Ask a Dude: Episode 2, Part 4

Emmy reads her entire list of what is a 'good' woman. 
The group discusses how these unconscious, unspoken lists govern how we interact with each other and the fragility of the male ego.
Nick is inspired to share his list of what is a real man.

Music by Lemon Music Studio from Pixabay

www.sacred-truths.com

Transcript

Ask a Dude Episode 2 Part 4

Emmy: Welcome to Episode 2, Part 4 of “Ask A Dude” - three women, one guy – where we get real answers on subjects most men aren’t willing to talk about. This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham.

Emmy: So it has been suggested that perhaps I should share my entire list, which is quite long, it’s three pages and granted I think some of these are variations on the same theme, but this was a stream of conscious list I made a few weeks back, maybe a couple of months back. So, I’ll just read it here now in its entirety. 

To the question: “What is feminine, girls/women have to be: 

Thin, never ever be fat.

Sexually attractive without being sexual.

Pretty, beautiful. 

Accommodating, agreeable. 

Smart but never smarter than the boy. 

Quiet, never contrarian. 
 Never opinionated. 

Nurturing.

Put other people’s feelings and needs first.

Best to be accomplished in sewing, cooking, care giving.

Compassionate.

Put boys and men’s interests first. 

Can have interests as long as they don’t interfere with boys’ interests.

Be agreeable to male icons such as sport teams, musicians, bands, male political leaders. 

Understand your place that men lead the world and we support them 

Accommodate men regarding their sexual needs and remain virginal simultaneously. 

Allow men to impose on your space physically, energetically, but never be assertive or flirtatious yourself. 

Be a good listener. 

Always be agreeable to men teaching you things.

Do not show an interest in food, eat small amounts. 

Be athletic but never to the extent that you outshine a man. 

Keep issues regarding your period to yourself. 

Do not show hostility to men or mock them or outsmart them. 

Be careful what you wear, be sexy without appearing to be sexy.

Do not be hairy: erase all signs of hair on your body, but have voluminous hair on your head. Agonize over this.

Agonize over your breasts: their size, shape. Enhance them, hide them, curse them, thank them.

Agonize over the size of your rear end: look at it from every angle and every outfit.  

Worry that you are not pretty enough; buy products to improve this. 

Don’t have strong opinions in front of men.

Don’t be too ambitious. 

Accept that marriage is your main goal. 

Your job is ultimately to run the house and keep the marriage together.

Take the blame if your husband is dissatisfied. 

Keep a neat and tidy house. 

Be clean, neat, and orderly in your appearance.

It is your job to keep your husband neat and clean in appearance.  

Accommodate your man in areas where he is weak or lacks awareness such as social cues, polite customs such as thank you cards and birthday gifts, etc. 

Make sure your needs are second to his.

Believe that men do things better: sports, operate machinery, professional jobs, with the exception of every day household cleaning and cooking, changing diapers, childcare. This is different from a professional upholstery cleaner or chef for example. 

Worry that if you want to do more than have babies, you are a freak, and the options available are uninteresting and grim.

Want sex, but not too much sex, you don’t ever want to be a slut. 

Wanting some sex is better than not wanting sex at all, you don’t ever want to be a prude. 

Do not show too much interest in a woman.

Never hurt a man’s feelings by rejecting his sexual advance. Smile and be kind. 

Smile, just smile. 

Always be nice and kind. 

Have social graces.

Agonize if your body is not petite, if your hands or feet are big, if you are taller than most men.

Nick: It’s really powerful hearing that all at once. Because to me it describes the scope of these demands. It seems, it sounds extensive to me and it really inspires me to really put my list together and to share it here, as something to go together.

I can’t, on short notice, I can’t really put it together right now. But it makes me want to do that. It feels like these two packages, these are these packages, and they’re operating…I mean, these are governing how we are interacting and the expectations that are maybe overlapping? Maybe not.

They might vary from generation to generation, they might be evolving? Who knows? And it’s all happening on this unconscious, unspoken level. 

