I try to see the obvious. Things that are so present in our reality that we can't even see them anymore... which is close to the best definition I've ever seen of the 'unconscious'.
This is not an esoteric insight, necessarily. Here's an example. At lunch today my therapist friend Erin mentioned that almost all of her clients are women. I asked why. She seemed puzzled. The conventional wisdom seems to be that women just are more likely to ask for help, look for support, reach out in times of need. That's just how the gender works - isn't it obvious?
I suggested there might be another explanation - maybe women need more therapy and support because they are actually more in need of therapy and support. In a world where women are disproportionately the target of violence, rape, abuse and systematic discrimination, it makes sense they might actually need help more than men.
Want evidence? Check out the "Trafficking in Persons Report 2011" released by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today. You can find it at http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2011/index.htm
As a man, I'm spending some time these days facing uncomfortable truths about the extent to which I am complicit in a world that is unsafe for my mother, sister, partner, and friends who happen to be women. When I ogle or stare at an attractive stranger, I am turning her into a piece of meat, ripe for re-packaging into a plastic coated dismembered doll - all legs, breasts, and dolled-up face, ready for the soft-porn fashion industry, hard-core online pornography sites, and potentially even for physical slavery and murder. It's a rather obvious feminist insight that we've done our best to ignore as a culture for at least two generations now.
Sadly, the obvious isn't always pretty.
This is not an esoteric insight, necessarily. Here's an example. At lunch today my therapist friend Erin mentioned that almost all of her clients are women. I asked why. She seemed puzzled. The conventional wisdom seems to be that women just are more likely to ask for help, look for support, reach out in times of need. That's just how the gender works - isn't it obvious?
I suggested there might be another explanation - maybe women need more therapy and support because they are actually more in need of therapy and support. In a world where women are disproportionately the target of violence, rape, abuse and systematic discrimination, it makes sense they might actually need help more than men.
Want evidence? Check out the "Trafficking in Persons Report 2011" released by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today. You can find it at http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2011/index.htm
As a man, I'm spending some time these days facing uncomfortable truths about the extent to which I am complicit in a world that is unsafe for my mother, sister, partner, and friends who happen to be women. When I ogle or stare at an attractive stranger, I am turning her into a piece of meat, ripe for re-packaging into a plastic coated dismembered doll - all legs, breasts, and dolled-up face, ready for the soft-porn fashion industry, hard-core online pornography sites, and potentially even for physical slavery and murder. It's a rather obvious feminist insight that we've done our best to ignore as a culture for at least two generations now.
Sadly, the obvious isn't always pretty.
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