of violence. And since this is primarily a military model, and since that is a masculine tendency, the thesis of the article still stands, but it's an aspect that is rarely discussed -- for the same reasons: it's an invisible backdrop that no one even thinks to question.
Sioux Rose
BONE: Feminists have been discussing the links for several decades! Deconstructing the myths of patriarchy, this idea of a punishing father God issuing from Biblical text plays a HUGE role in punitive societies. In case you hadn't noticed, there were significant articles about the Christian evangelizing in the American Air Force; and it was a large contingent of fundamentalist churches that supported Bush, his illegal wars, and this inane idea that we are in the "end of days" and there is MEANT TO BE (as in God's intention, not M.A.D. misdirected goals) a gigantic holy war in the middle East. To me the greatest blasphemy is this spiritual sleight of ideological hand that puts war and holy into the same sentence. Until that unholy diabolical "matrimony" is reconfigured as a divorce, simple-minded persons who think they are devout will go along with murdering their fellow brothers and sisters. And as a final note, how many of the strange cases where mothers murder their children hold the common factor that these women shared backgrounds of religious fundamentalism (or mental illness)?
Side note: you'll find lots of "prayer groups" at Hurlburt AFB, FL---Special Forces---some dangerous "christians" who have, shall we say, an incomplete understanding of the teachings of Jesus, a name they think and speak many times a day.
God help us...and help them to see the Light.
It's much worse than I ever believed possible.
Please read the revealing and extraordinary lengths that Palin & Co. "worshippers" are now going to.
They've taken religion, added a strong dose of heresy ( they become "living" Christs ), and then twisted around the neoCONer's axial of evil
The Most Dangerous Cult in the World: Sarah Palin's links to the Christian Right
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/165864-The-Most-Dangerous-Cult-in-the-World-Sarah-Palin-s-links-to-the-Christian-Right
or
http://tinyurl.com/3ql6tk
"Some days ago, most Americans had never heard of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Now, following her Vice Presidential acceptance speech, viewed live by more than 40 million people, Palin is viewed favorably by 58% of American voters according to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey. The self-described 'hockey mom''s poll ratings, if they are to be believed, are that of a rock superstar who is rated now higher than either McCain or Democrat Obama. The same Bush-Cheney propaganda apparatus that made the nation believe that Saddam Hussein was the new Hitler and that Georgia was a helpless victim of ruthless Russian aggression after 8.8.08 in Georgia is clearly behind one of the most impressive media propaganda efforts in recent history - the effort to package Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska for less than 19 months, to be the American dream candidate. Her religious roots are something she has been deliberately vague about. It's worth a closer look. "
Much more in article …
Namaste
Anyone who wants to know what really happened to cause the Challenger disaster should read my book "Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age," not the academic nonsense in this article. You can find it through my website, Amazon.com and other on-line sources, and many public and university libraries.
Richard C. Cook
www.richarccook.com
I haven't read your book, but suspect that you might agree,
that it was that big egotistic turky buzzard Ronald Reagan's planned call to Kindergarten teacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe, while in the sky -- as part of his eminant 'State of the Union' message -- that forclosed all reasonable deference of NASA to it's talented engineers and any real well communicated cold weather concerns and actual risks.
See http://history.nasa.gov/Biographies/challenger.html
"NASA selected McAuliffe for this position in the summer of 1984 and in the fall she took a year-long leave of absence from teaching, during which time NASA would pay her salary, and trained for an early 1986 Shuttle mission. She had an immediate rapport with the media, and the teacher in space program received tremendous popular attention as a result. It is in part because of the excitement over McAuliffe's presence on the Challenger that the accident had such a significant impact on the nation."
It still today brings uncontrolled tears to my eyes, recalling that day, and the culpibility of Reagan to that disaster ( that has no reason, other then him, to occur ).
Sure I would've loved to hear that blessed teacher talk with her kids, and the world's children -- but to risk her death as a publicity stunt is unforgiveable and reprehensible.
It was for me, one of the earliest and clearest signs of the times to come with our pathological and criminal gov't …
Namaste
Schwalbe's article isn't even about the Challenger, really. He's just using it as an analogy to talk about the normalizing of violent masculinity. What about that is "academic nonsense"?
Your comment seems like shameless self-promotion to me. And you can promote your book without stepping on others.
You're very apt in those observations, and I now suspect that having a MARS_RULES branch causality, in the root cause analysis would presume way way too much.
Better to say that it was just the cold weather that was shrinking the size of the phaliic missile's protective cover, and an errant eruption of fire occurred.
It seems that this overuse of the 'cold impacting the size of the male member' shows up in every other holyWOOD movie.
I guess real men are just bigger than the cold.
Namaste
Blame it on testosterone? How does that explain violent women? Our reactionary bestial side, our conservative side, explains everything.
Sioux Rose
EZE: I thought some of the mystical analogies I have shared would have illuminated you? The soul is gender neutral... when we reincarnate we carry all prior experiences. So many wearing male bodies this time round likely had earlier lives in the feminine gender and vice versa. The astrology chart shows the patterns of personality and how these will bear upon destiny. Past lives as a warrior will still bring violent tendencies into the present, regardless of gender. Do you think this is Hilary Clinton's first go'round? These types of women who are MUCH LIKE men and do little to challenge society's patriarchal order are comfortable with power and compete with men on THEIR terms. Visionaries challenge the terms altogether.