That seems really significant to me. The extent… I have had the experience of how long the list is for men. Many of those things are universal, or nearly, everyone nods in the room at least, when certain things come up. Not everything, but there’s kind of a core list that is pretty universal, and if this is universal, unspoken, we’re not sure how it’s getting transmitting from generation to generation and it’s governing our interactions, wow! That’s having a big impact how things are happening between people in a really unconscious way.

That’s really interesting to me, I’ll do that, whenever we come together again, or however that works, I’ll put my, my download all at once in a list form.

I can reference it. I can look things up, (laughs). And the other thing I felt was really…that came up earlier, I’m really interested in the fact that it’s reversed: When you ask: “What is a good man?” (vs) “What is a real man?”

The ‘real’ man question usually gets the programed answers, what was imposed on us, what was expected of us as men goes into the ‘real’ man category, or what you want to call it the shadow part.

But it sounds like that’s reversed, when women engage that question, it’s the opposite. The ‘good woman’ is the expectation, that’s where the expectations are. 

The ‘real woman’ …is what’s..  is more authentic, I don’t know what the words are, more authentic, comes from with-in, more heart-centered. And that’s amazing to me that that’s flipped like that. Really.

Heather: I want to ask the ladies a question. (All laugh) I’m really curious for you guys, actually maybe I’ll just ask you Emmy because we just read your list. Who…Do you have internal sense of the gender of whoever is evaluating whether you’re conforming to that list?

Emmy: Oh, gosh, I think, it might be a female mostly, I think so.

Heather: How about for you, Deborah? 

Deborah: For me it’s absolutely my grandmother.

Heather: That is interesting because for me, it’s definitely male. Yeah, and I’m really curious now, I hope people like comment if they’re listening, about whether that is a generational thing related to my sense of like, being a good sexual object vs being kind of proper that you guys have. I’m just super curious about that, I have no idea.

Emmy: The only exception I would make are things where I’m afraid of men, like it could damage me like, “Want some sex but not too much sex, you don’t want to be a slut.” That, that does come from a female, but there’s also a real danger with a man. 

Deborah: It makes sense that it’s men who teach men how to be men: fathers, brothers, coaches, teachers. Certainly for me, 7th grade revealed that women were dangerous, girls were dangerous, mean.

I went to a suburban school, with serious cliques of the wealthy kids up on the hill, the hoi polloi, and then the misfits. And every junior high has some sort, I think, version of that, that I know. 

And for me at that time there were a couple of questionable, dangerous if you will, boys, but it was the girls, that particular group of girls I had to be careful, to avoid engagement with, because they were scathing and, I wasn’t probably in physical danger because I was pretty scrappy but, gosh, the social censure was profound. 
 And they all wore blue eyeshadow. (quiet laugh)

Heather: (to Nick) Well, one question I had was about what it’s like to have a woman laugh at you, a woman or women laugh, like really laugh at you, not just necessarily you specifically but for a man.

And then, yeah, reflecting on the role of like, real trauma on both sides here, and how that links to shame. Shame for men, shame for us. 

Deborah: I was thinking about how I felt after Emmy read your list. Because many, many of those things on your list would be on my list. Not everything, but the enormous majority of it. And I loved that you read it such in a neutral way, just kind of relentless, relentless, relentless. And I was thinking of the conversation that you and I had, Emmy, about how life delivers blows to us: mental, physical, emotional just, just, just  ….sort of a pounding from the time we are tiny, tiny. 

And each of the items on your list felt like a blow. And it just made me so sad and angry that anybody: man, woman, child, transgender, human, anybody should be subjected which everyone is, to sort of the vagaries of society. This is how you’re supposed to behave. 

I’ve been reading a series of silly novels, that are set in Regency England, 1810, 1815 and they’re silly romance novels. I just needed a little respite from the real world. And the rules of society of that time and place were so rigid that a house maid can’t marry a prince. For instance, this is the theme of the book, people staying in their social class: to whom you should speak, and to whom you should never speak. And those rules seemed so gloriously old-fashioned, and outdated, but they’re not. 

