Mansplaining

[nashvillebrook]

So...it's been a while since checking in at RI, and I had to check out this thread b/c just last night I had heard a perfect example of "whitesplaining" and was playing with the whole idea of 'splaining in general. Nice synchronicity.

'Splaining in general says as much about how we legitimize ideas, as it says about gender/race/etc. It's a powerful notion that we don't actually require statements to correspond to reality to call them true. Rather, we require that the right people convey legitimacy to them.

And that's where gender/race/wealth/identity come into play. This manner of truth-seeking is easily corruptible with regard to political matters.

The 'whitesplaining' thing was heard on Sirius Left, Mark Thompson's "Make It Plain" show. He's a black radio host and was doing a segment on coded language and dogwhistles. All these white folks called in to take issue with him, saying that he was being racist for calling out racism in coded language, b/c you know, if they (white people) didn't catch the subtext, then it doesn't exist. And furthermore they accused Thompson of creating racial tension when "there was none," as far as they're concerned. This blew his mind...and mine. It was so blatant and obvious and these folks (a man and a woman...two different callers) just refused to recognize it, and 'splained to Thompson that it therefore didn't exist.

So, it's not about whether something is "explained." It's about who's perception is legitimate.

This isn't always about abuse or straight-line authority...it's about whether or not someone is being robbed of their point of view, their perception, and the validity of their experience. I had a pretty authoritarian mother, but she didn't try to invalidate my experience. I've had some amazing professors who were towering intellects, and rather than deny my point of view, they helped me find better ways to communicate it.

The author of the article in the OP wants to have the political discussion about mansplaining...which focuses on the "who" of the matter. I think that by remembering what the "what" of the matter is, makes this easier to understand. The "what" is that: in a world where truth is fluid, power-over games can be deployed to rig the playing field. And so, it's a very radical and beautiful thing for a woman or person of color to stand up for their experience. It's not called em-power-ment for nothing.

[Kristine Rosemary]

I especially liked the part where the author's friend had to say 'that is her book' three or four times before the old rich Aspen explainer could hear her. Isn't that interesting the way women's voices are just like a dog whistle, way above the average male's range of hearing.

[jlaw172364]

@ProjectWillow

What I meant about the anecdotes is that you can list four or five stories and make a phenomenon out of it.

"So you are intimate enough with the author to say with authority this only happened to her a few times, or... she just hates men so she has to make this shit up, or we're all just being deceived by our lying female brains, or what?"

No, but maybe I should come up with a term for putting words in someone elses mouth, and then make it gender-specific and pretend like only women do it as if it were a gender-based defect. I never said she lied about it. I just think that it's a superfluous poodle complaint from somebody ensconced in so much privilege that they've lost touch with things worth complaining about.


As far as I'm concerned, everybody's so-called authority stands on shaky ground.

"Except your own. You are so confident that you know more about what it's like to be a woman you can dismiss a group of us here and then lecture us on how the world really works."

No, clearly I would fall into the category of "everybody," otherwise I would have typed, "everybody but me." And are you saying that only OTHER people on here are allowed to lecture about how civilization works? But that would be discriminating against myself.


"This isn't a patriarchy because, did you see those few broads who were allowed to speak on television, to hold elected office, to do a man's job, to become rich?!"

This doesn't reflect my lived experience, although it reflects a historical reality of women being denied entry into holding offices and doing certain jobs. I suppose the 55% of women who attended the large state university I went to have all received clitoral circumcisions and are part of some wealthy warlord's harem by now, as our the 50% of the women I went to law school with, as well as all the female law professors and administrators.

What was true 40 years ago has changed in many parts of the world.

The apex predator wealthy don't care what creed, race, gender, or sexual orientation their servants are. They just want obedient workers who don't make too many demands. They like to divide and conquer by pitting people against each other and encouraging them to fight each other over relatively trivial differences like which fictional deity they pray to, or which geographical realm they inhabit, or the tiny fraction of DNA that determines their skin pigmentation, or whether they inhabit a male or female body, or which uglies they prefer to bump with. That's their ruling strategy.

