Ken and Nick and Emmy discuss power dynamics triggered by trauma, the dynamics between gay men and women, and how women edit themselves in front of straight men.
www.sacred-truths.com
Ken and Nick and Emmy discuss power dynamics triggered by trauma, the dynamics between gay men and women, and how women edit themselves in front of straight men.
www.sacred-truths.com
Welcome to Episode 4 Part 2 of a new version of “Ask a Dude” where our panel consists of myself and Ken. “Ask a Dude” with Ken: Questions from a gay man.
This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham.
Ken: I kind of like to get back to what you were talking about, about power. And I think what’s interesting, is I often think, the power at the top, I wonder if the threat is: LGBT people raise an awareness that there’s another way to be.
You know, you don’t have to fit the mold, you don’t have to, you know, grow up, marry your sweetheart, have four kids, live in a little house, work a job; there are other ways to be in the world, and I think that can be terrifying if you feel like that’s what you’ve depended on, to have your power, your tower of power last as long as it has.
And like, “Oh no, these people are spreading the bad news that there are other ways of being. That’s threatening us. They may not reproduce in the way we need them to be, they may not be a worker bee in the way that we need them to be, they may not, they may not tow the line in the same way that we need them to be to keep our power structure enforced.”
Status quo, whatever you want to call it. That may be way out there thinking, I wonder about that all the time, it’s like, ‘wait a second, wait a second. Whaddya mean you’re not doing what mommy and daddy told you to do to grow up and get married and do all these things and have a good stable job?’
Food for thought.
Emmy: Nick, I’m really curious about what you will say, but I just want to say, it feels like any time the feminine is brought in, it’s just bad news. So, emotions, feelings, love, community, heart to heart, any time that is happening, it needs to be stopped. That’s, that’s my take on it.
Nick: That’s a really important question and I feel like from my perspective, there’s almost a hierarchy of motivations, and because I’m so tuned in to trauma, that’s the thing that I would put at the top of the hierarchy of energy that goes into homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, everything.
That pain.
Say, the part about the best friend that was lost. Huge, huge reservoir of unresolved pain around that. Who knows, what else? Someone could be, could be gay, and be in the closet. And never told anyone about it, and hiding who they are from everyone. That’s awful! Painful! That could be part of this big reservoir of pain and trauma.
Any other number of just violence having landed on you and abuse and being kind of hammered into this really narrow, narrow definition of what was okay to be as a man, or a boy, or a male.
So, I would put that at the top, but for sure, any deviation from that…
It’s a fragile system because it isn’t livable. The hyper masculine standard is so unnatural and out of balance and warped, that it is unlivable. So it’s being carried and propagated, but it’s a really weak syste, because it isn’t really a way to be and so any expression of any deviation from that would be an incredible threat just because it’s so fragile that anybody at any time could see an expression of the feminine or see someone who is gay or has a close male friend or anything outside of that super-narrow that box, could just blow up or just collapse or have a nervous breakdown from one tiny thing because they’re carrying such an unnatural condition around. So that’s another facet of it, of that fragility. It’s fragile because it’s so out of balance.
And then for sure, just ‘differentness’, yeah, of course. Someone who’s really expressing a very different way of being that is outside of the, the lane, yeah for sure. That’s going to get a reaction.
But I would put the trauma at the top and that’s from my own sensitivities.
Ken: You touched on something that we haven’t gotten to, when you talked about: they might be gay themselves. And I really think, you know, good ole Dr. Kinsey, Alfred Kinsey was on to something major when he published his work about the spectrum, the scale, the Kinsey scale. It’s been sort of forgotten on some level, or maybe not so much, but I think people don’t talk about it too much. And people do say basically the idea that we’re all somewhere in the middle.
It’s only one level, the sexual intimacy and of course now we’re realizing there’s more complicated than that, emotional intimacy and there’s all kind of realities about us.
But the more rigid we get, the less we pay attention to or want to acknowledge that we are all on some kind of spectrum. I firmly believe that.
I don’t, I don’t buy into the fact that it’s straight or gay or whatever you want to say. I just don’t believe it.
I don’t know whether if it’s a benefit of being a gay man with a straight friend, but it seems like even lately, this new friend I have, it seems like there’s something about being a gay guy with a straight male friend, they start confessing things to you or talking to you about feelings they have for other men. And it’s so interesting, it’s like “Well, I’m glad you feel safe to talk to me about that (laughs), but (imitates straight guy) don’t tell anybody else!”
