Pro-Man, Anti-Patriarchy

Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. I'm a relationship and sex coach who's worked for 24 years with executives and business founders and by popular demand I have focused on their intimate relationships for the past dozen or so years as they sought my coaching to push the envelope on how good they could have it in life and love and sex. My extraordinary high performance clients have blessed me with a wealth of knowledge about how to create relationships that aren't just successful, but are truly great. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex to help you create those same world class results in your relationships. This episode is for every man who's ever felt attacked by people talking about smashing patriarchy like he wasn't safe or respected as a good, kind person, like he was being unfairly rounded up with oppressive or harmful people whose behaviors and attitudes he didn't share. This episode is for every woman who wants to help men around her understand how patriarchy hurts her, but also how it hurts them as well, regardless of individual attitudes. This episode is for every person who wants to gain awareness of how systems of oppression operate on all levels, not just societally, but inside our most intimate relationships and even between our own ears. I'm creating this episode in response to a letter I got from a longtime reader and listener in my community. He gave me the gift of his candid and vulnerable feedback and he asked a question about something I said. I'm going to read you his letter and then I want to share my thoughts in response. So first, to this listener, you know who you are and I thank you. Here's what he wrote. Hello Michelle, I'm a fan of your podcasts and newsletters and communication with you has always impressed me. In the mail below, I had sent him an email about a podcast and I said I put it in the context, quote unquote, of smashing the patriarchy. So I was putting something in the context of smashing the patriarchy and I had tied to recognitions about how psychological patriarchy plays out in relationships and I had put that into the podcast episode, as I often do. He goes on, that was my quote there. He goes on to say, I did listen to the podcast and I don't think I fully understand what you meant by that. While I can guess where the sentiment is coming from, and I'm sure that no offense is intended, it felt very jarring to me. I looked up the definition of patriarchy and found more than one. I assume in the context that you're using it. It means a system where men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. I agree nobody should wield power based on their gender, and certainly nobody should be excluded from power because of it either. In recent times, especially in the us there's certainly much of this negative mentality that should be abolished. I, however, am a single father and by other definitions of the word, the patriarch or leader of my family, which includes my mother, who lives with me. While I don't have patriarch on my business card, and neither I nor my children ever refer to me as such, it did leave me emotionally charged. I'd like to think that I'm a good father and a loving man. There are societies where the matriarch is dominant, for presumably we would both object to matriarchy or any other exclusionary approach to power, if that's what we're talking about. However, your mail didn't say smash the abuse of power quote unquote. It referred only to the toxic masculine incarnation. If I had replied smash the matriarchy, how would that have landed? I've had the privilege of having many matriarchs mentor me in my life. I would never want to smash their power. This is a long way to come to my point. As a parenthesis white straight man, I have long felt that my voice is not welcome, that because of my privilege, my problems may only be addressed once the more important inequities are resolved. If I do say something, then other men are quick to silence me, or women to shame me. My belief is, however, that as long as one sex wins, both sexes lose. To quote Warren Farrell and I don't know who Warren Farrell is, but that's who he quoted. Which is to say I am against inequality of any kind. If men and women are to live in harmony, then both should feel like their struggles and pains are important and that they're safe to speak. So in short, albeit without hearing your side of the story, I'm not left feeling safe. I would love to hear your side of the story. Kind regards. And then I took out his name and I'll just call him white straight male not feeling safe. So first I just want to say thank you for this candid message. I think this really illustrates what a lot of men feel, and a lot of them don't have the courage to say directly to someone who just said I want to smash the patriarchy. So I thought that it was a really ripe opportunity for us to bring this into the conversation and have some dialogue about the experience that people of privilege can have when we're talking about dismantling the structures that keep that privilege in place at the expense of other people. So I'm just going to answer straight up, as much as I can, what do I mean by smash the patriarchy? And I don't have to use language that incendiary I do want to dismantle patriarchy. I do want to create liberation for us all. So which systems do I want to dismantle? The systems I'm devoted to dismantling aren't just the larger societal system a patriarchy where, as my listener said, men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it, quote unquote. And