Gender Dynamics Redux

Following my post of Nov 30 (Gender Dynamics in Cooperative Groups) I received three comments. They were so interesting that I've decided to keep the dialog going...

Anonymous wrote:
It might be interesting to look at the research about how women and men resolve arguments. Men seem, according to this research, to leave an encounter where some agreement has been reached with an ability to leave it behind; women tend to come back minutes, hours, or days later with "and this is a pattern of yours" to restart a broader discussion. It's not over for them. When I heard this I was in the car with my ex-husband, who is now in a committed relationship with a man, and he was somewhat offended because he said his husband is definitely more female in that way. Of course I recognized myself and him in the examples. We were trying to think of an evolutionary advantage to the female behavior and we could come up with only the hunter vs. gatherer advantages...being able to kill and eat something differs psychologically from growing or gathering edibles...and what roles that meant "feminine" gay men and butch lesbians did in early society. But maybe it's more about creating community and resolving issues....somebody has to say "it's done" and somebody has to remember for next time.

While I'm not an anthropologist (and therefore don't know jack—or jill, for that matter—about the evolutionary explanation for different gendered responses to arguments), I can build a picture about why relational people (who may be women) tend to hang onto disagreements that results-oriented people (who may be men) claimed to have moved beyond. If the argument ends without an energetic resolution, the dynamics persist. Relational people know this, and therefore attempt to engage in a holistic way (even if they're not particularly distinguished as problem-solvers). However, if the other person isn't emotionally articulate (or even available), this may not go well. In such cases, all parties may reach an acceptable rational solution, but everyone doesn't feel heard or "done." Those aware of the unfinished business are likely to cycle back to it.

All of that said, in the community context it has not been my experience that women tend to hold on to hurts any longer than men, or, for that matter, that women are any less quick to be ready to move on.

Abe wrote:
I have had a lot of experience visiting communities and hearing this bigoted viewpoint about men being one way and women being another way. I mean, I hear it outside communities as well, but I would have imagined more critique of the concept of the gender binary or the idea of gender being anything more than a concept in our heads, in communities. I have heard quite a bit of critique of these ideas of men are this and women are that in the circle of Acorn, Twin Oaks, and Living Energy Farm. Still, there is a womyn's gathering and a womyn's collective at Twin Oaks.

I remember, at an early Gaia U board meeting, there was a proposal to divide the Board by gender (just women and men, no one else). It was decided there be two heads of the board, because, you know, "you have to balance the feminine and masculine energies" and "men and women have a different way of looking at things."

What does this idea that men and women think and do things differently serve? Let's say it's not being said from a biological perspective of sex, rather than gender, and you're only talking about the cultural norms and how people were raised. Even then, what can this thought even serve? First, it is said from a cisgender perspective speaking only of women and men and no one else. It excludes intersex people. It excludes transgender people. Beyond that, what do you do with an idea like that? You apply it to the people around you and make judgments on individual people based on what your belief is about people of their gender. The problem with prejudice like that is that there is no way to take a whole classification of people and accurately apply it to any one individual within the classification.

I wrote the original piece because I believe there are important differences in the way that boys and girls are conditioned in the mainstream culture. It was not my aim to encourage stereotyping or to promote the assumption that all feminine-presenting people act one way and all masculine-presenting people act another; it was to describe a gulf that I see played out repeatedly in cooperative group dynamics and which I believe we must learn to recognize and develop the capacity to bridge between.

The most important part for me is the ways in which cooperative culture differs from competitive culture with respect to how it solves problems. In the wider culture, we venerate rational problem solvers and systems thinking. In cooperative culture those qualities are still an asset, yet so is the ability to work relationally and empathetically.

What was intriguing for me about my friend's observation (which was the inspiration for my Nov 30 blog) was: a) that both styles persisted in his well-established community; and b) that the clash between the styles was the major impediment to peaceable resolution of conflict. I was not so interested in the analysis that women were never strident, or consistently did a better job of setting aside their egos to think of the whole, yet I was interested in how gendered cultural conditioning could explain what my friend observed. That's exciting because it means that there is every reason to believe that if all children were trained to be skilled at human relations, then we could all be better cooperative problem solvers.

