MenAreGood
Indigenous Rituals and What They Tell Us About Men
Excerpt - Swallowed by a Snake Chapter Nine
tgolden
August 26, 2024
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Cross-Cultural Grief

 

This is chapter nine of Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing.  In the late 1980’s I was confused about men’s ways of healing and bumped into the anthropological research on cross cultural grief.  It was this research that clearly showed the tendency of indigenous people to give men activities following a loss.  The more I studied the more I saw that men relied on action as a mode of healing. It was easy to admire the grief rituals these folks offered to both men and women.  See what you think.

Chapter Nine - Cross Cultural Grief

Indigenous people around the world have highly developed rituals and mechanisms in place in their cultures to aid the resolution of grief. These rituals are an important part of life for these people. Their cultures are fertile ground for grief to be nourished. In many ways we are the primitives, because we have very few mechanisms in our culture that function in a similar way. By studying the way indigenous people grieve we can begin to get some idea about the state of grief in our own culture and our inadequate rituals. Using the analogy of a business or a sports team that is not doing well compared to the competition, we can examine a successful party and learn from their achievement. We will probably not adopt a specific grief ritual from another culture, but we will be able to see how these cultures have incorporated grief into their daily lives and how they have developed different rituals for men and women.

These cultures have implemented action-oriented rituals that allow both men and women tasks that connect them with their grief. In our own culture we have no such thing. We are left to our own devices to heal our grief, many times without the support of a caring community. Given this void of ritual, men and women are put into a precarious state. Often, women are able to overcome this void by using their skills of relating and their natural tendency towards verbally sharing their grief with others, but men, usually with strengths of a different nature, are at more of a disadvantage. Without culturally-endorsed rituals men are left with nothing to do following a death. It has been my clinical observation that men in our culture grieve through task, that is, they find activities that allow them to access and heal their grief. Through studying the cross-cultural literature we can begin to get a glimpse of the possible root of a man’s tendency in our own culture to connect his grief with action.

The least we can expect is to stimulate our own thinking about different ways to express grief. Our own weakness in dealing with grief can be strengthened by observing the strength of the tribal culture’s ritual that is so effective in helping their communities come to terms with their loss. With that said, let’s look at what can be learned from grief around the world.

Community

One of the first things we notice is the difference between the social structure of indigenous people and our own way of life. Tribal cultures live in communities of intimately interconnected people who are closely affected in some way by the death of any member. They live in close proximity, rely on each other for the necessities of life, and usually have a common history and world view. There is a bond between them that is amplified by the feeling of “us” and “we” that develops when a group of people share such interdependence. The people of these cultures have ritual structures in place that are designed to support those in grief. There is usually a strong expectation and a sense of responsibility that the community will lend its support to those in pain. There is a sense that each death is a loss of the community, not a loss that is isolated.

We can contrast this with our own situation, where there is a certain invisibility in our interdependence. We live together in neighborhoods but not necessarily communities. Many times the neighbors who live three doors down the street have little attachment to or connection with our family. We shop in different places and work in different settings. When a member of a tribe dies, it is a person who was connected in many ways to the community. When a member of a neighborhood in North America dies, too often it is merely someone who lived down the street.

The interdependence of the tribal cultures can be better compared in some ways to the family unit in the United States. Families are interdependent in a similar kind of way, with each member having prescribed roles and duties and interacting on a daily basis. In many ways our families have become our communities. But without the embrace of a larger community we are left with fewer places to receive support for our grief. Our primary means of support frequently is limited to the members of our family. A table with many legs is not affected by one leg being sawed off, but a table with three or four legs is crippled by a similar loss. This is one of the reasons for the emergence of grief counseling in our culture.

World View

Another difference we notice is that the world view of the indigenous people in some way brings meaning to grief. Many times grief is seen as food for the soul of the dead person. The Minianka tribe in Africa see the tears of grief as being nourishment to the newborn soul of the person being grieved. Without the tears the soul could not move beyond the land of the living. In this way the mourners see their grief as a benefit to the person who has died. The variations of this theme are many, but they all incorporate the idea that grief is a necessary process and without it there is some sort of trouble. It is easy to see the contrast to our own culture where people tend to feel that their grief has no purpose or meaning, or worse yet, that it is a selfish act.

Marking the Griever

There are many common themes in the grief rituals among indigenous people. One of these is the tendency to mark the griever. All sorts of mechanisms are used, but one that is found in many cultures is hair. For many tribal people hair is a symbol of life. It marks the passage of time and is therefore connected with life and death. Many times the grievers either cut off their hair or allow their hair and (in the case of the men) beard to grow in response to a death. This is done as a symbolic act and as a part of a ritual process prescribed by the community, but it also functions as a way to mark the mourners. All the people of the community are aware that a certain haircut means a person is grieving. There are many variations on this theme, including special cuts where only a part of the hair is cut or all hair is sheared. The hair can be cut with all sorts of instruments, such as sharpened seashells, or it may be burned off. Sometimes the cut hair is saved as a memorial, to become part of a necklace or be used in a ritual. The important message of the special hair cut is that this is a person in pain, a person who is grieving, and the treatment he receives is altered due to his status as a griever.

Other ways of marking the griever include covering oneself with ashes or oil or certain colors of paint. In one African tribe there is a complex system of designating the colors of grief paint to alert the community to the type of loss that has been suffered. For instance, a man whose father died would wear a certain color of paint in a certain place on the body. If it had been his mother who died, the paint would have been a different color and painted in a different design. This simple system not only alerts the community to the fact that this man is grieving, it also clearly marks the type of loss that has occurred.

Bark

 

Bark is used in some cultures both as a way to mark the griever and as a symbol of grief. The Karanga people of Africa wear bark to mark themselves as grieving. Women wear a bark necklace, and men wear a woven bark chain around the head. The bark serves also as a symbol of loss, indicating that an individual has been stripped away from the community as bark has been stripped from the tree.

The story of Jaque, also related in a previous chapter, is another example of bark used as a symbol of loss. When his brother died suddenly, Jaque was torn by sadness and anger. Following ancient custom, he went into the forest, selected a tree and, after uttering a prayer, stripped away a piece of the bark. Now the tree, like Jaque, had lost something whose loss caused deep pain. Many times over the following months he returned to visit the tree. As the seasons passed, the wound in the tree healed. So did the wound in Jaque’s heart. With the tree as a visible reflection of his loss, Jaque was reminded that he, too, was healing. Jaque is a Native American, a Cree.

In this example, the bark of the tree was used as a symbol of the pain that the man was experiencing. As the bark is a covering of the tree, it is almost as if the man had his own covering sliced away in a similar manner. A part of him was taken—not his core, which still exists—but something that was a part of him all the same. The tree stood as a symbol for his loss; it was wounded in a similar way. Each time he visited that site the tree could remind him of his own wound and, as he watched the tree heal, of his own healing.

These are some of the ways native people have used to mark the griever. Marking gives the griever a public role to play and, in essence, permission to publicly and privately grieve. We can contrast this with the invisibility of grief in our culture. One of the last markings to be discarded in our culture was the black arm band. We now have no overt way to differentiate the people in our community who are grieving from those who are not. The men and women who are grieving can feel this invisibility and the accompanying lack of permission to grieve. Indigenous cultures prescribe specific behaviors and roles for the bereaved, the grief “norm” as it were. This can be contrasted with our own situation where there is confusion over where and when to express grief, or how much grief and of what duration is normal. This lack of “norm” leaves everyone guessing. The people I have worked with have all had the same question, “Is what I’m going through normal?” We are left untethered with a great deal of pain but no box to put it in.

When Does Grief End?

In some tribal communities, it is the responsibility of the community to clearly state when the time of official grief has ended. An example might be that a grieving man was marked by being forbidden to eat a certain type of food. When the community members feel it is the right time, they will offer the particular food to the grieving man as a symbol that he is now ready to re-enter the community as a non- grieving person. There are examples other than food—a certain way of dressing or different behavior—but the essence is the same: the community clearly marks the boundaries of grief for the griever. This contrasts with our own culture where there is great confusion about when and how much grief is appropriate. We live in a near vacuum of social indicators about the time needed to grieve. The most prevalent guideline we have is that many people don’t think you should be grieving at all.

