Columns May 22, 2013 at 4:00 am

Closure

Comments

212
EricaP at 211: Not a problem for you, but there's where we come across the "swing fist / hit nose?" issue. There's an awful lot of people like you working as psychologists*, therapists, or as counsellors in schools or workplaces or education. There's times in our lives when we all rightly need to be told, "oh, for god's sake, it's not that important, or you shouldn't treat it as such, so pull up your mental pants and move on". And if, at such a time, you fall into the hands of one those processprocessprocessprocess folks then you are in deep, deep trouble. They are death in family/marital relationships, for example, because problems are never solved, or adjusted to but rather just brought up again to be rehashed over and over again. Nobody is allowed to look at the loved one, shrug and get over it because every issue as treated as IMPORTANT AND NEED BE DISCUSSED! [I wish I could put that last capitalized bit onto marble in Roman style print, because that's how they see it.]

* - I leave psychiatrists off this list simply because of professional experience: the psychiatrists I have dealt with aim for a point where you won't need them any more, and focus on problem solving and moving on; the psychologists I've met tend to let things drag on forever, and sometimes even treat things that aren't problems as big issues that must be processed. I'd note that most of the psychiatrists that I have met have been men, and operate from a traditional healing modality, whereas most of the psychologists I have met are women who operate from a feminist and processing modality. Whether that is illustrative and interesting, or just the statistical fluke of my own decades in the profession is unknown.
213
EricaP @211:
Let me give you one example. When I was in grade 5 I was bullied by a grade 6 student. One day he was choking me and I lucked into a perfect jiu-jitsu style throw, and could have put him in the hospital. He was hurt and scared, and I was hurt and scared, and we both got sent to the principal's office. We got a talking-to, had to shake hands, and that ended it. He stopped bullying people, I never hit anyone in school again, and we both got over it, and we both went on to productive, law-abiding lives, me in law he in science. Were that to happen today, we'd both be suspended (and possibly expelled) and have to undergo mandatory violence counselling, and I'm pretty damn sure it would have f*d both of us up. I've never yet met a therapist or counsellor who thinks that "for god's sake, stop picking at it or it will never heal!" applies to anything other than scabs.
214
@nocutename: All joking about Cinderalla aside, I think you are absolutely correct. The fact is there are tons of books and movies targeting young women that present a fantasy of romance that is entirely female-centric in which the one dimensional male characters are simply there to advance this fantasy. This likely shapes their expectations, but at the same time I think it taps into something intrinsic to female sexuality - i.e. it panders to a notion of romance that resonates with the emotions many young women naturally have.

I'm reminded of a comment from a women here that for many women, the male form is initially somewhat disgusting, and that they only acquire a taste for it as they mature.

I'm not sure there is anything to be done about it other than to educate girls about the differences between Twilight and real romance, much like boys should be educated about the differences between real women and the actresses in porn movies.
215
Oh, and hooray for post-coital picnics.
216
@199: Ok, how about Cinderalla falls for a sturdy if slight paunchy, unkempt blacksmith with a wicked sense of humor who earns a comfortable but unextravagant living having ingeniously invented a light but strong new metal alloy?
217
I was trying to think if entertainment geared toward boys(not porn) depicts girls in a way that could skew their perception, but generally girl characters are tough and/or smart nowadays. That seems accurate when I get a load of the little girls in my son's class. Maybe, as this generation gets older the perception will balance out a little.

@214 I was utterly terrified of a boys bodies when I was a teen. Girls are how I learned anything. My poor first boyfriend...I did not learn to appreciate a male body until I was 25.

And can someone please tell me what GIF stands for?
218
@212, Psychiatrists are about the "traditional healing modality" because they are medical doctors who can prescribe medicine (means-->end). Psychologists are either PhDs who perform experiments in social science, or they're talk therapists (information gathering). Psychiatry can be as simple as writing a prescription and following up for side effects. Psychology isn't about an "answer," it's about finding out more (either through the scientific method or anecdotally from one patient). Ps and Vs have nothing to do with that. I appreciate you made a slight hat tip to subjective experience, but the feminist bashing in this thread is disturbing. LW is a mess because at some point she got a very wrong idea about something, but it's not "feminism's" fault that she's confused.
219
@seeker, if someone is functional in life, they get to determine how much processing is just right for them. It only becomes someone else's business if they
a) ask for advice (as with the LW), or
b) interfere with other people's lives ("swing fist / hit nose," as you put it).

On the other hand, if someone's paycheck comes from extending the processing, then it's natural for them to see the processing as a good thing. I'm sure my dental hygienist thinks I should get my teeth professionally cleaned every month. (And that wouldn't do me any harm, except in my pocket-book.) Presumably it's the job of whoever is paying the therapist's bill to decide when the processing has stopped helping the situation.
221
@218: First, I never said it was feminism's fault that she was messed up, so don't put words into my mouth. Second, having a criticism about a given feminist approach, or the impact of a feminist modality on another discipline, is not "feminist bashing". Feminism, like other net positives such as democracy, is many things but not above criticism in whole or in part.

Side personal comment: I can't speak for others but one reason that I no longer call myself a feminist is that I started to profoundly dislike attitudes like yours which equated any disagreement in part as opposition to the whole. I've never had much patience for orthodoxy sniffing and heresy hunts, truth be told.
222
@219: "Presumably it's the job of whoever is paying the therapist's bill to decide when the processing has stopped helping the situation." Um, no. Therapists have a moral and professional obligation to be honest with the patient as to when their professional services are serving no useful purpose.

In twenty+ years of practice I have lost count of the number of times I have told a client, "I can't help you and paying me would be pouring money down a hole", or "hell, I don't see where you actually have a problem" (or, "a problem any more"), or "yes, you have a problem but involving a lawyer will make things worse". Same for "yeah, I know you feel strongly about it, but you're wrong and all the feelings in the world won't make you right, since the problem is you let's stop worrying about the other person". I've seen psychiatrists do the same. I've never, ever seen a therapist do the same, either personally or professionally. I honestly don't have a high opinion of the breed, and that is hard-bought. Half of what you need to know about most of 'em is found in @218's comment that "Psychology isn't about an `answer'...", and the reality that thousands if not millions of people do come to them seeking answers. Therapists will validate any feeling, however inaccurate, save for feelings against them, however accurate. Those, apparently, are always "projection".
223
@seeker6079: A few observations from my experience on the inside and outside of psychology:

1) Psychology is an incredibly difficult thing to do well, and very easy to do poorly. Add to that the fact that a good therapist may be a poor fit for a given patient means that you really have to search and vet to find someone who will be able to significantly help you. That said, there are brilliant therapists changing people's lives for the better all the time, although that's probably a minority case. There are also good therapists out there cleaning up the horrible messes made by incompetent ones (including psychiatrists and other doctors).

2) Psychology is a female dominated field (with an overrepresentation of lesbians), and that can be a problem for men, both in how the therapist reacts to the patient and vice versa.

3) I've seen enough therapists over the years that it might even qualify as a statistically significant sample. Most of them (even the really good ones) weren't much help, but I was finally directed to a male therapist (by a good female therapist) who made a big difference for me, and the fact that he was male was critical to his effectiveness. I don't think there is another single therapist in Seattle who could have helped me, but I'm admittedly kind of an oddball. Psychiatry, by the way, has nothing to offer that is of relevance to me (though it can be of help to others).

4) For couples in which the male is the one considering divorce (the minority case - women leave men much more frequently), I think you'll have better luck saving the marriage with a straight male therapist. Female therapists, in these cases, are more likely to wittingly or unwittingly use processes that preserve the status quo. I know at least one woman who would agree with me on this.

And "yes" to your comments on orthodox feminism being hostile to external critique.
224
@216 - guaranteed the blacksmith will be more fun in the sack - better hands for a start...

@223 - yes, everything you said. i've also been through a statistically significant sample of therapists (or as my house-mate says, 'ther-rapists') since i was a small child. the accumulation of my years of experience boil down to these things:
- psychiatrist; psychologist; psychotherapist; mental health / dual diagnosis clinician; counselor. these are all different roles, with different strengths and weaknesses. they do different jobs, don't confuse them.
- there has to be a compatibility between the professional and the client. that means things like faith, political bias, gender, queer/straight/etc, sex-positive or not, are all important. they don't have to be the same as you, but there has to be understanding and acceptance. i have found that there are things i need to clear with the professional up front, before we even start. in theory, the more professional they are, the less this matters. but it does still matter.
- the therapist in question needs to be ahead of you in the process. ideally, they should be smarter than you :-) if you can run rings around your therapist, they are useless to you. this is a challenge if you've been doing psych longer than they have, but is worth sticking for.
225
@sappho

... you.... you don't know what statistically significant means.
226
@myd, it was seandr's joke first, @223, and sappho just picked it up ("also").
227
I entirely agree that many patients are only capable of being helped by someone with innate characteristic X that has nothing to do with the skills required by the position, and can respect either a patient who recognizes hir own extra dealbreakers or a professional who proactively redirects a patient to a better match.