MoonRaven wrote:
I hear your [Abe's] frustration with the division by gender raised by this article. I also realize how much I appreciate the issues raised by the article. Rather than proving the point of Laird's 'thoughtful friend' (since I'm a cisgendered—and an old white guy at that) by drawing 'positional lines' (and I could—I still have those testosteronal reactions), I'd rather try to look at the truth of what you're saying as well as the truth of Laird's post. There is a good bit of truth in each.

First, I want to acknowledge that many individuals do not fall within the cultural norms of their gender—and many also fall outside gender norms at all. But I also think it's important to look at what is perhaps the heart of what Laird wrote here, his list of relational skills. I think that anyone using these skills, whether cisgendered, transgendered, genderqueer, or intersex, any human being using these skills will further the building of communities. I also think that we need to encourage anyone who is quick to speak up (regardless of gender) to wait and step back and encourage the quiet people to speak up so that all voices are heard.

Personally I would like to live in a community with more strong women and less strong men (I've seen what's been described too often for my liking), and definitely with more queer folk of every type, with many people who flout and challenge gender norms.

And I agree that we need to look at each individual as their own unique self. I think there is a place for looking at gender dynamics and a place for looking beyond gender dynamics.

I'm wholly in agreement with MoonRaven's concluding paragraph. However, I want to comment on the admonition that those who are quick to speak up should step back, and the idea that groups may be better off with fewer strong men.

I believe what we need are groups where all members are strong—by which I mean articulate, unafraid to voice their views (even if unpopular), able to take full responsibility for their feelings and their actions, and possessing a strong enough sense of self that they do not feel unworthy or damaged as a consequence of others disliking their words or behavior. (Note that I am not equating strength with stridency or obstinacy.) The meek or insecure do not, in my view, get strong as a result of shackling others. That's coddling.

As a professional facilitator, here's the way I prefer to handle the dynamic where air space is unevenly distributed in open discussion (which only happens all the time). I have two main strategies. First, if I notice that a minority is dominating the conversation (or that there are a number of people who have not yet spoken), I will often offer an observation along the lines of, "We have had an animated conversation the last 15 minutes and a number of useful ideas and concerns have surfaced. I notice though that a few people have spoken a number of times while others have not spoken at all. For the next while I'd like to make room to hear from those who have not yet contributed to the conversation."

This does a number of things all at the same time:
o  It honors the contributions received so far, which means those who are quick to speak or are less daunted by speaking in front of the whole group are not punished or made to feel bad. (While I don't want to celebrate being rash, it's fine to be quick.)

o  It expressly encourages those who have spoken a lot to sit on their hands. It's now other people's turns.

o  It creates an explicit opening for the shy or the more deliberate thinkers to step up. Don't come back later with the complaint that there was no opening.

Note that this approach does limit the quick for a time, but only after they have already contributed, not before.

The second strategy I employ to equalize participation is to mix up formats. Instead of relying solely on open discussion—which is often the quickest way to get at things—I intentionally use a variety of other approaches. Here are three:
—Go Rounds (where no one speaks twice until everyone who cares to has had a chance to speak once).
—Small group breakouts (where it's easier for people to test out their ideas).
—Individual writing before sharing in the whole group (some are more articulate that way than orally—why not occasionally give them a format at which they excel?).

All together, these are strategies for getting everyone into the conversation without gagging the strong, which, by the way, has nothing to do with gender, yet has everything to do with getting everyone's wisdom into consideration—all the while encouraging all participants to get stronger without pretending that we're all alike.

