The Male Perspective on Sex and Power in the Age of #MeToo Meeting Report

There was some concern among colleagues that the Psychohistory Forum’s presentation, “Sex and Power in the Age of #MeToo,” was just too controversial a subject for us to hold a Psychohistory Forum Work-In-Progress seminar about. As in the past, this proved not to be the case: on January 26, 2019, the participants delved into many different aspects of this complex issue with considerable sensitivity to the nuances of the subject as they focused on one element after another.

David Lotto, our presenter, describes himself as an advocate of the #MeToo movement focused on fairness to all parties involved. In presenting a clearly male approach to the subject, he spoke of the situation of several of his patients who had felt victimized by the movement. His main thesis is that since women in countries such as the United States are usually in control of when sex does and does not happen, that some men have a strong reaction. Much of the bad behavior from certain men is a consequence of their feelings of anger and sexual frustration by not being the dominant partner in a relationship. Men as a rule are much more eager for sex than are women, resulting in an uncomfortable relationship. Incels are part of an online subculture of men, some living in sexless marriages, who complain of living in involuntary cel-

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ibacy.

The Forum group sitting around our seminar table recognizes the greater complexity for women who run the risk of not simply pregnancy but being seen as a “slut” if they express their sexual desires too freely and are inclined to be even more involved than men in the emotions and relationship issues around sex. In their lives, girls and women are labeled as “sluts” or “nasty” if they have sex when they’re too young, with multiple partners, or have “too much” sex—this perception can negatively impact their entire lives.

David Lotto wrote, without yet getting an answer from the pioneering scholar Carol Gilligan, wanting to get her opinion about the role of sex and the transformation of girls. Pre-adolescent girls are usually more and at least as achieving as boys. David argues that it is female ambivalence about their sexuality and relationship with boys that holds the girls back: they are stuck as to their sexuality and they start falling behind boys developmentally. They are afraid of being labeled as a prude or slut. There is also ambivalence about marriage, as reflected by 40% of U.S. children currently being born outside of marriage.

Inevitably, Trump was brought into the discussion because of the dichotomy between his sexual misconduct and the reality that 52% of white women voted for him in 2016 (although a majority of all women did not). There was some heated discussion of the defeat of the Equal Rights Act (ERA) by women who wanted to maintain a separate status and certainly didn’t want to be equally drafted into the military. There was a discussion of the different types of power between the sexes, with women’s power no less important than male power, but certainly subtler. Phyllis Schlafly, who was offended by the notion that there might be no legal difference between males and females, successfully led the crusade against the ERA. Schlafly defended traditional femininity and felt that women would be worse off with “equality before the law.” There was discussion of female identification with the aggressor as one of the motivations impacting some women, who are drawn to sexually abusive men like Donald Trump—whose behavior in bragging about grabbing female genitalia with impunity was exposed during the election campaign in the Access Hollywood tape by Billy Bush.

A psychoanalyst who was in the business world in the ‘70s spoke about the almost overwhelming difficulties women had when

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they tried to advance. It is now easier for women to advance, but there is still far from complete equality. It was noted that during the presidential election, at Trump’s rallies, many women yelled, at the mention of Hillary, “lock her up.” Part of why Hillary didn’t get elected was the baggage that she brought as a wife who had not divorced her adulterous husband, therefore enabling him and condoning his behavior. It was mentioned that prior to Bill running for president, Hillary and other close friends had gone to about 15 women with whom Bill had been involved sexually, and got them to sign non-disclosure agreements that they would not speak out about their sexual involvement with him should he run for president. The psychiatrist in the room sees Hillary as a perversion of feminism and Trump as a perversion of masculinity.

The double standard of expectations regarding the male and female candidates in 2016 are striking. As the longstanding presidential psychobiographer in the group, I spoke about the difficulties of the first woman seriously running for president because she’s expected to be both tougher than the men and at the same time somewhat effeminate. I referenced my article on cliospsyche.org/archives in the 1990s, “The Second Woman President,” in which the first woman president of militaristic countries like the United States had been threatened with foreign or civil war. The examples included Margaret Thatcher (UK) tested by the Falkland’s war as well as Indira Gandhi (India) tested by war and later assassinated. The experiences of Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto, and the Philippines’ Corazon Aquino also illustrated this point. More recently in 2016, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed.