I also note that you DENY or IGNORE that vast swathes of the male population are oppressed, brainwashed, subjugated, abused, jailed, raped, conscripted and slaughtered wholesale by equating their very real suffering with poodle complaints (the male equivalent of women complaining about the female poodle complaint of mansplaining) about domineering female associates. I guess oppression is only noteworthy when it happens to women, and men just get what they deserve.

Well, at least you wrote that "men get hurt too," the understatement of the year.

You're basically guilty of the gaslighting you're accusing me of.

If you're abused by a woman, nobody even believes you. And if you're a man, they tell you to man up and walk it off.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 67688.html

Did you ever lay awake at night worrying that you might conscripting against your will into being a soldier and being forced onto a battlefield where you can either kill or maim under duress or be killed or maimed? Probably not. But I guess that's no big deal, since ALL us men LIKE to kill, so war is fun for all of us.

I guess all the men who died on the battlefield got what they deserved, including these guys:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather

I like this quote:

"The writer Compton Mackenzie, then a serving soldier, complained about the activities of the Order of the White Feather. He argued that these "idiotic young women were using white feathers to get rid of boyfriends of whom they were tired."

I wonder how many went to jail for getting rid of their boyfriends . . . .

BTW, I predict you'll ignore everything I've written because it doesn't fit into your reality tunnel.

@KristineRosemary

Maybe the rich old male Aspener was slightly deaf, senile, drunk, drugged, or some combination thereof and not merely a garden variety male chauvinist. When people start talking they tend to stop listening.

[marycarnival]

How is it possible that now and then you hear men and women complain about a woman acting domineering over co-workers, having a "man wrapped around her finger", having a really petty attitude, misusing her power as a cop/gym teacher/company head/etc if only men can be mean and nasty? I mean they are only rumors and whispers...but it can't be possible.

Btw, if there is going to be mansplaining...then there needs to be hagsplaining, hipstersplaining, yuppysplaining, ghettosplaining, backwoodsplaining, yogaaddictsplaining, potsmokinghippysplaining,
religiousplaining, etc.

Thank you.

[compared2what?]

BTW, I predict you'll ignore everything I've written because it doesn't fit into your reality tunnel.

Thanks for explaining that. And thanks also for your candor.

[barracuda]

How to spot completely miserable women

You can see it in the eyes. Vacant, sort of glassy, dark and distant as if staring into a cave full of nails from a thousand miles – and a million joyful lifetimes – away.

It moves on to the skin, pale and ill-fitting like a mannequin in a human costume, like it’s not the slightest bit comfortable in there, closing around a sallow tightness of the mouth and lips, maybe a severity of haircut, the sweater buttoned a bit too tight and the collar cutting circulation to the vital organs, but most especially and obviously, to the heart.

Do you see it? Do you see it, most frequently and with a tragic sigh, in the women of the GOP, from the senseless female candidates themselves (Hi, Ms. Bachmann!) to the sallow wives and disoriented daughters of the ultraconservative males who fear and detest everything real women represent?

You know the look. You’ve seen it a million times, this “Oh my God how did I get here,” this “How can this really be my life,” this look of deep and long-muted pain and/or dull resignation (Hi, Mrs. Vitter!), the long rusted-over knowledge that choices have been made and there was no other way, even though there was, even though there still is.

Know this now: I do not care a whit for Todd Akin, and neither do you. No one really cares about Todd Akin. He’s already a tiny political footnote. He joins a long line of GOP crackpots who believe the most inane things. He has made it fantastically clear he possesses the soul of rotten broccoli and his 2.7 minutes of fame are pretty much complete.

But Akin did a wondrous thing: He generously revealed a particularly cruel aspect of the dark heart of the GOP not normally so clearly revealed, by way of a fantastic blunder about “legitimate rape” that exposed so many layers of ignorance and misogyny it stunned even the most resolutely jaded Americans, even moderate Republican Americans. And that’s saying something.