I would add there that the systems of oppression that we have in our culture are intersectional. They accord privilege on the basis of gender identity and other axes that include sexual orientation, race, religion, and more. So in the name of humanity, of liberation, and of the viability of our species surviving on this planet, it is vital that we co create more just, equitable systems. And in my work with couples and in my own marriage, I've learned a lot about how these systems play out on the most intimate personal levels. And that was what I was referring to in the podcast intro that I emailed out. So the patriarchy that I'm most engaged in dismantling is psychological patriarchy. And what is psychological patriarchy? It's the emotional and mental and energetic dynamics that we labor under when we've been acculturated. That biological gender determines certain traits about us and that we can't move outside those without censure, whether that censure is explicit or just tacit. The censure comes from the system when we step outside those. So psychological patriarchy is a thought system that's omnipresent in Western culture, but it's almost always unnamed and invisible. You might not have heard of it until just now. I didn't hear about it until the last 10, 15 years or so. And naming it really changes how we see a lot of what we have thought of before that as how men are, how women are, and how relationships work. Psychological patriarchy hurts everybody, but it hurts us in different ways because it tells each of us that we have legitimate access to only part of the spectrum of human qualities. Psychological patriarchy, it doesn't recognize the gender galaxy. It doesn't recognize that gender is not binary. It only recognizes male and female as the only viable genders. And it says that some traits are essentially male and others are essentially female. And as such, psychological patriarchy paints us into corners, separate Corners men in one, women in another. And if you don't identify as male or female, or you're not cisgendered, male or female, that is, your identity matches with the gender that was assigned at birth based on what your genitals looked like, then you're painted out of the picture entirely. So the effect of psychological patriarchy on women is that we get trained to be emotional, to be intuitive, to be concerned with relationships and with other people, to be oriented around being nice, being pleasant, being easy to get along with, and making other people feel comfortable and getting our safety from being able to do that. Psychological patriarchy affects men by telling them if they're emotional, if they're vulnerable, if they're intuitive, they can't be logical, forceful, directive, action oriented, making things happen, achievement oriented, performance oriented, then there's something wrong with them. And, and what's at stake inside psychological patriarchy? What's at stake for a man if he goes against any of those edicts? What's at stake is the loss of his privilege inside patriarchy. So white men are at the top of the pyramid of privilege inside patriarchy. They have more access to power and choice than anybody else. So certainly men do sacrifice some of those things. My listener is a single parent and a caregiver, it sounds like, for not only his children, but his mother. Men who participate actively in caring for other people sacrifice some privilege in order to do that. There are ways that psychological patriarchy and our patriarchal culture would say that that's weak, that that work is less valuable than the work that we do commercially. So if you're making career sacrifices in order to be more present for your family, there's a trade off in the eyes of the patriarchy. Even if in the eyes of your spouse, your children, and your own heart, you're winning, there's a level on which you lose. And that's one of the ways that the patriarchy costs men. Patriarchy also costs men in a slew of physiological ailments that result from suppressing emotions. To the extent that any one man does that, it costs men friendship with other men. The vulnerability of being able to say what's scary, what hurts, where their feelings are hurt, where they don't feel safe. And clearly my listener is self expressed with me, at least in such a beautiful way. He's standing in defiance of that definition already. But time and again in my own marriage and in my clients marriages, I see the effect of psychological patriarchy on relationships. And it goes along the lines of two people come in, but One of them has been taught to attend to the relationship, to think about how close are we? How much passion and connection is there between us? How much true intimacy are we really seeing into one another's worlds? Are we drawing close? Do each of us have a finger on the pulse of our own inner world and our sense of well being? And are we able to transmit that to each other? And the other person has been trained to show up and try to keep things on an even keel, to try to please their spouse, but really in a way that shows up time and again as checking the box, like marriage is another performative behavior. I show up for my career, I try to take good care of my health, I try to be a good dad, I try to do right by my spouse. And if I'm not succeeding at that at some point. Frequently men wind up blaming their wives for not being happy with them because, look, I work so hard. I don't know what you want from me. I don't know how to please you. I think you're impossible to please. And what the woman is frequently asking for is the other half of him