Now to address Dr Sean - OVERrepresentation of lesbians? If I ever give you a Sartre Award, you'll get two of them (who won't be compatible with each other because one will present as bi). That's my flippant response; nobody wants to see my serious response to that comment beyond wondering what figure you consider required to constitute such an upsetting of the oh-so-delicate balance.

Who says any marriage in question SHOULD be saved? I never met a divorce I didn't approve, even a same-sex one. (I SO wanted to say like, but I just couldn't do it.) Granted, there are LWs who strike me as being people who ought not to be permitted to divorce in order to prevent either party from marrying an innocent victim next, but I still stand by the maxim that we need more divorce rather than less, or perhaps less marriage in the first place (yes, after all the having-had-to-wait-far-too-longs have been brought into the fold, even less SSM).

Being in an extremely generous mood, I'll give you a mulligan to rewrite 4). I'm curious about whether you blame the deficiencies of GMTs in saving OSMs on the T or the H in the case, but that wasn't what irritated me about 4) - and there are at least two possible very quick fixes that won't hurt the flow of the passage in the slightest.
228
@mydriasis: My understanding of everything that happens in the universe is fundamentally informed by my training in statistics. And yes, you are correct that my joke using "statistical significant" as shorthand for "large sample size" does, technically speaking, rely on an incorrect definition of the former.
229
@ven: "overrepresentation of lesbians"

By this I mean that the percentage of lesbians psychologists is greater than the percentage of lesbians in the general population. It's a simple statistical observation suggesting non-random selection, not a judgment. Another example of this usage - men are overrepresented in prisons, computer science programs, and the US Senate.
230
@ven: Who says any marriage in question SHOULD be saved?

Certainly no marriage counselor I've ever hired. If either party is considering divorce, no therapist worth a dime would try to take that option off the table.

Anecdote - a couple in the last throes of their marriage sees a marriage counselor. At the end of their first intake session, the counselor simply says "X, I don't think Y wants to be married to you anymore." No further sessions are scheduled, and soon after the couple begins divorce proceedings.

As for your comments on 4), I have to admit I'm unable to follow your acronyms, but assuming GMT means Gay Male Therapist, I'll take a stab at it. I've never seen a GMT for marriage counseling, so maybe I'm wrong about that. I have seen a GMT as an individual therapist, during which various marital issues came up, and he was always reluctant to validate me. When I eventually brought this up with him, it basically came down to him holding a feminist perspective that made him uncomfortable, as a man, taking any position that could be construed as unsupportive of my female partner. He also said, in the context of a different discussion, "I wish I could revoke Dan Savage's gay card", in essence because of Dan's lack of political correctness. Not a good fit for me, obviously.

Anyway, I've found that a skilled straight male therapist (and maybe also a GMT) can advocate for the husband's position in a way that doesn't threaten the wife, in part because he is free of the emotional baggage that gets in the way of the husband's ability to communicate and the wife's ability to hear.

We did have one female therapist try to step into that role - a lesbian as it turns out - but I think she violated my wife's expectations about how women are supposed to relate with each other, expectations she doesn't have with the male therapist, and so my wife felt she was allying with me and we quit seeing her after a few sessions. This ties back to my statement about female therapists being limited to processes that support the status quo in cases where change from the wife would benefit the relationship.
231
Dr Sean - Well, given that your sentence had to do with patients and psychologists incapable of forming a workable connection, "disproportionately high" would have been perhaps a more clearly neutral word choice. I should certainly say, for instance, that the number of "open" Grand Slam tennis championships won by left-handed players is disproportionately high (with regard to both the general population and the ranking lists), while reserving overrepresented for such distinctions as people of colour in prison and men in Congress.

Wouldn't the proper comparison, even on your own system, be to the proportion of therapy seekers?
232
Okay, so you didn't vet one GMT sufficiently regarding individual therapy. You're buttering your bread very thinly there, but that was only a side interest.

You seem to be getting at something, though, with your conclusion:

[This ties back to my statement about female therapists being limited to processes that support the status quo in cases where change from the wife would benefit the relationship.]

I am not sufficiently interested in the mechanisms of heterosexual specifics to go into the question of flipping the genders, and leave that for any woman so inclined. But you appear to be prioritizing benefit to the relationship over benefit to the wife (it's unclear where you put benefit to the husband) or even conflating the two, which makes things even more interesting, as I'd claim that to be far from given.

As you apparently are punting on my quibble:

[4) For couples in which the male is the one considering divorce (the minority case - women leave men much more frequently), I think you'll have better luck saving the marriage with a straight male therapist.]

may I ask you to insert "opposite-sex" between "For" and "couples" to make it less heterocentric?

For something new, what is your take on bisexual therapists?

233
@seeker:

Psychiatrists and psychologists help with different types of disorders, or different aspects of these disorders. A psychiatrist will be able to help someone with an eating disorder maybe by treating their depression with anti-depressiva, but not necessarily with dealing with the underlying self-worth issues, sexual abuse, or even just the behavioural challenges sufferers may face.

The psychologists you described reminded me of the psychoanalysts of the 70s or of Woody Allen movies where everyone seems to have to be in therapy forever.

The completely non-significant sample of psychotherapist clients that I know skews heavily to problems where a psychiatrist with a pill is not the only solution: homeless teenagers from abusive homes, teenagers with eating disorders, and teenagers who have been sexually abused. Or any combination of the above. They definitely need to process what has happened to them, but very often they also need to have behavioural therapy, and sometimes also psychiatric care.

In short, each of these forms of therapy has their place and has inherently their own duration.
234
When your spouse gains a lot of weight, is that a "statistically significant other?" Fits the definition of "large sample size," too.
235
@seandr:

I am a bit confused about that validation business. In my understanding,to validate someone does not mean to agree with him/her. It's about acknowledging their feelings, not about blaming anyone.

236
@ven: Fair enough - let's go with "disproportionately high" if you believe that's a less value-laden description. The two phrasings have exactly the same dry statistical meaning to me.

But you appear to be prioritizing benefit to the relationship over benefit to the wife

You appear to be assuming the relationship is not to the wife's benefit.

may I ask you to insert...

For you, I'll gladly make the requested insert.

For something new, what is your take on bisexual therapists?

No experience with such that I'm aware of.
237
@migrationist: Validating and acknowledging are not the same thing.

And please tell me you aren't doing talk therapy with anorexics.
238
@seandr:
Then please explain what validation is in your words.
I am neither a native speaker nor trained in psychological terminology, so when I simplify I might lose nuances without necessarily disagreeing with you.

And no, I am not a talk therapist. But I volunteered with dementia patients, and still volunteer in a weekly chat for troubled teenagers. For both, I got introduction courses into validation.
Since they were independent of each other, and focussed on different groups, and the courses were provided by different people (even different genders), and still taught the same thing, I think I got the basic technique right.
239
@migrationist: Validation can take fairly neutral, rote, and I would argue useless forms, i suppose, but the kind i have in mind might be something like "Of course you felt angry, that was a humiliating thing for her to have said to you in front of your friends".
240
@seandr

Validation is only useless to people who perceive it as the norm, which is to say, people who grew up with it.

For people who grew up with invalidation as the norm (victims of abuse and neglect experience invalidation a lot), experiencing validation of their emotions can be a massive revelation.
241
@121, shurenka: sorry, but this sentence, and the sentiment behind it, are BS
If WSN feels violated and didn't consent to what happened, then she was on some level assaulted.

Surely the intent of the boyfriend is relevant in this situation too! It sounds like you're saying all that matters is how she felt about what happened. It sounds like in your world view, if I left a $20 bill on my dresser, and found it was gone later when I looked for it, and jumped to the conclusion that it had been stolen and felt violated, it wouldn't matter at all if it turned out my wife had actually just put it away in my drawer. All that matters is that I felt violated, no matter what sort of misunderstanding of reality on my part led to that feeling. People are right to feel threatened by the prospect of this world view catching on. Sure she's entitled to her feelings and shouldn't be shamed for feeling them, but that doesn't mean she's entitled to have them confirmed as reality.

242
@seandr:
Your example is, in my opinion, taking sides, not validation. The problem is the "of course".

If someone in my chat said something like that I'd probably phrase it like "You were angry because you felt humiliated by your father in front of your friends."

Being angry is a fact, the humiliation might have happened or not but was definitely felt.

But yes, validation does not work for everyone with everyone. And it's not only the words, it's the whole exchange. The person who gets validated must feel taken seriously and understood by the other person (not necessarily been told that they are right).
243
@mydriasis: I don't think we disagree - validation has been the key to successful therapy for me.

My point is that therapy that limits itself to rote application of objective statements, in which the therapists withholds all judgement, opinions, and wisdom, or worse simply asks questions and reflects back the patient's response, is in my opinion unlikely to produce meaningful change.
244
Dr Sean - Well, it seems reasonable to assume three possible benefits - to him, to her, or to the relationship. In a win-win-win situation, perhaps all three would coincide. Now, I shall grant that my own experience of therapy as a highly and openly oppositional process might not be the norm, but I suspect there's a good deal of fakery-pokery trying to make an outcome which benefits two of the original trinity appear to benefit all three.

