 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
SHAME AND MALE OPPRESSION
by Roy Schenk, Ph.D.
originally printed in Transitions, vol. 7, #4
a publication of the National Coalition of Free Men
This article is from the Bioenergetics Web site and is reprinted here with the permission of the author. About Roy Schenk Dr. Roy U. Schenk has been writing and speaking about men's and gender issues since the 1960s--far longer than almost anyone else. Dr. Schenk began writing about the male shame in 1967, almost twenty-five years before the concept became popular. He has written three books on gender issues (The Other Side of the Coin, We've Been Had, and On Sex and Gender, all available from Bioenergetics Press) and innumerable articles over the past two-and-a-half decades. Dr. Schenk has brought his expertise and understanding of men's issues to audiences all over the United States and in Canada. He is known as a speaker who gets audiences to respond, and who sparks lively discussion with his cutting-edge ideas. Dr. Schenk has spoken on many topics including:
Dr. Schenk is also the Director of the Dane County Domestic Abuse Project, which specializes in helping men caught in abusive relationships. He can also speak about his experiences in this role. To find out more about Dr. Schenk, or to set up an appearance, call (in the continental USA and Canada), , or
|
Over the past fifteen to twenty years I have increasingly been studying, writing and speaking about a male perspective on human liberation. My earliest article in this area was an article in a magazine called The Catholic World, in which I questioned the Catholic Church's attitudes toward abortion. This article was published in April, 1968. More recently, an article entitled, "So Why Do Rapes Occur?" appeared in the April, 1979 issue of The Humanist. In 1982, my book entitled, The Other Side of the Coin: Causes and Consequences of Men's Oppression, was published. If there is one thing I do well, it is listening. And in the early days of New Wave Feminism, I listened to women as they stood up and articulated the ways in which they perceived themselves as being oppressed. And I recognized that there was validity in what they were saying. Then I turned and said: Okay, how do these ideas apply to men? As a scientifically trained person, I have a strong urge to try to sort things out and make sense out of them, so this effort was perfectly natural for me. What I present here is based in large part on the results of my efforts to apply feminists' ideas and insights to the situation we men find ourselves in. These ideas represent an effort to sort out the many, varied and often confusing experiences and observations I have encountered during this time, including my efforts to liberate myself and to support my brothers and sisters in their struggles for liberation. Unfortunately, I have encountered a great deal of intolerance from feminists toward my efforts to develop and articulate a male perspective that speaks to how men are dumped on in our society. I've encountered this intolerance particularly when I have pointed out how women's sex-role behavior hurts men. As a result of this intolerance, I have some very strong anger toward women, and especially toward feminists, because of the frequent dumping I have encountered from these women who are presumably sisters in the struggle. There is an attitude prevalent among feminists that, because men's forms of oppression have not adequately been defined, they do not exist, or even if they do, women's oppression is far more serious and oppressive than is men's oppression. This attitude then demands that women's oppression must be solved to the exclusion of dealing with men's oppression.
VICIOUS CIRCLEIn contrast to this attitude, the way I see the interrelationships between men and women might be expressed by the idea of a Vicious Circle, with men dumping on women, and women dumping on men. We dump on each other in different ways, and in large measure this is controlled by the gender roles we have been socially conditioned to play. Playing such roles is not normally a conscious action. Rather, is just behaving the way we have been taught to behave. I propose that many aspects of these socially conditioned gender roles of both men and women are harmful to male-female interrelationships and very badly need to be changed. Others, in trying to understand how we got the way we are, have gone back to pre-history. They theorize that, as hominoids developed, children took longer and longer to develop to maturity. And because women gave birth to and nursed the children, it just naturally developed that women took on more and more of the tasks of caring for the children. This left for men the responsibilities for providing protection for both the women and the children, and for the harder labor. As time progressed, these people postulate that men developed attitudes of superiority about their leadership and job skills abilities.
