It was International Women’s Day this past week. I have seen only a handful of men acknowledge and amplify. I’ve had this post drafted for a while now; time to get it out!
My friend’s husband understands: “Here let me exercise my white male privilege.” He steps up, takes the handlebar facing the toddler in the seat, and the supermarket shopping cart sea parts for him, when it did not for her.
He knows he can live a life free from conflict much more easily than she can. He can be ignorant more easily. He bears fewer social costs for any dissenting behaviors.
Certain people just have more power. “You should exercise.” Advice from the doctor carries more weight and influence than from the spouse. Teen peer more than parent. And fellow Cis-Het-Christian-White Male (CHCWM) more than anyone else. So men: how are you helping?
It’s more effective if you come alongside rather than come at. Berating, lecturing, or shaming fellow men to take a hard left from their stereotypes, implicit biases, and internalized misogyny hardly ever works. Rather, use your influence more quietly. Lead by example with your words and actions to the slow off-ramp of self-awareness, self-regulation and movement toward gender equality. Be gentle. Plant the seeds. Water, water, light, fertilize, water, light, water.. and eventually we can repot.
Scale your influence by connecting with other exemplary leaders. Culture change occurs mostly from the top down, and CHCWMs are the CEOs of American culture.
If you’re already there, ready to exercise your influence on behalf of women, to be the best ally you can be, decide how you will act. Start small, like at the gym. Find the muscles of upstanding and train them. Test them for stability, add weights slowly by stepping into discomfort more often; do not push through pain or cause yourself injury, but challenge limits—both yours and society’s. Recruit a coach or buddy—it’s always easier and better to train with a friend.
If you’re not there, start by noticing: fleeting facial expressions, shifts in posture, passing clouds of mood or vibe change—how are the women around you accommodating you and other men automatically, without anyone even noticing, much less acknowledging?
Awareness can be hard. It can incite guilt and regret, even shame and self-loathing. But that is not the goal. The goal is growth and connection. Allow the feelings in, sit with their meaning and discover how they motivate you. That’s what feelings are for, after all. Hold it all loosely, give it space to settle, land where it fits in the cracks of your bias, wedging open a door to being and doing better for your fellow humans.
Then attune to the next signal, the next, repeat. Once enough nuggets have accumulated, your pattern of change energy may emerge, unique to you. Your contribution. How can you show up in solidarity, where does your own privilege do the most good? How can you come alongside and nudge, steer your male peers toward the off-ramp, from implicit or explicit misogyny toward empathic and compassionate inclusion?
We have come such a long way, we women and the men who support and hold us up. We have so long yet to go, though, and we can only move forward with the alliance of all— men and women, and non-binary people alike. When society raises the floor of respect for any of us, it helps all of us. It’s not about conflict and competition. It’s about shared humanity. “I see you. I value you equally to myself and those like me.”
The only way out is through. The best way through is together. Thank you, our White Male Allies, for going together with us.
…”So what keeps our inner depolarizer in the closet when it comes to sensitive topics like abortion, immigration, religion, and politics in general? Or in family conflict and workplace politics? I posit that it has, at least partially, to do with two levels of psychological safety: intrinsic and extrinsic.” Let’s talk about the first, which can be thought of as confident humility:
Premise: I resist/reject/assail challenges to my beliefs and positions because I worry that those challenges will change my beliefs and positions. If my beliefs are changed, then what does that mean? Am I weak? A hypocrite? Uncommitted? What will others think of me? Will I get kicked out of my tribe? Or, maybe I just think I’m right, and I’m simply not open to the possible value of any other perspective? Or I’m afraid that if I’m not right, then I’m just wrong, and that feels too uncomfortable and I don’t want to go there.
Question: When does it feel safe to reconsider or challenge some belief I have?
Answer: When I don’t have a strong personal investment in my belief—it isn’t material to my identity, tribal membership, or survival, real or perceived. In his book Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein summarizes eloquently the psychological research suggesting that when we perceive threats to our identity (eg gender, sexuality, sports fandom, family, nationality, political party, or other), our response is primarily emotional. The existential discomfort (experienced as real limbic threat) causes us to reject the challenge, be it information, policies, or other people, employing confirmation bias, rationalization, and other mental self-preservation tactics.