Separating Men and Women in Grief

Another form of marking the griever is the separation of men and women in the grief rituals. By separating the grievers these cultures are honoring the differences in grieving between men and women and setting up different containers for healing. An example is the Bara people of southern Madagascar who designate two huts when a death occurs. One hut is the Tranadahy, which means “male house;” the other is the Trano Be Ranomaso, which means the “house of many tears.” During the period of time after the death these huts are used for congregating and receiving condolences. The men’s hut is the center of activity regarding the death. The men plan and initiate the rituals, receive condolences from the male guests, and take responsibility for the body. The women’s hut is more the center of emotional expression, with the women keening, wailing, and crying as they receive condolences from the female guests. These people literally have different places for men and women to be following a death. In this way, men and women are among their own sex and are in a position to be healed by their same-sex community members. It also honors the difference in grieving styles between men and women by allowing the opportunity for each to be near those who grieve as they do.

Tribal people have found a box in which to put grief. That box is ritual. The ritual that is used is both a container for the effects of grief and a norm that shows people the way to grieve. It can be any number of activities. For women the ritual many times is related to sharing their pain with each other, crying or keening. Men, on the other hand, usually have a ritual that includes some sort of action—singing sacred songs, drumming, dancing, tree wounding, etc. When Rosenblatt examined grief in 87 different cultures, he did not find a single culture in which men expressed tears more than women. In nine of the cultures studied the men didn’t cry at all, and in most of the cases studied the men cried less than the women.24 This points to a significant difference among men and women: men don’t use tears as much as women when dealing with their grief. This finding is not limited to western cultures, as many of the cultures Rosenblatt studied were tribal people who still maintained their grief rituals from their cultural heritage. From this we can see that even in cultures where there is an adequate container for grief the men tend to use tears less often than women. This finding seems to verify the research, regarding a man’s decreased levels of prolactin and the increased difficulty for men to access their tears.

What we find when we examine the cross-cultural literature is that men many times have active rituals that help them move into their grief. There is a tribe in Africa where the men literally face the women who are crying and keening in order to get into the mood of grief. They use this activity of watching the women to bring forth their own sense of loss. Even these tribal men with the luxury of intricate and beautiful grief rituals acknowledge that it is not an easy task for them to move into their feeling state. By their actions of facing the women they do something that puts them closer to their own grief.

Drumming

Another active ritual used around the world is that of drumming. The men of the Yoruba in Africa use drumming as an active means to deal with their grief.25 They have a variety of rhythms for different parts of the funeral service; a rhythm for washing the body, a rhythm for lowering the body into the grave, etc. After the death of a chief the men start playing a specific monotonous grief rhythm over and over. This rhythm is played continuously for three days. The men of the tribe are responsible for keeping the rhythm going and do not allow it to stop. They drum day and night, sleeping in shifts and then drumming for long periods. It is through this ritual, and many others, that the men have something to do after the death, and this activity helps them engage feelings of grief. The rhythm signals to the tribe that a state of mourning exists and is a constant reminder of the loss to the community.

Externalization of Pain

Another aspect of active ritual is the externalization of pain. This is accomplished in a great variety of ways, from lacerating the body, scratching oneself until the blood flows, knocking out a tooth, or even cutting off a finger. Anthropologists tell us the reasons for these mutilations are related to a number of factors encompassed in their world view, including rendering the ghost of the deceased harmless, convincing the soul of the dead of the sincerity of the grief, establishing a corporal union between the living and the dead, strengthening the departed, as an offering, or purification. A few anthropologists have seen the core of these actions: they are outward acts that express inner states. By wounding the body in some way, the inner pain has an outer parallel. This is similar to Jaque who wounded a tree as a symbol; it is just that these people are wounding themselves. As their wounds heal, they will have an outer symbol for the healing of their inner wounds. They will also have physical scars to remind them for some time of the loss that occurred. One Australian tribe has a name for grief that literally translated means “bad guts.” That is probably the best description of grief I have ever heard. The mutilations cut away at the “bad guts” and let them flow. There is a ritual among the Aborigines where the blood that is dripping from the mutilated griever is allowed to drip onto the corpse, apparently in an effort to merge the living and the dead and to strengthen the dead person. I am certainly not suggesting that we adopt these rituals as a means to facilitate our own grief. However, they are honest and effective means that these people have found to externalize their pain and “bad guts.”

Let’s turn now to looking in more detail at the way a particular tribal culture deals with grief. We can examine closely the grief rituals and the mechanisms that the men use in dealing with their grief.

The Yolngu

 

Our first example is an Aborigine people of Australia, the Yolngu.26 The men of this tribe begin to work with their grief before a death occurs. As a person becomes seriously ill, the men respond by singing sacred songs. Groups of men gather around the bedside of the ailing person and sing the sacred songs of the tribe. This is not a “let’s sing a song and go” routine. The men will sing continuously as the person lies ill. The purpose of the songs is to comfort the dying person, to keep him alert, to insure that the person will die in the right “Manikay” (sacred song cycle), to alert the ancestors that this person is coming to them, and to insure that his soul will be oriented towards its “home” after death. As the men do this, the women of the tribe are responsible for the care of the sick person and feeding the men who are singing. If there is consensus that the person is dying, the women will also cry or keen along with the songs. This crying or keening by the women is called “ngathi.” Both the crying and keening and the songs by the men are accompanied by traditional Aborigine instruments, the clapsticks and the didgeridoo. Sometimes the ailing person recovers, and if this happens the singers disperse and life goes on. If death occurs, quiet covers the camp, uncharacteristic of the usual hustle and bustle.

At the ritual announcement of the death, which is made by a man, the women of the tribe keen and wail and throw themselves to the ground. At times they will strike themselves with sharp objects. It is expected that the men of the community will restrain the women from seriously injuring themselves. The men step forward and pull the weapons from the women’s hands and throw them out of reach. The women usually respond to this by ceasing their attempts at self-injury. This action of protecting the women is seen as a sign of protection for the grievers, and a show of community support for those who are most affected by the death. It is an action that men can take that is both protecting their loved ones and an indication of their own grief.

The men of the tribe will also keen at times, particularly if the dead person was a close relative, but the more common emotional expression of the men is venting anger by dancing. It is said that the men will dance in an “energetic and violent” manner that signifies hostility. According to Rosenblatt, this expression of hostility directed outward is a common masculine activity following a death. Many times a man’s anger will open the door into his other feelings of grief.27

Tribal Ritual in the 20th Century

The Yolngu people are in many ways between two worlds. Although they have maintained many of their rituals, they also live in the midst of twentieth century technology. If a member of their tribe has died in the nearby hospital, the body is retrieved in ritual fashion. The community goes to the hospital and obtains the body, then forms a “slow, emotional, and ritualized” procession back to their camp. The body, moved with accompanying dancing and singing, is taken to a shelter where it will lie until burial. It is said that even the cars take part in the ritual, slowing, stopping, starting, and reversing as they mimic the movements of the dancers.

The coffin of the dead person is painted with sacred symbols by the initiated men of the Yolngu. These symbols are secret and are not allowed to be viewed by women and children. The purpose of the sacred symbols is to mediate between the soul of the dead person and the ancestors who will help this newly born soul along his way. Prior to the use of coffins, the Yolngu men would paint the body of the deceased with red ochre and then paint on the sacred symbols.

Singing the Grief

Throughout the days of the ceremonies grief is openly expressed, many times through song. These songs communicate many things: a wish for the return of the dead person, memories of the events in the life of the one who died, and the hope of a safe passageway for the soul to the ancestors. The men often will be singing day and night, and will sleep in shifts as the songs continue. The singing of songs by the men is an important part of the funeral service. They are accompanied by the dancing of the women who enact the stories that the songs are depicting.

The grief that is felt and expressed at the funeral ceremonies can continue for some time. It is said that late at night after the day is done and the tasks of the community are completed, you can sometimes hear the keening of a solitary mourner. The sound is heard throughout the quiet of the community and is accepted as a reminder of the pain and grief that the mourner still feels.

The men are responsible for the ritual activities of their community, and in many ways become like stage managers or directors, making the ritual preparations, rehearsing the songs, and making sure the process runs smoothly. The Yolngu men are active in working with their grief, with very specific activities assigned to them. These activities of singing, dancing, and directing the rituals give the men a framework in which their feelings can emerge and be honored and acknowledged. The women are also busy in keening, crying, dancing, caring for the children, and feeding the men. The men and women of this tribe have very specific roles to play, and both support each other through the difficult period of grief.