PERCEIVED MORAL SUPERIORITY OF WOMENWhat has not been recognized, however, is that women also developed attitudes of superiority. These included cultural and especially moral superiority. There are other forms of perceived female superiority, such as child care and home care superiority, but I think moral superiority is the subject we need to look at most seriously, because I believe it has the most powerful impact on men. Some of the ways this moral superiority is expressed are through higher moral, especially sexual, standards for women, and through the perception of women as the peace-lovers. Some people speak of the Virgin-Whore Concept in describing women's moral superiority. I describe it in somewhat different terms: namely, that women are perceived as being "naturally morally superior" over men, who are perceived as being "naturally morally inferior." However, women can, by improper behavior, lower themselves to the same low moral level that men are perceived as normally always being at. A few quotes can illustrate how various people have articulated this concept of the moral superiority of women. The Kronhausens, in their book The Sexually Responsive Woman state: "Woman (is) the untouchable saint who through her spiritual purity raises and ennobles the grosser, baser male." Robert and Helen Lynd, in their book Middletown, which is a study of a Midwest city, reported that Middletown men were inclined to refer to women as "purer" and "morally better"" than men. Herb Goldberg, in his book, The Hazards of Being Male, states: "He learns that his conditioning, his style and his needs are 'shallow' or 'bad' and that her motives are somehow correct-and purer." A lot of the women who oppose ERA, such as Phyllis Schlafly, say they are not interested in lowering themselves to equality to men. Now obviously they are not talking about economic and political equality, since women are traditionally disadvantaged here. It has to be some other form of superiority they are talking about. It is my perception that they are talking about the belief that women are morally superior to men. This is what they do not want to give up. Another way women are portrayed as morally superior to men is as peace-lovers. The result is that men are left with being the aggressors-including doing women's violence for them. Let me point out here that men in our society have been perceived as being superior in job skills and leadership ability, and in actual practice, they indeed have been superior. So too, women, because they are perceived as being the peace-lovers, do indeed play that role. The point I raise is that, just as feminists maintain that men are not intrinsically superior to women in job skills and leadership abilities; so also, women are not intrinsically superior to men in the areas of peacefulness and morality. But as it actually happens in our culture, women are perceived as, and do act, morally superior to men (based on our society's definitions of morality, which are largely defined by women). Continuing to support this idea of women's moral superiority actually keeps men locked into their current roles. For example, I propose that the title of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom does more to promote war than all the members' efforts can ever do to promote peace. I therefore consider WILPF to be a sexist organization simply on the basis of its name. As another example, the symbol for the UN's International Women's Decade, which ended recently, is a peace dove whose eye is the circle for the female gender sign. This symbol again says that women are the peace lovers. This blatantly sexist symbol was accepted earth-wide: the idea of women as the peace-lovers is not just specific to our culture. Another example is the symbol on UNICEF stationary. This shows a woman holding a child, with olive branches surrounding them. Again, we have women as the peace lovers and the nurturers. So while women demand of us men that we give up our sexism, they continue to blatantly flaunt their own sexism. Now we come to what I consider to be the central theme of this article. Feminists have pointed out how women's perceived inferiority feelings about jobs and leadership cause great psychological harm to women. The result is, it is much more difficult for women to achieve in the job and leadership areas than it is for men. But no one other than myself, as far as I know, has explored what are the psychological damages done to us men by what we perceive to be our moral inferiority to women.