News flash: Akin’s comment wasn’t really all that radical. It’s boilerplate GOP misogyny. Did you know Paul Ryan co-sponsored a bill banning the use of federal money for abortions except for those stemming from “forcible rape” (as opposed to the other kind)? Akin’s statement was GOP-approved; he just happened to state it more stupidly, more hatefully than most. There is no news here. Let us move on.


Behold, three of the most miserable women
you will ever see. (Photo by Jeff Roberston/AP)

Let us move on to… Akin’s wife. There is Lulli, standing next to her man as if dipped in concrete, tight-lipped and hard as a frying pan, looking for all purposes like someone removed her heart 40 years ago and replaced it with a brick.

Akin’s wife appears to us as a wan facsimile of a vibrant, authentic female, something not altogether real, unmoving and unblinking as her husband tries to backpedal violently, saying “No no no, of course rape is a terrible thing, of course women should never get raped, and that’s why I sure hope they stop asking for it very soon because angry Jesus does not like it one little bit.”

What do you think is going through Lulli’s mind in this photo? How many layers of willful denial, how many blinders must be in place in order to stand up there and not reach over and punch her husband in the face?

Is she truly proud of her man? Is part of her thinking, “Oh please, rape ain’t so bad, most of those hussies probably deserved it”? Is she thinking, “Dear God, what has become of my life?” Or is she thinking, maybe, with a hint of abject sadness, of the terrible icepick of fear and misogyny she and her husband have drilled into their six children, and particularly their daughters?

Oh my God, the daughters. Just look. Look at the two Akin managed to drag on stage with him. It is they who inspired this column. It is they who have a look in their eye like they’ve just been made to swallow a fistful of broken glass. Again.

It is impossible not to extrapolate, not to interpret those expressions as a kind of numbed-out revulsion. It’s clear they’ve been forced to get on stage with their father as a show of family “solidarity,” as if to prove that not all women detest Todd Akin, that, when it comes to the GOP, even a mildly powerful white man can still force women to do his bidding, even after insulting and demeaning them so horribly he should be ashamed to speak to his daughters for a solid year.

Their look is impossible to ignore. Are they plotting their escape? Are they devising ways to reveal Todd’s gay porn collection on Twitter? Are they wondering, deep down, what they did in past lives to deserve the karma of this one?

They are young. They perhaps do not yet know the true depths of their disquiet, how violently they have been misled. But it looks like they suspect it. They know something is deeply, deeply wrong. Tick tock, Todd.

Which of those girls, would you wager, will soon break away from this nightmare? Which one will grab the first opportunity to travel to San Francisco or maybe Paris or Tokyo and have her mind blown open by art and sex and love, wine and yoga and the madhouse kaleidoscopic offerings of the world? Which one will hence run screaming from the bitter shell of a life the Akins’ have forced them to live? Both? Let’s hope it’s both.


An all-time classic. David Vitter talks
about his fondness for hookers, as his wife
looks like she’s being beaten by 10,000 sighs
(Photo by Alex Brandon/AP)

Let us be clear. Let us be fair. Certainly not all Republican women – or daughters – are thusly repressed and miserable. Certainly many consciously, even enthusiastically choose their path, and many believe the Republican platform is righteous and good, despite how it hates them and believes they are lesser, weaker, ill-suited to play in the Big Game, much less make their own decisions about their vaginas, their identities, their reproductive powers.

Of course some Republican women lead full and terrific lives, run the household, are the backbone of their families, don’t care a whit that their rights and basic identities as women are sneered at by their party every day, so long as that party continues to protect the “sanctity” of the usual overbearing institutions: family, church, corporations, the military and the unborn Jesus fetus guns of intolerant married gay blah blah blah… wait, what was I saying again? Right. Who cares.

Hello, two young daughters of Todd Akin up there on that stage. I see you. We see you. And we here in the land of the messy and the free-spirited, the progressive and the open-souled, we hereby band together and offer up a prayer, a dirty, wonderful, wild, unfettered blessing to you. Ready?

It goes like this: We hereby hope you will soon find a away to escape, ignite your hearts and minds (and bodies), to blast it all wide open as you realize women are far more juicily, beautifully powerful than you’ve been taught, and that the world is not as small and terrifying as the Republican party would have you to believe.

