Pelle Billing . com

Blog reader Allan recommended this video to me, and since I found it valuable I’m recommending it too.

The video quality is not great but the sound is quite clear. The speaker is Tom Golden, an expert on male grief and gender differences.

Some of the topics are:

• How men usually grieve through activity and not through talking or crying.
• How traditional psychotherapy is modeled on women.
• Fight or flight vs tend and befriend.
• How sex hormones testosterone and estrogen regulate the effects of oxytocin and prolactin.
• How school is not adapted to boys.

If you’re interested in more of the teachings of Tom Golden he’s written a book called Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing.

Philip Zimbardo, professor emeritus at Stanford University, gives his take on why boys are struggling:

I think he brings an interesting and valid perspective, but obviously there are more factors as to why boys are struggling in school and in finding a job.

Some of them may be:

• Schools aren’t adapted to the learning style of boys.
• Society has a negative view on men.
• Boys living without their father (and there are many of them) have a hard time finding male role models, especially in school.
• We lack a vision of what positive masculinity could be in a postmodern world. And when there’s no vision – you may as well play computer games and watch porn.

Alex B. Berezow – the editor of RealClearScience.com – has written an excellent article about how gender research ends up being ideological and… yes, sexist.

He’s studied a ’scientific’ paper where women and men were asked to look for sexist behaviors in their life. The result?

Based on a list of behaviors in the paper, sexism was essentially considered to be any differential treatment based on gender, regardless of whether it was good or bad. A man telling a woman to stay in the kitchen qualified as sexism. But a man opening a door for a woman or believing that women should be rescued first in a disaster qualified as “benevolent sexism.” Tired of hearing about sexism? That’s sexist, too.

As it turns out, if everything is defined as sexism, then sexism ends up being everywhere.

In Sweden, gender feminists often talk about ‘putting on your gender glasses’ so you can see all the sexism around you. Well, if you put on blue glasses then everything looks blue! This is exactly what the good dr Berezow has uncovered in his review of this piece of research.

Seeing the world through the lens of gender feminists, also means that you twist any kind of difference between male and female behavior as being negative for women. This leads to the construction of a bizarre terminology such as ‘benevolent sexism’. When women get the better deal then it is benevolent!

I couldn’t make this stuff up…

Gender feminists are also thoroughly unaware that their view of men is inherently sexist:

At the end of the article, the authors declare that men have a higher social status. (Isn’t that a sexist statement?) But worry not. They suggest that men can be trained to be more empathetic. (Isn’t that sexist?) While on a crusade to fight anti-female sexism, the authors overlook anti-male sexism.

Training your man – perhaps similarly to how you train your dog? – is not labeled as sexist. Can you imagine what would happen if a group of men publicly discussed training women to be more accommodating to men?

Finally, dr Berezow puts his finger on what many of us have long suspected. Gender research based on feminism rarely meets the demands of scientific objectivity:

The website of SAGE, which publishes the journal, describes it as a “feminist, scientific, peer-reviewed journal.” The authors also admit that their goal is to “reduce endorsement” of sexism. However, this constitutes a clear conflict of interest. A journal cannot state an ideological goal and simultaneously claim to be scientific. Would a global warming journal be taken seriously if it claimed “debunking the hoax” as one of its goals?

Let’s hope these kinds of analyses become more mainstream, so that gender research can be infused with a measure of objectivity, and the male sexism rooted out.

Take a look at this Youtube clip, starting at 4:48:

Now imagine if a group of men, with a male audience, had talked and joked this way after the mutilation of a woman. Would it have been OK for the men to find it hysterically funny that a man had cut out a woman’s vagina?

This – ladies and gentlemen – is a prime example of why the fight against misandry has just started. It took decades to root out misogyny from modern societies, and we’re only getting started with misandry.

I’m reading an excellent book at the moment, one that I even took the time to review on Amazon. It’s called Doing Psychotherapy With Men, by Dr John A. Ashfield, and it’s highly relevant for anybody who’s interested in men’s issues and male psychological health.

Here is the review:

An important book on an important subject

Some people may ask if we really need a book on doing psychotherapy with men. After all, don’t we simply need good psychotherapy for people in need - regardless of gender? Don’t we have enough gender stereotyping as is in society?

As much as I can empathize with the rationale behind those lines of thinking, it turns out we do need specialized knowledge in the field of psychotherapy, just like in medicine and other professional fields. The intersection of biology and culture presents men with unique challenges, opportunities and yes - distinct on average psychological functioning. Tackling this subject head on is also very much needed in this day and age where manhood and masculinity are increasingly viewed as pathologies.

The book unfolds in a logical way, starting out by defining core concepts, then moving on to male coping, communication and ways of handling stress, as well as specific diagnoses such as depression and alcoholism.

Rather than starting anew in each chapter, the author demonstrates how key ways of male psychological functioning shine through in many different situations. The included cases studies are also very useful, and help maintain this integrated and holistic vibe.

One of my own major take aways from this book is that male psychological functioning and coping are not deficient, but simply different from that of women. I thought I knew this but this book showed me how I still held on to the belief that men need to be more like women, psychologically speaking, and “get more in touch with their feelings”. In my opinion one of the reasons that the cultural zeitgeist presents male psychological functioning as deficient is that women have tended to be the norm in the development of modern psychotherapy (Freud, etc), just like men tended to be the norm in the development of modern medicine. There are other factors too, but we have been on a trajectory for decades where men are portrayed as deficient women when it comes to emotions, communication, etc.

None of this is to say that men cannot develop and improve their psychological health - after all, this is what the book is about! - but they will do it as men and not by trying to fit into a mould which is not for them.

To sum up, I recommend this book for any man who wants to understand himself better, and for any woman who wants to understand men better. For psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, this book has the potential to make every future meeting with a man that much more productive and healing.