Three Men Walk Into a Bar. One says “I’m a member of a minority about which the stereotypes are indeed true. I am male.” The second one says, “I live with a monkey.” The third says, “Join my nation of men.”
October 1, 2009 8 Comments
Dear CF,
The main questions of the Polanski case seem cut-and-dried and I don’t have much to add while Hollywood dons its queen’s necklace and conservatives and feminists strike an extremely uneasy alliance. It’s all interesting enough, and it’s been rewarding to watch the public try to adjudicate between principle and genius, but what interests me more is how Polanski’s defenders shiver off the rape itself as if it were something bug-like that will land again, and again, and again. They know it’s there, they know it’ll land eventually, but there’s some baser circuit of alliance and sympathy, some more instinctive imperative at work.
Given the comments on our Sterling Institute post and in anticipation of some thoughts on Mad Men and Flight of the Conchords, I’ve gathered three very different explorations of this problem of evolutionary or “instinctive” or “authentic” or “animal” manhood which all investigate Johnny Cash’s “The Beast in Me,” and (by extension, I think) the root of that impulse to sympathize with Polanski. Which isn’t, by the way, exclusive to men but which seems to partake of some older evolutionary view that makes Polanski so fit a Darwinian and the victim so obviously (and intentionally, it’s implied) vulnerable (dropped off by her mother, etc.) that rape is sort of okay, according to a totally unacknowledged set of principles.
The explorations that follow don’t all succeed. Some will go down in the annals of history and some will go down its near-homonym, and to atone for that awful pun I’ll jump right into our
First Man: The Geek
In his book The Trouble with Testosterone, excerpted here, Robert takes on the myths and facts about biological manhood. In this excerpt he addresses the conundrum that arises when (in connection with Ezra Pound) “good poets do bad things.” He anatomizes the “creeping empathy” the geek within might have with a Ted Kaczynski (or, I submit, a Roman Polanski):
There is a wonderful Russian story that takes place at the gates of heaven, where the newly arrived are judged. A dead murderer is on trial, fresh from earth where he was shot by the police after his umpteenth murder, the strangling of an elderly woman for her money. A panel of deceased judges sirs in session. And where does God fit on the scene? Not as a judge, but as a required character witness. At some point in the proceedings, he shambles in, sits in a magisterial decrepitude born of the weight of infinite knowledge, and in a meandering, avuncular way, does his best to defend and explain the man–“He was always kind to animals. He was very upset when he lost his favorite top when he was a small boy.”
Sapolsky calls for awareness of this process and promises a (surprisingly psychoanalytic) way to take measures against it. “There is the danger,” he says, “of a certain empathy creep, the transition from recognition to understanding and then to something resembling forgiveness. And thus, the remainder of this piece must be about the reassertion of our superegos.”
Second Man: Is Tired of Just Being a Man
Charles Siebert lives with a monkey named Roger. This odd little essay in Salon is part of Siebert’s larger quest to come to some sort of affective and transspecific understanding of animals. It starts with Siebert trying to impose a humanoid motivation on Roger’s activities and veers off into a reflection on his reasons for searching for Roger, who in the end occupies very little of the piece. He can’t occupy much of the piece since Siebert is trying to protect him from his (Siebert’s) impulse to narrativize everything, even evolution, even when surrounded by a group of Christian college kids in Africa.
He reviews the history of mythic and actual chimp-human relations. Apparently at least one primatologist let his pet chimp “mouth his penis,” Stalin wanted to breed a superrace of chimp-human Orcs, and there’s a bit of a tradition of women being gladiatorially raped by drunk baboons.
Roger, whose status as a “chimp entertainer” is one of those sad cases where he’s more at ease with humans than conspecifics, almost comes to function as a doppelganger for Siebert, who titles the article “I’m tired of just being a man” and revels in the pointlessness of his endeavor as much as Roger seems to like stacking cups of nothing in the air.
Third Man: Has Strong Male Qualities and is a Hero and Reigns with Strong Male Character and Experiments with the Concept of “Tribes” and is Male and Strong and a Man
I give you the Nation of Men, who are “not feminized, politically correct men, though our members exhibit varying degrees of civilization,” so don’t even think it. Civilization is for sissies (though there’s a fine port proviso). They’re the Sterling Institute’s kid brother but with (according to one commenter who has done both Sterling and NoM) less pressure to “sell” new recruits. And boy o boy are they a barrel of laughs! For example, they have a Heroes Team. (I am not making this up.) Also a “Team of Teams”! And an illustrious prehistory which is extremely long and detailed and long and which notes that the Nation of Men was once upon a time, before the name stuck, a community of men and women. Luckily, Masculine Mark was there to keep things from getting out of hand:
Mark always demonstrated strong male qualities in meetings. This was very important since there were many more women then men showing up at meetings. Mark’s strong male character ensured that the community was not a strictly feminized version.
The feminizing menace mightily neutralized, NoM developed and grew and eventually Tom Antolin and Steve Crowe took over. Who are they? you ask, bewildered, and I’m so very glad you did. Here is all you need to know about Tom and Steve: (Did I mention the prehistory was long?)
