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Guest Article... |
Starting With the War Between the Sexes
by
Alison Armstrong, author of © 2003
About eleven years ago, I received the most important phone call of my life. I was sitting at my desk, the executive director of a small organization dedicated to the end of hunger worldwide. On the other end of the phone, I heard my friend Ellen say, “Alison, we need to talk. Men are attracted to you like bees to honey, but when you are done with them, it’s like they have been with a vampire.”
As you can imagine, that got my attention. My first thought was, “What? A vampire? Little ol’ me? Innocent me?” Out loud, I said, “What are you talking about?” For the next half hour, Ellen proceeded to tell me all the ways that she had personally seen me emasculate men, or ways she knew I must have because she saw the evidence (a man left weak and powerless). I squirmed most of the time, but couldn’t contradict her. She was absolutely accurate; I had done everything she said.
All the while, though, I kept wondering why we were talking about it. After all, women emasculate men all the time. It’s standard behavior, par for the course, status quo right?
It was all just part of...part of what? Oh, yeah. Part of the war between the sexes.
Then Ellen said, “You’ve even done it to Jeffrey.” That caught my breath. Jeff is my son, who was 3-years-old at the time. As soon as Ellen said it, I could see that it was true. It
was like I considered it my job as a mother to train, squelch, badger, or drive the maleness right out of my son. Any time that he didn’t behave according to my ideals (ideals I found out later were based on how women behave), I had something to say about it. Letting anything slide based on “oh, he’s a boy” seemed like a dereliction of duty.
After Ellen had me completely squirming on the hook, appalled at the wake of weak men left behind me, she said, “I want you to cut it out.” She said it so simply, so easily. But it felt like she was asking me to cut my heart out of my own body. I instantly thought, “But they are bigger and stronger and they’ll hurt me.” I don’t remember ever consciously thinking that before that moment. But it had the force of truth. And I could see all my interactions with men since I was 16-years-old came from that premise: they are bigger and stronger and they’ll hurt me. And from a second premise, taught to me by my stepfather, “The best defense is a good offense.” That statement defined my relationships with men. I was always on the offense—with my intellect, my sense of humor, my looks, and my sexuality. No man was allowed to keep his balance around me. If he couldn’t get his balance, he couldn’t attack, was my unconscious but completely operative reasoning.
I might have bailed out of the conversation at that point if it weren’t happening under some unusual circumstances: six months prior, I had begun studying men. I had discovered how much they wanted to be my hero, and how much they wanted to make me happy. But now I could see that the information had been gathered under the
premise “know thy enemy.” The more I knew about men, the more effective I was at emasculating them, at keeping them weak, at taking the wind out of their sails.
Who would need to do that? Who would need to keep other people weak? Someone powerful? Nope. My compulsion to keep men weak came from my own sense of weakness. I couldn’t stand them having power, because I was sure I had none. And every time I emasculated a man, that knee-jerk reaction came from my own fear and reinforced
my own feeling of weakness. As soon as I saw this, I realized that I would never experience my power as a woman until I allowed men to have their power, too. It was either weak together or powerful together.
I took a deep breath and said, “Okay. I’ll stop. I won’t emasculate men.”
I’ll never forget that moment. It felt like wrapping myself in a warm coat of delicious, pure feminine power. It was the beginning of new life for me. I laid down my sword and learned diplomacy. I gave up manipulation and learned communication. I gave up power struggles and learned how to give men power, while losing none. I gave up being an adversary and learned how to be a partner.
After I said I wouldn’t emasculate men anymore, Ellen said, “I didn’t ask this for you. I believe that when women stop emasculating men, men will give us everything we ever wanted—including peace and the end of hunger.” I took that statement very seriously. I had already seen how much men wanted to solve problems, in fact, were compelled
to solve problems. What if women gave men different problems? How about “end world hunger” instead of “get out of this conversation about our relationship alive”? And if men weren’t being weakened by women, they could direct all that power at solving problems
that are worthy of their dignity and their honor.
That conversation with Ellen was the end of the war between the sexes for me. To this day, I am amazed at how men respond to me. They are so ready for me to be everything
I’ve always wanted to be. I kept studying men and a few years later we started PAX, our company that offers the Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women® workshop. PAX is
the Latin word for peace. We are dedicated to ending the longest running war in history.
In these troubled times, it is easy to feel powerless. It is easy to blame what is happening on “war-mongering men.” From learning so much about who men really are,
it is pretty easy for me to resist that temptation. Instead, I am asking the question given to me by one of our workshop leaders, Lisa Sasevich, “What is my piece of peace?”
We at PAX have started with the gender war. And we will continue to heal the relationships between men and women as our piece of peace.
What is your piece of peace?
Alison Armstrong, author of © 2003
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