One tip: Do not listen to your father. Do not become your mother. Come to the light side. Figure it all out for yourself in the most messy, confusing, luminous, smart, expressive, self-defined way possible. It’s completely worth it, more than you know. Just a humble blessing, from us to you. Good luck. You’re going to need it.

[jlaw172364]

"Let us be clear. Let us be fair. Certainly not all Republican women – or daughters – are thusly repressed and miserable. Certainly many consciously, even enthusiastically choose their path, and many believe the Republican platform is righteous and good, despite how it hates them and believes they are lesser, weaker, ill-suited to play in the Big Game, much less make their own decisions about their vaginas, their identities, their reproductive powers."

Or, more likely, they know that they are part of a hypocrisy that crams one set of rules down people's throats while following a completely different set of rules. Historically, women in wealthy and powerful families have had a lot less trouble getting abortions, so why should they care if their privilege is based on platform of oppression that denies women goods and services they can themselves can discreetly purchase, or get their families to purchase for them.

The Republican party is the party of the ultra-rich. The ultra-rich don't like birth control for the masses because it shrinks the labour pool. That's my opinion, anyway.

[Krysos]

That article about Akin is incredibly hateful and presumptuous. And Vitter was cheating on a woman with a woman, no? It's not like the hooker was too concerned about his wife either. Honestly, the complete disregard for all male suffering in this thread is systematic, disingenuous, and positively vicious. Of course this is the inherent problem with gender issues: neither side can understand the other, ultimately. Which makes it perfect for sowing dissension and despair.

[compared2what?]

That article about Akin is incredibly hateful and presumptuous. And Vitter was cheating on a woman with a woman, no? It's not like the hooker was too concerned about his wife either.

The hooker presumably didn't take an oath that obligated her to Mrs. Vitter, though. So she and Vitter can;t really be said to bear the same responsibility to her as one another.

Honestly, the complete disregard for all male suffering in this thread is systematic, disingenuous, and positively vicious.

This thread, like all threads here, is not about the topic it's not about. The gender-based experience of women is distinct from the gender-based experience of men. If you want to talk about the latter -- which Willow and other women here have done, extensively, elsewhere here -- you're free to start a thread about it.

And if you want to see any number of versions of the above statement -- heartfelt, affectionate, annoyed, wordy, they come in all styles! -- complete with repeated, detailed demonstrations of sympathy for the gender-based burdens borne by men (as written many times by me and others), please check out any and/or every thread women on this board have ever started that was about female gender-based stuff.

Because some men on this board have flooded every one of them with unsourced quoteless laments about how badly they're being beaten up on JUST LIKE YOURS. Including when they hadn't even been mentioned AS A GENDER AT ALL.

The Misogyny Thread is probably a pretty comprehensive example. It was mad long. So just try searching for "Misogyny."

[compared2what?]

That article about Akin is incredibly hateful and presumptuous. And Vitter was cheating on a woman with a woman, no? It's not like the hooker was too concerned about his wife either.

The hooker presumably didn't take an oath that obligated her to Mrs. Vitter, though. So she and Vitter can;t really be said to bear the same responsibility to her as one another.

^^It's astonishing how often that same point needs to be made, I find.

I mean, it just doesn't seem to me like it should be all that obscure, really.

[brainpanhandler]

'Splaining in general says as much about how we legitimize ideas, as it says about gender/race/etc. It's a powerful notion that we don't actually require statements to correspond to reality to call them true. Rather, we require that the right people convey legitimacy to them.

That and most people are usually blinded by confirmation bias. We note what confirms what we already know and literally do not experience that which is outside our reality tunnel.

And that's where gender/race/wealth/identity come into play. This manner of truth-seeking is easily corruptible with regard to political matters.

Indeed. What's the antidote though? It cannot be anything other than knowing ourselves and operating from a provisional, fluid point of view. I don't think we can really know someone else's experience until we know our own, absent the confirmation bias blinders.

So, it's not about whether something is "explained." It's about who's perception is legitimate.