I do believe it’s a spectrum, it’s a spectrum for me as gay man. Of course, I’ve known women who are hot and sexy and emotionally, I’m emotionally attached to them and intimate with them on so many levels, so why would it not be a straight man couldn’t feel that kind of feeling for another man, it’s just ridiculous!
So as you kind of talked about the rigidity and this impossible frame to live in, I can understand how the second some of those feelings come up, there’d be a reason to,, “I’ve got to suppress it, I’ve got to suppress it. I’ve got to kill it. Even if it’s not inside of me, if how I see it out there, I’ve got to do it, dammit, I’ve got to hurt it.”
I think that another piece of this whole puzzle, that’s why I said it was another one of the spokes on the wheel. Another piece of it.
Nick: Yeah, that’s a great point. That if it is something that is being suppressed on some level, internally, any outward manifestation of that especially if what was being suppressed inside was the result of trauma, like a little expression had this big reaction, or you did something little and you lost a friend or got kicked off the team or excluded or banished from a group because you did something innocent. “What was that, I didn’t even do anything!” Yeah. Seeing that would generate an enormous reaction and a tendency to kill it and destroy it. The reaction would be huge to something like that.
Yeah, for sure.
And I just had another thought about that. My sense is that the more rigid the system, and I see this as a very rigid system, the hypermasculine system.
The more rigid the system, the more intense the sanctions will be for not living up to it.
Because it’s like this energy field that so….it’s just holding this energy so tightly that when there’s a deviation that’s seen, it’s like an explosion and it shoots out and it’s incredibly destructive and damaging and scary. It’s scary When I’ve seen that happen, wow, incredibly intense energy behind those actions.
And it looks like hate, like really intense hate and it’s frightening to behold.
Emmy: I just want to comment a little on my personal experience as a girl. And that is when I was very young, I had some very close friendships with boys and I enjoyed them very much and they were heart felt, I think, from both parties. And at a certain age, I’m not sure, 2nd grade, 7, or 8, but they pulled away. It was very clear that being a friend with a girl was not cool. Call it the hypermasculine, I don’t know.
But it was painful for me to lose these friendships, it was palatably painful, and then I knew that my friendships with girls was where I had to go. And so just the arc of all of this.
And then boys started coming back into life in like 7th or 8th grade and it was not as satisfying because there was more of a sexual attraction happening. And I would say it was never really as satisfying, it depended on the boy, of course.
Some boys you could still have an emotional, heartfelt relationship with, but I think we as girls we transfer our love to these boys and it’s so incomplete and not at all what we have with the friendships with our girls.
And for myself I had some very, very close relationship with people who would later come out to me as gay and those I’ve maintained throughout my life, throughout elementary school and high school kind of thing. So, there is that arc of it as a girl, very painful to lose these relationships and when I got them back, there was something tainted about them, and I think, I’m grieving to this day, because there’s still something very tainted in my relationships with straight men today.
Ken: I can throw in something anecdotal if I may. Something that’s happened many times, but especially lately. I have some girl friends, some female friends, for 20 or 30 years, very, very close relationships and a couple of instances when their husbands are around there is an energy shift. Something happens and things get weird. And one of the husbands at one point said, because I’m not able to visit this person very often, but I was able to visit her and her husband said something like, “Wow, you’re so different when he’s around! You open up, and you’re lively and you’re fun, yadda yadda…”
We have a history, I can’t explain it, a history in show business we just light each other up. There is just something where we light up.
I don’t know if I’m feeling some kind of strange jealousy from the husband, it’s obviously not sexual jealousy, there’s none of that in there. There’s something that he’s seeing in her and my relationship that he’s not having with his wife on a day to day. I’m kind of playing in what Emmy just said I think sometimes gay men and women can have some kind of really special bond, obviously I’m generalizing like crazy here. And I don’t know whether that’s another factor. I just know that it’s very tangible in these couple of instances in my life, and I don’t ever know what to do with it.
Well, we have, we click, we have a something.
Emmy: I just want to say, that a lot my relationships with gay men in my experience has been very similar with my relationships with women, in that we can connect, we can be honest, we can speak from the heart, we can emote, and we feel safe.
I feel safe with gay men, safe to emote, safe to express myself, safe to be vulnerable, but also physically safe, from what I would even call sexual assault or some kind of come-on, unwanted come-on. I just feel safe.