Every time this subject comes up my dear forum-friend Kivals will relate names like Margaret Thatcher or Condi Rice. Just as Mars is not the only archetype suitable to the male gender, Venus does not govern every woman. There is a specific archetype for the type of female that lusts after power and doesn't give a SHIT about others, i.e. she's sold out on the basic feminine ideal expression of empathy/compassion. In my new book, Moon Dance, I explain this at depth. From mythology, the archetype that suits the violent-type woman is Athena who claims she was not of woman-born, but instead emerged whole from her father Zeus' head. Zeus, a/k/a Jupiter is the main CEO of Olympus, and Athena, the powerful daughter who has so many privileges come through men/the patriarchay she does nothing to level the playing field for other women. She is the TYPE of woman who will get media play or be elected to office as she does not really rattle the status quo. She serves the purpose of satisfying Affirmative Action quotas because she is a biological woman, but for all spiritually intensive purposes, she might as well be a man.
One size does not fit all... that's why Jesus had TWELVE disciples, and Abraham founded 12 tribes, and 60's legend Ritchie Havens has a prescient song, "There is a great secret to life... that there are only 12 of us." And then he sang the song of heaven through the sign language encoded into the higher spheres.
As a side note, Venus and Mars are about to "mate" in Pisces... couple of very romantic days ahead, particularly amenable to any of you wise (or lucky) enough to practice Tantra!
My conservative side naturally sees it in black or white.
Man or woman, either your liberal humanist side rules, or your bestial conservative side does.
Sioux Rose
Hmm.. I would have thought the spirit of Pacalolo would have blurred those dichotomous lines... ours is a circle world, my friend, these linear calculations lie to your soul and senses!
We follow science where it takes us, not where we think it should go.
You make an excellent point. These acts occur when lone males act out fantasies of violence that are common to millions of men.
The guns most often used - automatic rifles and pistols - are sold purely to feed such fantasies. They are not hunting weapons. They are not effective for target shooting. The mere possession of an assault rifle intensifies the fantasy and sometime the imaginary violence is not enough.
The Binghamton murderer, Jiverly Wong, for example, bragged that he had fired 10,000 shots at a target range. There can be little doubt that he was fantasizing about killing people for every one of those 10,000 shots.
Imagine a man with a carving knife who spends many hours in his backyard slashing away at pictures of people. The neighbors would be terrified. The same man buys an automatic weapon and goes to a target range, and he is merely "exercising his second amendment rights."
[ _____ We are ALL Palestinians now, _____ ]
holding back that rage is going to be dificult, to say the least …
The state of Israel even more than with in the USA, exhibits and has institutionized adherence to might makes right, and dominating violence and control ( not negoitiation ) is the only solution ---
… to the extremes of threatening nuclear armegedon as preferable to being forced to submit to anything -- especially a just resolution with indigenous Palestinians and neigbhoring Arabs and Persians.
Please somebody stop the madness of " M A R S __ R U L E S ", before the insanity of dominance reaches it ultimate cumulation.
If automatic guns and dozens of dead are
____ to crazified men seeking justice from being "victim of external forces"
would not the ultimate standoff of an emasculated and shamed country be equivalent to
____ throwing an A-bomb tantrum and millions of dead ?
Namaste
Sioux Rose
The best prescription for nullifying Mars rules is to fill the world with Venus... this is why the hippies/60's free love movement absolutely TERRIFIED the warrior clones of Nixon and his entourage. And guess what, they're been back with a vengeance! I'd like to ask Lynn Cheney if the old boy ever gave her an orgasm? This is not necessarily off the subject. Wilhelm Reich, given a lobotomy for all his cutting edge research into the link between repressed sexuality and violence, had some very profound conclusions drawn from his work.
I don't watch TV but the guy I date does. And if I go to his house we generally have to watch what he likes, which are typical macho action movies. Sometimes I actually have to leave I am so disgusted by the content, nor does he "get" it. He is young, a blue collar worker from a conservative Christian family, and to him TV = reality. I am going to write a comedy based on what he reveals to me, as in a sense, he is the "American everyman." Not you far more enlightened guys (most of you) in this forum. I've lived long enough to know that most of my experiences are meant to serve as teaching devices, if I can harness the creativity they merit.
In any case, I have been offended lately by how often women are just sexual objects in films. And the way men talk about them? It's as if all the females are to the male characters are a set of ports of entry. There is no humanity in this, no delicacy, no beauty, no basis for having a mutually satisfying relationship. And it makes me wonder if there is not some statistical relationship between sales of Viagra and these portraits of men as sexual conquerors, the females' mystery, essence, and personhood of no significance whatsoever.
Sioux Rose
One article on CD is about some Hong Kong billionaire building another Noah's Arc... maybe some bigshot $ tycoon can build an area where all the fundamentalists can go to do their own rendition of End Times. That would include any Israelis who are trying to out-do M.A.D with their own twisted version of Mars rules.
EZE likes to say conservatives are the bane to the world's existence, and I would say it's truer if they are also religious fundamentalists. People who are relatively OK with life have no need to tell others what to do, how to dress, who to sleep with, what weed they can smoke, etc. It's so diabolically ironic that the laws in America all so blatantly serve Mars. Violent things like fast cars, guns, cigarettes (they do violence to bodies), and in my view porn, and alcohol are all not only legal, but CHAMPIONED. But YIN, peace-prone activities are if not shamed, rendered illegal. The killers get to feel like heroes and the peace makers (John Dear) are arrested. Could a society be more twisted if it tried? Personally, I'd like to hear the opposing arguments on "the other side" when all these intolerant angry belligerent fools have to explain themselves to their purported God(s).
