Circa 2002-2003: I wrote this while I going through my divorce. Though it's dated and in need of substantial revision, I was pleased to rediscover it and to find that something coherent came out of my pain during that time. Others have more eloquently and more substantially discussed these themes--but it was meaningful to me to write it and helped me make sense of a tremendous loss.
I was thinking about Oprah on the way
home and how she doesn’t have time to do a lot of things like answer all of her
mail and shop for groceries and clean her refrigerator. I was thinking how in
order for her to do the work she does she must hire people to help her do these
other things. And I was thinking that it’s OK because other people can clean
the toilets and do a great job, but not everyone can be Oprah Winfrey and do
the things she does for people. She has special gifts to give the world.
Then I was thinking about my own life.
And about the Do vs. Be gender dichotomy.
Men Do and women Be. Supposedly. I think one of the things that led to
my divorce is that somewhere down the road my ex-husband thought I was the only
one who needed to clean the toilets so he could do things to help other people.
That’s a woman’s job, right? They’re there to take care of the mundane things
so the man can focus on worldly things. Men can’t give the world the gifts they
have unless someone frees up their time by cleaning for them and raising their
kids for them and doing their laundry for them and cooking for them and
everything for them. It is a waste of the man's time and energy and gifts to do
that kind of work. And, it should be added, it does nothing for his self
esteem.
To some extent it seems this kind of
hierarchy is necessary. It reminds me of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. These
levels of development work on a societal level, not just on an individual
level. But the problem is that many marriages don't allow both spouses the
opportunity to reach higher levels of development. There is no sense of
self-esteem when what the men do is valued and what the women do is devalued.
After all, anyone can clean a toilet, right?
The reality is that the mundane stuff
never goes away. But it serves a purpose. It must be taken care of first before
the other work can get done. It seems our values are mixed up. Yes, we should
value the people who have special gifts. But we should also value the people
who make it possible for these people to develop and share their gifts. And we
should also create opportunities for all
people to develop and share their gifts.
The wives who do the mundane work so
their husbands can do the more valued work also have gifts to offer the world.
But if they are told that the husband’s gifts are always more important, then
the world lacks the gifts the wife has to offer. If wives and husbands shared
the responsibility for the mundane work, then both would have time to pursue
other work.
There is another problem with the Do
vs. Be dichotomy: It seems that it is not true that women Be and men Do. We say
that, but there is a discrepancy between what we say and how things are. We say
one thing but do another. I’m thinking of a book, Why Women Get Sick,
that I read recently. In it the author points out how women are told they are
weak, but in reality the women are frequently the ones holding everything
together. They are responsible not only for physically holding the family
together, but holding them together emotionally, spiritually, and even
financially in many cases. I think it is incorrect to say that women just have
to Be. We tell ourselves that, but it seems that women Do a lot so that men can
Be. Women buy into the myth that they are dependent on men, but in reality, the
men are dependent on the women. Just as slaveholders were dependent on slaves.
The slaves did all the hard work so the slave owners could be wealthy and powerful.
They tried to convince the slave that s/he was inferior and incapable and it
was his/her place to serve and submit. They wanted control without
responsibility. That is tyranny.
Examples from popular culture
illustrate how families and roles have changed. Shows like Everybody Loves Raymond and Life
According to Jim are examples, I believe, of the traditional family in
transition. Yes, it's great the women's movement has helped empower women, but
it has not done enough to empower men and help them adjust to the changes. Many
men are unsure of their role, and more importantly, they are unsure of the
power they have in that role. They are feeling vulnerable.
Another
characteristic of this of this transition time is that there is no
authenticity. What we say is not what we live. Our performance has not caught
up with our competence. Men know all the right things to say. And women know
all of the right things they would like to hear. Men know how to tell women
they are equal. And women and men think the women are being treated as equal if
the man offers to do dishes and vacuum and watch the kids and change diapers.
The problem is that the men aren't doing these things for the reasons they say.
They don't do them because they think they are responsible for them: they do
them as a favor. They feel like they are doing something above and beyond the
call of duty. They do it because they want to, because it feeds their ego, not
because they feel like they have to.
So what happens when they have to?
Some of the men I know feel resentful and unappreciated. They really haven't
gotten it that it's their responsibility to take care of themselves, let alone
the wife and kids in times of need. That is above and beyond the call of duty,
remember. Because men have never been taught that it's their responsibility—they
have never been taught how to effectively respond—they feel out of control and
overwhelmed. They are used to being taken care of, and when the wife can't take
care of things like she used to, the men have a lot of anxiety. And they often
look for someone else to take care of them.
Many men simply repeat with their
wives what they have learned at work, which is often another example of the
master/slave relationship. Bosses abuse their power to keep their employees
under control. If the boss lets the employees know how talented they are or
that have the means, they might start their own business and compete with him.
That can't be allowed to happen. It's the employees’ job to make the boss
successful. They are paid to only need what the boss needs and wants. They
can't do side work because it's disloyal. All their time and energy must go
toward making the boss rich and powerful and happy and successful. That is
their God-given duty. It's not the boss's job to make the employees rich and
powerful. It should make the employees feel happy and successful when the boss
is happy and successful. That is what they were created for. And how dare they not appreciate all the boss
does for them. Don't they realize they would be nothing without the boss?
Many traditional religious structures
illustrate this hierarchy as well. Many of us have been taught that the
hierarchy is God, then man, then woman, then children. In this system, women
and children never have direct access to God. The man always serves as
mediator. Just as the boss serves as mediator between wealth (and success and
power) and employees.