And everything I think on all the lists, these are legacy lists, this isn’t just from the ‘60’s, it’s from the 1860’s. Nick and I were speculating on whether or not a certain kind of ‘women in their place’ misogyny went back to Ashurbanipal and the Assyrian Empire because there’s some resonance there with the kind of ancient cultures laying down the law on who can do what and when and how, and I think this stuff… you know, there’s all these books that it takes 8 generations, or 5 generations or at least 3 generations, to work through trauma and that’s if we’re working on it. But mostly we’re not working on it because we can’t, we just say, that’s how it is because we’re so, I guess, inured by the blows.

We think that feeling bruised and battered is the human experience, which it has been for probably the majority of the people, to this day. I guess it’s the sorrow, it’s the weight of the sorrow and my hope, that through this work, the four of us, can change the story, and hopefully, the people listening can start thinking about their own lists, and their own expectations, and their own boxes and maybe, maybe can liberate a few more souls as we go. 

Nick: Gathering thoughts here, lots to cover, lots to think about. I think, to what you were talking about, Heather, I see that this is a situation, where this is really, no one’s winning in this thing. As it is, in general, my experience of it, this is harming everybody, how these established gender roles and these lists. I think the process of stepping out of these lists, and questioning them, and witnessing them and saying, ‘this is what it is’, in actually the light of day as a starting point, is really powerful to do. And it starts the process and really work with it and step out of it and get out of this thing that just, just hurts everybody really. 
 
 Heather: So, I wondered, if we have time, just talking about the experience of a woman just really laughing at you. 

Nick: Oh! Yeah. (mumbles) I’m having a hard time coming up with a personal experience, that’s really happened. (laughs) I’m sure it’s happened.

Heather: Maybe I should clarify, maybe it’s not you, but as a male one, or the collective or whatever.

Nick: I think if I turn into this shadow masculine programming channel, it’s such a fragile system, this thing that’s being…. it’s like a shell, like a thin shelled vulnerable reality that this shadow masculine system is maintaining. Because just beneath the surface of whatever bravado there is, whatever apparently arrogant behavior, apparently confident behavior, apparently capable, whatever the show that is happening, there is just this incredible reservoir of shame and pain, with the thinnest possible veneer over it, and so the slightest thing happening to interrupt that comment, or the slight comment of like: ‘Well, have you thought about this? Maybe we should try this? Why don’t you ask directions?’ Kind of stereotypical things but shame brings it all down, suddenly this shame body just (explodes) and just takes over. And the person can just retreat, explode, has a high tendency to do that.
 
 Certainly, actually laughing, would be catastrophic, ‘cause even the slightest questions, “Hey maybe we should…” if that can bring the house down. Then, yeah, wow. There would be an incredible vulnerability to that, that experience in that shadow space, for sure, yeah.

Deborah: I have brothers, and I have laughed at them. It’s a different relationship of course, it’s got different rules. But even me laughing at my brothers has caused trouble. Most of us don’t like to be laughed at, but I’m wondering if, I wonder if men more than woman, I don’t know. 

Emmy: I thought of an example of being, maybe, “mocked” is a better word as a woman. It used to be, it doesn’t happen anymore, I feel a lot safer. But going to a garage where I needed some service on my car is just the most frightening experience as a young woman, it’s terrifying, it’s just awful. And after a while, I got to the point where I brought a male friend, with me, even if I know what the problem is with my car. It’s so humiliating, mocking, ‘Oh you, oh, a huh,” Mocking my question, mocking my concern; it feels like being laughed at. 

And to me it’s just frightening, it’s really frightening, and it’s humiliating, and it’s just an awful experience.  

Now I go to the place where they all; these vey nice young men change my oil, (imitates friendly workers) “Thank you! Can I get you coffee?” it’s just such a much better experience now (laughs). I’m grateful. There was a serious fear as a young woman. That’s how it was for me.

Deborah: And it continues. Perhaps not as prevalent as it was. Just a week ago, my cousin needed to take her car in and we thought she was perhaps she was taken advantage of.
 We consulted someone who knew much more about cars and they told her that what they needed to fix didn’t exist in her car. And so a couple of us got protective and went and sorted it out. And this was, you know, a week and a half ago. 