Well just as I was going to reply I saw the headline about another family suicide in Maryland. What about the farmers in India committing suicide in mass because they couldn't pay the money lenders. How would you classify that? None of the Indian farmers that I know of killed family members. One Indian who killed his entire family here in America stated that he did not want to leave his family indigent.
Why do unemployed Americans either kill their entire family or go on a shooting rampage and then kill themselves (sometimes). Do they feel that its their god given right to have a job? Is it non-masculine to be broke?
What the sociologist needs to do is study what women do when they are broke in America or study other cultures. Being broke is not unique to America. (LOL) Look at the folks who had to eat dirt in Haiti or the poor people practically in every corner of the planet. What do they do?
Is it about power or is it that these people believed the nonsense about the American Dream and it's our god given right to be rich? Is it about being territorial like one poster mentioned Israel? Israelis refuse to even let Palestinians have a slab of land and live on it in peace.
If a man is broke in the US he is worse than nothing. His relationships with women are over. He can expect separation from his spouse and children and social isolation from even his family. We treat our dogs better than we treat men without jobs or the means to earn an income due to medical conditions. If a man is broke he is expected to suffer alone or commit suicide.
Why complain if he treats others with the exact same contempt with which he is treated? If it's ok to dispose of one person why not all of them?
The USA is a narcissistic society. Change that to a healthy self ego society.
I don't know if it is possible.
Sioux Rose
I am responding before reading others' comments. Two thoughts come to me. First, when my daughter was about 9 she was playing with some local boys and they stole and then broke her watch. I walked over to speak with the main bully's mother and her response was that my daughter should not have been playing with the boys. It was a typical, she got what she deserved. The mother was unconsciously reinforcing this idea that boys will be boys, and thus do inconsiderate, if not outright BAD things.
The second thought is how often we see machismo--the exaggerated importance of maleness--in countries where there is a lack of power or sovereignty. This supports the basic contention of this excellent article, that the need for men to feel powerful when thwarted by actual socio-economic conditions--spurs the need (and cultural rite) to feel superior to someone else. That someone is usually a woman, but it can also be another race or religion or ethnicity. The extreme violence against Blacks issuing from impoverished whites is another manifestation.
When I rant about MARS RULES in this forum it's to show how pervasive are our belief systems that center around this idea of the separate self, the naked ego, and rationalizing the raw impulses borne of personal desires. These responses create me-against-you societies where hierarchy prevails. The opposite, sharing opportunities, teaching cooperation as opposed to competition disables the inevitable hierarchical structuring mechanisms that fuel social injustice and inequality.
I have brought up this issue many times in the forum, that the ideal of maleness in America seen in Clint Eastwood films, and all the bang-bang movies, and the near-worship of macho sports all empower this view that a man must be tough and strong and show no weakness. The military loves all this and feeds off it. Words like being SOFT as opposed to HARD; who doesn't see an analogy here to male erectness? Many words used in war sound like sex, and the disgusting misogynistic language of marines' jingles that turn their weapon into a phallic extension would be banned in any nation not under thrall to the military industrial complex, a/k/a Mars rules!
We could look to Nature for a better model - if we could also let go of the arrogance that holds that humans are the penultimate species. Wolves have an interesting alternative set of values for choosing leadership. The leader of a pack of wolves is not the biggest, meanest, male wolf who wins every bout of "wolf to wolf" combat. Instead, it's the single individual - male or female - that is the most charismatic and the best at initiating "play." I guess that's the wolf equivalent of charm? And it's an interesting option to consider in a world in which the social pressure on men to be the biggest, baddest, and "the winner" in any contest has been incredibly destructive. And the damage - as is the case with torture - is not confined to the most obvious victim.
Sioux Rose
SWKIDDER: One of the most compelling examples drawn from nature took place in Kenya, I believe. Baboons are known to form dominant-male ordered "societies." As a result, guess who gets to eat first? Well, a group of these baboons tended to frequent the garbage bins outside of a tourist resort. One night the food thrown away turned out to be poisoned and it killed off the dominant males. The researchers presumed that the more submissive males would take their places, but instead something strange and unprecedented occurred. These other males took up more egalitarian roles along with the females! The biological version of "Ding, dong, the witch is dead, witch ole' witch, the WICKED witch."
Margaret Mead also found other examples of HUMAN society that didn't follow the models presumed (by advocates of biological destiny) as "natural." So much would be possible in the way of new social engagements IF and WHEN societies were not socialized to make war, and set aside too many precious resources for so-called defense. Thanks to the recent pre-emptive wars of conquest, now nations feel forced to beef up their "defense reserves" to ward off if not terrorists, American military forces defining THEM AS terrorists as the warriors go about in search of their next "theaters."
Violence is the norm. I get the feeling from Schwalbe's article that the violence described is considered aberrant. Perhaps at some point it could be. It is not, and it is a very hard thing to do to change as a species, as I agree we must do. I have been committed to personal peace for a long time, and it has taken me most of those years to accept that on most days I really do want to choke the sh*t out of SOME idiot or other. Since then I have found it easier to understand others' violent feelings as well as to avoid situations wherein violence is nascent.