that patriarchy has cut off. She's asking him to step into his emotional, his intuitive, his passionate, his connected to his own desires side of himself. And he doesn't even know what she's talking about. In the beginning. When they first come to me, it's a foreign language because psychological patriarchy has so wrapped such a tight tourniquet around that part of him. So psychological patriarchy, as I see it, robs us of our intimacy, robs women of their agency. And women have been dismantling that for about 75 years now. And so a lot of women are in connection with that forbidden side of their nature. The driving, the self reliant, the focused, the determined, the ambitious. So women are activating that side of themselves, sometimes cutting themselves off from their more feminine or, you know, characterized as feminine. That's not my word for it, that's the psychological patriarchy word for it. You know, that side of our, that more receptive side of our being that has been deemed as feminine, as the province of women. Women have come to embrace the full spectrum of their human experience or have come to try to be like patriarchal dudes, you know, showing up with all of those heretofore masculine traits and trying to put their feminine traits in the trunk. When I first started to recognize that I needed to integrate both, it was because I had divorced myself from the side of me that was receptive, that needed rest, that was Emotional that longed to be held. And I thought of all of those qualities as either liabilities or luxuries. And I think that that's what patriarchy does. It teaches us that the feminine is less valuable than the masculine. I'm not saying women are less valuable. I'm saying all of those qualities are less valuable. So feminism has allowed women to step into territory in the world that reaches further than a generation or two ago. But psychological patriarchy in our bedrooms is still there and has us still unequally equipped and unequally permitted to step into the territory where intimacy lives. So that's why I wanted to dismantle the psychological patriarchy, so that my husband and all the husbands have permission to be erotic, to have desire, to have emotional hunger, to have vulnerability, to yearn, to be comforted, and to flow between states of activity and receptivity, of self reliance and of connection on a day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute basis. I want more fluidity for us all. My reader wrote, if men and women are to live in harmony, then both should feel like their struggles and pains are important and that they're safe to speak. And naturally, I couldn't agree more, that safety to speak of our troubles and pains and the confidence that what we feel and what we need are going to be validated is really key. And of course, in my work, it's essential that both partners feel safe and seen by me, that they both feel validated in their needs and their desires and their concerns. So I work really hard to ensure that both partners really feel that from me. Having said that, I believe anybody trust trying to help heterosexual couples without addressing directly the power differentials in the relationship, including income generation, physical strength or ability, and gender privilege, is doing that couple a disservice if they ignore fundamental forces at play in the relationship. So if one of you makes more money, we have to notice how that affects the relationship. If one of you is identified as male out there in the world and one of you is identified as female, we have to know what difference that makes inside the relationship. If one of you is physically bigger and stronger, that changes the way that the sense of safety and relative threat work in the relationship. And when we deny those things or ignore them, we can't get to the root of what's going on between the two of you. And that's why I have to name these things. Our equity and our liberation are the foundation of our harmony. But privilege and oppression are baked into our social system. And psychological patriarchy is this whole set of Limiting ideas about men, women, emotions, getting help, being vulnerable, wanting sex, deserving pleasure, having desires and needs, receiving what we desire and need, feeling worthy performance, and even more that really bind us in a thousand ways. And that entire system is what I am here to smash. So I'm so glad that you asked me to elaborate, but now I want to say something that's a little bit more tender because when we look at an individual man's sense of safety after he's read the phrase smash the patriarchy, well, my reader wrote in short, albeit without hearing your side of the story, which I appreciate him nodding to that he wanted to hear my side. He said, I'm not left feeling safe. Now, I think a lot of men feel this way too. They feel not safe with women that they consider feminists, or they feel like they're not given adequate credit for being good men. When they hear women talking about the harm that those women have suffered at the hands of men. When they hear women talking about not trusting men, like, but I'm not like that. Well, not all men are like that. Well, I like to consider myself a good. You know, if you want to call me a patriarch, I'm a good patriarch. And I, like, I do think of my dad as a patriarch. He's, he's the head of a big family and he takes care of everybody. And in that role, I love him so much and so appreciate a patriarch. But that said, it is the function of privilege that everybody orients around keeping that privileged person's emotional comfort level as