The Dagura People

 

We now turn to another example of indigenous grief rituals, that of the Dagura people of Africa.28 When a death occurs the women of the village begin to grieve. Their grief is somewhat muted, however, until the men have ritually announced the death. This announcement cannot occur until the men have created a “sacred space” for the grief of the village to emerge, and no man is allowed to show signs of grief until after this ritual space has been created. This is done by invoking the aid of the spirits through a private ritual performed only by the men. The invoking of the spirits is partly designed to elicit enough grief from the mourners to allow the dead person to move into the world of the ancestors. The Dagura believe that the soul’s journey into the next world is dependent in some ways upon the grief expressed by the mourners. Without adequate grief, the soul is thought to be stuck on this plane of existence and unable to leave the world. They have thus connected their grief with a purpose, that being the birth of the soul of the newly dead. The creation of ritual space, a safe container for the expression of grief, is seen as essential to the birthing of the spirit of the person who died. A part of this creation of sacred space involves throwing ashes around the house of the deceased and the ritual preparation of an actual physical space for the grief ritual. The announcement states that there has been a death, the ritual space is ready, and it is now time to grieve.

The Dagura Grief Ritual

The grief ritual itself is complex and beautiful. The grieving space is divided into different sections. The body of the dead person is dressed ceremonially and seated on a stool in the section called the “shrine.” Two women elders are seated next to the body and are charged with the duty to collect the grief that is being expressed and to “load it on” to the dead person to help him or her in the journey toward the ancestors. The shrine is colorfully decorated and contains some of the important possessions of the dead person. There is a boundary around the shrine which symbolically marks the separation between the living and the dead, and outside of the two women tending to the body, no one is allowed to enter the shrine, for to do so would mean entering the realm of the dead.

Between the shrine and the mourners is an empty space that represents chaos. Within this space people are allowed to express any form of grief they want, as long as it is related to their feelings about the death. Crying, dancing, or any expression of emotion is accepted and expected to take place within this space. There are people who are designated as “containers.” These people are often relatives who have come from afar. Their job is to insure the safety of the space for the grievers, making sure that no harm comes to those who are actively grieving. The Dagura believe in releasing grief with all its intensity, but they have also developed a system in which the intensity does not exceed the capacity of the mourners. It is like a system of checks and balances. The containers follow the grievers as they mourn and if they stray out of the ritual space, will gently tap them on the shoulder to remind them to come back into the contained space.

On one side of the shrine are the men of the village and on the other side are the women. Each group consists of mourners and containers. The mourners are further divided by the “kotuosob,” a small piece of rope tied around the wrist of the griever. The rope designates a person who was particularly close to the deceased, perhaps a family member. This marking alerts all the participants that someone who is wearing the “kotuosob” is what they call a “center of the heat” person, that is, a person who is more likely to be in danger of “grieving himself to death.” The Dagura see grief as food for the psyche, necessary to maintain a healthy psychological balance. But they also see its danger—too much grief and a person will “lose their center” and, they believe, can grieve to death. Thus the Dagura designate specific containers to follow closely behind the tagged person and do exactly as they do, including dancing, jumping to the beat of the drum, or pounding the ground. Sometimes when a tagged griever is experiencing a great deal of grief, a group of containers and mourners will form a line behind him or her with each person in the line doing the same action as the primary griever. It is understood that this transmits the feeling of the primary griever into all of those down the line. This type of process is viewed as a form of silent and physical support to the person who is grieving. It is important to point out that among the Dagura the healing of grief is gender specific. That is, no woman will approach a man in trying to help him with his grief, and no man would do the same for a woman. They believe that it takes a man to help release and heal the grief of another man, and a woman to reflect the grief of a woman.

Music

Music plays an integral part of the ritual. The ceremony is accompanied by xylophones and drums and two singers. The xylophones are divided into male and female. The male xylophone follows the mood of the singers and the female xylophone accompanies the male xylophone with a redundant set of notes. The singers are charged with the responsibility of singing (chanting) the life of the dead person. They sing the joy and sorrow of the family history and the events which led up to the death. This spontaneous singing is done in order to emphasize and direct the grief of the community.

Everyone in the community is expected to take part in this ritual. It is held as a solemn responsibility. Anyone who happens to be near the village during the ritual is expected to participate. It is as if death stops life for a while, all other activities coming to a halt. In the words of one singer, “We are trapped in a world in which we are not in control because of the mighty power of death.”

In the Yolngu and Dagura cultures, and in others around the world, grief is vented at the funeral in a very intensive fashion. The rituals of both last about three full days. During that time grief is given all the attention of the community, and it flows and flows. It should also be noted that in both cultures the support for a person’s grief does not stop after the funeral. Most indigenous people have post- funeral rituals that provide further opportunity to express grief. Rituals are practiced throughout the year, often marking important dates such as the one-year anniversary of the death. The community expects the grief to continue for some time, and in both the Yolngu and Dagura cultures grief can be released after the funeral and at the next funeral, if need be. This can be compared with our own culture where there is usually very little expression of grief during the funeral services, and few, if any, culturally-endorsed occasions for expressing grief thereafter.

Both the Yolngu and Dagura examples begin to give us an idea of how our culture lacks sufficient contained space to process the emotions that follow a death. Both have woven grief into the fabric of their lives and into their world view. Both cultures have linked a person’s grief with the purpose of aiding the soul in its journey. These cultures are very explicit in providing markers of who are the grievers and actions and roles to be played. We have very little of this. Both give men specific things to do following a death, activities that help them in connecting to their grief. Among the Yolngu, men have the responsibility of singing, and with the Dagura, men are responsible for the ritual and the healing of other men.

Imagine just for a moment that the people of the Dagura and the Yolngu suddenly lost their active grief rituals. What would happen to their men and women? What would the men of the Yolngu do without their songs? In some ways this is a parallel of what is happening in our culture. We have much to learn from indigenous people about the resolution of grief. We can use this knowledge to find creative mechanisms that are right for us.

24. Rosenblatt, P.C., R.P. Walsh, and D.A. Jackson. Grief and Mourning in Cross-Cultural Perspective. 1976, H.R.A.F. Press.
25. Diallo, Yaya, and Mitchell Hall. The Healing Drum: African WisdomTeachings. Rochester, Vermont. 1989, Destiny Books.
26. Reed, Janice “A Time to Live a Time to Grieve: Patterns and Processes of Mourning Among the Yolngu of Australia.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 3, 1979.
27. Rosenblatt.
28. Some, Malidoma. Ritual: Power, Healing and Community. Portland. 1993, Swan Raven and Company.

If you are interested in this book you can find it here.

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Changing the Norms to fit the Narrative: CMNI
Bias Against Men and Boys in Psychological Research

(written in 2010) This is the final post in this series examining how science has been bent to serve a false narrative. According to ResearchGate, this particular article has been cited 299 times — placing it among the most frequently referenced works of its kind. In other words, it has helped spread a great deal of misleading propaganda about men under the guise of research. Keep that in mind as you read how it was constructed.

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Changing the Norms to fit the Narrative: CMNI


The last study we will examine in this series will be the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI). (Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory published in Psychology of Men & Masculinity, Vol 4(1), Jan 2003, 3-25.)7

This inventory purports to measure the conformity or lack of conformity to what it considers the masculine norms for this culture.

The first problem I see in this inventory is that the norms they have chosen as being masculine norms don’t seem like norms at all. Here’s a list of what this inventory considers masculine norms:

Power Over Women
Violence
Disdain for Homosexuals
Playboy
Winning
Emotional Control
Risk-Taking
Self-Reliance
Primacy of Work
Pursuit of Status
Dominance

It’s the first four that I find most off target, Power over Women, Violence, Disdain for Homosexuals, and Playboy. I just can’t see them as masculine norms for our culture. These four actually seem more like negative stereotypes which is hardly the sort of thing that will be effective in a professional inventory. My initial reaction was to think this inventory is painting masculinity in a very poor light. These “norms” are clearly negatively charged and not what one would expect. Why would any inventory choose such negatively charged words? Are they claiming these are generic masculine norms? The study clearly states that it is studying the reaction to the masculine norms of the dominant culture of the US. It says:

The inventory was constructed to assess the extent that an individual male conforms or does not conform to the actions, thoughts, and feelings that reflect masculinity norms in the dominant culture in US society. (page 5 Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory)

This sounds very much like they are examining generic norms. The article also states:

Gender norms also operate when people observe what most men or women do in social situations, are told what is acceptable or unacceptable behavior for men or women, and observe how popular men or women act (page 3, Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory).

So they are claiming that violence, power over women, disdain for homosexuals and being a playboy are all norms in the US and men are encouraged to act out these behaviors? That seems to be a very outlandish claim given that the norms for men are usually based on the ideas of provide and protect. Many normative messages received by males include things like “never hit a girl” or some other imperative that says the opposite to what this inventory is claiming are cultural masculine norms.