Two things he didn't mention that I think we need to address are violence in media and entertainment, and the violent feelings that arise from eating the meat of abused and frightened animals. I like to eat meat, and even though I may pray well and sincerely over a dish, if it is not organic and the animal killed with proper respect, I often later have dreams such as a recent one of being immobilized and seeing my human friends dragged into dismembering killing machinery.
Lastly, I don't know how much Schwalbe is right about women. Their violence against children would be vastly underrported. There is great violence amongst the women of my family, emotionally as well as corporally. And do women argue against competition more than men?
Recent studies ( see latest Sci Am ) on
A L T R U I S M _ and its polar opposite
S E L F I S H _ C H E A T I N G,
demonstrate that in a true evolutionary sense we are constantly doing a balancing act --individually, in groups, and overall as a race -- between these competing tendencies.
WHat I mean is that given a group dynamic, altruism makes sense to improve the odds of everyone's survival -- but it relies upon common participation and equality. When elements that are selfish enter into the dynamics, they reply upon the net benefits created by the altruists, so that they can coast for little investment or effort on their own part.
What's now becoming even more interesting, is that cheaters can only "profit" when their numbers are relatively small, so they attack the new cheaters to compel group harmony -- while really just protecting their own asses. The recent spiteful discord about doping athletics illustrates this very well, where the most vociferous voices against doping, were in fact using dope themselves.
What I found very interesting, was that it is in groups that compete against each other, where altruism has a definite advantage. This is because the groups are all ready competing, so the selfishness or cheating issue is eclipsed -- at that level.
Common Dreams is a community, and clearly there are people who "cheat", are "selfish", and those "benevolent" ones.
It is also true from game theory ( linear programming of optimum solutions ), that a simple tit for tat strategy works amazingly well for people and groups.
The premise of the strategy is that we all want to work together to get along, so
1. ) we INITIALLY tend to then cooperate together on each interaction ( tit, tit, tit, … )
2. ) UNTIL there is an instance of negative reaction ( tat )-- perceived or real: defection, selfishness, or other nastiness for which the immediate response is a reflected negative ( tat ).
3. ) IF that slap of disappointment back ( tat ) is then ignored by the other in the next interaction ( because of the possible realization of experiencing the bigger picture, and the promise of future cooperation ), then the sequence returns to all good ( tit for tit, for tit … )
4. ) IF that slap is met with another returned slap ( tat for tat ), we degenerate into all negative interactions, UNTIL someone tries going positive again.
5. ) There is no memory or vindictiveness, the system strategically immediately returns to all positive interactions
See
… it is possible to perceive Humankind as
essentially of a good ( altruistic ) NATURE,
with the strategy to fight back ( selfishly )
as needed for their survival when threatened,
but not to hold grudges.
R E V E N G E _ is thus very bad for society and survival overall,
but is a form of retribution against cheaters going out of control
How is it that we forget that _ W A R _ is the ultimate of negative reactions, which should only be used as a last resort to maintain our overall chances for survival.
The corollary of which is that W A R for puerile and selfish aims of imperialism and avaricious gain -- is intrinsically EVIL ( even when carefully wrapped in the flag, nationalistic pride, and "fundamentalist" religion ).
The later is attempting to act as the former, so that the masses join in in collective FEAR and HATE -- while the antidote to that unreasonable fear is LOVE and understanding ( altruism ).
O U R _ F U T U R E _ & _ S U R V I V A L _ D E P E N D S
________ O N _ E A C H _ O F _ U S ________
C H O S I N G _ F O R _ T H E _ G R E A T E R _ G O O D
As Star Trekking Spok and Kurk made famous " The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few "
Namaste
The story of Samson comes to mind. What are these men doing but pulling down the temple they are chained to. And isn't it usually in response to being maimed (in their perception) by a woman?
It's sort of predictable that this article on violence would turn into feminist finger-pointing.
The entire article is an example of leftist Academia talking about income disparity. Obviously, the author of the article makes a hefty salary and has enjoyed the entitlement that comes with being born into a particular class.
And it probably feels good to talk about how unfair income disparity is. Even how destructive and violent this disparity is. But of course, you'll never give up your own entitlement.
Which is why social change never comes from smooth-talking academics who must - all the while - protect their own pile of status symbols and priveleges.
When the self-styled "leftist" academic talks about equality or justice, he is just trying to protect his own status from the pitchfork-carrying other.
Only the poor themselves can grab their own equality. And this might involve a bit of violence - unfortunately.
"It's sort of predictable that" that those like yourself with a message already keenly filling your mind, might tend to ignore any part of a larger subject that isn't consistent with that position.
This author does a stupendous job outlining how all men, even those in the highest elites, are propagandized and imprinted to do violence.
The only real class basis difference, is how these crazified ( as they're so unbalanced ) men act out their charter of violence and then the obvious aspect where the rich nominally go free due to their having bought the judges to play there games.
For almost all men, we feel the total disempowerment and demeaning shame of not "measuring up" or being "hard" enough to "break through and score" as a manly man -- to the extent that we are propagandized and conditioned. We are blessed that much of the middle and upper middle classes having been brought into this world in loving families -- have only being partially imprinted so negatively, so the level of violence is much attenuated although still beyond any other culture, over the arc of human history.
