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Man-A Woman's Best Friend
I know a man that for 20 years has been a faithful
friend to his wife, staying by her side through
breast cancer, an auto-immune disease making it
extremely difficult to walk, sometimes affecting
vision and the use of her hands, more breast cancer
requiring surgery and chemo, a broken hip; year
after year of countless doctor visits and
treatments, some very painful. With all that, their
lives together have also been wonderful and magical
in so many ways-- the love and committed
friendship, the wife will tell you, has meant
everything. They live far beyond mere survival and
enjoy a quality of life unimaginable but for that
deep and abiding commitment. It’s been a
beautiful thing for me to witness up close.
There are so many examples of men as friends,
allies and partners with women in intimate
relationships, work relationships, co-operating in
extreme adventure of all kinds and quality; from
war to space exploration, parenting to politics.
Old tropes about a battle between the sexes is not
only outdated, it never was true. There has always
been a “partnership society,” even in the
midst of bigoted pedagogues, oppressive patriarchal
regimes and distorted religions that would have it
otherwise. I am talking about partnerships that do
not place anyone above another on the basis of
gender and exhibit a deep honoring of each
other’s strengths and gifts.
That said, those regimes and distorted religions
have much to do with why partnership societies are
far from universal in the 21st century. The idea
that men are superior and women are inferior is
still a mental virus afflicting significant
portions of populations around the world. The
symptoms of the disease; sexual harassment, rape in
war, the military, universities and elsewhere,
domestic violence, the large scale sex and slavery
trades, genital mutilation, female infanticide,
wage inequality and others must be treated along
with implementing the cure.
Among the many allies and friends of women is a
90-year-old man whose efforts are among the most
widespread, thorough and often effective on a
global scale. He was the 39th American President,
and the only one that did not start or maintain a
war but used what political influence he had to
wage peace. He is Jimmy Carter and with his equal
partner in life Rosalyn and his team of 175 at the
Carter Center established in l983 works tirelessly
to eliminate disease, injustice, inequality and
violence in dozens of countries.
And while doing so, Jimmy Carter now writes
passionately about his chief mission in
life—to end violence against and
discrimination of women in all forms with a
particular emphasis on examining the abuse of
religion that becomes a tool for justifying
discrimination. A biblical scholar and teacher for
life, Jimmy Carter works with other religious
scholars who agree that there is no authentic basis
for discrimination in religious texts, only out of
context and distorted references that speciously
support dominance and control, a sense of male
entitlement and privilege that has no basis in
reality and would not be approved of by the
original founders or the source of inspiration for
the creation of world religions.
Jimmy Carter's new book A Call To Action: Women,
Religion, Violence and Power draws attention to the
symptoms I mentioned above and provides the
impassioned but calm, balanced and fair treatment
of the problem with a perspective that all men
could benefit from, as men also suffer when their
mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and communities
are diminished or destroyed by this discrimination
that affects everyone.
"It's not a so-called woman's issue," Jimmy
insists. "All of society is affected by what is
both an injustice and a tragedy.
In reading the book I have to admit that with my
erstwhile background in rape and domestic violence
education and men’s role in family planning
and parenting notwithstanding, there are staggering
statistics that took me by surprise. Case in point,
there are more slaves today than before the US
Civil War, most of these women and tens of
thousands passing through Carter’s native
state of Georgia, USA!
If statistics seem cold and aloof, Carter’s
reach for collaborative solutions are anything but.
I was inspired and encouraged to learn about how
many men at high levels of leadership care and are
involved in doing larger scale systems thinking
while generating and delivering solutions on the
ground in partnership with women. Carter is a
member of an international group of men and women
called The Elders, many of them former leaders of
state. The men in this working group have either
recovered from the mental virus that still helps
drive isolated, marginalized and disenfranchised
young men to a movement like ISIS or they were
fortunately exposed as I was at an earlier age to
the truth about gender equality by select families,
teachers and communities.
So, what then is the cure for the ongoing
violence and discrimination? Running with my
epidemiological metaphor a bit longer, we need an
anti-viral agent. And as with most diseases the
cure often comes in the same package as the
disease, or the solution is contained within the
problem.
The virus we want to spread is the news about
boys and men being inherently good—I’ve
never known a male baby to go to war or rape
someone. We begin as whole human beings, malleable,
but whole. One powerful protein in this positive
virus is parenting. How we cuddle and talk to boys,
the messages they receive about their inherent
worth and lovability is not turning them into
something they are not to begin with, it’s
maintaining and further nurturing their strong
sense of self and humanity. We need to root out
sometimes invisibly different treatment boys
receive in school that fosters bad or anti-social
behavior and see to it that any and all kinds of
sexist references in media are eliminated. We need
to help boys discover and live their passions and
talents with teaching and mentoring that supports
their passions and sense of purpose.
One of the strongest proteins in this pro-virus
are the men who are consciously building strong
communities to provide women-respecting role models
of what it means to be a man as a partner with
women, modeling that at home, work and in public in
a variety of ways and scales.
Having worked with former gangbangers creating
new lives for themselves, I know that much of the
violence they were forced into perpetrating is
simply a distorted means to receiving attention,
recognition, a sense of belonging and even love.
And that they were usually first violated in some
way before they violated others. From gangbangers,
to campus and military rapists, to tribal warlords
and ruthless despots, under these distortions of
maleness is the need for human closeness and
friendship that remains constant. It is possible
for every man to learn how to be a woman’s
best friend. Let’s join Jimmy.
Read more here: http://theelders.org/article/jimmy-carter-womens-man
Become aware of and join the larger global
movement called 1 Billion Rising Revolution now
joining together people and partnerships across all
nations
©2015, Randy
Crutcher
* * *
Randy
Crutcher has over three decades of experience as a
teacher, counselor, and community
organizer/builder. He is a personal and
professional development coach, facilitator, and
consultant to both large institutions and small
organizations in the public, private, and
non-profit sectors. He has done extensive work with
men and boys to become all they can be having
opened one of the first state grant funded
men’s counseling center’s in America. He
developed programs to assist men in learning
alternatives to violence, father and son workshops
and gatherings.
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