I'll go back to your own supposition that, for a couple of the opposite-sex variety in which the male partner is considering divorce, the marriage is most likely to survive if the therapist they consult is straight and male. You have advanced various ideas supported by your experiences as to how female therapists approach such situations. But it seems to me that the statement hangs together at least as well that a straight male therapist has a better chance of saving the marriage not because straight men removed from the problem have Magical Powers to get through to Recalcitrant Wives but because:

Both of the married parties are more likely to engage the therapy in good faith, straight males (I'm not sure where to place bi males in OSMs) having not only the training that They're Not the Problem that they will expect an SMT to confirm but also a greater inclination to be suspicious of a therapist Other.

Women, having the training to Defer to Straight Men, can be manipulated into falling in line more easily. It's exhausting enough to go against training with one straight man, and much harder to oppose two.

If FTs are going to be supposed invested in Permanent Process, it seems only fair to be permitted to speculate that SMTs are invested in Perpetuating Patriarchy. I think it would make a fascinating experiment if we could somehow track the identical advice given to couples from different sources to see if just the perception (even if inaccurate in a particular case) that a SMT would be more naturally inclined to perpetuate patriarchy than a GMT or any FT would be enough for the identical advice to meet with a better response from SHs than it would have received had the source not been both S and M.

The net result is that SMTs will tend to reinforce patriarchy (they can be presumed to have a vested interest in maintaining control of the profession, an outcome which is to the benefit of a great many more husbands than wives.

And now, as I have done a great deal of theorizing about heterosexuality, which will serve about much purpose in my life as the knowledge that the earth revolved around the sun did for Sherlock Holmes, may I ask you to be so kind as to speculate about bisexual therapists? What would be your hypothesis about BMTs and BFTs, as suggested by your extensive experience of therapists of the monosexual variety?
245
"It's exhausting enough to go against training with one straight man, and much harder to oppose two."

Yup. I think most women would be afraid of being ganged up on.
246
@migrationist: Perhaps my use of the term doesn't precisely square with the technical definition of "validation" as taught in clinical training programs. I also suspect there may be gender differences at work here with women deriving more therapeutic benefit than men from simply being heard and understood.

The process I have in mind (call it what you will) looks more like the following. Patient describes an incident in which something triggers a negative emotional response. Depending on the trigger (which is always a behavior, not a person per se) the therapist assures the patient that their emotions were a normal, understandable, justified, or otherwise valid response to said trigger. Perhaps the therapist "unpacks" the trigger in order to help the patient understand and accept his resulting emotions. Perhaps he relates it to other cases he has seen, or to a scene from a movie or book (hi vennominon!). The effect of this is to soothe the negative emotion. Moreover, the patient implicitly becomes an observer of himself in the incident, learns to label the various dynamics at work, and thus the trigger begins to lose its power as a negative emotional catalyst.

As this cycle is repeated, the patient becomes less reactive to the trigger, and can thus take more constructive steps (perhaps suggested by the therapist) to address it with the triggering party, or, minimally, he can avoid acting in ways that escalate the situation and take the focus off of the instigating behavior.

This form of validation has proven useful to me. If a therapist simply reflects back what I say, I would assume he is an amateur who has no idea what he's doing.
247
I'd just to add my 2 cents on the word "validation", because it is a much-used word in therapy, but it's a bit too flexible a word in its application.

*** Validation can mean (as noted above) the recognition that a given person has a right to have feelings or responses or perceptions in general; also (again, as noted above) it can be vital to people who have been mentally or physically abused, or who were or are in controlling relationships of any kind where even the notion that they have a right to their own feelings has been pulled out of them and needs to be rebuilt.
*** Validation can also mean that a person is right to have specific feelings or responses or perceptions, including (and sometimes especially) in a specific context. An example might be “normally you’d be are wrong to be enraged at your spouse because (s)he had some friends ‘round for drinks without telling you, but you have every right to be enraged when that’s the first night off you have had in four months and you had been telling him/her that a night alone with him/her was of deep importance to you”.
*** Validation can also mean that, whatever the intrinsic merit of your feelings you are right to talk about them with me or someone else.
*** Validation can also mean (and this is where we swerve into the negative) taking a position on the essential rightness or wrongness of the source of the feelings. For example, (and to continue the example given above assume that I’m the scheduling spouse), it’d be right of a therapist to validate that I’m upset that my wife screamed at me for this, and perhaps even my feeling that she was wrong to scream, but it’d be wrong of the therapist to validate my colossally assholish act of bringing the friends ‘round without any consideration for her whatsoever.

What I am trying to say is that I have seen therapists, in their eagerness to validate the right to emotions also validate objectively wrong conduct. They are more interested in supporting their patient’s right to their feelings than examining the circumstances of those feelings. This can be emotional death in cases of disputed custody or access where a child soon learns that no matter how bad their own conduct they can run to the other parent / therapist for validation of their feelings and be backed up to the hilt. So, good validation might be “X, I know you were upset at this, and I understand that, but you were a bit of a dick to your mother and I’m not going to back you on this until you apologize to her”, but bad validation might be “X, I know you were upset at this, and I understand that, so I’m climbing into the car and getting you home from your time with her right now, and you don’t have to go back until this is sorted out”. And, since I have taken the child to a therapist who is more interested in my child’s feelings than the fact that my child called my ex-wife’s new girlfriend, say, “an ugly cunt”, you can be damned sure that the breach is going to widen and the behaviour will worsen.

Sometimes being a therapist means being like a parent who is teaching their kid to ice skate and sees them fall: sometimes you have to be genuinely concerned and say, “are you okay?” and take ‘em off the ice, and other times you have to say, “you’re not hurt so kindly get off your ass before it gets soaked and before somebody trips over you”. Most therapists I have run into over twenty years are pretty good at the former, and suck ass at the latter.
248
@ven: It's becoming evident that I'm a fool for trying to generalize from my experience. As mydriasis would tell you, my own relationship constitutes an N of 1, which leaves 0 degrees of freedom, and thus provides no basis for drawing statistical inferences about the greater population.
249
"It's exhausting enough to go against training with one straight man, and much harder to oppose two." "Yup. I think most women would be afraid of being ganged up on."
I don't disagree. I'd only add that most straight men who have been in some form of marital or family therapy with a female therapist feel that they're outnumbered. They feel this because they usually are: First, because the emotional processing/ discussion model is one which can be accurately characterized as "feminine". Second, (and it's sad but true) that female therapists usually side with the woman. I wish it weren't so, but it is. Third, taking the side of the woman often takes the form of what is or isn’t going to be considered in the therapy. One of the tricks that I noted over the years was when a contentious issue could not be avoided: If the husband was right on the objective facts and wanted to talk about them, the counsellor would try and switch him around to what the wife's feelings are about them, and “couldn't/shouldn’t he see it through that lens”? Where the wife was right on the objective facts, the counsellor would edge the husband away from his emotions and insist that he deal with the hard facts because "that's the reality the two of you have to deal with, isn't it?" and so forth. [The only exception to this, really is the nutcase religious ones who suck in the opposite direction, and, thank Baal, we don’t see many of them in Canada, whereas we’re ass-deep in the other kind.]
250
There's a huge bit of willful blindness involved when people discuss the role of women and therapy. Nobody, for example, thinks that you're a misandrist nutcase if you say, "women are often treated badly in tech because it is, at the moment, an almost irredeemably male environment with excessively male outlooks and behaviour". At the moment that statement is one of fact, not misandry. If, however, you say that "men are often treated badly in marital/family therapy because it is, at the moment, an almost irredeemably female environment with excessively female outlooks and behaviour" people think you are anti-female, even though that too is a simple statement of fact and not misogyny. This problem gets exponentially worse if the therapist operates from a feminist modality, as Seandr noted above @230:
When I eventually brought this up with him, it basically came down to him holding a feminist perspective that made him uncomfortable, as a man, taking any position that could be construed as unsupportive of my female partner.
That is sadly common, but that level of honesty about it isn’t.
251
Look, I want to get one thing about all of this on the record. I don’t hate therapists per se. I just think that most of them in the family/domestic field are biased as hell and blind about it, or, worse, just complete hacks. The ones that are good are wonderful, and pearls beyond prince. In that, I suppose, my views on them are the same as a car dealer’s views on mechanics or a homeowner’s views on contractors: you have to sift through a lot of dung to find the diamond. However, most people treat contractors and mechanics (and lawyers, heh) with a certain degree of wariness that they frequently very much deserve. They treat therapists with a fair degree of assumed competence, trust and fairness that they definitely don’t deserve. If I seem to be ragging on them here it’s simply because it’s the first thread I’ve seen in a while where people seem willing to call therapists on their limits or biases, and frankly, after twenty years there’s a real dam burst happening.
252
@seandr:
In my context, validation is not used as a treatment but to make clients/ patients/ etc feel accepted and understood. Only if they are feeling understood, they are open to new experiences (dementia patients) or to discuss their problems (troubled teenagers).