For the elites, they have many options and "fields of battle" to consummate their blood lusts and the manipulation of whole nations and wars are part of that canvas. Of course, the crazified rich do not go to McDoughtnuts and blast away at the locales, they hire our some mercs and go "in country" and destroy a village or two -- and we never hear anything about it ( as of course who controls the news ).
In summary,
The rich act out this cultural violence -- to an even greater extend as a manifestation of their often psychopathic ( sometimes just apparent, but always reinforced ) need for control and manipulation.
The poor and middle classes have many popular and sanctioned outlets for violence -- like bloody sports events, beating their wives and children, and arm chair participation in ra-ra'ing for our "side" in the countless wars that we start and propagate, for both profit and "fun".
The rich can sublimate some of their violence by betting on the battles' outcomes, in sports and in the field -- but often they own the teams themselves ( Blackwater Xee comes to mind ), and can direct the action for greater amusement and release of their pent up rage.
The poor might attempt to emulate the rich in their pursuit of gaming pleasure, but this is insidiously dangerous as it just reinforces the already strong conditioning to do even more violence …
THe whole of violence, can be boiled down to all of us being each other's brothers and sisters, in the larger family of humankind -- which must be balanced with understanding against the constant ravages of the crazified man violence.
All people are being savagely split into spurious waring pieces, through manipulative propaganda, with disastrously negative divisive techniques to create the illusion of separateness, hate, fear and loss of control.
Of course the violence of 'men to each other' is also codified in 'men against woman', which is prototypical of a hierarchical paternal based society's control mechanism.
__________ A Better, more concise ___ S U M M A R Y : __________
We often react on auto-pilot, as so many injured people in our condemNATION of broken souls -- where compassion must be raised as consciousness to awaken our "better" halves of VENUS_RULES.
MAR_RULES is way too powerful today and is bringing the entire Earth down, in its misguided ( w/o Venus' soft hand and heart ) attempts to solve problems with tools and thinking that got us exactly to this place -- and that is insanely ineffective.
Namaste
Sioux Rose
POWERFULLY TRUE: Indeed! (Your words ARE powerfully true). Or as Granny from "The Beverly Hillbillies" might say," That's a right smart."
The phrasing "Mars rules" can be read as a verb... that Mars occupies a position that lends it power to instill rules. Yet it can also be read as those rules that "belong" to Mars, as in Mars' rules. In that respect, as counterbalance, Venus would have those elements she also governs, or rules. Yet with Venus I'd choose a softer verb: Venus attracts, Venus affirms, Venus magnetizes, Venus accords with... I thank you for sharing these terms as mankind may have forgotten its links to the greater cosmos, "As above, so below," but like DNA, we cannot truly abandon what we are. The logos is writ not so much into our genes, as into our essences, the subtler lasting stuff of lifetimes. You know, kind'a like matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
Powerful, I think I may not have made myself clear about the implied source of societal violence in this article.
According to many scholars, it isn't the rich or the poor who are behind most social violence. It is income disparity that causes significant numbers of less-rich people to respond instinctively to a perceived lack of status symbols.
This seems to be hard-wired into humanity. Wherever you have large income disparity, you have violence in many forms, often perpetuated by those who have less. To Gandhi's "poverty as violence" we can add "wealth as violence."
However, it is almost always the rich (and their loyally aspirational upper middle class underlings) who defend this income disparity, because their surplus of status symbols gives them a feeling of empowerment and fulfillment. They often don't develop other means to acquire status, and so their symbols become incredibly important in their lives. They many even "read" their status symbols as "survival."
So the rich are the problem when it comes to resolving income disparity. And tenured professors, in their own way, defend their pile of status at the expense of both the greater good and academia. Soft criticism like this helps upper income, privileged people feel better about themselves by giving them a text to pretend to follow. "I believe in this text" is NOT the same as "I will work towards income equalization." This academic provides a text to read and feel good about, but the fact that it is written by an academic (and not an angry, poor person) just reinforces the ideal of wealth that causes to much violence. "I wish I was a tenured professor so people would listen to what I have to say." This is violence-inducing. It separates the less wealthy from popular discourse.
And look at the way the author shamelessly promotes Jackson Katz. This name-dropping of a throw-away media person is all about social climbing and mutual admiration of high status individuals, rather than an honest search for the common good. The article would have been stronger if it had contained less cross promotion, and a bit more wealth redistribution memes.
Perhaps we agree than the mere existence of any disparity
leads to egoic comparisons with others,
and the deep desire and wanting for things to be different.
The financial disparity you are concerned about, has been being stretched further, with the richest few getting ever larger and more disproportional part of the overall pie. This can certainly in part describe a model of increasing violence, but I don't think there is a very high correlation with societal violence.
You postulate ( or imply ) that ending or severely narrowing income disparity, would automatically release us from so many cycles of violence. One obvious counter example, is the continued violence of men toward women in upper middle or upper class families -- where this income disparity is dramatically lessoned or non-existent.
Your theory in no manner addresses the disproportional segment of > 50 % militarization of the USA & world's economies and major industries, where the major export of the USA is violence, munitions, and high tech weapons systems. We could be building green technologies, and there is no longer justification for warmongering, especially considering the World-wide violence, death, and suffering resulting -- which reflects additional violence here within and upon America.