Tom Antolin and Steve Crowe … were called Master Blaster after the Mad Max Thunderdome movie. Steve was the Master with the brains, Tom was the Blaster. Tom was short in stature but, he was extremely strong physically and in presence. During their reign, we experimented with the concept of “Tribes.”
Then, like America, or perhaps like the Indians, they decided to break away from Justin A. Sterling—King George III in our analogy—and his repressive rule! The Founding-Father-Master-Blaster-Heroes-Team met to discuss their Tea Party in a meeting that “became known by NoM men as “Bloody Sunday.” Men and their teams found themselves divided, physically and spiritually. Many felt a loss of trust and pain in their hearts.”
‘Twas a sad state of affairs. Brother fought against brother, Master against Blaster, and all that remained was the great yawp of a ravaged and tattered community. Someone once said that time heals all wounds, and by time, they meant port. Fine port. (Or Reconstruction, in our metaphor for a Men’s-Only America).
It was time to stop crying and to organize a new men’s organization. That night, over a pool table, drinking fine port and smoking cigars, we agreed to form the Nation of Men.
It’s a moving story. Suspense, conflict, hopes dashed and rebuilt, and the result is a nation of men that, like Macduff, is not of woman born. Hurrah! You couldn’t ask for a more American utopia.
(Well, I guess you could. But it would be about a nation of men and women in which compatibility doesn’t have to be oppositional. Where a man doesn’t necessarily need to look at a woman he admires and make himself her opposite. And where manliness as a concept can emerge from the weak and defensive position it’s taken up so that even if it wins and becomes a nation all its own, all it will ever be is “not feminized.” )
You’ll be pleased to know that the Nation of Men has a “humorous” piece on color, a list of Teddy Roosevelt quotes which are well worth perusing, and a Links page that ought not to be missed. Sample links include “Abuse-Excuse,” a website dedicated to defending men against false allegations of child and spousal abuse, MensFlair, a quite chi-chi and serious online publication on men’s style, MenAlive, an intriguing site on Irritable Male Syndrome and Male Menopause, and The ManKind Project’s New Warrior Training Adventure.
The Nation of Men, like MILF Island, 30 Rock’s reality show, is—all joking aside—comedy gold. It’s a Family Guy subplot. It’s a rip-roaring parody of the American Dream it thinks it champions. It could be a chapter of Huck Finn. Trouble is, it’s not a reality show; it’s real. And when people defend Polanski, it’s suddenly not that funny.
Yours in manliness,
M
Carla Fran
millicent
Millicent and Carla Fran
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This is a knotty one, isn’t it? My riffle with the Polanski coverage is the high amount of outspokenness here that is so hard to kick up for other extreme causes. The privilege irks me. The point that keeps coming up is if another committed the same crime (a priest, a poor man, a person of color), this conversation would be slammed shut and the pitchforks would be out. An inverse of the OJ not guilty ruling? We have another guilty man, but instead of eyerolling and frustration at lawyers, the zeitgeist is saying “hallelujah!” It reminds me of the day we went to the Beauty Mart and heard of Jackson’s release. The store has changed, but my surprise is the same.
When did rape become fuzzy? Don’t 1000 out of a 1000 Law and Order episodes agree: rape is one of the baddiest of the baddiest.
And then, the common “he’s been through enough,” plea. I find this an interesting rhetoric because it plays with the liberal belief that often criminals are not guilty for their crimes. As victims of the circumstance of poverty, lack of education and opportunity, they deserve sympathy and help. Here we have rich man who also was a victim at one point to a tragic background. I find that I have little sympathy for the rich man, here.
NPR mentioned that the man recently arrested for planning a terrorist act of mass destruction had hired a PR firm prior to his arrest. Maybe, like presidential elections, it would be a clearer puzzle if funding for self-presentation was capped to make an equal playing field for all candidates and defendants.
Yes. It is hard to sympathize.
It’s been gratifying to watch France and Poland and Whoopi Goldberg shrink back from their original positions as the internet backlash gathered momentum. It’s rare to see outrage and criticism actually effect change and in this case, I think it has. I think governments have had to alter their positions. That’s big.
M
M – I appreciate your well written and composed note. Some of it is over my head but it was a great read and a reminder of Bloody Sunday. My time in Sterling was after that.
Thinking about Polanski and these Men’s Movements the word that comes up for me is: Accountability.
If you grow up on the tough streets and/or have abusive elders then perhaps you are not as accountable as a priveledged person. Polanski had the means to split and avoided accountability.
Ideally, men would hold each other accountable; Polanski would have been on a men’s team; Polanski wouldn’t rape a girl knowing he would be accountable; But if he did the team would escort him to the Police Station. No excuses.
Jay Smooth on the topic:
Just saw Jay Smooth’s video yesterday. He needs to make more videos. It is so good. That is all I can say. Well, that and his vehemence pleases me in exactly the way Chris Rock didn’t. Chris Rock, who appeared on Jay Leno and attacked Polanski defenders by saying only the pilot that landed a plane in the Hudson can “get away with” having sex with a thirteen-year-old. Hilarious. Also, how sixteen can be mistaken for eighteen but thirteen is thirteen. The kind of defense the world could do without, I think. Jay Smooth: thanks for doing it right.
