Throw down your arms! Surrender!

Recently Marie read the manuscript of Man Overboard and wrote detailed notes (which I will treasure and learn by). In more than one place she brought up the issue of sexual politics and the power imbalance in many relationships. This forced me to confront the feminist paradigm and say which side I am on...

Here is one such comment, followed by my reply:

"Page 24: Many women will be alienated by "you will love a woman into submssion". Women do not want to submit as they already feel imbalanced from a power perspective. This line may put them into the opposite affect of needing to overcompensate for their lack of power. They want to be equal and respected and in doing so will love back in a way that will respect and pleasure their their partner as well."

Dear Marie,

You have opened my eyes to another perspective. I will re-read the manuscript with your suggestions beside me.

Meanwhile let me address one theme – about sexual politics. I feel there could be a new paradigm.

I am aware of the issues. I was Miriam Dixson’s research assistant when she was writing The Real Matilda, a feminist history of Australia. That was in 1975. I haven’t read the books you mention.

Have you read The Surrendered Wife by Laura Doyle? I think I quote it in the manuscript. It takes a radical position re sexual politics. She believes that women (many women) want to be ‘husbanded’ - made to feel secure and protected by a man. She recommends that women force their husbands into this role and stop letting them off the hook by doing the family finances and planning all the outings and holidays and replacing the light bulbs, etc. while he plays golf or earns a living or whatever excuse he hides behind. She also advises women to stop belittling their men and reducing them to the status of naughty boys or incompetent nincompoops. She advises them to say, “Whatever you say” when he makes some lame-brained suggestion, throwing the responsibility back on the man to think through the consequences of his decisions. Be the helmsman instead of the passenger. Once given the power to wreck the ship, he is more likely to seek his wife’s opinion. The old-style traditional male position was all power no responsibility. A man fulfilling the role of husband - protector and provider – has all the responsibility and his power is prescribed by his desire to make his wife happy.

I could leave the dishes in the sink, but I won’t because I want to make my wife happy. I could leave the bed unmade but I won’t because... I could stay out late drinking .... And so long as my life is dominated by its chief function – making my wife happy – power relations don’t come into it.

That is what I mean by loving her into submission. It is not a submission to my will but a submission to her desire to be loved, cherished, cared for, thought about, considered, made to feel special...
Remember that my action plan involves complete submission on my part... Total.

I am a feminist. I have always been ideologically a feminist. (Not always practically or domestically. That has been a hard lesson to learn, having been bought up by a mother who did absolutely everything for me.)

I never sought to dominate a woman or sexually control a situation. I erred on the side of giving control to the woman. And guess what? Those same women were suckers for guys who treated them bad, used them then drifted away... I was always a ‘friend’, but when it came to romance they went for the blokes who were bastards to them. I could never figure it out, until my epiphany. I now believe that, primally, women have an echo of their ‘submissive’ role in ancient times when survival was by brute force and a woman needed a man to protect and provide for her children as they grew to self sufficiency...

But even then the woman held great power. In a fantastic book called Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices by Paul R. Lawrence, the author argues that women in these times bred selectively only with males willing and able to bond (ie. Stick around while their kids could grow strong enough to fend for themselves in the wild). In other words, women decided whose genes would live on and whose would not pass on. The modern man’s impulse to bond is the outcome of generations of choices by females.

As evidence of this primal echo, I believe women like to be pursued. Sounds like caveman stuff, but these are the facts of life as I have encountered it.

My fundamental thesis is that love submits to love. Love dissolves the power struggle.

Sexual politics is the negation of love because politics is the mechanism whereby sectional interests compete for dominance. That means ego seeks to defeat ego.

But love is not ego. Ego is the negation of love. We can’t love when we focus on ourselves. (However we can’t give love to another until we first learn to love ourselves.)

I believe in sexual politics if it means kicking him in the groin to get his attention. A crisis must be precipitated. I believe in differentiation – being self-validated. Being the change you want to see in others.

I am on the other side of the crisis, waiting with my radical strategy of unilateral surrender that endures as long as it takes to win her confidence and erase the pain of all the insults and injuries. Once back in balance (the woman decides when it is time to swing the pendulum back to the middle) things will never be the same. For love to prevail, there can be no seeking after justice. It’s best not to expect it.

The Prayer of St Francis says “Father may I never seek as much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love...”

This won’t work for everyone. For some people the pain is too great, the leap of faith too far, the risk too big. But for those who ‘get it’, it makes a permanent change.

And love grows by this magic process: Love sees love loving and loves love.

I know there are many damaged women, damaged by damaged men, who in turn were damaged by damaged women and men. The path to healing for them is forgiveness because it is empowering and re-integrating and reaffirming of a person’s personhood.

Since writing the book I have learned a lot about love – that pain is its twin and they travel everywhere together. Pain is bearable when it has meaning. The pain of love has meaning.

I am sorry, this has been a rant. You were so kind to read my manuscript and thoughtfully so. And to spend the time critiquing. I want you to understand the clear distinction I draw between love and sexual politics and why I don’t dwell on the latter.

Yours,

Michael