GUILT AND SHAMEWhat I found through my experiences and observations is that moral inferiority produces feelings of guilt. This is guilt because we are male. It has nothing to do with anything we do. At a workshop I gave on the subject, one of the participants pointed out to me that this "guilt without action" is actually shame. Indeed, this is what has been found by the few researchers who have studied shame. What I have finally concluded is that this "SHAME OF MALENESS" is the primary manifestation of men's oppression. My most dramatic exposure to this Shame of Maleness has been at the Conferences on Men and Masculinity which usually happen each year. The basic response of the men leading these conferences has been to apologize for being men. This is so dominant that the central activity of the conferences has regularly been a march against men's violence to women. In addition, whenever there has been an issue involving male-female conflict, the conference leaders could not do anything except articulate the feminist perspective. They simply could not grasp that men could have a valid, different perspective. Indeed it was my experiences at these conferences that forced me to begin to study guilt and then, ultimately, shame. In studying guilt and shame, I found that Freud, Reik and the other founders of psychology studied guilt almost exclusively. Freud stated that: "The sense of guilt is the most important problem in the evolution of culture." Theodore Reik insisted that "the unconscious need for punishment induced by guilt feelings must be recognized as one of the most powerful destiny forming forces of human life." Yet, ultimately it became clear to me that the "guilt without action", or shame, is perhaps even more powerful. However, as Ernest Kurtz pointed out in his book, Shame and Guilt: Characteristics of the Dependency Cycle, shame rarely exists without guilt, or guilt without some shame. Yet it became increasingly clear that men's primary negative affect is shame. Indeed it is shame that induces the striving to excel, competitiveness, the need to control, the whole macho trip. In short, when mothers socialize their male children, they not only convey to the boys that they are different, but also that they are different in a bad way: that they are morally inferior to females, because they are male.
COMPENSATIONThere is another pertinent concept I want to introduce here. In 1912, Alfred Adler pointed out that when someone feels inferior in some important way, they have an intense need to find other ways in which they can perceive themselves as superior. He referred to this as COMPENSATION. I have experienced this myself. For example, as a kid, I was really poor at sports, so I compensated by working very hard to get top grades at school. I've also heard workers bragging about how they can out-work their bosses. I suspect that all of us have witnessed this phenomenon of compensation, either in ourselves or in other people. The result of the ways in which men feel inferior, and especially morally inferior, is that men have a desperate need to compensate. And men compensate in their areas of perceived superiority, such as job skills, leadership, and the whole macho trip. An important aspect of shame is that it induces in men the feeling that they deserve to be punished, and that the oppression they experience is this deserved punishment. The result of this is that we men tend to be trapped in our oppression. But even though we may feel that our oppression is justified, the oppression does, I believe, still create feelings of anger and rage, particularly aimed at women's attitudes of moral superiority. And men do, as I think we are all aware, sometimes express their rage in physically violent ways. It appears to me that most men can not openly stand up to the moral self-righteousness and the attitude of moral superiority of feminists. What I see happening a great deal is men toadying to the feminist line in public and then simply passively resisting changes. The result is that changes are coming extremely painfully, if at all. After 20 years of feminists' struggles, it is claimed that the average income of women workers has changed very little in comparison with men's. Because of their feelings of shame, men often buy into feminist perspectives and seem unable to recognize that there can be differing male perspectives. I referred earlier to the Conferences on Men and Masculinity at which the leaders simply could not deal with the issue of men's oppression. They actually denied that men's oppression even exists. In effect, what they said is that it is only men, and not also morally superior women, who cause the problems in male-female interrelations. I maintain that these men are reveling in a most severe form the Shame of Maleness. As a result of these experiences, I have concluded that one of the most common expressions of this shame among men working for social change is the attitude that women's oppression is so much worse than is men's. This is typical of the traditional male role, in which we are taught to discount and deny our own hurt and pain. Of course it is hard to compare economic and political oppression which women experience more, with the emotional, psychological and moral oppression which men experience more. However, I suspect that we will never advance very far in the human liberation struggle until we either stop comparing, or until we assume that both men's and women's forms of oppression are equally in need of elimination. We need to quit comparing them and just assume that men will work on defining and eliminating our own oppression while women will work on theirs. We need to listen to each other when each gender describes how the other gender's largely socially conditioned attitudes and behaviors hurt them, both male or female. And we need to then strive to modify our behavior accordingly. Without this attitude change, I believe men will continue to be in the "one down" position of moral inferiority, which drives men to compensate with other areas of perceived superiority. The macho role, which leads to the whole insane arms race, is the primary form of compensation for men. This says to me that the only way to end the arms race is to eliminate men's perceived moral inferiority. Instead, the tendency of feminists is to make men feel even more ashamed, and so the insanity increases even more. Since women derive a great deal of power from manipulating men's shame, I conclude that men's feelings of moral inferiority and Shame of Maleness are implanted by mothers, grade school teachers, and of course throughout the entire society. But, of course, the reality is that both boys and girls have far more contact with women than they do with men when they are young. Because shame permits women to manipulate and control men, it gives women immense power over men. But I find that feminists, and indeed most women, tend to deny this power. I suspect that this is because this is one of women's main sources of power, and they do not want it to be recognized and challenged.