high as possible because everybody else's well being is dependent upon that person's favor. So I want men to feel safe with me, to feel honored and even loved. I do love men as a group and I come to love my clients individually. And I have huge compassion for the ways that patriarchy wounds men. And just as it's not women's job to be cheerful to make men feel better, it's also not women's job to make men feel comfortable. That unjust systems that disproportionately benefit men at the expense of everyone else are always going to remain standing and won't be spoken ill of. I can't give you that comfort. Now, I know this one from the other side too. I'm a white woman and I know that as a white woman, I am not always comfortable. When I hear black people talk about mistrusting all white people, it can sound unfairly personal. Well, I'm not. But you know what? On examination, I can see that they have all kinds of reasons not to trust me. As someone with white skin privilege, and with a lifetime of experiences with well intentioned white women like me, who are nice as can be until our own privilege or our comfort is threatened, they have reason not to trust me. And then in people's consistent experience, when you poke a white woman or when you poke a man and say, hey, what you do in these situations hurts me, people of privilege will often cry, hey, I'm not safe with you. You're attacking me simply because we feel uncomfortable. But the real question here is when the harm is named, when individuals are called to be accountable, when systems that benefit some at the cost of most are called out as harmful systems like white supremacy, systems like patriarchy, then the privileged parties can feel unsafe. And I put that in quotes here. But it's really a relative reduction in comfort that we're talking about. Is it really a lack of the safety or is it an increase in sensation? Is it a sense that our old version of reality isn't guaranteed as unassailable? And is it possible that inside that direct confrontation with the structures that have been oppressive for others and oppressive for us? As I've been talking about, these structures don't just hurt those they oppress, they actually hurt the privileged too. They rob us of our humanity. Is it possible that by confronting those, we might, at an even deeper level, be more safe than we were before we were confronted in that way? Is it possible that that which is truly of interest, truly life giving to us, is being strengthened by the confrontation? So that's what I am repeatedly inviting clients to consider. That's what I invite the wonderful man who wrote to me to consider. And I invite everyone listening to this to take heart and engage in these conversations. One of my teachers in dismantling systems of oppression is Desiree Attaway, and she speaks of not creating safe spaces by creating brave spaces, spaces where we can, in an empowered way, confront that which is frightening, that which we have to go numb to, to ignore that which harms others, and because we are all connected, has to harm us in the process, cannot not hurt us. So in the show notes I will link to Desiree's work. If you want to do more looking at the structures and the systems and the belief sets and the enculturation that sets us all up to lose. I've gained so much from this work over the past six, seven years or so, Ever since the Charleston church shooting. I just said, wait a minute, I live in a different country than I thought I lived in. I cannot remain this ignorant. I have to learn more, and I set about to do so. And it has been tremendously painful. It has absolutely felt threatening a lot of the time, and it has undeniably brought me more of my humanity and equipped me to better help others confront the places where they are cut off from part of their humanity in order to protect their privilege. So I hope that something I've said today has helped you put a finger on something you've been feeling or thinking. I hope that it's made you a little uncomfortable. I hope that it hasn't actually made you less safe. I hope that it has made you more alive, more awake to the realities of this marvel of being human and living in culture together. I hope that it has helped you see how you can create more truth, more equity, more true intimacy in your relationships, both at home and beyond. I hope we can keep talking about it. So the conversation continues over on the Conscious Couples Circle, and that's@society.lizenberry.com that's a great place to ask your questions and share your experiences. That's where we're creating the conversation about building the love and sex we deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. So please come check it out. The link to the Society is in the show notes@lizenberry.com episode 029 and I would love it if you would leave a review for the podcast because they're hugely helpful in finding new listeners and growing the positive impact that our conversations can have. Please go leave a review right now, wherever you listen, with just a few words about what the show gives you. I would so, so appreciate it. And have you subscribed to the podcast? You're going to want to, so you never miss an episode. Please go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and hit that subscribe button so that you always get notifications of new episodes each week. As for today, so appreciate you listening. Thank you. I am Michelle Lisenberry Christensen, and this has been Sex, Love Power. I'll be back here next week with the next episode and until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.