Nick: That is a great observation. One of the things I’ve noticed in that in relationship dynamics or hearing people talking about their relationships, it’s amazing what you would call a traditional heterosexual relationship. It’s amazing what the guy is doing in enforcing traditional roles without even realizing it. And traditional roles, really, to any degree that they’re happening, traditional role dynamics are not safe for the women. Simply enough. They’re just not by design. Those traditional roles were based on subjugation and unequal power dynamic and so that’s not going to be safe.
And so, that can happen in pretty subtle ways, certainly for people who are trying or feel like they’re enlightened, or, ‘oh, we don’t do that’. And then I’ll hear them talking about how they’re interacting with their partner and I’ll say, “Well, that’s misogyny, there for sure!”
So that could be part of the explanation and I have no idea, once again, generalizing and I think it’s really interesting and important. And I think the main takeaway is that the way that misogyny is ingrained in those traditional roles is so extensive that it’s really easy to being doing it without realizing it. That’s what I’ve noticed in observing guys as that they don’t even know they’re doing it.
And I want to go back briefly to the point about the spectrum, I definitely agree with you on that. There’s this huge range of traits, that almost every person has an assortment of traits. Some of them masculine, some of them feminine, what we would call, identify as masculine and feminine and they’re just naturally a certain way. And through this socializing process, get really hammered into a tiny little mold. But if we were left to our own, if that wasn’t happening, that system of enforcing that really rigid system, people would just disperse, they would just disperse across the spectrum and there would be every different kind of everybody out there. Well, for sure, I agree with that.
Emmy: I also agree with the spectrum idea and just contemplating into the scenario you brought up, Ken with your friend and her husband. I’m speculating, but I’m
imaging myself as the women and what I’m feeling is when she’s with you, she’s allowed to really be herself, she’s allowed to step into her power. She’s allowed to be powerful, happy, vibrant, creative in all the ways that she just is and shows up in the world. She doesn’t have to edit herself, and her husband witnesses that.
And I can’t imagine what’s going on with him: maybe he’s afraid, maybe he’s mad, but as a woman, I think we edit ourselves constantly in front of the men, the straight men. So, when we are free to really be ourselves, wow, I think for me, that happens when I’m with other women, and when I’m with gay men. But I don’t think it really happens when I’m with straight men, too much editing goes on, that’s my observation.
Ken: Wow. That’s powerful to me to hear that. I just have to say.
The other thing that occurs to me based on what Nick was just talking about. When you think of the gender roles, the masculinity role and the relationship with a woman and all of the expectations and all of the things that have been set up for centuries and then you see a fellow, who, for whatever reason, and it’s put out there more and more today that it’s some kind of choice. (laughs) I can attest that it’s not a choice.
We’re just born that way as Lady Gaga says.
Why in the world would anybody choose to “take on the role of the woman, and you know, forsake his god given superiority?” I’m putting all this in quotes. Why in the hell would they ever want to do that: “That’s just sick, that’s just twisted!” So I’m thinking that’s another spoke in that wheel, and I’m just playing off what you were just talking about, these narrow roles that we’re supposed to play from.
These playbooks that we’re given from when we’re really little, and we see mom and dad playing it out, and grandpa and grandma and there’s something wrong with you if you’re not going to play that game. You’re obviously going to go the devil, or fill in the blank. There’s something definitely wrong and so make another choice. Why would you want to do anything different?
The guy’s the boss, so don’t let go of that.
And then, not to get too scatological, (Laughing) I do think there’s a piece of this that is about this mythology around anal sex. It’s just there. There’s this mythology that all gay men have this particular kind of sex.
And we all have been potty trained, and we’ve all have fear of fecal matter and we all have this whole thing that that is just nasty and I think that’s a very visceral part of this thing called homophobia.
I had to put that spoke out there because I think that it’s real, and I don’t think there’s any way we can be complete without talking it. It’s a complete myth, but it’s out there and I think it’s visual. It’s something very visual and visceral when people look at two gay men together. I know it, because (laughs) I’ve heard the questions. So, I don’t know, it is something I wanted to be sure to include, part of our mission here today.
Nick: I can feel the energy behind that. I can tune in, I have, I don’t know what to call it, I can’t call it misogyny anymore, I have like a radio station that has opinions that can voice opinions about homophobia and misogyny. That’s on that radio station, for sure.
That visceral reaction. I can feel that.
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 Episode 4, Part 2 of “Ask a Dude” with Ken: Questions from a Gay Man. Please join us for Part 3.
Please visit our website www.sacred-truths.com
Thank you for listening.