The natural balance of equal footing between the sexes has been shifted to patriarchy for the last ~ 5000 years, and only a few examples from before that time have survived to offer us comparison of matriarchy based Western society. Indubitably the further left-brain domination of our culture and the drive for technologic innovation, was marked by Descartes some 500 years ago. Both of these events pushed our culture increasingly out of balance to create the violence-prone times of today.
What Descartes did was to demean the emotional & right-brain holistic spiritual thinking-- which also beneficially spurred the materialistic ( medical, better financial equality ) it did this at an extreme cost of putting nature down as subverient tyo man -- just something for us to dominate and control.
This once only philosophic foundations of modern Western Civilization, has become an internalized "monster" in people, institutions, and in our cultural cues and mythology that allow us to perceive & understand reality.
What many researchers now understand and has increasingly become evident, that we lost the quintessential part of being fully alive and in harmony with both inner and outer worlds -- with nature and between sexes -- and that this psychic / emotional chasm must be healed to unite the fractured people that we've created.
The failing bankster frauds and collapse of wall-eyed street and our participatory representation in government are additional elements that demonstrate that we need culturally much more than just equable distribution of money.
Namaste
"Your theory in no manner addresses..."
It's not "my theory." It is "the theory" of inequality expert Chuck Collins, and this "theory" is backed up with my own experience working with (and hanging around with) low economic status males. The richer the fat white guys are around them, the more they feel panicked and endangered. And the luxury cars with their horns beeping to signal "locked" keep homeless men awake all night, along with making pedestrians lives miserable and lonely.
It ought to be common sense that wealth inequality is bad for the common good, but a century of "American Dream" propaganda has left Americans with little to none of this difficult-to-hang-on-your-mantle commodity.
Rich people make everyone else feel poorer. And the small amount of happiness that they get from their superior gadgets is no match for the misery that they create with their surplus status symbols.
"Just because we spend a third of our government tax monies on some form of wealth protection for the people at the very top doesn't mean that they don't deserve to own everything even if they steal it with the help of lawyers and bought politicians. If the poor want to own something they need to learn to hire lawyers and buy politicians too."-Lush Rimjob
Frankly, I think the poor in america need to learn the emotional gratification a bottle, a rag, some matches and a pint of alcohol can bring a person. If a man can't eat what use is a restaurant, and if he can't drive he doesn't need a car. If he 's sleeping on the sidewalks a beachside mansion is just ruining his view. But if he has the ingredients listed above he can keep his feet clean and free of fungus; or do other stuff like warm his hands at night with a homemade lamp.
You might try using your own right hemisphere more, as it's that under utilized part of you able to go outside of simplistic linear thinking.
People involved in coordinating types of athletics, who participate in meditation, and music -- make fuller use of their entire brain by integrating both hemispheres.
Even perfect economic equality will not jump start the right brain functioning nor integrate it systemically into a new sustainable culture mythos, and unified world perception of total human equality, so the violence and degeneration will insidiously continue ( especially still between men and woman ).
If you just continue to hang out with "the boys", while wrapping your thought patterns tighter and tighter, I suspect this whole thing will just boil over and be done. NOT.
It is very interesting that for you the world appears to only consist of men, despite my laboriously going into various relevant aspects of sexual equality seriously trumping mere economic issues, and continuing after the wealth disparity eventually is addressed.
I guess after that, we can look forward to solving the wealth disparity between men and woman ?
Namaste
There a lots of homeless people, men people usually, that play guitar or can draw or paint or drum. It doesn't seem to to a damn thing about getting them out of the rain.
Economic equality allows time and energy after the means of earning a living are secured to relax, create, innovate and learn. Those periods after work is done are also when social interaction and bonds are made and secured. When there is no time or energy for such things misunderstandings and resentments will occur, build, fester and explode.
The wealth equality between men and women isn't going to help things if there is strong class inequality and no safety net. When men and women risk losing their ability to maintain family life due to economic insecurity exploitation and anger rises instead of falling.
Yes, so true.
We've stretched our social fabric and safety net into rags, splitting up families and lives unapologetically, and hardly need to wonder where for the anger comes. We are in many ways less violent than we might become, due the intrinsic goodness that seems to come through our skin easier, with dirt a little rubbed on us.
What's worse is that the richest agents of sleaze and depravity, then self-satisfyingly tip & turn their spinning heads about ( looking at what they caused ) as if they cannot comprehend why people "do this to themselves".
___ The BEAT DOWNS shall continue
___ until MORALE improves around here
Namaste
Yes, let us do light many candles to dissolve the darkness, and to thereby bring another light within
"I guess after that, we can look forward to solving the wealth disparity between men and woman ?"
This is a way of skirting the issue of income disparity between different classes.
It isn't the disparity between men and women that causes violence, it is the disparity between different classes of men/women combined.
Once again, the Western consumer feminist model succeeds mainly in muddying the waters about the issue of class disparity in anglospheric nations, and how this disparity leads to misery for so many people. And how this income-hoarding violence that is practiced by the wealthy leads to all manner of violence against poor men, women and children.
The rich need to be made to take the blame for this. Currently, privileged white men like Jackson Katz like to point their fat fingers at poor black men and the media they consume (produced by fat, white men like Katz) as signs of "their" imperfection.