The CMNI is not claiming to study some arcane aspect to masculine norms but instead is stating they are interested in the basic masculine norms as described above. That is pretty straight forward but the researcher throws in another twist and claims that the norms the inventory wants to study are only the norms of white heterosexual middle and upper class males. The reasoning, according to this researcher, is that these white males are the “dominant” group and other males would be affected by this dominant group. So this inventory is not just about male norms for the United States, it is specifically about white heterosexual middle and upper class male norms. Here’s the explanation from the article:

“The construct was chosen because Mahalik (the researcher) posited the gender role norms from the most dominant or powerful group in a society affect the experiences of persons in that group, as well as persons in all other groups. Thus, the expectations of masculinity as constructed by Caucasian, middle- and upper-class heterosexuals should affect members of that group and every other male in U.S. society who is held up to those standards and experiences acceptance or rejection from the majority, in part, based on adherence to the powerful group’s masculinity norms.” (page 5-6 Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory)

This inventory seems to assume that white heterosexual male middle class norms impact the rest of men in our culture. This seems a bit off to me when you look at the sorts of things that young men are looking up to and emulating. It seems to me that hip hop, word choices, language styles, and dress styles, and behaviors of black males are having a greater impact on young men then stuffy middle class and upper class whites. Furthermore, aren’t the rates of violent crimes much higher for blacks than whites? Aren’t the violent crime rates for lower socioeconomic groups much higher than the middle and upper class? If this is correct why are they ascribing violence as a prominent norms for middle and upper class white males? It doesn’t add up.

So this inventory clearly states that it is not attempting to gauge the norms of all men, it is looking to isolate the norms of a very specific group, the white heterosexual middle and upper class males of the US and then labels them in a very negative fashion. This is beginning to remind me of the way white males are isolated on TV as being recipients of bashing and shaming and sidesteps the problem of voicing any sort of negative comments about women, gays, blacks or other minority males.

Let’s have a look at the four categories that seem most ill placed in this inventory.

1. Violence

Is violence a masculine norm? I don’t think so. In 2008 99.82% of men in the United States were not arrested for a violent crime. That leaves about .18% who were. Very far from being a norm. Of the men you know how many are violent? How about your father, brother, nephews or other male relatives, are they violent? Probably not. And if they were, do you look up to their violent behavior? Do they model what you would like to be? Saying violence is a masculine norm in this culture shows a hateful attitude towards men and masculinity. In actuality, violence occurs when the role for men breaks down. Men’s roles have traditionally been to provide and protect. Are men sometimes violent while protecting others? Yes. But that is far from lumping all men into a norm of violence. Yes, some men can be violent, but no, violence is not a descriptor of men in general and to imply that violence is a norm for men goes beyond being anti-male and moves into being a hateful attitude toward men and masculinity.

Just imagine that we are creating a scale of norms for women. We know that women commit child abuse more often than men and that women initiate violence in intimate relationships more often than men.4 Knowing this, should we add to our norm scale that women are child and spouse abusers? Or that women are violent? Of course not, and anyone who tried to do this would be laughed at. Only a small percentage of women abuse children or initiate domestic violence. In 2001 243,000 women were labelled child abusers by HHS. Out of the population at the time of about 143 million women that comes out to about .17%. That is about the same percentage abusers per capita as there were males convicted of violent crimes and yet we wouldn’t dream of saying child abuse was a norm for women would we? Of course not. So why is it that no one objects when researchers try the same thing on men and even boys? This double standard, I suggest, is a strong indicator of misandry.

Disdain for Gay People

Some men and some women surely have disdain for gay people, but is this even close to being a defining characteristic of masculinity? Again, if this were about women, the offenders would be thought of as witless. The idea that most men have disdain for homosexuals is simply nutty. Implying or outright claiming that this sort of characteristic is representative of a birth group is again misandrist.

Power over Women

The norm of power over women is as perplexing as the previous two. Where is the data showing that most men have a tendency to want power over women or that that behavior is frequent enough to consider it a norm? I could find nothing to support this. This may indeed be the case in a tiny minority not unlike the female child abusers mentioned above, but hardly the frequency to call it normative. There are likely some men who do want power over women, just like there were indeed some men who were violent, but I see no reason to believe that most men do. Making a claim that one birth group wants power over the other birth group seems to be on very shaky ground. It seems to me that this is just another way to shame and stereotype men. Again, there is no evidence to support such a claim.

Playboy

Is playboy a norm for men? It seems like the same problem with this one as with all the others. Yes, some men are interested in continuous and multiple relationships and behave in a way that would be consonant with the playboy role but is that the norm for men? I don’t think it is even close.

I wrote to the creator of this inventory, James Mahalik, and asked him about these four “norms” and the reasons for their inclusion in this inventory. He referred me to the journal article being discussed here and claimed the article might explain this for me. I went back and re-read it. I was not surprised to see that the only reference to how these norms may have appeared was a list of articles dating from 1975-1995 that Mahalik claimed were used for his search of the literature. One of those he cited was a book by I. M. Harris written in 1995 and titled “Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities.”9 I found this book and discovered that “Playboy” was one of the roles the book mentioned. It was one of four roles under the category of men’s ways of loving. The other three in that category were “breadwinner, faithful husband and nurturer.” Each of those sounded complimentary as opposed to playboy which seemed more judgmental. As I went through the book I found that the book’s author stated that the playboy role was only chosen by 1% of the men surveyed as their dominant role. This leaves us with the obvious question of why would Mahalik choose playboy as a norm when the source he claims to have used to find those norms listed playboy as a very infrequent choice for men? It just didn’t add up and it looks very suspicious.

These four “norms” violence, power over women, playboy, and disdain for homosexuality seemed to pass harsh judgment on men and boys and seemed much more like stereotypes than norms. But questions arose in my mind. Was I overreacting? More specifically, had no one done this before? Was naming norms of men as being very negative new or was it a continuation of earlier research? To answer this question I pulled together examples of words that had been used as norms for men during the period of 1974 to 2003 and the CMNI. The chart below offers examples of the terms that have been used to describe masculine norms.

men-bias chart
 

Notice that the norms that were used prior to 1990 seem to be neutral. Examples included competency, level headed, independence, aggressive, forceful, suppressing emotion, willing to take a stand, assertive, and self-contained. All of these could be seen as being close to neutral with some like “level headed” or “self-confident” seeming even a bit complimentary. Someone could have some of any of these qualities, like some aggressiveness, some forcefulness or some assertiveness and depending on the situation would be considered okay. Now think of having some violence. Nope, you can’t even have a little bit of that before you are judged harshly. Same thing with power over women, playboy or disdain for homosexuals. A little bit of any of those and you are sunk. These four categories from the CMNI seem quite different from all of those from 1970-1986.

The Shift in Thinking

Why would any academic psychological inventory be willing to place such negative labels on a birth group in this manner? In order to even partially answer that question we will need to momentarily divert our attention away from this inventory and take a quick look at the ideological shift that has occurred since the late 20th century in the academic psychological community.

Prior to the 1980’s the psychological community thought of sex roles in terms of traits. Men and women were seen as different but not seen in terms of one being better or worse then the other. The trait theory was in its heyday and different traits were assigned to each sex. Norms such as strong and aggressive went to the men’s column, norms such as nice and nurturing went into the women’s column. Very simple and obviously inadequate as a measure of both masculinity and femininity. After the 1980’s feminist writings started gaining influence in the academic study of men and masculinity. It’s not a big surprise that with this shift men/masculinity started being seen as “the problem.” Prior to this time men and masculinity had been seen as a group of traits, now this perception shifted and instead men and “masculinity” starts catching blame for the world’s ills. I know that is hard to believe but it is true. Feminism, which had found men to blame through “patriarchy” for many of women’s problems now was beginning to become dominant in the discourse about men and masculinity. One of the influential writers in the late 20th century was feminist R W Connell. It was in the mid 1980’s that Connell began writing about “hegemonic” masculinity. Connell’s book on Masculinities and specifically hegemonic masculinity came out in 1995 and was considered a top resource by academic psychologists on the study of masculinities. Since that time these ideas about hegemonic masculinity have become entrenched into academic psychology. But just what does Connell mean by hegemonic masculinity? According to an article in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in 2005 Connell defines hegemonic masculinity as “the dominant notion of masculinity in a particular context which serves as a standard upon which the “real man” is defined. Connell claims it is built on two legs, one being the domination of women and the other the hierarchy of intermale dominance. It is also shaped to a lesser extent by the stigmatization of homosexuality.”