So, does this mean that we must dilute or divest our personal identities in order to depolarize? Certainly not. I think it does, however, require some honest reflection on how we define and relate to our various identities. Why do we get emotionally agitated about certain topics and not others? Why do debates about abortion cause some people such agitation, and some people not? Why gun control? Immigration? Transgender and sexuality issues? What is it about any particular topic, and how I identify with it, that triggers me? How does it define my in- and out-groups? And how does this constellation of thought, emotion, and behavior affect my personal well-being, relationships, social standing and security? As a result, how do I contribute to divisions or affiliations in my own social circles, and society at large through my words and actions? How much do I care about that last part?
Intrinsic psychological safety means feeling solidly grounded in my core values and the practices that manifest them—it’s a sense of quiet, confident, unassailability. To me it means cultivating a growth mindset, confident that I am at the same time rooted down and branching out- embracing and navigating the paradox of personal conviction and intellectual humility and flexibility. Challenging my beliefs then becomes a personal practice of learning, integrating, and cultivating complexity and depth to my opinions, beliefs, and perspectives. I stir and knead, exercise and expand my mental elasticity and range. Rather than diluting my positions, all of this training can actually strengthen my understanding, expression, and agility in defense of them. It gives me the confidence to seek and welcome challenges, knowing that I have enough internal clarity to maintain my core values and also integrate important nuances that may edify them. It is a product of disciplined self-development.
In confident humility mindset, I understand that my position is not, in fact, the only ‘right’ one; it is simply one of many. “Everybody’s right, and only partially,” was one of my first life coaching lessons back in 2005, and has served me well. This mindset allows us to think of ourselves and our opinions as ‘also right.’ It frees us from the burden of having to prove ourselves or exert power over others to convert them. It opens space and time to find middle paths for creativity, collaboration, and connection.
Wonderful! Now we know how to depolarize ourselves—how to gracefully (even joyfully) integrate personal conviction and intellectual flexibility, perhaps even to move towards advocacy without alienation. So what holds us back from practicing these skills outwardly, vocally, especially within our own tribes? Tune in to Part 3 on Extrinsic Psychological Safety, to consider consequences and rewards of standing up and speaking out.
What kind culture do you wish to perpetuate? What specific actions, policies, behaviors, and outcomes would it manifest?
I learned the term ‘cultural perpetuity’ this past week, from a thought-provoking article on how Maslow’s Hierarchy was influenced by and also misrepresented Blackfeet Nation teachings:
Self-actualization. Where Maslow’s hierarchy ends with self-actualization, the Blackfoot model begins here. In their view, we are each born into the world as a spark of divinity, with a great purpose embedded in us. That means that we arrive on earth self-actualized.
Belonging. After we’re born, imbued with a divine purpose, the tribe is there to love and care for us.
Basic Needs & Safety. While in Maslow’s model, we find love and belonging only after attending to our basic needs and safety, the Blackfoot model describes that our tribe or community is the means through which we are fed, housed, clothed, and protected. The tribe knows how to survive on the land and uses that knowledge and skill to care for us.
Community Actualization. In tending to our basic needs and safety, the tribe equips us to manifest our sacred purpose, designing a model of education that supports us in expressing our gifts. Community actualization describes the Blackfoot goal that each member of the tribe manifest their purpose and have their basic needs met.
Cultural Perpetuity. Each member of the tribe will one day be gone. So passing on their knowledge of how to achieve community actualization and harmony with the land and other peoples gives rise to an endurance of the Blackfoot way of life, or cultural perpetuity.
I also listened this week to the Building an Anti-Racist Workplace episode of Adam Grant’s podcast WorkLife. It’s an insightful, enlightening, and empowering interview with John Amaechi, whose work I will now explore further. In their discussion on allyship, Amaechi points out that we upstand against racism and sexism not just to help our individual friends or coworkers, but because we uphold certain core values. Thus, we speak and stand up to defend and disseminate a certain culture—to perpetuate it:
Adam Grant (21:43): I wanna talk a little bit about sort of the- the ally perspective here. Just thinking about my own failures in anti-racism and other people who I know, recognize the problems and care about the problems, but haven’t done much about them, I keep coming back to this literature on psychological standing.That sense that, you know, it’s- it’s not my place, it’s not legitimate for me to speak up because I’m white. What are your thoughts on overcoming it and getting those people who are by-standing for those kinds of reasons on board?