True, but America is a patriarchal society (for that matter I guess damn near the whole planet is patriarchal) and men are conditioned to treat perceptions as subjective and therefore lesser than. The stereotypical gender roles reinforce this. To defer to someone else's world view (especially a woman's) and really try to understand where the other is coming from feels like weakness to most men. They are conditioned that way from preschool on. When men start to benefit from this they self servingly certify this as the natural order of things and never question it again. Even well meaning men who are given to introspection are deeply conditioned this way and under pressure will revert to what they learned on the playground without even realizing it.

I'm not trying to apologize for male oppression. I consider that beyond a certain age all human beings are responsible for their own thoughts, beliefs and actions. But it's worth looking at the childhood roots of misogyny, I think.

This isn't always about abuse or straight-line authority...it's about whether or not someone is being robbed of their point of view, their perception, and the validity of their experience.

To deny the validity of women's experience of chauvinism by any and/or all of the convoluted methods available to the committed sexist (some of which are being brilliantly displayed in this thread) is dehumanizing and I imagine on the receiving end humiliating and infuriating. IRL I feel I've only got it when I can relate to those feelings. But when I do it it is difficult and painful to admit.

The author of the article in the OP wants to have the political discussion about mansplaining...which focuses on the "who" of the matter. I think that by remembering what the "what" of the matter is, makes this easier to understand. The "what" is that: in a world where truth is fluid, power-over games can be deployed to rig the playing field. And so, it's a very radical and beautiful thing for a woman or person of color to stand up for their experience. It's not called em-power-ment for nothing.

True and they have to stand up for it in a context where they can expect to be attacked, ridiculed, marginalized, labeled as too emotional, given to subjective perceptions, crazy or just plain ignored. As a male I can relate to a certain extent, but I understand that I can never really walk in the shoes of someone not white and male, at least not in this culture. And the not white and male know this.

I put the following video in the Here and Now thread. I am curious to hear the opinions of the women on this thread about this session.

[nashvillebrook]

Thanks for the amazingly cool reply!!

'Splaining in general says as much about how we legitimize ideas, as it says about gender/race/etc. It's a powerful notion that we don't actually require statements to correspond to reality to call them true. Rather, we require that the right people convey legitimacy to them.

That and most people are usually blinded by confirmation bias. We note what confirms what we already know and literally do not experience that which is outside our reality tunnel.

Yep -- that's where the friction comes from. Going back to the callers on the Mark Thompson show, their confirmation bias prevents them from hearing racially coded language, and so the conversation becomes an argument as to whose perception will win.

And that's where gender/race/wealth/identity come into play. This manner of truth-seeking is easily corruptible with regard to political matters.

Indeed. What's the antidote though? It cannot be anything other than knowing ourselves and operating from a provisional, fluid point of view. I don't think we can really know someone else's experience until we know our own, absent the confirmation bias blinders.

If "truth" is determined by the legitimacy of the speaker, then the only "truth" we're allowed to have comes from "authorities," or, those who we agree have power. Note that this is a form of irrationalism that favors power. The antidote is to empower those voices being snuffed out by those in power. It's really as simple as recognizing the dynamic and allowing disempowered voices to be heard -- and furthermore to stretch beyond personal confirmation bias.

I think most people here would agree that challenging one's own confirmation bias is a skill that has a high rate of return. You learn more, you feel more and your actions sometimes even evolve.

So, it's not about whether something is "explained." It's about who's perception is legitimate.

True, but America is a patriarchal society (for that matter I guess damn near the whole planet is patriarchal) and men are conditioned to treat perceptions as subjective and therefore lesser than. The stereotypical gender roles reinforce this. To defer to someone else's world view (especially a woman's) and really try to understand where the other is coming from feels like weakness to most men. They are conditioned that way from preschool on. When men start to benefit from this they self servingly certify this as the natural order of things and never question it again. Even well meaning men who are given to introspection are deeply conditioned this way and under pressure will revert to what they learned on the playground without even realizing it.

I'm not trying to apologize for male oppression. I consider that beyond a certain age all human beings are responsible for their own thoughts, beliefs and actions. But it's worth looking at the childhood roots of misogyny, I think.