BLAMEAnother problem we encounter is the phenomenon of BLAME. Feminists blame men for behaving the way we have been socially conditioned to behave (largely by women). I believe blame is simply inappropriate when we are dealing with socially conditioned behavior patterns. Blame implies choice, and I don't believe there is much choice involved when we behave the way we have been socially conditioned to behave. I find that when I speak of women's socially conditioned behavior patterns and the way they harm men, I get the response that I am blaming women for doing this. But that is not what I am trying to say. I think the level of blame is very limited when one is behaving according to one's socialized roles and before one has been alerted to how these roles damage persons of the other gender. But because men have intense feelings of shame, it is very easy for women to use blame to control and manipulate men. And so women fall into the pattern of doing so. By so doing, they are increasing men's oppression. I personally feel that women cannot liberate themselves by maintaining or increasing men's oppression, which is what I see happening. So it seems to me it is in women's best interest to begin serious efforts to examine and change these behavior patterns which oppress men. Feminists are demanding that we men give up attitudes that we are superior to women, but they are unwilling to give up their attitudes about their so-called superiority to men. To the extent that this is a conscious choice, there is room for blame. Betty Friedan, in her book, It Changed My Life, stated: "female chauvinism perverted--and aborted--the first wave of women's revolution in America...the notion that women as a class were purer and morally superior..." She went on to say that she hoped that this would not interfere with the struggle in the present situation. I'm sorry, Betty, but it already has, and very severely! In fact, it is perverting and aborting it again. Both men and women are male chauvinists. Both men and women are female chauvinists. We see, for example, the traditional male wanting to marry a virgin--a woman he can visualize as morally superior. A very upset woman friend described to me her experience with several men. They continued urging her to share sex with them, and then when she did, they no longer had any interest in her. If I were a woman, I would be madder than hell with this kind of experience. But she needs to understand that the reason it happens is because men have this perception of women as morally superior. When a woman goes to bed with a man, she has lowered herself to his level, so it is only logical that he is now no longer interested in her. We are all going to have to make some changes in attitudes towards women's presumed moral superiority before that kind of situation can be eliminated. If women continue to maintain their attitudes of moral superiority, men will be forced to keep their areas of job and leadership superiority, and equality will not be gained. Still, we are seeing some gains for women in the areas of jobs and leadership. As a result, men appear to be turning to vicarious means of expressing their superiority. For example, the tremendous growth of professional sports, especially the violent sport of football, is an expression of men seeking vicarious ways of expressing superiority to compensate for their perceived moral "inferiority". In looking at the ways men's perceived moral inferiority hurts men, it seems to me that men's areas of perceived superiority are poor solace. These feelings of moral inferiority and the feelings of shame associated with them, the feeling that we deserve our oppression, really appear to paralyze most men, so that they really cannot struggle effectively to free themselves of their oppression. I think this explains why men so seldom, if ever, have organized against their own oppression. For me, this makes it by far a more terrible oppression than women experience. After all, women have an oppression that is overt. You can see it. You can get angry about it. You can change it much more easily than you can change something that is so subtle, so covert, so much harder to deal with, and where you consequently are locked in to it. If I were convinced that most feminists were seriously committed to equality, I would think we would need to tell them, "If you really want equality, then you are going to have to help men." Because if men are trapped, then feminists must help men cast off their perceived moral inferiority. This will require of women that they examine their mind-sets, and give up their own perceptions of themselves as morally superior to men. Also, feminists are going to have to quit using shame to manipulate men. This will require a 180-degree turn for feminists. For example, when trying to get legislation passed, shame has been one of the major vehicles feminists have used, and for a short time it worked. But the problem is that men do develop feelings of anger, and so they do develop passively resistive ways of subverting the struggle for alleged equality. Another aspect we need to examine is the perpetual accusation that women are perceived by men as sex objects, given that almost no one takes issue with the fact that men are equally perceived by women as economic objects. Money tends to be in shorter supply for women than for men, and women tend to evaluate a man on the basis of his economic status or potential, both for dating and for marriage. What happens is that each gender values in the other gender those things that are in short supply for themselves.
