Roots of the Problems Between Men and Women

Yesterday I published an “Introduction to the Forthcoming Piece, ‘Roots of the Problems Between Men and Women.’ “ I posted that introduction because it was with some trepidation that I waded into such waters. 

It was not going to be the first time I've ventured to share some of my thoughts about the relationship between men and women. And some of my previous experience has been bruising.

My brother is a psychotherapist who works in that domain, and he’s told me that my experience reflects what a minefield that area is in today’s society. A minefield especially in a segment of today’s society that is processing the whole long-buried horror of the sexual abuse of women by men.

So I stepped into that minefield, and found that it was possible to give offense where none was remotely intended.

(I recall a bit of that minefield when a woman took huge offense at my using the famous line from the syllogism, “All men are mortal.” It was a piece about the challenge of facing one’s mortality, but this woman mistook my using what the old culture has handed down to us for being an attempt to perpetuate leaving womankind out of the picture when we speak of humankind.)

For such reasons, I am once again preceding the piece itself — which appears here below — with such an introduction.

It’s understandable why this area might be a minefield. There are some very painful places that might get inadvertently touched.

The #MeToo movement is testimony to all the deep human pain that resides on the female side of our society – pain caused by men doing things to women sexually that are hurtful to those women. I’ve always been on women’s side when it came to such matters, but I never before this recent time of women coming forward and telling their stories have I understood the depth of the trauma involved.

So I get that, and I’m totally with the women and their right to be treated as of their sexuality belonged to themselves and not to men who take a sexual interest in them.

So, minefield or not, I would like for it to be understood that whatever I say is in no way to be taken as contradictory to that fundamental human right of women, and of a proper respect for the meaning of sexuality in our being.

(And that points to all the other ways in which women have been subordinated and exploited.)

Which brings me to a second thing about me that should blunt the impulse to take offense at something I might say.

The most nourishing project I’ve done in this politically dangerous time bore the name, “The Sacred Space of Lovers.”(Op/ed version here . Longer version here.)

There I describe an ideal of what the relationship between lovers should be, and I say that it is there that we human beings can have one of our most fulfilling experiences of the sacred.

I argue, thinking in an evolutionary framework, as has long been my wont, that it is vitally important that the relationship between those who produce the next generation embody as much as possible that ideal —for their own fulfillment in life, and for the good of the next generation they create together.

That kind of evolutionary thinking has been at the core of my life’s work. My goal has been to find and speak the truth about the human story in ways that might help things move in a good direction. Please understand that has been my goal and, if my efforts to articulate what looks true to me rub anyone the wrong way, forgive me my trespasses.

So for a goodly while, I followed my brother’s advice to stay out of that minefield—not talk about things that are so charged and so easily triggered. Thinking that his words were wise, I kept choosing to keep my thoughts to myself about that core human matter: the relationship between men and women.

But then, eventually, I had something I really wanted to say. It offers a way of seeing why it is that, in our human world, men often inflict sexual pain on women— why that relationship sometimes has so frequently taken things in the direction of brokenness, and not the wholeness of “The Sacred Space of Lovers.”

The thoughts it offers about the "Roots" of our problems are not a complete answer. But it’s two big pieces of an answer. At least so it seems to me.

In invite you to try it out, on that basis, if you’re interested. Here’s that piece.

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In 2017, I published a piece here titled “The Sacred Space of Lovers.” It discussed “the space that lovers can create to inhabit together – a space that, ideally, is one of open-hearted intimacy of body and soul, of romantic passion, of deep love and attachment.….”

Because such a relationship is ideally suited to the flourishing of life, from generation to generation, “because our nature has been crafted to find fulfillment and beauty along those paths that have best served the life of our kind,” we experience that space as “sacred.”

However, as we know, not all that happens between men and women in the sexual realm embodies that ideal. The recent #MeToo movement has brought into focus how much trauma, assault, and humiliation women have suffered from men. More broadly, the history of civilized cultures shows pervasive domination – and often disregard, demeaning, and abuse -- of women by men.

The question arises: Why?

Part of the answer arises at the level of biological evolution. Another part concerns the consequences of “the reign of power” that, as I have written previously, inevitably accompanied the rise of civilization.

Natural selection, which is the engine driving the process of biological evolution, creates wholeness in impressive ways—from the cell, to the organism, to the ecological community, to the biosphere.

That natural selection creates such wholeness is not surprising, given that it operates by continually choosing life over death.

But wholeness is hardly evolution’s whole story. That’s because the various players in the drama of life often have conflicting interests—like between predator and prey, parasite and host, and even within the same species (as between male and female). And because that “choosing of life over death” is entirely opportunistic.

We can think of each “player” in the “game” of evolution having to answer the question, “How do I get my DNA into the future?”

Given how that determines the way that creatures get shaped, dangers arise in the relationship between human males and females as a result of the profound asymmetry between the situations of men and women regarding that fundamental task of passing life along into the next generation.

For the female, producing the next generation inescapably entails an enormous investment (and risk as well). Pregnancy is no small thing, and when the baby arrives, the mother is always there.

The male’s role in producing the next generation, by contrast, does not necessarily entail such an enormous investment. The male can pursue different strategies to get his DNA into the future – different strategies that entail different degrees of involvement, and more or less loving ways of relating.

The “sacred space of lovers” is at one end of the spectrum, characterized by love and mutuality and commitment. In that approach, the father invests heavily in his offspring. Given how long our young are dependent, and given how important it is for the flourishing of human young that they be well enculturated, this strategy is good for producing fewer offspring but with each having a higher probability of survival.

But the male also can “succeed” at the evolutionary game by fathering more children and doing less (or nothing) for them. “Love ‘em and leave ‘em” works to get a male’s DNA successfully into the future. But that approach leaves the women and the children more vulnerable.

(And unfortunately, at the opposite end of the mutuality of “the sacred space of lovers,” some males can be rewarded for getting their DNA into the future through sexual assault.)

The genetic predisposition toward any of these strategies is apt to get represented among the patterns of “male human nature.” Which contributes to the uncertainty of how well human males will deal with the needs of their female lovers.

So while natural selection is likely to produce females motivated to establish relationships with men who will stick around to protect her and her children, that same process apparently can produce good “family” men, but also “rogues.” (And possibly rapists.)

Which shows clearly a fundamental point about what’s “natural”: although the “natural” connects in many ways with what we regard as “the good,” it is not at all reliable in that respect. And as a result, the natural often needs to be checked and corrected by cultural morality.

But civilized cultures have had their own problems. Which leads to the second part of the answer.

As I argued in my book The Parable of the Tribes, the rise of civilization made it inevitable that only those societies organized for power in “the war of all against all” could survive. As a result, starting many millennia ago we find the world filled with warrior societies.

The increasing centrality of war in itself warped the relationships between men and women, as the increased importance of those who fight (men) meant a corresponding drop in the status and power of those who nurture life (women).

This problem of male dominance has been compounded by the misogyny that -- because of what such societies require of men – seems to be an endemic by-product of men being socialized into warrior subcultures.

In these ways, the warping of human life through the reign of power brought with it a widespread pathology in civilization that has led many men to treat women badly.