Now in the academic psychology world masculinity through its perceived domination is seen as THE problem. We have gone from an overly simplistic trait view to an even more overly simplistic view of masculinity as being bad, as being responsible, as being the problem. It is amazing to me that so many educated people can take such a misandrist viewpoint. Masculinity is obviously very complex, there are multiple models pushing multiple norms, some violent, some peaceful, some yin and some yang. “Never hit a girl” or “girls first” were surely messages that most boys received loud and clear. But they were among many. It is very complex and to try and boil it down to men being bad seems incredibly simple minded. So many different voices it is preposterous to claim that only one very negative voice defines the masculinity that all other males will follow.

It is worthwhile noting that R W Connell changed sexes from male to female in 2006. He was Robert W Connell and then became Raewyn W Connell. I have heard that Connell went to a professional conference after this change and presented a paper as a woman, Raewyn Connell, without giving any sort of notification to many of his peers of his profound change. I understand there were more than a few dropped jaws at the professional meeting. Yes, what many academic psychologists believe about masculinity was drawn directly from the writing of someone who at best had an ambivalent perception of what it is to be a male. Someone who decided to cease being male. Hard to see this viewpoint as anything near fair and balanced.

Apparently academic psychologists in the U.S. have taken Connell’s theories of hegemonic masculinity and siphoned out the negative traits and distilled it down to what they now call “Toxic Masculinity” which is characterized by: ruthless competition, violent domination, inability to express emotions other than anger, unwillingness to admit weakness or dependency, devaluation of women and all feminine attributes in men, and homophobia.

It should be getting more clear about the origin of those four categories of the CMNI. (Violence, Power over women, Disdain for Homosexuality and Playboy) They are the basis to the ideas of hegemonic and/or toxic masculinity. It seems that Mahalik must have liked the idea of hegemonic masculinity and toxic masculinity and liked them so much that he just inserted those into his inventory as norms not because there was any research that backed up those choices, but because they were the foundation of the latest and hottest theory among his peers.

I can personally testify that the ideas of toxic masculinity are alive and well in the American Psychological Association’s one place to study men and masculinity, APA’s Division 51. It’s a hotbed of feminism and attachment to the ideas of toxic masculinity. I was on the mailing list for this group for some time (until I was unceremoniously tossed out) and was continually shocked at the adherence to these ideas. The basic unvarnished theory is that masculinity is the source of our problems and that men need to learn to be more mature which is “code” for men need to act more like women. One of the list members actually wrote a message where he stated just that. Men needed to be more mature like women and the world would immediately improve! This is the primitive feminist lens through which they see the world. They don’t even seem the least bit aware of the ideas and psychological theories around mature masculinity. Here is what the mission statement of the APA group that studies men and masculinity says:

“Acknowledges its historical debt to feminist-inspired scholarship on gender, and commits itself to the support of groups such as women, gays, lesbians and people of color that have been uniquely oppressed by the gender/class/race system.”

I don’t mind professionals being interested in this or that theory but what I do mind is when that theory becomes a sacred cow which limits open discussion. On the mailing list of Division 51 feminism was that sacred cow. It was highly discouraged to question anything about feminism. It was also not a good idea to make any references to possible biological factors in masculinity, or to consider men worthy of choice and compassion. None of those flew very well. Actually a man, a PhD, was banned from the list for bringing up male victims of domestic violence too many times. Hard to believe but in the wacky wonderland of the feminist Division 51 it is totally true.

During my time on this list I would receive emails from other list members who did not post to the list but wanted me to know that they appreciated my willingness to question the feminist ideas and stand up for boys and men. They all said the same thing. “I wish I could post to the list and support you but I fear for my professional career.” They were worried that the bullies on the list, which included a number of very prominent psychologists, would blackball them. This tells the story of this list. It is run by bullies who try and force messages to the list to conform to the feminist standard. Many list members are very aware of their power and simply lay low.

It is of critical importance that every person interested in the MHRM knows that our professional psychological community routinely blames men and boys and expects them to change and be more like women in order for the world to advance. Much of the research being done has this underlying attitude as do the “experts” that are called on by the mainstream media, and also many of those who are doing therapy with men and women. It will take a great effort to expose the misandry that is embedded in their ideas and related practices. The more these ideas can be challenged publicly the better. We need our helping professionals to have concern and love for both sexes, not just one.

Now that we have a better idea of the origins for these four categories let’s get back and take a look at more of the ways that misandry underlies this inventory.

The Focus Groups

How had Mahalik come up with these categories? Were variables such as “power over women” and ”violence” pulled out of thin air, from the ideas of toxic masculinity, or was there some other rationale behind their selection? Had there been any attempt to choose norms that fit with white heterosexual men of all age across the United States? The article states that the researcher first reviewed the professional literature on masculine norms and then started two focus groups to discuss and refine them.

The groups met for 90 minutes each week for 8 months with the researcher. The curious part of this is that of the nine people in these two focus groups, only 3 were white men! Five of the nine were women. Here is the demographic composition of each focus group: (Group 1) 1 Asian American man, 1 European American man, 2 European American women; (Group 2) 2 European American men, 2 European American women, 1 Haitian Canadian woman.

Notice that men are in the minority and that white men make up only 1/3 of those in these focus groups. Importantly, white men are in the minority even within each focus group. This is odd, to say the least, considering that the overtly claimed goal was to develop norms of European American men. Why include so many women? Why have the group that you want to study be the minority? I started to wonder if the researcher had some pre-conceived ideas that he wanted to propagate. I wondered if having too many men and especially too many white men, after all, might foil his attempt to plant the seeds of his favored ideology? Who knows but it is a gaping question why white males were so underrepresented.

To see the absurdity of having white males be only 1/3rd of the focus group participants let’s try an exercise. Imagine that the same researcher is studying African American norms. He puts together focus groups to try and refine these norms. He has 3 African Americans, 4 whites, 1 Korean, and 1 Hispanic. These nine people form two focus groups where the African Americans are in the minority of both groups. It’s simple to see how that could be considered racist and intentionally marginalizing African Americans. It’s simple to see that groups such as that would be less likely to come up with an accurate representation of norms for African Americans than a group that solely consisted of African Americans might be able to provide. I hope it is also simple to see the misandry of this researcher’s using a minority of white males in the focus groups.

It’s worth noting that these focus groups included only grad students in counseling psychology. According to an e-mail from Mahalik, moreover, all were in their mid-20s. In a nutshell, the groups lacked diversity in age. Hardly the sort of group one would want to make decisions about the norms for all ages of white American boys and men.

Inventing the CMNI, supposedly an academic enterprise, were young men and women who relied on their own moral and ideological judgments about masculine norms. A better name for the result would be the Conformity to Adolescent Masculine Norms Inventory. Some of the conclusions that it presupposes do make sense when applied to immature and adolescent boys. Middle school boys may exhibit similar sorts of immature behavior. In some ways that is normative for that age group. Perhaps the authors are simply unaware of and have little experience with the mature masculine? We simply don’t know that at this point. What we do know is that the inventory, whatever its origin, is misandrist.

Mahalik also created an inventory for women, the Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory. It gives us a way to understand the CMNI more deeply by comparing it to the related CFNI. That is what we will do next.

CFNI Female Conformity to Norms Inventory

When I first saw the CNMI, I was a shocked at the misandrist content but wondered if that was merely a millennial shift for the 21st century toward examining the shadowy, unconscious aspects of life. That thought was dashed, though, when I saw the companion inventory for this the CFNI (Conformity to Femininity Norms Inventory), which the same researcher had created. I wondered if this version, for women, would contain similarly negative and judgmental “norms” for them. Would it refer to gossip, relational violence, the queen bee, or the gold digger as norms? What I found was that these norms were almost completely positive, all sugar and spice. Here is a list of them:

nice in relationships
thinness
modesty
domestic care for children
romantic relationship
sexual fidelity
investment in appearance.

All of these “norms” are either flattering to women or neutral. There is not a hint of judgment towards women in the naming of these feminine norms. All of them could be manifested robustly without causing harsh judgments. A woman could invest greatly in her appearance and be very concerned about her sexual fidelity or children or her modesty and she would be considered fine and dandy by our culture’s standards. Contrast this with the men’s “norms” such as violence where even a little of that “norm” is a horrible thing that deserves scorn and harsh judgment. I won’t argue if these feminine norms are right or wrong, only that they are distinctly different from the norms for the men and are much more positive and non threatening towards women.