So back to my above stated confusion: I had wanted to express my disbelief at how did your therapist think he could help you without establishing that kind of trust?
253
@seeker:
Most psychologists I've met privately, I dislike, male ones and female ones indiscriminately. But I have seen how much they can help if someone gets the right one - for them.
The thing is that it is even more important to click on some level with your therapist, more so than with your doctor. Now, one, or even the, problem with marriage and family counselling is that the therapist needs to click with more than one person, so that makes finding the right therapist for any given couple even more difficult.

Interesting that you consider the emotional processing/ discussion model to be feminine. Since its foundation is the work of Freud/ Jung/ Adler, the whole concept was never gendered for me.
254
@seeker: I'm not sure I agree that our culture holds therapists in such high esteem.

@migrationist: Thanks, it seems I've left out one of the most important effects of validation - building trust with the patient.
255
@seandr, I'm a bit late to the picnic, but I love your alt. fairytale. Maybe the next Disney princess should be Anne Rice's Beauty?
256
@seandr - Re: your Disney hypothesis --

I don't know where you got the idea that young girls' impression of male sexuality comes from Disney movies and "Prince Charming" images. When I was growing up I saw mostly media images of male sexuality that fit the opposite extreme, that men are sexually obsessed, have no respect for women, and are out to "conquer" or "take" any woman that they can. Both boys and girls see this image of male sexuality all the time, way before puberty. We see it in popular culture, and, unfortunately, we often see it in real life too. Kids witness misogynist comments by adults. Kids witness street harassment, and, if you are a girl, you may have been on the receiving end of street harassment (or similar harassment and inappropriate comments from men you knew) long before your teen years. Not to mention kids who were victims of or witnesses of some form of sexual violence.

Girls enter adolescence not naive about, but wary of, male sexuality. In some cases, as in that of WSN, that can lead to an awkward encounter being mistaken for intentional and premeditated harm. And a lot of men do do shitty things. And the ones that do shitty things, and the way that is glorified in our culture, can lead a 14 year old, and yes, even a 21 year old, to wonder what was going on with a guy in a situation that was ambiguous. So you should probably be complaining about the guys that do shitty things, and the cultural images that glamorize guys doing shitty things, for creating a situation where everyone is on edge and the margin of error for an inexperienced and inept 14-year old boy is slim. I don't think this has anything to do with cartoon movies that almost no one watches past the age of 4.

@200 -- You may have driven yourself crazy by over-thinking whether something happened to you that you can't remember (yes, that is a pointless road to go down) but don't judge yourself for the squicky feelings that came up over what you did remember. I realize everyone's household is a little different, but sleeping with your father (esp alone, just the two of you) every night, and spooning? That alone may not rise to the level of abuse, but it does seem like poor boundaries. Kids sleep with their parents once in a while when they've had a nightmare or something, not as a matter of course, and spooning is something you do with your romantic partners, not your kids. So it seems natural that you had a little bit of residual squickiness over it when you first thought of it again as an adult.

Also, men know that they get erections while they sleep. So spooning your kid, knowing that you'll probably end up with your erection pressed against them, is gross and creepy. No, it does not mean that your repressing other memories, but it, in and of itself, seems icky and inappropriate and I think you had a right to feel weirded out remembering it. It also seems a bit like your father was using you as a substitute bed partner to spoon with when your mother wasn't available, and parents who try to make their kids fill the needs a partner is supposed to fill, again, have poor boundaries.
257
For those who don't read unregistered comments, #256 is worth looking at.

@256: I agree with what you're saying without discounting what I was saying up around #203. That even while young girls are absorbing cultural signs that lead to fear and distrust of male sexuality, they are gobbling up narratives of romance which is very female-centric in which the man yearns for the woman, rescues her, and worships her, not unlike in a Disney way, but even more like something out of a Nicholas Sparks novel/movie.

I also beg to differ that no one over the age of 4 watches Disney movies. I teach university, and have discovered a trend: more and more of my 18-23 year-old students still watch Disney movies as a nostalgia/comfort activity (in many ways, many of them are quite reluctant to step all the way out of childhood, even as they want to participate in the fun activities of adulthood--though not the responsibilities, which intimidate them). Many of the young women, women up to and including the age of 26, explicitly hold up Disney princess relationships as their romantic ideal (I have had many conversations with them about this as part of a class discussion over the past 6 years). Moreover, they apparently feel no embarrassment about this. It is acceptable in their social circles to idealize the Disney model.
258
For those who don't read unregistered comments, #256 is worth looking at.

@256: I agree with what you're saying without discounting what I was saying up around #203. Even while young girls are absorbing cultural signs that lead to fear and distrust of male sexuality, they are gobbling up narratives of romance which is very female-centric in that the man yearns for the woman, rescues her, and worships her, not unlike in a Disney way, but even more like something out of a Nicholas Sparks novel/movie.

I also beg to differ that no one over the age of 4 watches Disney movies. I teach at a university, and have discovered a trend: more and more of my 18-23 year-old students still watch Disney movies as a nostalgia/comfort activity (in many ways, many of them are quite reluctant to step all the way out of childhood, even as they want to participate in the fun activities of adulthood--though not the responsibilities, which intimidate them). Many of the young women, women up to and including the age of 26, explicitly hold up Disney princess relationships as their romantic ideal (I have had many conversations with them about this as part of a class discussion over the past 6 years). Moreover, they apparently feel no embarrassment about this. It is acceptable in their social circles to idealize the Disney model.

259
Ooops: sorry for the double post.
260
Ooops: sorry for the double post.
262
Mr Seeker - Again, I'm a tourist here, but I see it as a female therapist providing a bit of counterweight to the male-leaning advantages of the patriarchal society under which the couple acquired all the problems they bring to therapy in the first place. From the viewpoint of patriarchal bias, neutrality appears anti-male to begin, when really a bit of pro-female adjustment is probably required to restore equity. I won't go so far as to approve the bait-and-switch you instance, and hope that that is not a widespread practice among competent therapists.

I didn't bring up the idea that OSM generally benefits him more than it does her, but that was a part of why I was so ready to dispute against the idea that saving a marriage was necessarily a win-win. Dr Sean mentioned that an OSC would be more likely to save the marriage with SMT assistance, but I'm willing to consider that frequently or perhaps even usually a negative result (at least under the pro-male terms the SMT is likely to be able to negotiate), though again, as a tourist, I have little or nothing invested in this.

263
@102 seeker6079

this is old news by now, but just to clarify -- i tell this story fifteen years later without using the guy's name to people who have never met him and never will. i am as much the butt (get it) of the joke as he is. especially in light of where these comments have ended up going, i actually think it is important to share the fact that teenage sexual experiences are often uncomfortable, unintentional, and a bit messy. i usually bring up this anecdote when boys start talking about how middle school was little more than a daily battle to hide their erections, at which point i like to reassure them that many girls had absolutely no idea what was going on -- even when the evidence was mere centimeters away.

so. i'm not in favor of throwing my partners under the bus, but i am in favor of a more honest dialogue about sexuality, and i hope that i've been erring on the side of the latter rather than the former.
264
@256: I don't know where you got the idea that young girls' impression of male sexuality comes from Disney movies and "Prince Charming" images.

My speculation about Disney's influence on girl's ideas of romance (not sexuality) comes from raising a daughter, who, like all of her friends, went through a several-year phase of Disney Princess obsession.

She's now moved on to Disney sitcoms targeting tweens. I have no idea what she's taking away from them, because I can't watch them for more than 5 minutes without feeling the urge to the stab my eyes out with a fork.

When I was growing up I saw mostly media images of male sexuality that fit the opposite extreme, that men are sexually obsessed, have no respect for women, and are out to "conquer" or "take" any woman that they can

Wow, really? Which cartoons were you watching? Maybe there were some episodes of Scooby-Doo that I missed?
265
Nobody, for example, thinks that you're a misandrist nutcase if you say, "women are often treated badly in tech because it is, at the moment, an almost irredeemably male environment with excessively male outlooks and behaviour".

Except that's not what I say at all. There is no such thing as "irredeemably" or "excessively" male. Male =/= misogynist. That's, well, kind of the whole point. The preponderance of men in tech is an effect of misogyny, not the cause.
266
seandr@265: well, cartoons are hardly immune to rape culture, though I don't think that's what squickipedia meant. Pepe le Pew, anyone?
267
Dr Sean - Oh, dear. It's probably too late now. Best of luck in the future; I fear you'll need it.

I might advise, for those whose children are still impressionable, a variation on the practice taken from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn of reading a page from the Bible and a page from Shakespeare every night. The authors may vary to suit tastes. While I did not exactly follow such a practice with my sisters, who are nine and twelve years younger than I, I was at least able to keep them from being entirely sucked in by such things as the Sweet Valley High series. Put enough quality material into a child's head early, and if the child goes on to choose junk, at least it can be considered a free and fair choice.
268
@seandr

First of all, you think the only media that children take in is cartoons? Really though? Okay, fine here's one: Family Guy.