John Amaechi (22:13): There’s a couple of things that I’m trying to do. One of them is to stop the alignment of allyship with black people as individuals and start the alignment of allyship with their own principles or with their organization’s values. So racism is an incivility. Sexism is an incivility. I do not require sisters nor a mother, nor a wife to be against sexism and misogyny because it is an incivility. If I’d intervene on something that’s racist, it’s not on my behalf or another one of my black colleagues. It’s because it’s an incivility against the values that people say they share. Today it’s not about an individual. It’s about standing up for your values and understand that you don’t need to have a black person in your team for that to be important because the presence of a black person has never been required for racism to occur. The presence of a woman has never been required for sexism to occur. As men, we know that the absence of woman reveals sexism and misogyny.
What culture do you lead?
In my role as interim clinical director of a small practice, I see myself as a steward. My best contribution to most places I inhabit is to highlight and foster relationship and connection. At work, this manifests as effective teamwork, high engagement, and positive morale. Last year as we recruited for a new medical assistant (MA), I got to listen on the phone as our current MAs interviewed a candidate. Through my own questioning, the candidate’s responses were short and sedate. Then each MA on the team met with her, describing with energy and conviction how they live out our core values of collaboration and accountability, as well as our mission of providing compassionate, holistic patient care. With each encounter, I heard the candidate’s responses lengthen and deepen. I heard her own energy and engagement rise to match that of the team. It was one of my proudest moments as director—I could see (hear) and feel how far our culture of connection has come, and how it could persist after I pass the baton to the next director.
What is the dominant (perpetual) culture in America?
Do not underestimate the complexity of this question, and its profound implications. The first answer is, of course, it depends whom you ask.
For far too many, the dominant American culture is white male supremacy. For the past year, I myself find it inescapable. Increasingly, every time I consider what to post to this blog, or jeez, every day and in almost every domain, the primacy of white men pervades my consciousness like smog on a hot, humid day. Let me be clear: White men are not each and all bad; I do not assume every one is a racist sexist, even the actual assholes. But whenever American systems are examined, we find that they are primarily designed, favored, empowered, and perpetuated by and for white males—it’s baked into our societal structures, hence the terms ‘systemic’ and ‘structural’ racism and sexism. If you are a white male, it may be hard for you to see the barriers that have not impeded your life journey (Amaechi discusses this in the podcast as well). You may have answered that dominant American culture is one of success with hard work, of equal opportunity, and of individual freedom. Of course that is a culture we’d all love to perpetuate. How could we achieve it for everybody?
What culture do you work to perpetuate?
I think it’s about the values and commitments we hold highest and manifest most in our daily activities. What do our daily encounters say about our priorities? What do we want more of, and thus work for every day, for ourselves, our friends, our colleagues, patients, parents, and children? I want mutual respect and unqualified acceptance. I want sincere valuation of diversity and real, wholehearted inclusion and integration of that diversity—of thought, experience, wisdom, and perspective—into a coherent, synergistic mosaic of strengths, engaged in service of elevating every individual to their highest potential. I want to perpetuate a learning culture, one that operates with a growth mindset, founded on kindness, generosity, humility, curiosity, and resilience.
None of this happens automatically; even well-established gardens of inclusive culture require regular tending. I have to renew my commitment every day, in every encounter. I fall down regularly. And I give thanks every day for loving companions who help me up. I try also to appreciate the challengers, to see them as allies rather than enemies or hindrances. That is walking my talk, no? To value those whose goals and values don’t align with my own, to find a place for them—for everybody—in my world? I’m strengthening my practice of self-assessment. How did I walk the talk today? How can I do even better tomorrow? The more concrete and specific, the better—words, actions, and attitudes. It’s my own version of “trudging the road of happy destiny.”
On that note, I leave you with two more resources that hold me up this weekend:
First, Hank Azaria’s conversation with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman on the Armchair Expert podcast. They discuss addiction, privilege, and racism, among other things. What an inspiring example of vulnerability, courage, humility, connection, and lifelong learning and growth.
Healing Through Connection 