Q A T Z E L O K
You let us know ( again ) of your regurgitating position, with :
"This is a way of skirting the issue of income disparity between different classes"
This is mildly humorous in that the CLOAKING that you mention is supposedly being done with a SKIRT ( aka feminine covering of sexuality ).
Perhaps this was merely subconscious and unintended, and that you use a sexually ladened term to attempt to deflect and cover-up the real challenge of dealing with male-to-female violence, until some far distant future ?
I must conclude from your lack of response -- that my use of the phrase AFTER THAT, in my sentence "I guess after that, we can look forward to solving the wealth disparity between men and woman ?" -- has no meaning for you ?
When perhaps not clearly enough for you, I am using "THAT" to refer to the possibility of first doing as you had suggested, to create financial equality, and secondly deal with the unresolved ( by your plan ) sexual based income gap issues.
I submit, it is you who is skirting the issue of sexuality, attempting to neuter the issue of violence, and who has reduced a complex of multi-dimensional social dynamics { vectors } into mere quantitative { scalar } differences of money.
More explicitly, you go much further in denying the reality, by errantly labeling my comments as " the Western consumer feminist model … ," and then attempt to obfuscate the issue by asserting that this " succeeds mainly in muddying the waters about the issue of class disparity," without any reason or evidence.
At least you consistent in your unproven repeated and over-generalized assertions that "this income-hoarding violence that is practiced by the wealthy leads to all manner of violence against poor men, women and children."
R e p e t i t i o n ___ is not, and has never been -- a rational technique of proof, and is more appropriately described as an approach to attempt to persuade or intimidate people -- which of itself can easily become a form of verbal violence, when the voice is raised and used in a threatening manner.
Your concept of _ j u s t i c e _ appears flawed as well, as before proof is established, you want "The rich need to be made to take the blame for this."
I believe that this article well substantiates its arguments, when quoting seasoned researcher Katz:
"As anti-violence educator Jackson Katz documents in his film "Tough Guise," over the past twenty years violence has come to be the defining feature of manhood in America. Violence and masculinity have become nearly synonymous."
From this, you say discombobulatedly "privileged white men like Jackson Katz like to point their fat fingers at poor black men and the media they consume (produced by fat, white men like Katz) as signs of "their" imperfection."
If figure pointing is the issue, it's not about any black men ( or white ) being responsible for this, but about how our failed materialistic and immoral society's evasion and subterfuge has created ever increasingly violent people.
Perhaps you entirely miss the fact that the " i m p e r f e c t i o n " of our culturally mandated intrinsic violence, is written outward onto ALL of our society, not harnessed ( and blamed ) upon the backs of poor black men.
I hope you read the above with some patience, as you exhibit some signs of a violent tendency in your written expression, that is somewhat scary -- and need not be so.
Namaste
I think the author, though making valid points, is missing the forest for the trees. Capitalist civilization that operates for profit rather than sustainability is a pyramid scheme which must constantly find more suckers to keep the elite flush. This system of wealth for a few and wage-slavery for the many, in an environment of all out resource depletion for profit at any cost, produces massive psychological dysfunctionality for all. The buttheads at the top are authoritarian sadists and decadent consumers, while us commoners on the bottom try to figure out an ethical way to escape the elite's capitalist gauntlet of survival. Consequently, to put it bluntly, this version of civilization that we humans have let roll through the millenia, has driven all of us, stark raving mad.
And now that we fill every corner of earth and there's no place left to escape to, our dysfunctions show up everywhere in tragic examples. These tragedies: empiric wars, genocides, pollution, global climate disruption, resource depletion, 90% fished out oceans, catastrophic drought and fires, over-population, financial system collapses, privatization of infrastructures, and all manner of localized violence and cruelty ... have all been NORMALIZED by capitalism. How else would this corrupt and utterly dysfunctional system keep itself alive? By brainwashing the passengers into accepting anything that comes along as NORMAL.
Our real problem is the normalization of accepting dysfunctions, that are clearly solvable through a redesign of civilization, to replace the profit objective, with the sustainability objective. If all the people who write and read these articles identifying what are only fractals of the problem, would connect the dots, as Laurie Anderson has said, and see and redesign the big picture, we could get our asses out of the fire of our own making. Until that time we will just be a cast of voyeurs watching the ship go down.
Truth? The elites and their civilization is controlled by them. All of the elected leaders tow the line to keep the existing profit objected machine running. Until we abandon them and their methods we are doomed. Clearly the Green Platform and the Earth Charter is a ship of sustainability and egalitarian re-composition of a democratic republic that would at least head us in the right direction. [I am not saying this is the only way or trying to sell this exclusively in any way, but at least it is a diametrical move of opposition to the Reagan policy disasters of the 80's from which we are now drowning.] People ignore these options (even if they actually read either document) and voted Blue or Red because they have been NORMALIZED to accept the existing "approved options" that the elite's capitalism and it's mind vacuuming media place in our faces, as the only possible options. This is a very simple logic impasse, that every human, who is awake, should walk right through. Very simply, to accept ANY of the tragedies listed above without demanding and working toward elimination, is a dysfunctional act.