Second of all, not all little girls drink up Disney (I didn't). Some of us had brothers, and the media we consumed was influenced by them (especially if we had older brothers, like I did).

Plus let's not forget that little influence called real fucking life. Your parents' relationship(s), relationships your older siblings are in, etc etc etc.

Do you want to know which cartoon influenced me as a kid? Bugs Bunny. I'll never forget when he dressed up in drag to elude his various hunters. All it took was a dress and some false eyelashes and all of a sudden they were wrapped around his finger. That's when I knew: female sexuality was power.

My point being: children aren't little vessels for Disney to pour it's saccharine (and messed up) worldview into. They have their own takes on things and process information in their own ways based on their own lives, personalities, and experiences.
269
@ven

Shakespeare and the Bible? Ugh, kill me now.
270
@269 (mydriasis): Mr. Ven was referring to Katie and Johnny Nolan's parenting techniques in Betty Smith's 1943 novel set in the first quarter of the 20th century), not necessarily suggesting that everyone should adopt them. Although one could do a lot worse. The point was to read to your children, or expose them to good literature daily.

seandr: A funny "Scooby Doo" story: When my oldest kid was little, she didn't even know our tv had channels. It was only tuned to the local PBS affiliate and could only be turned on and off. PBS limits children's programming to a few hours in the morning, and she was ordinarily allowed to watch a half hour of television per day, although sometimes of course, she got to watch more. Naturally, she'd never seen commercial television (a huge bonus for me, because that meant she didn't beg me for toys or food she'd seen advertised during children's programming), nor had she seen cable networks like Disney or Nickelodeon. So one day, when she was 6 or so, she came back from a play date at a friend's house talking about this great show she'd seen, "Scooby Doo." I told her that it sounded really wonderful, but alas, our television didn't get that channel. Which she accepted. Then about 2-3 years later, she figured out how to change the channel and that led to the discovery that we did, indeed, get "that" channel. But she didn't realize that I'd been deceiving her. She said, very excitedly, "look, Mommy, I found a way we can watch those other tv shows!" It was sweet, even as it was the beginning of the end.
Luckily, or maybe because I kind of was a Nazi about stuff like that, and practiced my own version of the "page of Shakespeare and page of the Bible" parenting technique, she was never susceptible to any Disney programming, princesses or tween, and hated Nicholas Sparks type movies, too. But she and I drooled over the same actors on "Trueblood" together.

271
@Mr vennominon:

If you want to reinforce patriarchal gender norms and unreasonable romantic expectations in girls, then yes, the combination of bible and Shakespeare will be the best choice!
272
@nocutename:

The power of parents to influence their children is limited. My sister and B-I-L don't have any TV programme but my nieces are allowed to watch DVDs for 30 min a day. They also go to the library together regularly and the girls can choose their own books, with just a bit of direction from my sister.

One day my youngest niece (6 yrs old at the time) wanted me to read her newest book to her. So I did. And boy was I surprised!

Apart from the missing sex scenes and that the hero and heroine were a wild boar and a pig, it could have been a 1980s romance novel with Fabio on the cover! The pig was very sheltered, completely naif and went on my nerves with her stupidity. The wild boar knew what was best for her, saved her from being slaughtered and together they lived happily ever after.

Anyway, while I was reading that book to my niece, I tried to get her to see the stupidity of the pig but I think she was too mired in the romance.

The book was clearly not what my sister had it expected to be, but she was rather amused by it.
273
@migrationist, oh I know how limited parents' powers are. I also didn't want to limit everything. I must wanted to limit a few things, and I succeeded.

As far as the Shakespeare and bible combo go, the book is about a poor Irish immigrant family living in New York during the 19teens and 20s, and the mother's plan to expose her children to great writing so as to better their changes in for success in life starting with success in school. I think was a pretty wise choice..The poetry of William Shakespeare and the poetry of the King James translation of the bible, content aside, are beautiful things. Learning to wrench meaning from those collections of beautiful, but confusing sounds takes a good deal of mental work and requires a level of interpretive ability which, if applied elsewhere and under different circumstances, will help you go far in life. You can get all that from the exercise of reading those texts without having to believe in the moral absolutes of either one. But you'll no doubt develop an appreciation for a well-turned sentence.
274
@Eirene: Pepe le Pew, anyone?

Ah, good one! But see my comments below.

@mydriasis: First of all, you think the only media that children take in is cartoons? Really though?

If we're talking about the Disney Princess age cohort, any media they consume these days will have been carefully chosen and vetted by their adoring parents.

children aren't little vessels for Disney to pour it's saccharine (and messed up) worldview into.

Given my point above, that's exactly what today's children are, with maybe some Star Wars (now owned by Disney!), DreamWorks (Shrek), and Harry Potter thrown into the mix. To be fair, not all Disney movies are bad, especially the Pixar stuff.

Okay, fine here's one: Family Guy.

I've had numerous discussions of What Are We Going to Watch in which I futily attempted to persuade my kids to try Family Guy, The Simpsons, and even (bad bad father!) South Park. They have no interest. "Dad, these are grownup cartoons - boring!"

I do take heart in the fact that my daughter now watches Saturday Night Live with me, which only started when she discovered that Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Macklemore, etc. make appearances on the show. And I've successfully converted both of them into Jim Carrey fans - Ace Ventura and Dumb & Dumber in particular were well received.

Do you want to know which cartoon influenced me as a kid? Bugs Bunny.

Perhaps you're older than I thought you were. Anyway, the media we consumed as kids, especially latch-key kids like myself, were indeed a lot less "regulated" and heterogeneous. Those old Warner Bros cartoons were great, many featuring variations of comedy setups (including the one you mentioned) dating back to Elizabethan England and the ancient Greeks. My kids have sat through a few of them, and maybe a few episodes of Tom and Jerry, but they can't compete with Disney for my their attention.
275
@migrationist: If you want to reinforce patriarchal gender norms and unreasonable romantic expectations

Is it "reinforcement" or "educating as to the existence of"?

I'm actually thinking if I want to teach my daughter about pushy and coercive men, Pepe le Pew might be a place good start. "Yes, it's true, some men behave like that, but the French accent makes them easy to spot."
276
@275: chuckling . . .
277
I wonder how much the disney-princess media feeds ideas into little girls' heads and how much it answers an innate need that's there for some reason. I can see good arguments for both sides.

Sometimes I think that parental campaigns to keep their daughters (and sons) away from all helpless-beauty-gets-rescued-by-strong-man storylines in an effort to rear girls who eschew pink-tutu unrealistic ideas about gender roles does about as much good as giving boys toy guns and baseball mitts to prevent them from being gay. It's as though there's something very deep and real there for (some) girls, and all the leading in other directions can't squelch the fantasy.
278
It wasn't that cut and dried for me--I was not protesting gender roles so much as consumerism and bad artistic values. My daughter went around town dressed as Queen Frostine from the Candyland game, and I thought it was funny.
279
@seandr

You seem to have missed my point (which was explained in my last statement).

Let's go real oldschool: three little girls watch Cinderella. One comes out thinking "I want a prince charming of my own!" one comes out thinking "I want a fairy godmother of my own!" and the third comes out thinking "I want to live in that giant castle!".

If you don't believe me that children aren't blank slates, believe the overwhelming scientific evidence. Give them girls a little credit!

I remember babysitting kids and seeing young boys (probably 7?) running around at the park singing the "Family Guy" theme song. That show's suuuper shitty towards women/sexuality. I think if Disney teaches little girls that men are Prince Charming, then Family Guy teaches little girls that men are Quagmire or worse... Peter Griffen.

As for how old I am, reruns my friend! I grew up in the 90's.
280
@mydriasis: Read my comment @214 - I don't think kids are blank slates.

And while I do believe that children have become, from a consumerist perspective, "little vessels for Disney to pour it's saccharine (and messed up) worldview into", I also think that kids are savvy enough to maintain some critical distance from what they watch, perhaps more so if they haven't been excessively media-sheltered.

I thought children of the 90's watched the Mighty Morphin PowerPuff Ninja Turtles.
281
@seandr

Ooh boy, did we ever.

What I was getting at was less of a critical-thinking aspect, and more of an innate personality factor. I was shown Disney as a kid, but it didn't take, neither did Barbies or really any kind of dolls. My baby sister adopted that media (and worldview) enthusiastically. You can take a horse to (or from) water, but you can't make it drink.

And just because a girl likes Disney movies doesn't mean she likes/adopts every part of them. I liked the Lion King (maybe that'll put more of a timeline on me, eh?) but I took away that nature is dope, not that Elton John should sing all my love songs.
282
@mydriasis: Yes, and I'd think that anyone who would disagree with you has never had the experience of raising a kid.

