In this issue:

· Men and Violence

· Bitches and Bastards

Men and Violence

I recently sent out an invitation to the e-mail recipients of this newsletter for a viewing of the TV mini-series "The Odyssey" and a discussion of how this myth might apply to our lives. One subscriber, Peter, wrote me this:

I won't be able to come to the viewing, but I do have a question. Why, why, why must myths always be about men killing people????

From Homer to Robert Bly, there is the worship of male violence. Why?

This got me to thinking. Why indeed? Does Peter have a point? We do and always have lived in a violent world. Is the violence all male-driven? Are we biologically natural-born killers - to the point that we worship violence?

Think about this for a second or two before you read on. Does society worship male violence? Why are there so many myths that involve killing and violence?

What follows is a slightly edited version of my answer to Peter. But form your own ideas first; my answer is only one man's ideas.

E-mail to Peter

Dear Peter,

I'm not a mythologist, so I don't have a ready or scholarly answer to your question. I do know that there are at least some myths with murderous women - Hansel and Gretel comes to mind, and there's a Russian myth about an evil woman Baba Yaga. Snow White and Cinderella are also rife with tastes of female violence, if not exactly killing. Then there's the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz. I'm sure there are more.

As for the killing itself, I think that death is part of the circle of life; in fact, in the wild, many (most?) animals face at least the potential of a violent death when they become food for other animals. And it's of course not all male: among lions, for instance, the females do the hunting.

Some killing, almost all of it by men, is undertaken for the protection of the genetic bases of the community, particularly the women and children (sources of future generations). I think there's a genetic inheritance among men (and maybe males of many species) that impels them to perform that role. Modern wars (and Iraq is no exception) take place when (a) the instincts overwhelm human reason and - more importantly - (b) the need to protect is perverted by orthodox ideologies and rigid theories about right and wrong.

On a smaller scale, death is a constant companion of life. Mythologically, death in many of the tales can be interpreted as a kind of spiritual death from which a resurrection is expected. Sometimes it's the death of one phase of life and the rebirth into another - as in initiation rituals in which the mother's son dies and the father's son is born into the community of men.

Although some of his views have been challenged, Bruno Bettelheim ("The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales") has theorized about the usefulness of myths in giving form to children's natural and violent fears. The myths (if I remember Bettelheim correctly) show children the universality of their fears and the happy-ever-after endings for those who can master those fears.

I'm really not willing to go so far as to concede that male violence (or just plain violence - see the comment about females above) is "worshipped." Worship just seems too strong a word.

I remember your abhorrence of violence and death from a men's retreat we shared, and I deeply respect that. I believe there is an important place in our "real" and mythological and psychological realms for the gentleman and the gentle man. In an ironic way, part of the wisdom of violence is the very abhorrence it creates.

Violence will always be with us. We can't afford to ignore violence, and we can't afford to get used to it. One of Hannah Arendt's books had the phrase "the banality of evil" in its title. When evil becomes commonplace, we need the gentle people of the world to remind us how to shudder once more, and that there is another way to exist.

Thank you for being one of those people.

Love and peace,

Tim

Bitches and Bastards

I finally finished both books of essays by men and women. (See Menletter #28 in the archives.) I started with The Bastard on the Couch, edited by Daniel Jones, and discovered that it was actually a follow-on to his wife's collection, The Bitch in the House, by Cathi Hanauer.

In both books, the essays are mostly by professional writers. Thus, they may lack the grittiness of a Studs Terkel collection of interviews, but they are still compelling.

Bitches

The cover of Hanauer's book (to take them in the order in which they were published) features a lipsticked, sneering mouth (of the paperback edition anyway) and enough blurbs ("Amusing, ferocious") to indicate that this is a book about female anger and rage, mostly against men. This, along with the title, could be very off-putting to a lot of men, but apparently the publisher thought such provocation would increase sales among women.

A few of the essays are angry and openly hostile to men. Most, however, have a different tone and theme. There are women deeply in love with their husbands, sometimes after failed first marriages. Others love their children with a love that borders on ferocity, yet they still scream at them frequently because the balance between home and work goes regularly out of control. One woman has never married, with a mixture of regret and contentment over her life of independence. Another both bemoaned and celebrated the fact that she was becoming her mother.

Relationships with men - husbands, boyfriend, lovers - are presented in detail; sometimes with increasing rancor over their shortcomings and sometimes with compassion for what their men face in the world. Many of the essays are filled with humor, sometimes light and sometimes dark.

Bastards

The book jacket of the hardcover edition of The Bastard on the Couch features the soles of a sock-footed man loafing on a couch. Not much else is visible, as if this feet-up position is all that is expected or bemoaned about men at home. Again, the title, graphics, and blurb ("27 men try really hard to explain…") seem intended to provoke rather than inform. Fine, if it sells books.

The sense I got from many of the essays in this book was one of sadness. There are men who despair about having enough family time while working at demanding jobs. There are homemakers whose wives don’t appreciate their efforts. Some men are lonely. Some are unabashed womanizers. Some have trouble dealing with female anger. Some just feel used. These men don't do rage as well as some of the women in Bitch, but they are angry and confused at times. And at other times they display a level of understanding and compassion about women's challenges that I think might surprise some women.

As with the women's essays, the essays here are often humorous, sometimes in a biting way and sometimes in revealing, self-deprecatory ways.

Speaking for Themselves

There are plenty of books about men and women, with sociological and pop-psych pronouncements about what men and women are like. The 53 essays in these two books are refreshing because men and women are speaking for themselves in ways that can be far more revealing. I can imagine someone reading one or both books and saying "That's not me" or "What a bunch of complainers." I hope, however, that men and women will read both books and say "Now I understand."

Understanding or not, simply reading the stories of other people can lead to a sense that nobody's perfect, we're all in the same leaky boat. The best quality of both books is their honesty. The men and women pull no punches, but they seem to have no wider or hidden agendas. Their goal is to tell their stories, not to advance some cause.

Why We Should Read These Books

We may think we're committed to assessing people on their individual merits, and the people we love or at least know well benefit from this commitment. But I think we're all subject to making generalizations: Men are. . . . Women are. . . . (even if we're careful not to put "all" at the beginning of the sentence).

The essays in the two collections create a kind of intimacy with men and women who are navigating the shoals of gender relationships with out-of-date charts, or none at all. And each one navigates differently, with safe arrivals, shipwrecks, and mixtures of humor, anger, joy, sadness. We may agree with some of the writers' views, disagree with others. But there's so much variety. The books are a demonstration that each person's story is unique, both in the books and in the world. And this realization could lead us - men and women - to the beginnings of compassion and perhaps some early glimmers of gender reconciliation.

I have no illusions that lots of men and women will read both books and start a spontaneous gender reconciliation movement. But what about the few of us who do read the books and take them to heart? Would compassion and gender reconciliation on a personal level enrich our lives?

Could be.