Gender Dynamics in Cooperative Groups

I've recently been in a dialog with a thoughtful friend who has lived half his life in a consensus-based community and shared this reflection about gender dynamics (which I have lightly edited to preserve anonymity):

As I see it, there is a distinct difference between the genders that has persisted for decades, well beyond the behaviors or personalities of particular men or women. When our group experiences open conflict in arriving at consensus it almost always becomes positional/territorial "lines" between one or two men, not women. I have recently seen the group get close to agreement only to have the consensus founder because one or two males believe they have a better understanding of: a) how consensus works; or b) what the real problem is that the rest are missing. It happens repeatedly… and heatedly. 

Recently, I was standing in a circle of members when I expressed a concern that a committee had sent out a written message to a departing member that had not been cleared in plenary. When anger erupted in response to that revelation all the women took a physical step back, while the males exchanged heated words. Though we worked through the anger over the next days, it has made me look more closely at male-female dynamics during our plenary conversations—to read the body language, to observe if females are speaking out or not, and to see who is helping us move collectively and who is holding onto some "sacred" place that cannot be touched.

Lately, I've been finding a wonderful amount of courage and inner clarity to challenge these positions, yet I admit to almost wishing to be part of a community where the women's views were weighted a bit more than the men's (I know that's a big generalization, but there are threads of truth for me), because women can sense much of what is being felt in the group and what is being lost that the males often miss while proving themselves "right."

I replied:

I can certainly resonate with your observation as someone who gets to peek behind the curtain of many groups (people don't hire me to confirm that everything is going well).

The way I've made sense of the gender phenomenon you described above is that women in our culture are conditioned to be more relational than men; and men are held up to the standard of John Wayne, the archetypal rugged individualist. (To be sure, I know plenty of women who are every bit as roosterish as those men whose behavior you have highlighted in your community, but in general I think your observation is sound.) For relationally oriented people it's not so difficult to set aside personal preferences for the good of the group. For those taught to trust their inner truth above all else, it can be the very devil distinguishing between personal preference and divine inspiration. In that context, asking them to think of the whole is an insult because they believe that their inner truth is always about that. They just have trouble accepting that other people's inner truth might be different, and just as divinely inspired.

On the whole, it's been my observation that strong women tend to run intentional communities. Not because they are naturally better leaders, but because it's essential for leaders to have developed fairly sophisticated social skills to be effective in community, and girls tend to be steered in that direction more than boys. While you want leaders to be good at both relational skills and systems thinking, it's my sense that its easier for a woman to learn systems than it is for a man to learn to see an issue from another person's perspective.


What do I mean by relational skills? It's the ability to:
o  Articulate clearly what you think.
o  Articulate clearly what you feel.
o  Hear accurately what others say (and be able to communicate that to the speaker such that they feel heard).
o  Hear critical feedback without walling up or getting defensive.
o  Function reasonably well in the presence of non-trivial distress in others.
o  Shift perspectives to see an issue through another person's lens.
o  See potential bridges between two people who are at odds with each other.
o  See the good intent underneath strident statements.
o  Distinguish clearly between a person's behavior being out of line and that person being "bad."
o  Own your own shit.
o  Reach out to others before you have been reached out to yourself.
o  Be sensitive to the ways in which you are privileged.

Intentional communities (at least the ones that don't espouse traditional gender roles, which is most, but by no means all) tend to be especially attractive to strong women for two reasons. First, communities tend to be progressive politically and are therefore likely to be committed to breaking down stereotypical gender roles. Thus, women are far less likely to encounter glass ceiling dynamics in community. That means openings for everyone without reference to their plumbing. Hallelujah!

Second, communities are committed to creating cooperative culture, and that means how things are done tends to matter as much as what gets done. This is in striking contrast with the mainstream culture and its fixation on results. In consequence, those social skills (that women have been conditioned to excel at) stand out as a big plus.

Going the other way, community can be a challenging environment for strong men because their behavior may trigger knee-jerk suspicion about whether their strength is rooted in a desire for personal aggrandizement (the mainstream tendency) instead of service to the whole. It is not enough that the strong man thinks he's clean (by which I mean not ego-driven and working on behalf of everyone); it matters more how he comes across to others, and this is all about social skills, not facility with rhetoric or branding.