Yep, totally agree. I've known plenty of "enlightened" guys who revert to playground patriarchal thinking without realizing it. Actually divorced one after 18 years. Got tired of saying to myself "he knows better than that…he doesn't mean that…if he heard someone else say that he'd ridicule him for being a prick."

On a political level, this is why it's powerful to have women and people of color in office so that our laws (our system of power) reflect the realities of all of us, and not just the Todd Akins of the world.

This isn't always about abuse or straight-line authority...it's about whether or not someone is being robbed of their point of view, their perception, and the validity of their experience.

To deny the validity of women's experience of chauvinism by any and/or all of the convoluted methods available to the committed sexist (some of which are being brilliantly displayed in this thread) is dehumanizing and I imagine on the receiving end humiliating and infuriating. IRL I feel I've only got it when I can relate to those feelings. But when I do it it is difficult and painful to admit.

What a lot of women do (myself included) is just stop listening to the chauvinism -- to turn away, not engage. BUT, that's not where the power is. You have to agitate it, draw it out and drain it like the suppurating boil it is.

The author of the article in the OP wants to have the political discussion about mansplaining...which focuses on the "who" of the matter. I think that by remembering what the "what" of the matter is, makes this easier to understand. The "what" is that: in a world where truth is fluid, power-over games can be deployed to rig the playing field. And so, it's a very radical and beautiful thing for a woman or person of color to stand up for their experience. It's not called em-power-ment for nothing.

True and they have to stand up for it in a context where they can expect to be attacked, ridiculed, marginalized, labeled as too emotional, given to subjective perceptions, crazy or just plain ignored. As a male I can relate to a certain extent, but I understand that I can never really walk in the shoes of someone not white and male, at least not in this culture. And the not white and male know this.

I put the following video in the Here and Now thread. I am curious to hear the opinions of the women on this thread about this session.

I think what we're seeing in this thread, is an encapsulation of the push-back that women experience when we refuse to back down from our perception. People take refuge in attitude polarization and illusory correlations to delegitimize the voice that's challenging the power structure. Marginalize that woman, stet!


(I watched about half of this before I had to turn it off. I felt like I was watching a hideous experiment in dehumanization. I'll return to it and re-listen to his intro b/c I think what he thinks he's doing is very different from what he's actually doing.)

[Krysos]

That article about Akin is incredibly hateful and presumptuous. And Vitter was cheating on a woman with a woman, no? It's not like the hooker was too concerned about his wife either.

The hooker presumably didn't take an oath that obligated her to Mrs. Vitter, though. So she and Vitter can;t really be said to bear the same responsibility to her as one another.

Honestly, the complete disregard for all male suffering in this thread is systematic, disingenuous, and positively vicious.

This thread, like all threads here, is not about the topic it's not about. The gender-based experience of women is distinct from the gender-based experience of men. If you want to talk about the latter -- which Willow and other women here have done, extensively, elsewhere here -- you're free to start a thread about it.

And if you want to see any number of versions of the above statement -- heartfelt, affectionate, annoyed, wordy, they come in all styles! -- complete with repeated, detailed demonstrations of sympathy for the gender-based burdens borne by men (as written many times by me and others), please check out any and/or every thread women on this board have ever started that was about female gender-based stuff.

Because some men on this board have flooded every one of them with unsourced quoteless laments about how badly they're being beaten up on JUST LIKE YOURS. Including when they hadn't even been mentioned AS A GENDER AT ALL.

The Misogyny Thread is probably a pretty comprehensive example. It was mad long. So just try searching for "Misogyny."

Why is it that people aren't allowed to have a reaction to what the thread is about? It's completely laughable to suggest that people reacting to the OP is somehow not relevant to the thread. You're saying that unless people are nodding their heads in agreement they're going off-topic? Come ON. Men (myself included) have a hard time with feminists because they tend to completely ignore any advantages their gender might confer, from either society or biology, as well as ignoring any disadvantages men might have because of their gender. Gender issues are simply dead end, divisive issues and the people that push them, while (perhaps) well meaning, do more harm than good, imo. They're just too hard to resist though. I can't help but put in my two cents about they hypocrisy of a feminist that will condemn a man for cheating but not the husband banging ho's they go to. I mean, surely not every hooker is a single mother with a heart of gold who only does it because the patriarchy won't pay her what she's worth, right?

