Men and Shame....Enormous Issue Now Faced Directly by Jim! Thank you!

• Responses to First Learning about Affect Theory by Jim Duffy a.k.a. J.C.D., 2/28/97
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    • Faith, Hope, Love, and Science Sustain Us Through a Shame Darkened March of History by Jim Duffy, 3/27/97
      
      

Jim, great post. Seems to me women and men dealing with the impact of men's shame on the world (and how to stop it) is what this forum is centrally about. Isn't that what's been going on, only now we are talking about it more directly?

Judy Wyatt and I wrote a 25,000 word pamphlet on the topic of men and shame five years ago just after Don's book came out. (I sent a copy to Don at that time and for some reason he never received it, and it wasn't returned to me.) We used Don's compass of shame to clarify men's seeming "genital fixation" as blamed by women, including women therapists. We also explained that most women are reluctant to look at the systems nature of men's shame---and especially women's role in sustaining the system that demands men behave in ways that women, sometimes too easily, like to complain about in men. I focused particularly on Lillian Rubin (_Intimate Strangers_ and _Just Friends_) and Ruthellen Josselson (_The Space Between Us_); two writers that example women's often too willing blindness about the systems nature of men's predicament.

Judy and I wrote that women avoid the systems view of men's shame for at least two reasons. One, women are angry as hell (some may say they aren't but I don't believe it); and when people are angry there is no reason to look deeper until they get tired of blaming. And two, many women benefit from the male system as it is, especially those women (writers) who are in the male power structure (academia, the publishing world, etc.)---so they mostly don't want to look deeper because they fundamentally want it the way it is while appearing to want to change it (I was very, very angry and cynical when we wrote the paper five years ago).

We also explained that both men and women shame men to enforce the male norms that keep men locked into behaviors that satisfy the system. There's been little willingness by women therapists to understand systems and how shame enforces male norms. Most therapists, men or women, make the fundamental attribution error that social psychologists like to flag out: therapists forget the system's impact on the individual. There are basic male norms that none of us as men can change alone (because we are in a system that demands these abusive behaviors--that's why I had to leave a large oil company after 21 years: I was forced to abuse those I supervised or leave)---but we are blamed, individually, for all of the characteristics that we really can't change because these behaviors are required by the system. Note how Rich is shamed by his colleagues who are trying to get him to follow the norm: blame the abuser. Isn't Rich seen as "some kind of wimp" or being "soft"---when really he is showing courage?

The paper by Judy Wyatt and I, called The Space Between Us is Shame, needs updating (and will never be updated). It's the beginning of a book that we will never write. There are at least two other books ahead of it....these won't get written either. Writing and publishing a book (I've done three) is much, much more wearing than rewarding (masochism!!). Thank you Jim for raising the issue of men trapped in shame

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