It seemed to me that the researchers were reluctant or even afraid to make any negative claims about traditional feminine norms. Even more interesting was the way in which Mahalik established these norms for women. He created focus groups, as he had done for men, but this time he included students of only one sex, only women. These focus groups had a wider range of ages, moreover, and included middle-age women. The mean age was 32 with a standard deviation of 10 years. This means that most of the group members were likely between 18-46. Indeed, the women were asked to join not two but five focus groups. Several groups included mainly young women. Two included adult women from the community. Unlike the male focus groups, these represented more than the adolescent population. Somehow Mahalik switched gears and only chose women for the focus groups for the CFNI. I wonder what sort of reaction might have come if women were in the minority of each of the five focus groups?

Comparing the CMNI and CFNI

Both inventories used focus groups to refine the norms that would be used. In the masculine version (CMNI) the focus groups included many women. In its counterpart, the feminine version (CFNI), these groups included only women. One would think that if you wanted to get a clear idea of the norms of a group you would want members of the group under study to make those assessments. To create a group deliberately with most members coming from outside the group almost defies explanation. I e-mailed Mahalik about this. He never responded directly to my question.

Focus groups for the CFNI had a greater age range than those for the CMNI. It is easy to assume that the older women would have a markedly different perspective on feminine norms from that of the younger women. The younger men and women in focus groups on masculine norms would be likely to have a very similar perspective: that of an adolescent.

The two inventories contained remarkably different “norms,” with the masculine ones being negative and judgmental and the feminine ones either flattering (despite being, according to feminists, inconvenient) or neutral. Why didn’t the feminine norms include any negative stereotypes, just as the masculine ones did? I found a hint about the reasons behind this from Mahalik in a section of the journal article about the CFNI.

In addition, because the CFNI is intended to measure conformity to traditional norms of femininity in the U.S., we thought it should also relate to women’s development of a feminist identity. In describing women’s feminist identity development, Downing and Roush (1985) proposed a five-stage model in which the first stage, passive acceptance, reflects acceptance of traditional European American, North American, gender roles, beliefs that men are superior to women, and that these roles are advantageous. The second stage, revelation, is in response to a crisis or crises that lead women to question traditional gender roles and to have concomitant feelings of anger toward men. Sometimes women in this stage also feel guilty because of how they may have contributed to their own and other women’s oppression in the past. The third stage, embeddedness-emanation, reflects feelings of connection to other women, cautious interactions with men, and development of a more relativistic frame of life. The fourth stage, synthesis, is when women develop a positive feminist identity and are able to transcend traditional gender roles. (page 425 Conformity to Feminine Norms Inventory)

This quotation is very different from my earlier one about the culpability of white men. The women are described as developing a “feminist identity” and learning that they have been living in a world that oppresses them. This is the first time identity has been connected to social norms and is only found in the CFNI, not in the men’s CMNI. The women are told that men and their traditional roles are what has been holding them back because of the belief that women are inferior. It is clear that the researchers frame women as “good” and in need of space to grow while at the same time framing men as “not good” and needing to change. It is also worth noting that good is now conflated with victim in the CFNI. The assumption is that women are inherently good, and this goodness manifests more robustly when they can transcend the oppression they have suffered at the hands of males. This creates a picture of a good human being who is perpetually victimized by “the way things are.” It is this sort of characterization that allows feminists to paint women as good and also in need of protection and special services. Sadly these two inventories boil down to the creaky dichotomy between good women and evil men. Cartoons, in short, have made their way into academia. Let’s just look briefly at the norms chosen for women and the norms chosen for men and compare the two:

Screen Shot 2013-09-18 at 3.34.48 PM
 

I am going to avoid comparing these and will leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions. I will say that the Nursery Rhyme for each seems to describe the contents fairly well. How far have we come since the days of Nursery Rhymes?

It was obvious to me that a part of the misandry of this inventory was in the choice of names for the different categories. But it dawned on me to examine whether the actual questions on the CMNI were connected to the names. The first one I thought of was disdain for homosexuality. I found myself wondering what questions you could ask in a questionnaire such as the CMNI that would allow you to determine if someone truly had disdain for homosexuals. I found the actual questions of the CMNI and guessed at which ones were related to the disdain for homosexuality category. You will see them below:
5. It is important to me that people think I am heterosexual
16. Being thought of as gay is not a bad thing
23. I make sure that people think I am heterosexual
37. I would be furious if someone thought I was gay
42. It would not bother me at all if someone thought I was gay
51. It would be awful if people thought I was gay
63. I like having gay friends
73. I would feel uncomfortable if someone thought I was gay
80. If someone thought I was gay, I would not argue with them about it
91. I try to avoid being perceived as gay

Each of those questions seems to ask about a man’s worry and fear over being seen as gay. Please note that none of them are remotely related to a man’s “disdain” for homosexuals. Disdain is defined as having to do with contempt, scorn, or some might even say hatred. But do those questions in any way evaluate the respondents contempt, scorn or hatred? I would say no, but somehow the researcher seems to ask that series of questions and then label those who answer that they are indeed fearful of being seen as gay that they have disdain for homosexuality. This is ridiculous. Someone can be afraid of tigers and not hate them. They can be afraid of lightning and not hate it. The two are very different and this is one more example of this inventory’s questionable construction. It seems to me that it would be like asking a group of people if they were afraid of bumblebees and then labeling them bumblebee haters if they answered that they were afraid.

Yet another questionable part of this inventory can be seen when we compare the questions of the CMNI with those of the CFNI. If we look at the questions for the Playboy section of the CMNI and compare it to the questions in the Sexual Fidelity portion of the CFNI we find that the two sections have almost identical questions. Here they are:

PLAYBOY - CMNI
3. If I could, I would frequently change sexual partners
13. An emotional bond with a partner is the best part of sex
28. If I could, I would date a lot of different people
33. I would only have sex if I was in a committed relationship
38. I only get romantically involved with one person
47. I would feel good if I had many sexual partners
58. Long term relationships are better than casual sexual encounters
66. Emotional involvement should be avoided when having sex
83. A person shouldn’t get tied down to dating just one person
90. I would only be satisfied with sex if there was an emotional bond

SEXUAL FIDELITY - CFNI
4. I would feel extremely ashamed if I had many sexual partners
21. I prefer long-term relationships to casual sexual ones
29. I would feel guilty if I had a one-night stand
39. It is not necessary to be in a committed relationship to have sex
47. I would feel comfortable having casual sex
50. Being in a romantic relationship is important
56. I frequently change sexual partners
65. I would only have sex with the person I love
67. When I have a romantic relationship, I enjoy focusing my energies on it
72. It would be enjoyable to date more than one person at a time
78. I would only have sex if I was in a committed relationship like marriage

Some of the questions are exactly the same and some are simply worded differently but are asking very similar sorts of things. But the titles are very different. Calling one of these categories sexual fidelity and the other playboy seems very suspect. Why not call them both what they are, an assessment of sexual fidelity? Either call them both sexual fidelity or change the female title to something that matches the playboy title. What is a female who has lots of relationships called? Well, a hussy or a slut. Name it sluts and playboys! I bet that would have gone over very big with the feminists but the playboy label doesn’t seem to draw much ire does it?

Conclusion

It seems clear that misandry is embedded in this inventory. When I wrote messages on the APA mailing list for men and masculinity that questioned this inventory and pointed out many of the things you have seen in this article I was told that there was no misandry. I think this article clearly shows their claims are indeed false. There is misandry in this inventory and it is clear for all to see. That these professionals were unable to admit to this is yet more proof of the academic psychological community being enablers of females and feminism in the worst sort of way. The problems started as feminist writing and thought started to influence the thinking of psychologists. This resulted in the adoption of feminist thinking about men which then resulted in rigid and misandrist attitudes about men and the resulting misandry we see placed in this inventory. I simply can’t see any other explanation for the willingness to lump an entire birth group into such negative categories. If this sort of thing were done to any other group of people, the result would be immediate negative reactions from the groups involved and the press with multiple calls for apologies. However, when it is done to men we hear nothing of the sort. The problem can be likened to an ideological infestation. It is not merely popular culture, which everyone likes to attack, but also elite culture—that of academics, lawyers, politicians, social workers—and psychologists. We need to move to a point where we can see both men and women, masculine and feminine as having positive and negative qualities and learn to value each individual. We have a long way to go. You can help things along by speaking out.