Robert,
Thanks for writing in. Here’s what I would say: the problem is precisely those men who think that accountability (achieved, in your model, by belonging to a team) is the only reason NOT to do something.
Rather than the fact that doing that thing is five different colors of wrong according to whatever ethical code is your particular cup of tea.
Rather than the fact that when someone gets raped or assaulted in our culture, it hurts everyone: men and women. Because we do not live in segregated worlds, and because men care about what happens to women, and vice versa.
Regarding this:
“Ideally, men would hold each other accountable; Polanski would have been on a men’s team; Polanski wouldn’t rape a girl knowing he would be accountable; But if he did the team would escort him to the Police Station. No excuses.”
I’m curious: why do you resist inserting “people” where you’ve written “men”?
The assumption that holding people accountable is the exclusive purview OF men is the problem. Because they often don’t, you see. Take a look at the articles online holding Polanski accountable after France and Poland came out demanding his immediate release: you’ll find that most of them were written by women.
Moreover—and I can’t emphasize this enough: this is not a man’s problem. Nor is it a woman’s problem. This is humanity’s problem.
There is no “team” that wouldn’t hold Polanski accountable except the group of people who signed that petition (a group that’s predominantly male).
That’s the problem. And men are not the solution. People are. Because men do not contain all perspectives. Neither do women. To achieve anything approaching wisdom or justice, we need all points of view. And the more strongly you insist on a division that assigns all the “enforcement” to one side, which happens to be the side that does most of the offending, the farther from justice you’ll be.
M
Millicent…
Most recently, I have subscribed to your blogs, because for a bit of time now, I cannot and will not state names, but will state that I have had an intimate look into the life of at least one men’s weekend attendee, and I cannot say that the results are always going to be glowing, because the reality is that in one instance, I suppose one could believe that it is in place for the betterment of men in terms of being an actually masculine man. However, what is not in place, as far as I have seen, is the opportunity for these men to be able to form their own beliefs in terms of what it is that they have been taught by these things that this group calls its rules.
I am not a psychologist, but I do conduct scientific research in terms of behavioral science and holistic behavioral health, and the one thing that what I have borne witness to is that idea that in order to have what needs to be had, in terms of healing the relationships that people have with one another, there needs to be an outer availability in terms of resources for the attendees. This is something that I have wondered about for a long time – there are help groups on this planet that have a means by which the attendees, once it is that the thing that they are in attendance for, is completed, if those people feel like they might need help otherwise, there are always resources available provided by the group. Any group that is actually helpful always offers some sort of resources list, and one that is not associated with the group itself so that those who are part of those groups will have a manner by which to not only ensure that what they have been shown or taught is relevant and more, helpful and permanent. True healing and even self-help does NOT make it so that the only source any one person has is the group and only the group.
I will not lie – I am upset because this group, and what i have learned about it over the last year and a half, is detrimental to those whose mindsets are not in a place where truth in healing, and truth in being who one is for real, is not something that is taught in terms of an actual end to suffering. Much depends on the person’s life status and life issues and the actual reason as to why anyone would feel compelled to join such a group. I have nothing to say in terms of the cost of such an attendance would cost, because in terms of group sessions, I, myself, have conducted them over the years, all for the purpose of people getting along with one another and learning to accept themselves as they are and not try to live up to a societal set of standard for life or living that is merely and only the copycatted version of what another person who could NOT deal with in terms of being told “no” by a woman, of being told that they are who they are and who they are is truly acceptable as they are, that no one on this planet is going to be able to live up to anyone else’s ideals about what is and what is not a man.
The Sterling program, because I have read what it offers, may well offer a lot to those who are not in a mindset of being fixed by someone else’s ideals about what is, and what is not, a man. Unfortunately, just alone and from the organic reactions and energies in terms of the thing that I have had to let go of has been directly affected by the teachings of this program where indeed, it teaches men, at least in my own opinion, and regardless of what anyone else wants to believe, even a man himself, on one hand, to accept nothing less than what they can see themselves as being in the future. What it does NOT teach is the ability to deal with one’s own shortcomings as being something to focus on. It teaches people that their weaknesses are there to torture them, when in reality, our weaknesses are meant to provide for us a focal point where it is in our lives that we need to pay attention to and ask ourselves questions that only we have the answers for.
I will never ever be hostile about this program, because I have always borne witness to lots of good things about it, but, those good things will not ever, unless it is proven to me otherwise, outweigh what is so very damaging about all of it – it makes it okay that a man NOT try to feel who they are in the emotional sense, by teaching them that they cannot handle their emotions. They are taught that we are superior to them, and a lot of that is about making certain that men know that they are less than we are. This is not something that i just did not ask about, from several scholars, professional workshop leaders, providers, supporters and creators. Instead of there being groups which lambaste this one, there ought to be literature that allows people to do more research and and ask questions about what it is that we think of ourselves after the fact, because really, from what i have gone through, with the right kind of conditions, this program only destroys people and does so from the inside, out
Of course, this is only my opinion.