Ending the Role of Male Humans
as the Principal Agents of Oppression
In the last few years in my work as a client and counselor and leader in men’s liberation, I have focused my attention on the oppression of male humans.
The role we men play, as I see it, is to be the principal agents of nearly all oppressions. As “principal agents” I mean that we take the lead: we command or dominate the organizations that oppress everyone, including ourselves. We have been—and are—leading in capitalism; classism; destruction of the environment; beginning, and carrying out, wars; sexism; genocide; racism; anti-Semitism; and so on.
In RC we understand with great clarity that for humans to act so irrationally, and with such force, they have to have been very badly treated. In the case of men, the treatment has been uniquely bad—such that we men can and will hurt many others in a thoroughly devastating fashion, and then defend our behavior to the death (even of ourselves).
A week ago a male human slaughtered eleven of my people in their synagogue. As a Jew and a male human I find this doubly restimulating. Though repelled by the beliefs of this man and his acts of murder, I acknowledge that he, too, is my people. His early life and his recent life had to have been so devoid of humanness, of gentleness, of connection and support that he was vulnerable to acting this way.
I am sharing this so that as we Jews connect with and enlist allies, we keep in mind that the work to end our oppression—and every other oppression—is inhibited by the present state of men’s liberation. Until many more men have access to discharge, have warmer and more reliable connections to other men, and gain greater understanding of men’s oppression and how it has affected their lives, and until there is an effective group of allies to men, our efforts to end oppressions will be endlessly undermined by the decisions and actions of men.
Frenchtown, New Jersey, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail
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