Final Word on This Series

The three research articles that have been discussed in this series have one thing in common. They all rely on an ideological assumption, which the researchers try to bolster and confirm. In the process, they ignore the needs of men and boys by heaping contempt, either implicitly or explicitly, on masculinity, maleness or both. In the first study, on teen dating violence the questionnaires offered convincing data that boys were victims. But the researchers ignored that. Instead, they relied on a preferred ideology, one that assumes the primacy of female victims and therefore (despite the non sequitur) the primacy of their need for more care than male victims (if, so goes the argument, there are any male victims at all). In the second study we examined on reproductive coercion, researchers relied on the ideological belief that women are victims and men perpetrators, and their study showed just that, but they used an impoverished population that in no way generalizes to the population at large. Even though the researchers were aware of this limitation, the press release and articles by journalists ignored this limitation and treated the study as if it were indeed generalized. This was a huge boon for those researchers who wanted to “spread the word” of their chosen ideology. I can hear them saying, “Well, it was not exactly portrayed correctly but, you know, it was for a good cause.” In other words, the end justifies the means. Then the third article on the CMNI showed distinct signs of misandry in psychological research. The researcher believes that masculinity, or at least the version of masculinity that he considers prevalent in our society, is to blame for our problems. Consequently, the CMNI becomes a way of promoting an ideology.

The problem is that these researchers are standing science on its head. Real science requires astute and unbiased observers, who are eager to find the truth wherever the search leads them. This stands in stark contrast to ideologically based “studies” that use science as a means to some political end. This is very dangerous, in my opinion, but not enough people are aware of what is happening. Confidence in scholarship must be earned, continually, by scholars themselves. Even my confidence in my own field has declined. Scholars must be vigilant and not allow those who grind political axes to promote their own ideologies in the name of scholarship. But that’s not all. Journalists, too, must wake up. In fact, everyone must participate in the renewal of intellectual and moral integrity in academe.

Men Are Good.

REFERENCES

One of the best summaries of the ways that misandry is found in current psychological research is found in Appendix Three of Nathanson’s and Young’s Legalizing Misandry. The title of that appendix is “Misleading the Public: Statistics Abuse”

1. Nathanson, Paul & Young, Katherine R. (2001), Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, Harper Paperbacks, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, ISBN 9780773530997
2. Nathanson, Paul & Young, Katherine R. (2006), Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination against Men, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, ISBN 9780773528628
3. Fiebert Bibliography which contains abstracts of over 150 studies many of which show that women initiate domestic violence at a greater rate than men
4. August 3, 2007 American Psychiatric Association article pointing out that among violent couples women were more often the aggressors. (See the image below)
5. Archer, J. (2000). Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 651-680. (Meta-analyses of sex differences in physical aggression indicate that women were more likely than men to “use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently.” In terms of injuries, women were somewhat more likely to be injured, and analyses reveal that 62% of those injured were women.)
6. This page is a Montgomery County Maryland sponsored page which falsely claims that men are over 95% of the perpetrators of domestic violence. This page has recently been edited and moved. see the original image below.
7.Mahalik, J.R., Locke, B., Ludlow, L., Diemer, M., Scott, R.P.J., Gottfreid, M., Freitas, G. (2003). Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 4, 3-25.
8. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services statistics on child abuse/murder, This page has been moved. Here is a jpg of the original chart.
9. Harris, Ian. Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities (Gender, Change and Society)Taylor and Francis, 1995.

 
 
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tgolden@tgolden
December 08, 2025
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Is the UN the Global Amplifier of Gynocentrism?


Is the UN the Global Amplifier of Gynocentrism?

For decades the United Nations has described gender equality as one of its core missions. But when you look closely at where the money goes, what the campaigns say, and who the programs serve, a simple pattern appears:

“Gender equality” at the UN means women’s advancement—not equality for both sexes.

A structure built for one side

The UN has an entire agency, UN Women, whose mandate is “the empowerment of women and girls.”
There is no equivalent body for men and boys—no UN Men, no program for male mental health, no dedicated fund for fathers, male victims of violence, or boys falling behind in school.

The budget lines and organizational charts make that bias plain:

  • The UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women describes itself as “the only global grant mechanism exclusively focused on ending violence against women and girls.”
    There is no parallel trust fund for male victims.

  • UN Women’s “UNiTE” campaign calls for ending digital violence against women and girls.
    Men’s victimization online—equally common according to Pew Research—doesn’t exist in that narrative.

  • UNDP’s Gender Equality Strategy reports success by counting “nearly 300 million women reached” and by helping nations “stop violence against women.”
    Men and boys appear only as partners to help women.

  • UNICEF’s Gender Policy 2021–2030 centers “the empowerment of girls and women.”
    Men and boys are mentioned mainly as positive role models in families, not as potential victims.

Across the system, the beneficiaries are female; the helpers are male.

Where men are finally noticed

There are small exceptions—almost all in war zones.

UN reports on conflict-related sexual violence acknowledge that “men and boys have also been victims.” The Children and Armed Conflict office has even published a piece titled “Hidden Victims: Sexual Violence Against Boys and Men in Conflict.” But those admissions stay confined to the battlefield. They never migrate into the UN’s global gender architecture, where billions in aid and advocacy focus on women alone.

Why that matters

When one of the world’s leading moral authority treats one sex’s suffering as routine and the other’s as invisible, the effects cascade downward:

  • Governments model their own policies on UN frameworks.

  • Media outlets echo UN language when reporting violence or inequality.

  • NGOs compete for funding by aligning with “safe” causes—those that serve women and girls.

The result is an institutional feedback loop of gynocentrism—a worldview that instinctively prioritizes women’s welfare and treats male hardship as either self-inflicted or irrelevant.

What real equality would look like

If the UN truly meant gender equality, it would:

  1. Collect sex-disaggregated data on all victims of violence and harassment.

  2. Fund services for male victims alongside female ones.

  3. Acknowledge boys’ educational decline as a global crisis, not a footnote.

  4. Retire one-sex language (“women and girls”) from documents that claim to speak for gender equality.

  5. Create a UN Office for Men and Boys to parallel UN Women.

Those steps wouldn’t reduce concern for women—they’d complete it. Because equality that only travels one way isn’t equality at all.

Conclusion

What we see here isn’t an accident or an oversight. It’s the inevitable outcome of a worldview that equates “gender” with “female.” Every policy, campaign, and funding stream reinforces the same moral reflex: women deserve compassion and resources, men deserve correction and silence. The UN’s gender architecture has become a mirror of our cultural blind spot—a system that praises itself for “equality” while institutionalizing exclusion. The language may sound noble, but the practice reveals something else entirely. The UN has become the global amplifier of gynocentrism—broadcasting a one-sided empathy that shapes governments, media, and public consciousness around the world. Until that changes, “gender equality” will remain a slogan that hides a profound inequality.

I want to commend the work of Ed Bartlett’s DAVIA on the issue of the UN’s failure (links to over 50 press releases about the UN’s misandry) to address the needs of boys and men and promoting the 12 Global Disparities faced by men and boys. Jim Nuzzo has also done some great work on this issue. Examples are here and here.

Sources: UN Women Strategic Plan 2022–2025; UNDP Gender Equality Strategy 2022–2025; UNICEF Gender Policy 2021–2030; UN Trust Fund Annual Reports 2022–2024; UN reports on conflict-related sexual violence (OHCHR, CAAC).

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tgolden@tgolden
December 06, 2025
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Reproductive Coercion and Research Omissions
4 – Bias Against Men and Boys in Psychological Research

This post is the second in a three-part series that followed How Feminist Researchers Lied. Although these pieces were written some time ago, they remain just as relevant today.

The study examined here focuses on “reproductive coercion” — and it’s a striking example of how researchers can deliberately mislead. Incredibly, it makes the preposterous claim that men are the ones “poking holes in condoms.” Despite its weak foundation, the study received massive coverage in the mainstream media and has undoubtedly shaped public perception, reinforcing yet another false narrative about men.

Read on to see how they managed to spin this.
______________________________________________

 

 

I was browsing on the web and happened to read an article about a study on “Reproductive Coercion.” As I read it I was amazed at the sorts of statistics that the study was quoting. One article said that 53% of women surveyed had experienced violence in her relationships. “Wow” I thought, thatʼs over half of the respondents. Thatʼs quite a few. I read on and other stats were quoted that were equally shocking. I began to wonder about how they got such alarming statistics.