As a parent, you can certainly influence them, especially by fucking them up, but there's no question there's a lot of predetermined and indelible scribbling on Locke's Tabula Rasa.
283
Believe me or not, I'm WSN. Here's my original (un-edited) letter to Dan.

21 year-old female here. When we were both 14, my first boyfriend took advantage of me. Although we were both lucky enough to get comprehensive sex education, I was still pretty naïve about sex. I wanted to explore my sexuality a little, but things went farther than I wanted. One day we were kissing with him on top of me. We were both fully clothed and he started rubbing up against me. I didn’t realize he was dry-humping me until after he (presumably) finished and left to clean himself up. He never asked for my permission. Once I understood what had happened I felt violated. He’d also groped my boobs in the past without asking. He broke up with me a couple months later. I haven’t spoken to him in 7 years.
For the most part this hasn’t scarred me too much. I’m comfortable with my sexuality and it hasn’t caused any problems with my relationships. However, it’s very painful for me to think about what happened. I also avoid having sex with someone on top of me because it reminds me of what happened and I start panicking. I want some closure so I can move on with my life. I don’t want to report him to the police because it’s not necessary - it happened so long ago. As far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t rape. But I do feel like I was exploited and it was not consensual.
I want to contact him and ask him to apologize. I doubt he’ll even remember that it happened. But a sincere apology would help me get over this either way. The problem is that he lives on the other side of the country and I have no way of contacting him besides looking him up on Facebook. I don’t think FB is the right place to talk about this, but it’s not possible to talk in person.
How can I get in touch with him in a way that’s appropriate without having to see him? And what do I say? It’s hard to talk to anyone about this and I’d be really grateful if you could help me, Dan.

Also to those who think I'm over-reacting to what happened to me, this was my first sexual experience and I did not want it to happen then, especially with him. So it's painful to think that I was too afraid to speak up and say no. I feel like a coward. But I've realized an apology is too much to ask from this particular person because he's a scumbag and most likely always will be.
284
Believe me or not, I'm WSN. Here's my original (un-edited) letter to Dan.

21 year-old female here. When we were both 14, my first boyfriend took advantage of me. Although we were both lucky enough to get comprehensive sex education, I was still pretty naïve about sex. I wanted to explore my sexuality a little, but things went farther than I wanted. One day we were kissing with him on top of me. We were both fully clothed and he started rubbing up against me. I didn’t realize he was dry-humping me until after he (presumably) finished and left to clean himself up. He never asked for my permission. Once I understood what had happened I felt violated. He’d also groped my boobs in the past without asking. He broke up with me a couple months later. I haven’t spoken to him in 7 years.
For the most part this hasn’t scarred me too much. I’m comfortable with my sexuality and it hasn’t caused any problems with my relationships. However, it’s very painful for me to think about what happened. I also avoid having sex with someone on top of me because it reminds me of what happened and I start panicking. I want some closure so I can move on with my life. I don’t want to report him to the police because it’s not necessary - it happened so long ago. As far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t rape. But I do feel like I was exploited and it was not consensual.
I want to contact him and ask him to apologize. I doubt he’ll even remember that it happened. But a sincere apology would help me get over this either way. The problem is that he lives on the other side of the country and I have no way of contacting him besides looking him up on Facebook. I don’t think FB is the right place to talk about this, but it’s not possible to talk in person.
How can I get in touch with him in a way that’s appropriate without having to see him? And what do I say? It’s hard to talk to anyone about this and I’d be really grateful if you could help me, Dan.

Also to those who think I'm over-reacting to what happened to me, this was my first sexual experience and I did not want it to happen then, especially with him. So it's painful to think that I was too afraid to speak up and say no. I feel like a coward. But I've realized an apology is too much to ask from this particular person because he's a scumbag and most likely always will be.
285
@273 and 275:
I tried to be a bit tongue-in-cheek.

@284:
I don't see anything in your unedited letter, either, that tells me that your ex-boyfriend is a scumbag.
286
@nocutename: Scooby Doo

Oh that is too cute.

We cancelled our satellite subscription long ago, so it was a while before our kids saw their first TV commercials. When they did (I think we were on vacation) they didn't really understand what they were, and they were mildly outraged by all the interruptions. I gave them a brief lecture on advertising and how they try to trick you into thinking you want things that you don't really want or need. Then we'd all sit and make fun of them. "Look at that kid - what kind of loser get's that excited over a juice box?"

So, with commercialism more or less out of the way, like you, my objections were always based on artistic merit. Little Mermaid? Sure - it's well crafted, some beautiful songs, and interesting themes involving love, interracial marriage, coming of age and autonomy, questioning authority, etc. But Little Mermaid III? "I'm sorry sweetie, but no - it's pure pap shat out by a roomful of cynical MBAs."
287
The original lw has posted @283/4, if anyone who doesn't read unregistered comments is interested.

@283: I hope you read beyond the harshness in some of these comments to see the part about going to therapy and consider it. Your unedited letter doesn't contain any new or relevant info and when you say at the end of your post that "I've realized an apology is too much to ask from this particular person because he's a scumbag and most likely always will be," it comes off oddly, especially in light of what so many of us and Dan have said: that 14-year-old boys have little control over their sexual responses, that unless you left out some details (which you had a chance to make clear and still didn't take), he doesn't sound like a "scumbag," and that to still be this upset about it so many years later and to feel so traumatized suggests you could use some help beyond an apology for something, which, as written, doesn't seem to warrant one.

@seandr: Kid's tv: exactly.
288
@283: I understand that feeling, years later, of being disappointed in yourself, of wishing you could have stood up for yourself better, of realizing that you were a coward, or didn't even know you had the right to object to something or thought so little of yourself that you just went along. I get that.

To which I say: Cut your 14-old self some slack. 14 is a hard age at which to speak up for yourself. You wouldn't behave the same way now. You've learned to be your own advocate, and that's what counts. You are lucky, really, that if this is your example of the time you didn't stand up for yourself, it doesn't involve more exploitation than it does. Most of us have some kind of experience in which we were exploited because we couldn't/didn't know how to/didn't realize we had a right to say stop. Not all the exploitation was sexual in nature, and that that was, was often far more serious, even if it seems that for you the damage was as significant as if the exploitation had been more obvious.

You say: "this was my first sexual experience and I did not want it to happen then, especially with him." So many of us have our first (or more than our first) sexual experience in ways that we didn't plan or that later we regret, or not how we would order them from a wish list if we could, and with people we either didn't know or didn't want to know or whom we grow to dislike, or (well, you get the point). Real life very rarely plays out as we would make it if we could control every aspect of it.

But it was a relatively minor experience, really, all things considered, and it happened a long time ago (a third of your lifetime), so you need to be able to let it go and move on. Ultimately, it's your future sexual experiences that matter, much more so than your past.

Please forgive yourself for being a naive and non-assertive 14-year-old and see if you can forgive him for being an over-eager 14-year-old. You're putting a lot of energy into this that could be better spent elsewhere.
289
WSN, get over it. Quietly. In a corner or something. When you rub up on 14 year old boys, they come. Sometimes boyfriends spontaneously grab boobs. You weren't assaulted. STFU.
292
Hey, boyfriend, I want you to climb on top of me and make out with me but not too much, you fucking scumbag.

Your unedited letter and addendum makes you look worse than before.

You fucked up, Dan.
293
I propose that anyone responding to Mr Hunter @291 only provide a single point - or maybe two - so that there is room for all and nobody spends multiple hours in composing a response. The first thing that came into my mind:

Reproductive choice. I am envisioning a year in which Mr Hunter is held by society to be entirely and solely responsible for contraception, which he is unable to buy anywhere because all the pharmacists within a hundred miles of him are female and it would go against their religious scruples to sell contraception to a man, while those medical practitioners available to him have been targeted by protesters into leaving the area or discontinuing providing the service. To make it even more interesting, the form of contraception he seeks would provide other benefits to his health, but is still denied him because it might be used for contraception.

(Sorry that this is a retread of the old, "If men got pregnant, there would be abortion centres open 24/7 on every street corner," but I have seen many histories of bad experiences women have had in this area, and I wanted to leave direct refutation of the points of Mr Hunter's assertions to the actual women present.)
295
Mss Migrationist/Driasis - I was not specifying either Shakespeare or the Bible as a must, and certainly should not choose the latter myself.

Even if one cannot entirely avoid predestined tastes, in many cases the damage can be minimized, and one might as well at least provide enough of a base for being able to see the flaws in the seductive stuff.

Ms Cute - Oh, well; at least it's not your fault. Was there a Mr Cute at the time who can serve as a convenient recipient of blame?
296
Mr. Ven: I'm afraid you're being too inscrutable for me. Would you mind explaining what's not my fault but I might want to blame on my ex-husband or maybe my father.

My brain's not working as it ought to.
297
283- I've read your unedited letter, but to me, it sounds like the letter Dan put at the top of the page. I don't see a difference.