[brainpanhandler]

(I watched about half of this before I had to turn it off. I felt like I was watching a hideous experiment in dehumanization. I'll return to it and re-listen to his intro b/c I think what he thinks he's doing is very different from what he's actually doing.)

I realize that I should have prefaced posting that video with the information that for many years, 20 perhaps, I highly respected Fritz. I still do to some extent. But I've got alot invested in Gestalt therapy. I had not seen this video until very recently when I dug it up for the Here and Now thread. When I initially watched it I found myself cringing at some of Perls' responses to Gloria's descriptions of her experience. But that's fritz' style I rationalized. He would do the same for a male I believe. But I don't know.

The dynamic in that setting is somewhat artificial to say the least, but nonetheless instructive and Fritz was not immune to ego inflation, methinks.

Famous male psychotherapist looking very freudian and academic, detached, clinical, authoritative and Gloria, evincing perfectly understandable nervousness, self consciousness, alternating defiance/deference, all while being filmed for posterity, which I assume was known to Gloria.

For all of Fritz' faults in his approach here (even agreeing to do this) Gloria does evoke and represent some of the ways in which women also are deeply conditioned in our culture. She does in fact revert to rather childish mannerisms as a defense mechanism. I think Fritz' intentions are good and I think ultimately all he really wanted for his patients is that they be themselves again. In fact, in Gestalt Therapy he says as much - psychological well being is nothing more or less than being authentically oneself. And that means, among many other things, shedding all the gender roles we've adopted. So his methods might be questionable in a therapuetic setting, but I think his goals were noble. Or so I like to believe.

ps... I work really long hours on the weekends so I probably won't be able to participate much, if at all, for the next couple of days.

[nashvillebrook]

(I watched about half of this before I had to turn it off. I felt like I was watching a hideous experiment in dehumanization. I'll return to it and re-listen to his intro b/c I think what he thinks he's doing is very different from what he's actually doing.)

I realize that I should have prefaced posting that video with the information that for many years, 20 perhaps, I highly respected Fritz. I still do to some extent. But I've got alot invested in Gestalt therapy. I had not seen this video until very recently when I dug it up for the Here and Now thread. When I initially watched it I found myself cringing at some of Perls' responses to Gloria's descriptions of her experience. But that's fritz' style I rationalized. He would do the same for a male I believe. But I don't know.

The dynamic in that setting is somewhat artificial to say the least, but nonetheless instructive and Fritz was not immune to ego inflation, methinks.

Famous male psychotherapist looking very freudian and academic, detached, clinical, authoritative and Gloria, evincing perfectly understandable nervousness, self consciousness, alternating defiance/deference, all while being filmed for posterity, which I assume was known to Gloria.

For all of Fritz' faults in his approach here (even agreeing to do this) Gloria does evoke and represent some of the ways in which women also are deeply conditioned in our culture. She does in fact revert to rather childish mannerisms as a defense mechanism. I think Fritz' intentions are good and I think ultimately all he really wanted for his patients is that they be themselves again. In fact, in Gestalt Therapy he says as much - psychological well being is nothing more or less than being authentically oneself. And that means, among many other things, shedding all the gender roles we've adopted. So his methods might be questionable in a therapuetic setting, but I think his goals were noble. Or so I like to believe.

ps... I work really long hours on the weekends so I probably won't be able to participate much, if at all, for the next couple of days.

Ah! that helps a lot! I see what you're saying...and see better what he's doing. I deal with this at work, prepping people for media exposure. Men also have a "puppy place" they go to when they feel threatened. You can see it when an inexperienced spokesman twists in his swivel chair. Or, scratching or leg bouncing. The people being interviewed don't perceive the movement, and it's important to get them to stop b/c it's seen as a weakness by the interviewer (in the case of an adversarial interview), and they'll go for the jugular.