An excerpt from the Power chapter of
Beyond the Blame Game

We Appear More Different Than We Are

My years of experience leading men's groups, mixed-gender groups, and even groups made up entirely of women has taught me that men and women are actually more alike than they are different. There are real differences, but men and women are not as different as we commonly believe.

Men and women grow up empowered in different ways. These different ways of empowerment lead us to have superficially different sets of value, and these values create different perspectives through which men and women see the world. Because of these different ways men and women tend to be empowered, we see the same world differently. When we understand the differences in male and female empowerment it becomes easier to see past those differences to the ways in which we are alike. Until we can understand the different areas of empowerment of men and women, we will continue to perceive many differences where few differences exist, and be aggravated by what actually are superficial differences.

"Empowerment doors" that are generally held open to boys tend to be closed to girls, and vice versa. Thus, a woman who wishes to excel in a traditionally male achievement area is likely to meet resistance when she tries to open the door. Furthermore, she finds she is often not taken as seriously as a man would be (thanks to feminism, this is changing). Men, on the other hand, often find that their choices and moral judgments about relationships, feelings, and sexuality, if they disagree with women's, are not taken seriously and are even derided.

In addition, the way our culture has examined men's and women's power has hurt men. Although the ways men are empowered have been extensively discussed, the ways women are empowered have not been. The result has been that men are being called upon to give up their special privileges, but women are not being called upon to give up theirs. For this reason as much as any other, men have resisted women's calls for "equality."

The Paradox of Men's and Women's Power

There is a paradox that defines and structures much of how men and women are socialized, how they are empowered, and how they interact with each other. This is the paradox of "goal orientation" and "feeling orientation." The two sides of this paradox exist in all of us, but our socializing trains us to see ourselves more in one side or the other, depending upon our gender.

Let's look at how the two sides of this paradox are empowered differently in males and females. Our society empowers assertive, goal-oriented behavior in men. Goal-oriented people set a goal and move toward it come Hell or high water, no matter what the cost to self or to others. Goal-oriented people are concerned with changing the external world and getting the job done. The goal may eclipse all other considerations. Men who are locked into the goal-oriented mode will do anything to reach the goal, even if it requires not taking care of themselves, ignoring their lovers or families, lying, cheating, and paying no heed to their own feelings or to the feelings of others. For goal-oriented people, their value to society and to themselves is based on achieving the goal. Morality or even basic fairness can go out the window. The end is all-important, and the end justifies the means.

People who are empowered in the goal-oriented mode have an easier time getting power in the external, work-a-day, dog-eat-dog world. The goal-oriented mode is the mode used in most money-making, political, and business activities. Women, trained to be feeling-oriented, have been kept out of and oppressed in business and politics, the traditionally male achievement areas.

Men are society's judges of how well a job is completed, and they have often been quick to tell women workers they aren't doing the job well enough. Men are society's goal-oriented experts, so society has come to see men's ideas about work and achievement as better than women's ideas. The ability to be obsessively goal-oriented is the basis of male power in the achievement-oriented realms.

Feeling-oriented behavior, on the other hand, is concerned most with how an activity is gone about, and less with whether the goal is completed. The feeling mode emphasizes how relationships are maintained, how people feel about what is going on, taking care of people, and doing the "right thing." I once worked in a cooperatively-run business in which 90% of the workers were women. Making sure that everyone felt okay about a process was more important than getting the job done quickly and effectively. Women are usually more socialized than men into the feeling-oriented mode. Women are more likely to get their sense of self-worth from how they go about doing things, rather than from what they get done. They are more likely to be concerned with what is going on inside. Women are more likely to be concerned with maintaining relationships and fairness than with getting the job done. For women, the means are more likely to justify the ends. The ability to be obsessively feeling-oriented is the basis of female power in the feeling and relational realms.

We all have both sides of this paradox within ourselves, and a healthy person can be either goal-oriented or feeling-oriented, depending on the needs of any situation. Unfortunately, during our socialization we tend to be encouraged in one mode and discouraged in the other, depending on our gender. Men and boys are encouraged into the goal-oriented mode and discouraged in the feeling mode; girls and women are more encouraged in the feeling mode and discouraged around achievement. This creates many of the perceived differences between men and women.

Just because men tend to be pushed into the goal-oriented mode doesn't mean that men can't be feeling-oriented as well, and just because women are pushed into the feeling-mode doesn't mean that women can't get things done. I know some very goal-oriented women and feeling-oriented men, and plenty of people who can go back and forth as they desire. Generally, though, a man's feelings are more easily dismissed, and a woman's achievements are more easily dismissed.

Excerpt about the system of male-female relationships
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