Is there a difference now? Have you changed your mind about anything after reading what Dan had to say? If you've read this comments column, is there anything any of the commenters have said that you think is right or wrong or helpful or stupid or something you'll think about?
298
@Ven

I'd suggest that no one reply at all. That is some pure, uncut trolling there. "Durr, what are you talking about, ladies have disadvantages?"

His advanced age has given him eons to ponder (and answer) that question. The fact that he hasn't is pretty overwhelming evidence that he never will, and that anyone answering him would be wasting their time.
299
Ms WSN - While your assessment of the character of Mr J*-in-his-Pants is entirely plausible (some may say probable), you will appreciate, I hope, the difference between his behaviour being compatible with the S word and his conduct such as you have related proving his deserving a big scarlet S.

You are now actually reminding me of 17-year-old boys who would take certain girls to go make out (and perhaps do a bit more in the back seat) but would never ask those same girls to the prom. He was good enough to use to explore *your* sexuality but you certainly didn't want to have your first sexual experience with him - sounds much the same. Nothing wrong with either such arrangement if all parties are happy with it, but it's the same type of double standard, and often not made clear to the Not-Good-Enough-For-X party.

Taking everything at your own valuation, I do advise you again at least to check to see if your ex has had similar incidents since your experience with him. He could have escalated. Even if your story might not be able to serve a purpose as evidence supporting the case of another of his victims, you might at least find someone with whom to commiserate.
300
Ms Driasis - I thought it might amuse some of the women present, or at the least that some might enjoy my quick sketch.

Mr Hunter - You're in a deep pink state larger than Alaska in area. Oh, and the almost-all-female legislature keeps passing laws requiring you to have invasive and often painful medical procedures in order to maintain your eligibility for insurance. Pharmacists are free not to stock items of which they disapprove, and the legislature has banned the purchase of items you need over the internet.
301
Get into therapy WSN. If you've let these small incidents simmer for 7 means you're not ready to date, even at 21. Too bad I can't warn your potential dates to steer clear of you. That is unless they're looking to dodge a malicious date-rape charge. Dan went way too easy on you WSN. You were a partner in this. You were OK with your 14-year old boyfriend humping you until you discovered he blew his load. Then YIKES! He touched your boob, but never did it again. I'd say he was a saint. What did you think making out meant? A peck on the cheek?
302
Get into therapy WSN. If you've let these small incidents simmer for 7 means you're not ready to date, even at 21. Too bad I can't warn your potential dates to steer clear of you. That is unless they're looking to dodge a malicious date-rape charge. Dan went easy on you WSN. You were a partner in this. You were OK with your 14-year old boyfriend humping you until you discovered he blew his load. Then YIKES! He touched your boob, but never did it again. I'd say he was a saint. What did you think making out meant? A peck on the cheek?
303
@284

Hon, the reason Dan suggested that you not read the comments, is because you'd deal with a wide range of responses from unquestioning support (any touch you don't want is a bad touch! if you FEEL violated, you WERE violated) to ambivalence (well, it sounds unpleasant, but not really traumatic and I don't think he did anything WRONG) to mocking (my GOD, if THAT'S traumatic, then 99.9% of teen sex is traumatic! kids these days!) to hostile (what a crazy bitch!!! That poor guy!!).

Anyone sensitive enough to be distraught by such a situation as yours (sensitivity is not a bad thing, by the way) will probably be upset enough by the latter three that the first one won't help. Stop me if I'm wrong.

Therapy can be super helpful but it's hard to get into, especially if you're American, which I assume you are. If you're Canadian by any chance I could probably message you with some options so get at me, and if you're a student there's probably resources at your school. To be clear, I don't think you're "crazy" or anything, but if something from your past is troubling you then it could probably help to talk it out with someone.

I've seen therapy do a lot of good.
304
@ven

Haha, I did!

My warning was more for people who don't know better than for yourself. The sad thing is how common this view is. Women live longer? BFD. Frankly, I'd rather die at 65 with a loving wife doting on me than at 75 alone in a nursing home. Who wouldn't?
305
WSN has posted, but is unregistered, so a lot of folks will miss it. Here is her letter:
Believe me or not, I'm WSN. Here's my original (un-edited) letter to Dan.

21 year-old female here. When we were both 14, my first boyfriend took advantage of me. Although we were both lucky enough to get comprehensive sex education, I was still pretty naïve about sex. I wanted to explore my sexuality a little, but things went farther than I wanted. One day we were kissing with him on top of me. We were both fully clothed and he started rubbing up against me. I didn’t realize he was dry-humping me until after he (presumably) finished and left to clean himself up. He never asked for my permission. Once I understood what had happened I felt violated. He’d also groped my boobs in the past without asking. He broke up with me a couple months later. I haven’t spoken to him in 7 years.
For the most part this hasn’t scarred me too much. I’m comfortable with my sexuality and it hasn’t caused any problems with my relationships. However, it’s very painful for me to think about what happened. I also avoid having sex with someone on top of me because it reminds me of what happened and I start panicking. I want some closure so I can move on with my life. I don’t want to report him to the police because it’s not necessary - it happened so long ago. As far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t rape. But I do feel like I was exploited and it was not consensual.
I want to contact him and ask him to apologize. I doubt he’ll even remember that it happened. But a sincere apology would help me get over this either way. The problem is that he lives on the other side of the country and I have no way of contacting him besides looking him up on Facebook. I don’t think FB is the right place to talk about this, but it’s not possible to talk in person.
How can I get in touch with him in a way that’s appropriate without having to see him? And what do I say? It’s hard to talk to anyone about this and I’d be really grateful if you could help me, Dan.

Also to those who think I'm over-reacting to what happened to me, this was my first sexual experience and I did not want it to happen then, especially with him. So it's painful to think that I was too afraid to speak up and say no. I feel like a coward. But I've realized an apology is too much to ask from this particular person because he's a scumbag and most likely always will be.
306
vennominon @244 and @262: There are two large (and conjoined) flaws in your supposition/argument. First, it assumes that there is a currently extant patriarchy. I know that's holy writ for someone approaching from a feminist analysis, but I'm not obliged to swallow it whole or in part any more than I'm obliged to accept a purely Freudian approach or a purely religious one; it's a philosophical/ideological assumption, and that's it. Second, it assumes that the individual male therapist is emobdying and enforcing that patriarchy. Seandr's experience is an illustration of how, even if we accept the existence of a patriarchy, men within it can and do reject it.

What worries me more is the day-to-day implications of your argument @262, which seems to be, basically, "patriarchy, therefore therapist can/should put thumb on scale on female side". That's horribly immoral and unfair. I was married once, and my wife far excelled me in education, income, power, health and skill in the therapy process. In your frame she is still disadvantaged and should be favoured, which is utter rot.

At a practical, political level, you might want to consider how likely men are to buy into feminism when it is characterized (and, if you had your way, implemented) as "we will favour women no matter what".
307
Alright, I wasn't sure if I'd have enough room to clarify in the last post so I didn't. So one thing Dan edited out was that he groped me multiple times on separate occasions without permission. I said "in the past", which to me meant "many times", but I guess that wasn't clear. Also the fact that we received very comprehensive sex ed, so it's not like I'm sexually repressed or backward as some commenters have suggested.

Also we were NOT just having a hump fest which ended in me getting upset when he came. We were just kissing, no groping of any other parts. He was on top of me when he starting rubbing on me. I did not reciprocate. I basically lay there uncomfortable and confused until he got off.

I don't blame him for being a horny teenager. I realize that kind of thing happens a lot. The reason it's still bothering me so many years later is that I pushed the memory of it back for so long while I was trying to deal with family conflict, depression, and the deaths of 2 friends. I mentioned the police in my letter because I knew there'd be some responses saying I should report him or something, but I'd never do that because it would be ridiculous.

As for going to therapy, I've been in and out of it since I was 11, so I'd rather not. But I will try journaling and talking to a trusted friend about it.

One more thing: the reason I'm calling him a scumbag is because of his unpleasant personality traits, not what he did to me, although that was scummy.
308
@mydriasis: I'm guessing you'll respond by mocking me as a whiner, which would be sexist, but here goes anyway.

Women suffer disproportionately from sexism - I won't question that. But societal gender roles and the uneven distribution of testosterone cut both ways, and for many men, these two forces impose a tremendously high cost, which might be paid, for example, by a term in prison (9 to 1 male) or by putting a gun in one's mouth and pulling the trigger (4 to 1 male). One might respond by saying "So what, it's not women's fault", which is certainly true for testosterone, although to claim that women, even the enlightened ones, play no role in reinforcing gender roles is, I think, naive.

Also, gender is certainly not the only mode of oppression, and in my opinion, it's a lesser force than wealth, which men and women are equally likely to be born into. (We'll save racism for another discussion.) I was fortunate, as a lower middle class kid who's father hadn't completed high school, to have attended private school with my city's crop of trust-funders. The outraged cries of "male privilege" don't resonates with my personal story, especially when I see what's happened to many of my old male friends from the hood, and when I hear from my best female high-school friend about the windfall she received when her rabidly Republican grandma finally died.