It's even more nuanced than that. Given the historic privilege that men have enjoyed in the wider culture, the determination to create a more feminist culture in community (by which I mean egalitarian—not woman-centered) translates into encouraging women to step up and men to step back. In practice this can result in women being celebrated for being assertive (in the interest of encouraging their stepping up) while men taking the same action are criticized for being too aggressive (in an effort to encourage their stepping back).

While this may be demonstrably unfair, a more subtle question is whether it's an appropriate strategy for closing the gap in societal prejudice that favors men. While there's no doubt that this strategy won't work long term (because it would just reverse the inequity), it's an open question whether this brand of affirmative action is justified in an effort to accelerate getting to the promised land of equal opportunity, or for how long it should be supported.

All in all, intentional community is an incredibly potent laboratory for experimenting with gender dynamics in pursuit of the holy grail: a better life for all.

Sitting out the Old; Sitting in the New, Part IV

In this fourth installment of Laird's New Year's Revolutions, I'll focus on the turnings in my mind about gender dynamics at the 10-day Vipassana retreat.

First of all, the Vipassana philosophy is not gender specific. The advice or techniques offered men and women are the same. That said, over the years—centuries, really—Vipassana practitioners have evolved definite ideas about the best way to structure introductory courses (having only experienced the introductory course, I don't have a clue if or how course structures change as one advances along the path). My comments in this blog will pertain to the structure, not the philosophy.

As I wrote in my previous blog, one of the core tenets of Vipassana philosophy is sila, or correct moral conduct. In everyday life this includes proscriptions against sexual abuse or misconduct. During the 10-day reatreat, the request is much stricter: retreatants are asked to abstain from all sexual activity. Of course, given that we're also expected to not touch, look at, or communicate in any way with other meditators (excepting with the assitant teacher or with the course manager assigned to our gender—there is a female manger for the women and a male manager for the men—with whom we are allowed to ask questions about our meditation practice during certain times of the day), it's pretty difficult to imagine interactive sex as a possibility. Implied, though not expressly stated, is that masturbation is also a no-no during the course.

As I can see the point of asking meditators to set aside sexual activity for the purpose of focusing on concentrating the mind (samadhi), heightening awareness of full body sensations (not just those in the loins), and noticing how cravings and aversions plague one's thoughts and frustrate attempts to reach and maintain an equanimous state, I'm not objecting to this expectation of course celibacy. Rather, I'm commenting about the lengths to which course managers go to keep the genders separated, and wondering what the point of it is.

In addition to sexual abstinence, meditators are also asked to forego all intoxicants during the retreat, to not talk with fellow meditators, to refrain from bringing food into the bedrooms, and to neither read nor write. With all of these restrictions, the basic approach is to lay out the boundaries of acceptable behavior during the course, and then to trust that consenting adults—after all, no one is forced to attend a Vipassana retreat—will abide by them. To my knowledge, no is checking up on you.

Interestingly, when it comes to gender separation—unlike with all of the other strictures—the Vipassana folks do not simply rely on people having read the Code of Discipline and behaving appropriately. In fact, they go to great lengths to permit both genders to attend courses, and then keep them scrupulously separated. It's goofy. If mixing genders is so dangerous, why don't they alternate courses by gender, with all men at one sitting, followed by all women at the next?

As near as I can piece it together, they do it this way for two reasons. First, I suspect they fear (and may have had some actual trouble with in the past) meditators' capacity to resist sexual temptation if men and women are allowed more into each other's proximity. And this can be something far less blatant than groping in the cloak room or unauthorized bedroom visitors after lights out; it may not be anything more than heightened sexual tensions (Luke, I can feel a distrubance in the Force.) Thus, this policy may simply be in loco parentis, where the Vipassana managers are protecting meditators from the temptation that history has proven is the hardest to resist (certainly sex was on my mind during the retreat—see my previous blog for a mea culpa on this). Still, it seemed to me they were treating us more like over-hormoned teenagers on court-ordered silent penance than consenting adults pursuing spiritual development.