So what would be a functional act? Start redesigning your own lives as if you lived in "Ecotopia" (Ernest Callenbach, 1975). Bike-train-ped, no personal automobioles, 20 hr. work weeks, work place collectives, no toxics, solar, electric, organic, pesticide free, localized non-corporate democracy and community, self sufficient sustainable localities across the globe. This is all doable when you realize the only reason we have personal automobiles, cell phones, computers, and all the infrastructure required to allow these to work, is so each person can try to stay one step ahead on the wage-slavery pyramid-scheme rat-race, and feed the elite their illusionary profits. All one needs is air, food, water, shelter, sleep, exercise, community, useful and enjoyably sustainable work, art and intellectual pursuits, community entertainment and safe sex ... and viola! ... a decent life! Void of the master's demand for your slavery to provide them their cush life.
?
Well put.
A key piece in this area is the corporation---how "we" have chosen to organize commerce.
The corp floats the wrong people to the "top" of society for the wrong reasons.
The specific attribute of the corp is "legal personhood" through which corps assume the Constitutional rights meant only for humans under the law. Authors Thom Hartmann, David Korten and Naomi Klein have written eye-opening work on just how this came about, its effects and remedy.
Most, if not all the signs of dysfunction mentioned above can be tracked back to the legal entity, "corporation".
The bind is, of course, our system is dominated by corporations, which are unlikely to change the rules (or more correctly, will change the rules only if they can increase their power and profit by doing so, which is unlikely). Change inevitably will come in one of several ways: through enlightened leadership and a Supreme Court that have the courage to correct this error, through economic and societal collapse, through rejection by informed citizens, or by game-changing Natural conditions.
Families (read: women) raise their male children to succeed in the world they see around them. This runs deep, to the core of western "modern" civilization. We could learn a lot from what's left of the cultures that emerged from the last ice age. I think it is obvious that we face game-changing ecological conditions of some kind. And, I think the corporate model of societal organization has not only aggravated and hastened the onset of climate change, but is entirely inappropriate to survival under those conditions.
Change we must. And change we will. How it happens is up to each one of us, every day, with every dollar we spend, every person we talk to, and every vote we cast.
I had an odd moment years ago watching Bowling for Columbine when Moore discussed the stat that Canadians own guns but shoot each other less than Americans.
Could it be that desperation makes people act badly, at least some of the people some of the time? If so, could it be that the lack of a social network -- the lack that makes people work second jobs, leave kids at home and so forth -- makes us nuts?
I am unsure how many people will get this far in the comments, but FYI, Professor, your article was circulated among an on-line group of mothers I deal with, who have lost their children in custody battles to batterers or child-molesters (convicted), sometimes after (like I did) having lived with violence in the home itself.
ALL of us are very thankful when we read a man who has stated the situation we have experienced personally, and "got it right."
If a man is not culturally accepted without dominating, women are going to continue daying (and children) til either they do, or the powers that be decide that killing women and children is not manly. This is rampant in not just radical Islam, but (the premises) in mainstream & nondenominational Protestantism.
As to this article,
I AGREE! ! ! ! , and believe this is stated VERY well. I have been thinking about these issues (perforce) for nearly 18 years, and that's 9 years in the violent, battering, dominating marriage and 9 years post-restraining order. Towards the end of this time, my (ex) was collecting BOTH guns and knives in the home, and using them to intimidate me. We had close calls with a family-slaying situation (by the grace of God and in the name of Jesus Christ, which he at that time respected, diffused). It was the knives the freaked me out the most, and the manner in which they came out after I had done something resembling independence. Although we were struggling financially, he at one time worked for guns, not cash (and I was working throughout the marriage as well).
Afterwards, in a temporarily repentant situation (and after his own father committed suicide -- with a gunshot to the head) -- somewhere after separation, I got a long letter from this man stating precisely that he felt the guns would help him feel more like a man. There was absolutely no question (throughout the marriage) that my frequently being on the floor or up against a wall was his need to define his masculinity through domination. This man was intelligent and (i thought) a decent person, devout, articulate, kindly, and all that. He had not graduated from college, and (I later found out) was not a reader, at all, and resented intellectual activity on my part, and worked hard to put it to a stop. As this played out post-divorce, currently there has been more and more criminal activity going on.
There is a comment somewhere in the Bible (largely ignored in practice) where Jesus comments that those who follow him will be servants, and not seek to exercise authority over each other, "after the manner of the Gentiles." This is the foot-washing example. As we have known generally speaking, this man ended up crucified, which is possibly THe least dominant position possible in society, would you not say?
There is an excellent book out talking about this hierarchy thing, its title is misleading: "The End of Manhood." Its author (male) talks about how, in practice, when push comes to shove (sic), it's EITHER "manhood" (and image of this) OR justice.
Another good reference might be the organization NOMAS, or (oddly enough) a book by Schmuley Boteach (memorable enough?) called "Hating Women." Just give it a try, eh? He's a rabbi.
If you have not actually sat in a church recently, and heard some of this male-backlash, he-man talk, or read the literature, be frightened. Be very, very frightened. They are thinking separate from and above the law, and this includes in anti-gay issues also, and anti-feminists. I am wondering where "safe" is these days.
This is being funded at the federal level, Obama is as much in favor as Bush, and yes Clinton : Fatherhood initiatives. It is tipping the scales in the courts, and lots of us are in almost permanent trauma because of this.
I have a (very unprofessional) blog, but it helps me, at familycourtmatters.wordpress.com Women in all countries and men are addressing some of these issues, particularly as they play out in divorce and custody situations. I most assuredly will post this entire article there, and you can read more about the Fatherhood stuff there too if you wish.
Peace.... WoMom.