And I had to explain to my cousin, as a young woman, she’s 27, she is subject to that vulnerability in, particularly in the auto industry, which seems odd.

IT guys are condescending (imitates) “Oh, little lady, you don’t know that,” and Boy, oh, boy, oh boy. Interesting I chose that word. That sort of casual male condescension toward women’s competency: I’m not going to put up with that anymore. 

I once called out a really unctuous waiter. I’d gone in with some female friends for brunch, I was the youngest in the group and I was in my 40’s. And this young whippersnapper said, (Mocking voice) “Ladies, it’s so lovely to have you here, you just brightened my day by coming in, where do you girls want to sit?”

 I turned and dealt. 

And subsequently, he referred to us politely and respectfully and got out of the way. 

Nick: I think it’s hard to figure out who has the worse experience, you know in kind of in general terms, but it’s more of an understanding about how fragile this masculine shell is and how quickly it can just go (Imitates implosion) just implode. 

And then, not to excuse it, but certainly the dude in that situation is having a bad experience, having a shame implosion. But, it would be easy for whoever made the statement or mocked or laughed or whatever could have a very bad experience in that situation too, that’s a dangerous situation, because there’s an incredible shame/pain explosion happening inside this guy and he could lash out in a really dangerous way in that situation.

 Deborah: So earlier we were talking about how one of the things women were taught, that the male egos are very, very tender and they bruise really easily. And so we would be best to remember this and not poke the tiger, and what you’re saying is, that was good advice, right or wrong? 

Nick: It’s certainly part of something that’s really destructive and unhealthy for everybody. But, yeah, given the givens, if we’re talking about these two packages, 

these two sets of programming that two people have been programmed and more than likely the guy that you’re dealing with has this programming and this shame ball that’s just waiting to blow up, then, yeah, it’s legitimately dangerous to poke that. Yeah. Yep.

Well, everybody, I feel like we’ve touched on a lot of really powerful stuff today. This is giving me a lot to think about. I’m thinking about my list, how to put that together and how to do that and I think that’s a really important thing for me to put together and to share here when the time is right. 

I’m thinking about that.

 I’m thinking about, we touched on some things that are heavy, dark, feels dark, sometimes and encounter shining light in the corner, and take a moment, take a deep breath and need a moment to process this, things we’ve experienced this but this is also a legacy and this goes, I don’t know how far back. 

And so, whenever I have that feeling of encountering something that dark or difficult or with that much pain behind it, I have to take a deep breath, and say, “Alright, we are starting the process of discontinuing this legacy.” That’s what we are doing and the first part of that is the light of day. 

Making a list or talking about a taboo topic. 

Bringing something to light that maybe has never been talked about that freely before or not very much and then that perspective is what gives me the power to me keep going and to keep digging into this stuff and keep shining the flashlight even when I can feel that feeling of something saying, “Don’t do that! Don’t say that, don’t shine the light there, don’t do it, this whole thing is going to blow!” 

And then I say, “Well, I’m going to go ahead, or we’re going to go ahead and go somewhere that feels risky or uncomfortable or scary or dark or hard.” 

So that’s where I end up in this work, I’ll call it work of unraveling these mysteries and then I feel honored. 

Yeah, I feel honored to be here, and grateful to be here, and grateful that we’re able to do this and speak freely about these things that feels so taboo. That’s where I am right now: I’m grateful to be here. I’m grateful we did this. 

Emmy: Nick, I’d like to thank you for being our ‘dude’ once again, and thank you Heather and Deborah for being here as well. 

 Heather: Thank you. 
 
 Deborah: Thanks, all. 

Emmy: This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham with music by Lemon Music Studio from Pixabay, and with special thanks to our ‘dude’, Nick Oredson. 

This concludes Part 4 of Episode 2 of “Ask a Dude”.

Please join us for Episode 3.

Please visit our website at www.sacred-truths.com.

Thank you for listening.