We see how this kind of rigid
traditional system can be harmful to women, but what about the damage it does
to men? The women may have all of the responsibility but they also have the
tools they need to thrive and be independent if the system collapses. But by
assuming all of the responsibility they deny men the ability to be independent.
Men are just as much a
"victim" of the current system as women. The way the system has worked
has been that the man's needs always come first. Always. That's the hierarchy.
And the woman is supposed to meet all of his needs. Had we taught men and women
that they were responsible for and capable of meeting their own needs themselves,
and had we taught them how to meet them in healthy ways, perhaps they wouldn't
do it in unhealthy ways.
Women have been fighting to dismantle
this system, but some have tried to invert it rather than create something
egalitarian. Some people feel that taking responsibility means blaming someone
else. And many women are resentful for having been oppressed in the old system.
No wonder the men feel threatened. They are now in a position where they feel
dependent and they fear that women will try to control them. They are anxious
about their new responsibilities and feel afraid and ashamed when they can't do
things as well as women because they haven't had practice. They also feel
resentful and defensive. In the old system men were used to being better than. In
the new system, equality feels like a step down.
Another problem we face is that our
definition of respect is changing and that has left both men and women
confused. The old definition of respect was to treat people as you think they
should be treated. It was easy to respect women because the men were the ones
determining how the women should be treated. The women had no say in it. If the
man said it was respectful for him to open the door for the woman, then the
woman couldn't complain he was being disrespectful so long as he was doing the
things he deemed respectful. Never mind if the woman didn't care if he opened
the door. Never mind if what she really wanted was for him to do the dishes.
Another definition of respect is to
treat people as they would like to be treated. But that is difficult for some
men. They don't have a lot of practice at letting wives decide how they want to
be treated. They have more practice at telling them how they should want to be
treated. Allowing others to decide how they want to be treated means
acknowledging that they have needs and desires that are different from your
own. And it means allowing them control of themselves. Men are afraid that
women will try to control them. And they are afraid to feel vulnerable in other
ways. What if the woman wants something the man can't provide? What does that
do to his sense of identity, self esteem, and personal control? Or what if the
woman wants something the man wants for himself? Who comes first? For many men,
compromise means capitulation.
Is a struggle for power inevitable? How
do we empower the men who don't want to be empowered, who don't or won't see
the need for change, or who are afraid to change? What is an appropriate role
for women in all of this?
In many ways, men are at a temporary
disadvantage because in the old system men didn’t think they would have to work
so much themselves to feel successful. After all, if I “had been a good wife,”
my ex told me once, then he would be successful. If he was ever unhappy,
unfulfilled, or unsuccessful then it must be my fault.
I don’t think my first marriage was
really that atypical. Gender roles have changed and it seems like a lot of men
are confused now about their identity and their desires. The old system didn’t
allow women to get their needs met, but we don’t seem to have a new system in
place so that both men and women get their needs met. Again, it seems like
we’re in a transition phase: our performance has not caught up with our
competence. Many men say they feel women are equal. And they do all the
right things: they help cook, they help clean, they change diapers. But they
are secretly still buying into the old system. The actions have changed, but
the values have not.
And in some families when the secret
comes out there is an all out war. Especially when it comes to whose values,
whose definition of respect, which power structure will be passed down to the
children. One of my lit professors, Greg Garvey, posited that the central issue
in Shakespeare’s The Tempest is over who gets to reproduce with Miranda.
In other words, whose values get passed on in the new world—i.e. whose values
get passed on to the kids? There were times in my marriage where I was
literally not allowed to speak. I had to hide books that I was reading for fear
my ex would think I was corrupting his children. The kids and I were not
allowed to have our own identities.
I have wondered if this was a typical
battle between male and female values, between reproduction and transformation:
do men have children out of a desire to reproduce themselves, and women out of
a desire to transform themselves?
I think if men didn't fear that the
new system would be as oppressive to them as the old system is to women that
they would be more willing to work with women to change it. What many men fail
to realize is that they are also oppressed in the traditional system. The king
in the traditional system isn't the man, or even God, it's Fear.
I am reminded of the classic
transcendentalist debate over how to reform society: Do you change individuals
or institutions?
Individuals must change themselves.
You can't change them. But when institutions change, that forces/facilitates
change in individuals. The way to change individuals, then, is to give them the
opportunity to change themselves.
A metaphor I came up with while having
to contemplate divorce:
I
feel like a slave who thinks the only way to truly be free is to reform the
system, which means to create conditions so that each person may free him or
herself.
I changed when I went to college, and
as a result I changed the structure of my marriage which put pressure on my
ex-husband to change. Like many men, he feared and resisted that change and we
ended up with a war.
My
ex wanted things to stay the same. And he keeps trying to relive the past. He
believes that the old system is the best for him; therefore, it should be best
for everyone. He was accurate to perceive my trying to change things as a
threat to his values. He may continue to feel that he needs a wife to serve him
so he can achieve success. He may continue to define success as having others
be dependent on him. He may prefer tyranny.
I don't think that's where we're
headed though. Change is inevitable. So how do we change the institutions of
marriage and family in our society in order to help facilitate the highest level
of development for everyone? Who cleans the toilets? How do they do it and not
be resentful or wither up?
What I have discovered is that
sometimes the only way to change an institution is to refuse to participate in
it. I kept trying to create conditions so my ex could free himself, when really
I simply needed to free myself.
Freedom is responsibility.
Margaret Fuller believed that if we
could make marriage egalitarian, we could change the world. Maybe the work I'm
doing is enough for now. Maybe it feels like I'm trying to change the world
because in my own small way I am.
No wonder my ex felt threatened. It is
a shame, though, that he was too afraid to see that what I wanted was for us to
change our world together.