Second, there may be a vibrational explanation. On the one hand, it may be best to have roughly equal numbers of men and women in the Dhamma Hall during meditation hours (all men=too much yang; all women=too much yin). On the other, mixing genders unnecessarily (or even gender-identified objects; see more on this below) may trigger subtle vibrational disturbances that undercut the equanimity and centeredness we'll are striving for. To be clear, nobody told me this; I'm just guessing.

To give you an idea how ridiculous this got (in my assessment, when we'd come to breakfast every morning the containers of dry cereal were marked Male Granola and Male Raisin Bran. When I first saw this, for a fleeting moment I wondered if that meant these were the batches that were laced with testosterone. Upon reflection, I realized that wasn't likely, but they were going to a fair amount of effort to make sure that the container of granola we got was the same one each morning. What bad thing, I wondered, would occur if on Day Three the men were served granola from the container that had been offered the women on Day Two? There were, apparently, spiritual matters at work here that were far more subtle than this neophyte could grok.

Better yet, one of the morning choices was Male Cheerios. Now really. How could anyone take a look at Cheerios and label them "male" with a straght face? It boggles the mind.

For the duration of the retreat, the women had a route for traveling between the dormitory, dining hall, and the Dhamma Hal, and it was completely separate from the route assigned to the men. While I suspect that the isolation of pathways by gender helps reduce the temptation to ogle during the lightly clad days of summer, in January everyone was wearing so much down that you couldn't tell which way was up—much less what plumbing anyone was sporting in their underwear.

On Day Ten, after the silence had been broken and the men and women were once again allowed to sit within sight of each other—and even talk together in the Dining Hall, I was chided by the facility manager that it was still inappropriate to approach the Dining Hall by a shortcut from the dormitory that crossed a path that had been reserved solely for women while the silence was in force. Huh? How could it be OK to commingle sexes for the purpose of organizing the post-retreat clean-up and to make a unified pitch for donations to support Vipassana operations, and at the same time unaccpetable to walk across the parking lot to approach the Dining Hall? There were distinctions here I simply wasn't getting.

On get-away day, after the retreat ended, I lingered to help clean up and make sure all the dorm rooms were ready for the next retreat. (Naturally, my partner, James, was another man, and we were working solely on the male side; two women were our counterparts on the distaff side.) When James and I found a bed that needed the bottom sheet changed, we were admonished to be careful about using "male" sheets for that purpose—even though the mattresses and sheets on the female side of the dorm were exactly the same. On the other hand, it was OK for the men and women to use the same floor mop, and we could refill the spray bottles of cleanser for each suite of rooms from the same master container.

While most of these distinctions were simpy nutty and not really harmful, on a more serious level I wondered about the heterosexual assumption that underlay all these gender-based restrictions. When you take into account that about 10% of the population is gay, the carefully-constructed sexual firewalls of the Vipassana Center are not just ineffective, they were downright incendiary. By insisting that men only hang out in close proximity with other men and the same for women, they've institutionalized homosexual temptation. Noticeably, this was not mentioned at all, either by the instructors or in the literature.

Perhaps the Vipassana folks have discovered that gays are simply more mature than straights and don't need the plethora of training wheels to keep them on the path of sila. However, I doubt it. I suspect that the truth here is that the Vipassana leaders, for all their noble commitment to seeing things as they truly are (the literal meaning of "Vipassana") are simply in denial about homosexuality and have not adjusted their carefully wrought course structures to take into account contemporary LBGT reality.

For my money, the answer here is simple enough. Stop making gender such a big deal, make no attmept to sort people by sexual orientation (it's not the Vipassana folks' business anyway and is irrelevent to the philosophy and practice), continue to ask meditators to forebear from sexual activity during the retreat, and trust that students will behave. If they don't, then deal with that.

If you want people to behave like adults, then treat them that way.