When I heard British writer and philosopher Nina Power interviewed recently, I ordered her book. I was interested in her ideas, but also in her. I liked her curiosity and intellect, her attitude of respect and her low-key sense of humor.
Power wrote her book, “What Do Men Want?” (Allen Lane, 2022, 192 pages), because she was tired of male bashing. “In my experience, and statistically,” she says, “the vast majority of men are kind, thoughtful, self-aware, interested, compassionate, loving and protective, as friends or as partners… Most men are, like most women, a mixture of good and bad…” The fact that Power started her adult life as an advocate for Leftist positions only enhances her credibility to speak on this issue. She is not just repeating traditional views.
And, yes, there are men, too, who blame women or feminism for current problems. Power knows, as we all do, how easy it is to blame, and she impressed me by talking about forgiveness early on. “Without forgiveness, and the acceptance that we all make mistakes sometimes, we are all doomed to suspicious isolation.” Her goal is encouraging the move beyond isolation towards the risky but adventuresome and possibly joyous experience of learning from others, especially others who are “not quite like you.”
Interaction between the sexes can be “an awkward and confusing mess, where the rules are often extremely obscure.” Power sheds light on some of the assumptions underlying confusion. Current culture, meaning advertisement and social media, encourages us to think that one person can fulfill most of our needs and that near-constant technological connection is a good thing. Power advises women to take responsibility for themselves. She talks about the rise of the masculinity industry, exemplified by Jordan Peterson, who says the same thing to men. And Power, like Peterson, says that it would profit us all “to revisit old values and virtues – honor, loyalty, courage.”
The masculinity business, men who tell men “how to be a man,” is popular these days, and a subject of complaint by some feminists. To complain about the whole genre, writes Power, is to take “a cynical, oppositional attitude” about the difference between the sexes. “If pro-masculinist books have an appeal to young men in particular today, it is in large part because they present an image of an escape from various kinds of depressed, morose types of masculinity in a consumerist, hedonistic society.”
I enjoyed the chapter on patriarchy. “Some want to dismantle this nebulous thing called ‘patriarchy’ altogether. I increasingly think that we need to think less in terms of structures (and patriarchy would be one such structure) and much more in terms of mutual respect. About how we get along day-to-day rather than in terms of vast, oppressive systems, whose image only makes us all more powerless.”
Patriarchy, she adds, was not always great for men either. Rather than condemn systems, it might be more productive to celebrate what we value. In the interview I watched, Power says that the patriarchs in the Bible were men who took responsibility. For sure, she notes, there were times when individual men were abusive, and individual women were repressed or hurt, and it is an absolute good that women have more agency now but patriarchy was not all bad or all good. Seeing only the negative is depressive.
What is the point of this book? In part, to stimulate conversation, especially, in my case, with the younger generation. “I’ve been reading this book …” That’s my starting sentence. When I described Power’s fatigue with male bashing, a young male friend’s response was immediate. “We’re not all bad.” I agreed. Wholeheartedly. A Millennial female friend and I ended up talking about “Pick-up artists,” described in the chapter on “The Games Men Play,” and my friend sent me a link for a podcast she liked on the subject. A seatmate on a recent train ride asked me about the book, which I was reading at the time. We talked for an hour. People, at least some, want to talk about these things.
I also have a newfound awareness and appreciation for the ways in which men help other men. The author says that it would be helpful if men took more responsibility for helping others of their sex understand when their behavior is out of line, but I have seen men do this very thing. A friend told another friend that he was coming on too strong to the women in their social group. Another told his buddy that an angry outburst at an athletic event was inappropriate. Has feminism helped to bring about some of this action? I believe so.
I have also seen many examples of men being friends during tough times, or just helping each other out. Two men I know go together to a nursing home to visit the widow of an old friend. These visits are much easier with the two of them! They laugh about this.
Some men and women will always choose to remain separated from the opposite sex, as Power notes, and that is fine. But there is plenty of room for hope and excitement here about the possibilities of interaction. I’ll give one example from the book: the pick-up artists I mentioned above. Two, each with a prominent on-line presence, are highlighted, along with their message and tactics. But both came to see women differently. One gradually felt the presence of God in his life, and eventually banned from his site any vulgar language or mention of pre-marital sex. The other found true love, and wrote a book about commitment.
In short, being willing to take responsibility for our actions, being willing to forgive, being willing to try a light-hearted and playful attitude towards life, helps us to “avoid a childlike image of the world in which there are simply good guys and bad.”
(Anne Bevilacqua is a book lover who lives in Haywood County. abev1@yahoo.com.)