First up is my husband. Fortunately, we are both very cerebral. We love talking about everything, and anything. Not just surface, but digging around within the roots of the ideas to see what we can do to make those ideas personally applicable and therefore even more meaningful/useful. For this journey into enhancing the relationship between the genders, he's going to be an invaluable guide and guinea pig.
Second up is Alison Armstrong, the lady who founded Celebrating Men/Satisfying Women. Most everything I'll be talking about comes from her work, though it's all been through the discussion wringer with the hubby and it's also been modified by my own sociological and psychological studies over the years. I'll be quoted Alison extremely often and I've urged every single woman I've ever even come into contact with the study Alison's work. It's vital. There is soooo much needless suffering on the part of both genders over simple, easily avoidable communication differences that it just breaks my heart.
After I wrote that very long Background piece, something struck me. It was like a light bulb went off and I could see the original hurt which has been festering unrecognized in the hearts of western women for centuries. The truly shocking part? Men had no idea. I talked about it with the hubby and he did one of those unconscious body reeling back moves, blinked as he processed it, and was completely baffled. "I can see it, but ... it doesn't make sense." Not to the Male mind!
What the heck am I talking about?
Okay. Throw yourself back before the Industrial Revolution. If you've studied anything about that phenomenon, you'll realize it was largely a textile revolution. Documentation of the time illustrates that the women of the home, who could do weaving and spinning AT home, were valuable contributors to the success of the household. There are plenty of images of women pulling plows and doing all manner of work, as needed, around the farm. Suddenly, almost overnight, everything that a woman could take pride in as being a contributor, vanished. Cotton gin, automated looms, mechanical spinning wheels. These made her contribution ... pointless. She goes from being a valued member of the household to being a servant.
Shifting away from an agrarian culture to an industrial one not only rendered her at-home contributions moot, they also took the man away. In Germanic culture, of which English is a direct descendant, has a very, very long history of women following their men. Unlike other cultures in which the women stayed behind and the men assimilated into their new homelands by taking native wives (look at the Vikings, the French, the Spanish, etc), the Germanic cultures expected their women to follow. And woe unto any man who thought his woman would willingly stay behind! As the Germanics invaded the British Isles, they conquered so thoroughly and so brutally that the place name of London is about the only native one left. This is a classic sign of the natives being not only defeated, but wiped out - or at least completely dispossessed. There's no one left to ask "what's this river called?", leaving the new conquerors the task of naming everything. You don't get that level of conquering without having your women following in the wake of that destruction. Flash forward to the 1400/1500s and you see images of the feared German mercenaries, and right behind them were their women, massive baskets on their backs, trudging after their men folk all over Europe on campaign. We're not talking washerwomen here, we're talking wives as well. This mindset is seen again during the colonizing of the New World, in which the working women went right along with their men (Germania settled in 1714, for example). Given that, does it make sense that these Germanic women would suddenly abandon that tradition? Or does it make more sense that she would continue to follow in the footsteps of her man? He goes off to work, guess what? She wants to go off to work too. Insulting her with that Weaker Sex crap is just going to piss her off, and that's exactly what it did.
I know that's terribly broad strokes, but I'm trying to find a generalized mindset. I'm of Germanic heritage, and so that Cultural Shadow is buried deep, influencing me as long as I do not fully recognize it.
So - back to the industrial/textile revolution. From her perspective, all her jobs other than raising the kids and cleaning/cooking have now been devalued. It also means she is now wholly dependant on what he decides to bring home, because she can no longer support herself, and the law is not on her side. If he dies? *shudder* It's easy then to not recognize the value in what remains, to feel overall devalued, childishly dependant, to lose a great deal of self-respect. This combination can easily lead to resentment. From HER perspective.
Reading Alison's book "Keys to the Kingdom", she made a statement about the post WWII refusal to go back to being dependant. The hubby paused and said "That's not right." We launched into a discussion about the man's idea that life is a series of jobs. Whoever can do that job best is the one who should do it. Then the men went off to war, and since he served in combat arms he knows full well how much the men needed to go home to their women and try to resume some semblance of 'normal'. And when they get home, guess what? Those women refused. As he spoke, I could catch a glimpse of the gender shadow sense of betrayal in what he was saying. From HIS perspective, she had never been devalued. Her role as inspiration, motivation, the very reason for doing anything at all, for striving to be a better man, is what she contributes most. And by focusing instead on working, from his (generalized) perspective, she (generalized) walked off the job.
Wow. All of that coalesced for me and I could hear the woman's gender shadow grumbling irately. I want self-respect, dignity, to feel valued.
Oddly enough, I've never asked him what he wants. I thought I knew. So asked him, "What do YOU value that I can provide?" I was stunned by the answer. It took me quite a while to wrap my head around it. REALLY? THAT?!? It never once crossed my mind, and even hearing it, it still didn't make sense.
What am I talking about? I've already mentioned it:
"Her role as inspiration, motivation, the very reason for doing anything at all, for striving to be a better man, is what she contributes most."
As one fellow said, "look at who has been dying for who all these millennia, and tell me you honestly think men don't value women." Bruno Mars says largely the same thing in his song Grenade:
To give me all your love
is all I ever asked,
'Cause what you don’t understand is
I’d catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I’d jump in front of a train for ya
You know I’d do anything for ya
I would go through all this pain,
Take a bullet straight through my brain,
Yes, I would die for ya baby;
But you won’t do the same
is all I ever asked,
'Cause what you don’t understand is
I’d catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I’d jump in front of a train for ya
You know I’d do anything for ya
I would go through all this pain,
Take a bullet straight through my brain,
Yes, I would die for ya baby;
But you won’t do the same
I have to wonder why. What is it about women in general, as an abstract concept, that has men willing to do that? Is this the true power of the Feminine?
"All I want to do is to make you happy. Genuinely, gushingly, overflowingly happy. Whatever it takes, that's what I'd do."
Am I (Woman) really that powerful a muse? If so, why have I devalued it? Why can't I see that within myself? Most importantly, how can I reclaim, nay, embody that aspect of the Feminine consciously?
This is my journey. And now you know where I'm starting from. Walk with me.
- Lioness (in training)
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