My interest was stimulated and I started searching for articles on this research. There were plenty. One from Newsweek, one from Science News Daily, one from Medical News Today, one from EScience News, one from the LA Times and others. They all made similar claims about this study and often used the same quotes and the same statistics. I kept looking for more articles thinking that with statistics as strong as these that there must be something unusual here. I wondered if their sample was biased in some way or perhaps the way they had defined their terms had inflated the numbers. About the tenth article I found was one from the college newspaper of the lead researcher in the study. The publication was called “The Aggie” and was the student paper for the University of California, Davis. That article included something that the others had omitted. The Aggie article said that the survey was done on an “impoverished” population of African American and Hispanic females. It went on to say that the study should not be generalized:

“The five clinics surveyed were in impoverished neighborhoods with Latinas and African Americans comprising two-thirds of the respondents.

The results are expected to be applicable to reproductive health clinics in demographically poor areas. Researchers cannot estimate if surveys at private gynecologists would produce similar results.”

Suddenly the results started to make more sense. We know that lower socio-economic levels tend to show much higher levels of interpersonal violence (IPV). One DOJ report shows that women with lower income levels are almost three times more likely to experience relationship violence than those with higher incomes. We know that women in rental housing are also three times more likely to experience IPV than those in homes that they own. By studying a sample that was impoverished it dramatically increased the likelihood of finding higher rates of IPV.

 

Then I started to wonder. How was it that all of the national media articles which had obviously been seen by millions of people had missed the sample being of impoverished African American and Hispanic females? I started to think that the media was simply not doing their homework and that their readers were getting fed misinformation as a result.

I decided at that point to obtain a copy of the study. I went to the online site for the Journal Contraception which had published the original article and purchased a copy. I read it. By the end I was shocked. There was no mention in the journal article of the socio-economic status of the sample that had been surveyed. No mention of whether they were rich or poor. I had to catch myself because I had earlier assumed that it was the media not doing their homework and simply not reading the journal article. But now it was a completely different situation. The information had been omitted from the journal article. How could that be? This was an article that had 7 researchers named as co-authors. It had to have been read and edited over and over again. How could it be that something so basic would have been left out?

I decided to write to the lead researcher Dr Elizabeth Miller. I sent her an email and asked about the sample. I told her that I had read the article in the Aggie that had mentioned that the sample was “impoverished” African American and Hispanic females and I was interested to know if this was correct or if the Aggie had made a mistake. She wrote me back a very pleasant email in several days apologizing for taking so long to get back to me and saying that yes, the Aggie was correct that the sample was largely disadvantaged African American and Hispanic females. I wrote her back very quickly and asked why that information had not been mentioned in the journal article. I also asked if she was concerned about the national media articles that never mentioned the fact that the sample was impoverished and seemed to be erroneously implying that the study could generalize to the population at large. She wrote me back once but has never offered any answers to those questions.

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At that point I contacted Gabrielle Grow, the author of the Aggie article and congratulated her on a job well done. I asked her how she had found out about the sample being “impoverished.” She told me that it was just one of the questions that she had asked the researchers in the interview. I wrote her back and congratulated her again and explained to her that all of the national articles including Newsweek, LA Times, Science News Daily, EScience News, Medical News Today and others had all missed that important bit of information. Ms Grow was the only reporter that asked the important question.

But why did the national news media not ask the same question? This is an important question and we really donʼt know the answer at this point. What we do know is the study issued a press release about the research findings and never mentioned the sample being largely a poor population. They also made no mention of the fact which is referenced in their study that this sort of population has higher reports of IPV thus creating inflated responses when compared to the general population. It made no mention that the study should be applicable only to other poor neighborhoods. Reading the press release one might easily assume that the study applied to everyone.

Here are just a few of the points the press release made:

1. Men use coercion and birth control sabotage to cause their partners to become pregnant against their wills.

2. Young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage their birth control or coerce or pressure them to become pregnant – including by damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives.

3. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they had experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner.

4. Male partners actively attempt to promote pregnancy against the will of their female partners.

With no mention in the press release that the studyʼs sample was largely indigent African American and Hispanic females one could get the impression from reading it that the study might apply to the general population. Even though the researchers when asked by Ms Grow, admitted that the study should only be applied to the poor. One can only assume that the researchers failed not only to mention this important information in the press release but also didnʼt offer this to the media in any of the interviews. Actually there was very little information offered that might have discouraged the media from playing this as a study about men and women in general.

This is obvious when you look at the headlines and quotes from various news articles. Here is a sampling:

NEWSWEEK

“What we’re seeing is that, in the larger scheme of violence against women and girls, it is another way to maintain control,” says Miller.”
“The man is taking away a woman’s power to decide she’s not going to have a child.”

LA Times

“Reproductive coercion is a factor in unintended pregnancies”
“Young women even report that their boyfriends sabotage birth control to get them pregnant.”

ScienceDaily

“Over half the respondents — 53 percent — said they had experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner.”

“The study also highlights the importance of working with young men to prevent both violence against female partners and coercion around pregnancy.”

Physorg

“Approximately one in five young women said they experienced pregnancy coercion”

ESCIENCE NEWS

“Young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage birth control or coerce pregnancy — including damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives”

INSCIENCES

“This study highlights an under-recognized phenomenon where male partners actively attempt to promote pregnancy against the will of their female partners,” said lead study author Elizabeth Miller, a

Medical News Today

Headline – Physical or Sexual Violence Often Accompanies Reproductive Coercion

End Abuse . org

“It finds that young women and teenage girls often face efforts by male partners to sabotage their birth control or coerce or pressure them to become pregnant – including by damaging condoms and destroying contraceptives.”

What do these quotes and headlines have in common? They all sound as if the study in question applies to the general population of men and women, boys and girls. The circulation of Newsweek is 2.7 million so just from that source alone a great many people have been given the impression that men in general will tend to coerce women in general to get pregnant.

 

 

The first level is the research paper itself. The Contraception Journal was obviously read by many, especially other researchers. Then the next level is the national media that wrote stories about the study. We saw above some of the sorts of misrepresentations that were common from the national media articles. But things go even further. Once the journal article is published and then the media articles follow there is a third wave that hits: the blogs. When end users hear this sort of thing they take it a step farther. Here are just a few examples of what happens:

Hereʼs a headline from a blog:

Crazy, Condom-Puncturing Control Freaks Are Often Men

So we have gone from omitting the nature of the sample to the printing of articles in the national media that implicate men in general and once this happens the end users at the blogs take that information and exaggerate it much farther. Hereʼs another example:

There is a new study which discusses a horribly prevalent but rarely discussed form of intimate partner violence: reproductive coercion.

So we have gone from low income Black and Hispanic females claiming to be coerced to making global pronouncements about reproductive coercion being “horribly prevalent.” Right. Those crazy condom puncturing control freaks are part of a horribly prevalent pattern.

It doesnʼt take much imagination to see the next step of a dinner table discussion of this issue. The daughter announces at the table that it is men who puncture condoms and force women into pregnancy. Mom tells her that that couldnʼt be and the daughter pulls up a link to the blog and then to the Newsweek article. Dad is still unimpressed until she pulls up a link to the study which partially verifies her false claim. All at the table are convinced now it is the men in general who are coercing women into pregnancy.

This is the way memes get started. A “research” article tells half the story and the partial data is misinterpreted unknowingly by the media who then pass on the half story as truth to unwitting millions who hear the medias version and their claim that it is research driven and the public is sold. It must be true! This is of course what happened with domestic violence. Early feminist researchers only told half the story, that women were victims of domestic violence and men were perpetrators. The media simply passed on the story to millions and the rest is history. We have a general public who is convinced that it is only women who are victims of domestic violence.

The scientific method is very clear. You create a hypothesis and find a way to test it. You then carefully sift though the test data and account for the data that affirms your hypothesis and importantly account for the data that conflicts with your hypothesis. What has happened over and over from feminist researchers is simply ignoring the data that conflicts with your hypothesis (male victims) and focusing solely on that data that confirms your ideology (female victims). Interestingly in this study the researchers failed to ask the subjects if they had also coerced their male partners. They only asked the questions that would provide them with the “acceptable” answers.

In the study examined in this article the researchers seem to have “forgotten” to remind the media of the limitations of their sample. In a similar fashion to the first study, the press release seems to have been used to steer the data. One could assume that leaving out the nature of the sample was an honest mistake. If so, I would have expected Dr Miller to respond to my email asking about the omission of the nature of the sample. But she did not. This leaves us not knowing if the mistake was or was not intentional.

Perhaps we will never know. I know what my guess is. Whatʼs yours?

Men Are Good

 

The Research https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20227548/

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