Fast forward a couple decades, and I find myself in a demographic where orthodox feminism simply doesn't fit reality. A plurality of mom's in my kid's private schools, for example, have chosen to walk away from ivy league educations and promising careers (one was a practicing MD!) to focus on child-rearing, which at my kids' age, to be quite frank, is a cake walk. This is not a choice most men will ever have, and while I'm aware of 2 stay-at-home dads in this community, they ended up in that position because their careers fizzled out, and I doubt their wives would have married them if they knew they'd later end up as sole breadwinners. (Foot note - I've heard from more than one career mom about about being socially ostracized by the stay-at-home-mom crowd, or, to borrow from feminist parlance, the "matriarchy".)

I'm sure you'd agree that many men don't truly understand the costs that women pay for simply being women. For example, men don't know what it's like to have one's personal autonomy restricted in very significant ways by the fear of being raped. Perhaps as you mature and become less glib, you might someday entertain the possibility that there are things you don't understand about the experience of being male.
309
@seandr

First off, I'm not a feminist. I also disagree with many feminist views.

But, both of those examples have massive counterpoints:

1. Men may end up in prison more often, but when men end up in prison for violent crime, who was the victim of that crime?

2. Men may succeed at committing suicide in higher numbers, but women attempt in greater numbers. Women also suffer from mental disorders in higher numbers for nearly every single type except for (off the top of my head, so excuse minor inaccuracy) narcissistic PD, antisocial PD, and schizophrenia.

Arguing that one kind of advantage is more important than the other doesn't relegate the lesser form of privilege to nonexistence. I think race is wayyy more important than sex in terms of oppression, but that doesn't mean sexism doesn't exist AT ALL.

I count myself lucky to being female. I enjoy the benefits, as I joked about earlier with Bugs, I like the benefits of female sexuality. I like women's clothes, shoes, lingerie. I like the fact that I will never be pressured into liking sports, I'll never be pressured into a fistfight, by nature of my gender. I can listen to whatever music I want, watch any show I want, read any book I want, without being put down for gender-nonconformity. I appreciate these things. I like that I'm allowed to cry, and be sensitive. If I ever have a child I'll feel incredibly blessed for the unique kinds of bonding available because of my gender. I wouldn't trade genders in a hot minute.

My glibness was never at the possibility that there are some disadvantages to being male, the glibness was at the absurd "pendulum has swung the other way" rhetoric that ignores the fact that superficial metrics of success ignore the massive reality underneath. In that reality, women are still getting the short end, in most ways.
310
@308 seandr: Well said!!! Could you pleeeeeeeeeease then elaborate further on the experience of being male? I'm a heterosexual female and have been left to feel totally clueless about boys and men since birth. Way too often it's as if I just don't understand guys at ALL anymore, however human we all are (most of us?).

You made some very strong points about our dysfunctional society and its inequalities among men and women. That got me thinking. Thank you for sharing your background and thoughts.

Dan: I LOVED your interview in this Sunday's Seattle Times with Nicole Brodeur!!!!!!! I'll be looking for American Savage!
311
Grizwatch update: Down to 158 lbs. on Memorial Day, and my new yogas are already getting loose on me!!!
312
@mydriasis: the absurd "pendulum has swung the other way" rhetoric

As I said, I believe women currently suffer in aggregate more then men from gender bias. However, I think it's clear which direction The Pendulum is swinging, and I don't think it's any more "absurd" for men to worry that it's not going to stop at its nadir than it is for women to worry that it may never get there or even reverse its direction. Is it really so crazy, for example, to imagine a world in which business generally favors traits that are more readily found in women? As an employer, it's not hard for me to imagine that at all, and as a man, the idea of losing my hard-earned position as provider (fairly or otherwise) conjures up a life in which every day would be a struggle not to put the gun in my mouth. (Doesn't help that an old acquaintance of mine was knocked off his perch a couple of years ago, subsequently abandoned by his wife, and is now chronicling this exact struggle in painful detail in his Facebook status reports, which I fear are going to one day come to a sudden halt.)

Furthermore, The Pendulum is really just an aggregate of millions of smaller pendulums, some of which aren't positioned on the man's side. (For example, it's slim pickins around these parts for a man in search of a good, masculine psychologist.) When a man says he doesn't see male advantage, he might be correct in a local sense even if his view of the bigger picture is obscured. And he's certainly no worse than women who mock the idea that men can suffer for being male.

Finally, you may not call yourself a feminist, but dismissing Hunter's (admittedly not very well articulated) post as "pure, uncut trolling" sure does sound like feminism's reflexive hostility to the male perspective. Of course, a lot of decent and fair-minded men are very poor advocates for themselves, so they share some of the responsibility for such breakdowns in communication. (Oh, that's right, you two have a history here, don't you, so, maybe I'm misapplying some of these ideas.)

And with this post, I've set a new personal record for procrastination. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
313
@seandr:

I agree that certain aspects in life are harder for men than women. I would disagree that fear of rape restricts my life very much. In my opinion, an 18 year old guy is much more likely to get beaten up (or stabbed, or shot at)if he ventures into the wrong part of town at night than an 18 year old girl is to get raped in the same part of town at night. Rape is not predominantly a stranger crime.

What makes it hard for me to sympathize (Mr. ven, as I was told on the other thread I will try and use a zed with Greek words from now on) with men who tell me how hard life is for males, is that those males are often the ones who sign up to the whole machismo voluntarily. They don't try to change the stereotypes, they just live them and whine about their lot (maybe it's just the men I know).

The men who live a more equal life usually do not tell me how hard their lot being male is.

And yes, those not uncommon women with a martyr outlook on life also go on my nerves.
315
[M]en who tell me how hard life is for males ... are often the ones who sign up to the whole machismo voluntarily. They don't try to change the stereotypes, they just live them and whine about their lot... The men who live a more equal life usually do not tell me how hard their lot being male is.
Depends on where in the stage they are, migrationist. If they are still in an egalitarian relationship (or have had theirs end with some decorum) then I’d accept that. However, I've noted over the years that some of the hardest-core MRAs are former egalitarians who discovered that their adjustment to the newer way of organizing things meant exactly dick when things went south: the higher-income wife seeking spousal support so high it will beggar him, or the judge who regards his role as a father as no more than a writer of cheques, the access schedules which treat him almost as an interloper in his own childrens’ lives, there on revocable license, the grade school teachers who once loved to see him at the school cutting him out of the loop once they know that the couple is separated (and so on). IME and IMHO traditional guys are less likely to be enraged simply because they have always thought that society saw them as Checkbook and Secondary Parent, and they may have thought that themselves. Mr. Egalitarian husband and equally parental dad who is suddenly thrust into that harsher reality tends to take it, um, rather more badly. They either get crushed and depressed, or very, very, very angry. Then again, most people do -- no matter what the context -- when they feel suckered because the rules they were told to / agreed to live by are suddenly thrown out the window by the very people who told them / agreed with them to live by those rules.
316
@griz: Could you pleeeeeeeeeease then elaborate further on the experience of being male?

Apparently I'm not done procrastinating yet.

Well, for starters, I don't think most women truly understand what it's like to have a body that makes sex such a ridiculously high priority. (For those women who do, you'll find my email address in my profile.)

Nor do I think they understand the loneliness and desperation and damage to self-esteem that a sexual dry spell can bring.

Nor do I think they understand how much energy and resources most men must expend in order to keep the supply of sex at tolerable levels.

Nor do I think they understand how this affects the career choices men make, and the level of sacrifice men are willing to make for their career. While feminists cry foul that men make more money on average then women, when it comes time to find a mate, women tend to prefer men who make more money than them. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Given my own career arc, it's been striking to me the attentiveness, the deferential posture, the beaming smile, the hand on the arm, the eye contact, the dilating pupils (oh how I love those), the subtle probing for your marital status (usually it's "So, do you have kids?"), that suddenly emerges from women the moment they find out what you do for a living or where you live.

I know plenty of women who only wanted (and found) a decent man with solid job, and yet a man who makes more money can elicit many of these same unconscious reactions, even in them, even if they'd never leave their husbands or allow themselves to entertain the thought of cheating.

As a young man, I knew this instinctively, and this knowledge, along with the not entirely misguided idea that my worth as a man was largely tied to my ability to provide, is in large part what drove me to a lucrative corporate job and kept me there for 9 years despite the toll on my health, both physical (gained 30 lbs) and mental (2 years on Paxil, 2 more on Wellbutrin), while at the same time working evenings and weekends to start my own business.

I could also go on about the touchy business of being an 16-22 year old male, coursing with testosterone, wired to think in the short term, intolerant of boredom, fascinated by your own physical and mental "hardness" and wanting to measure it against that of other men, and how all of these factors lead many young men to take enormous risks which sometimes pay off but all too often are foolish and lead to tragic outcomes.

Anyway, I certainly don't claim that all men share this experience, but I know I sure as hell ain't the only one.

    Please wait...

    Comments are closed.

    Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


    Add a comment
    Preview

    By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.