SEXUAL DESERT AND RAIN FORESTAs women grow up, sex tends to be like water is in a rain-forest. Not only is there all they want, but more is constantly being pushed at them. It is like slogging through water, and finding one's clothes wet and mildewed. On the other hand, men are raised in a desert as far as sex is concerned. And, of course, if you live in a desert, water becomes very important. In a desert, one searches the skies looking for any indication that it might rain. Men develop the feeling that sex is important because it is scarce, and they search for any indication that a woman might be interested in sex with them. The result is that women feel they must be careful about expressing affection to a man because he may think she wants to share sex with him. This is a direct result of the sexual desert condition that men live in. Another result of this sexual desert for men is that sexual teasing by women, and the attitude of sexual moral superiority, are far greater violence to men than most women recognize. It can be compared to a situation where a man has cookouts with his friends on regular occasions. He has a dog penned up in the yard, and just before he cooks his steaks, he and his friends take the steaks and wave them in front of the unfed dog, jerking them away before she can grab them. After they do this several different days, not surprisingly the dog gets angry. Done often enough by different men, the dog will develop feelings of rage at all men. Then, if the dog gets out of the cage, she might attack the first man she encounters. One could say that this is an evil dog attacking an innocent man. But realistically, what the men were doing to the dog was cruel and sadistic, and I see the dog's response as a violent response to that earlier violence. A similar situation applies to men and women. When women engage in sexual teasing, this is cruel and sadistic behavior, and men react with anger at this violence. Sometimes, this ongoing violence generates rage in men, and sometimes this rage explodes in physical violence towards a woman. And it may make little difference who the person attacked is, as long as it is a woman. The earlier violence to the man does not, of course, justify his violence to the woman. However, women's violence to men through sexual teasing is equally unjustifiable. It should be labeled and treated as the violence that it is, and equally condemned. Indeed, this systematic violence by women toward men is going to have to end if men's violence toward women is going to end. People do, after all, respond violently to violence, whether it is justified or not. We read a lot of criticism of the use of women's bodies in advertising. Yet one cannot use something that is in adequate supply as a come-on in advertising. It is only something that is in short supply that can be used effectively. That is why women's bodies can be used effectively in advertising and men's bodies cannot. In short, what we can regularly find is that there is an equally serious problem experienced by men for every serious problem experienced by women. It is important that men work at defining these problem areas, these areas of oppression. When we become able to tell women the ways that their behavior oppresses us, and become able to demand that women change those hurtful behaviors, just as women have been demanding that we men change the behaviors that hurt them, then I think we are going to be able to work together to achieve equality between men and women. This will not be equality for 51% of the population, as so much feminist literature advocates, but for 100% of the population. Roy Schenk
|
|||
 MENSIGHT TMC Home
E-mail:
, Webmaster |
||||