Different participants spoke with considerable emotion about certain movies that had touched them. In On the Basis of Sex (2018), Ruth Bader Ginsburg is walking with her 15-year-old daughter and construction workers are catcalling to them. Her daughter breaks away and confronts the men, asking, “Would you want this done to your mother?” The men physically back away. Another participant brought up the movie Tootsie (1982) in which Dustin Hoffman, an out-of-work actor dressing as a woman to get a part on a daytime soap opera, was told by the Jessica Lange character he worked with in his female impersonation clothes that she wished men would be direct and say, “I find you very attractive, and I’d like to go to bed with you.” Hoffman, not in costume, would later see Jessica Lange at a party, and repeat her own words,

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resulting in a drink tossed in his face. Clearly, women are very ambivalent about many issues regarding sexuality.

David Lotto spoke about cultural differences to a group that included a fair number of Jews. He said, with the apparent approval of the other Jews in the room, that in Jewish families, women are likely to have the power. Men go to work and “huff and puff” about their importance as the leaders of the household, but this is not their usual reality. In the traditional Eastern European shtetls that most Jews come from, women generally handled everything to do with business and men focused on studying the Torah. These patterns persist in America. He felt that you had to look at the particular cultural group to know where the power lays, as well as the individual family and couple.

Adults asserting their power over children leads to a negative reaction among some men. Clearly the mother interjects and certain interjections bring this to the fore. These totally unconscious feelings certainly get in the way at times of lustful sexual vitality. The historian of the human condition in the group brought up the issues of how humans differ from most of our mammalian relatives, except for some other primates. Most mammalian females have to be in estrus to have sex. However, he spoke of female chimpanzees having eight partners a day and the sex lasting seven seconds! Matriarchal bonobos use sex to control male aggression and females combine to punish bad behavior. There were general smiles when someone said that clearly in our society, sex involves a tango and it takes two to tango!

All agreed that one of the very good things about the Women’s Rights Movement generally and the #MeToo movement in particular is that women are asserting their agency. There was a historical discussion of how there was traditionally formal courtship for the better off in society, and then in the 19^th century, separate male and female spheres of influence, followed about 100 years ago by companionate marriage as the ideal. More recently, the ideal of a marriage being created by soulmates came into existence. Today, some speak of our sexual “hookup society” among young people. A participant in his late 60s or early 70s said that this was the case for many when he was young. It was referenced that some sociologists have argued that there is a combination of togetherness and separateness in the relationships of females and males.

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One male member of the group argued that women accepting sex has to do with acquiescence partly because they are trying to meet the emotional needs of their partner; they’re afraid of losing him, rather than acting on their own sexual desire. This author spoke of the powerful impact of male counter-dependency regarding women since beneath commonplace male bravado about their alleged dominance over women is the unconscious wish to return to the cared-for dependency of early childhood. As boys, separating somewhat from their dependency on their mothers, they denigrated females, and as men they complain of their lack of sexuality. This certainly is not likely to make them attractive sexual partners and good lovers of girlfriends and wives. Another male argued that women are now and since the beginning of historical time suppressed and held back.

The female psychiatrist/psychoanalyst pointed out that a major difference in regard to sexual activity is that men have to “keep it up” (their penises) for sexual purposes, whereas women do not. This brought to mind When Harry Met Sally (1989). In the movie, Harry (Billy Crystal) declares he can always sexually satisfy his lover, and Sally (Meg Ryan) not only declares that women can successfully fake it, but illustrates her point with a head-turning rendition of a phony orgasm that has everyone in the busy restaurant staring at her. The psychiatrist pointed out that women’s ability to give the impression of orgasm and pleasure brings up the question of the varying motivations of men and women. The psychiatrist noted that women are much more comfortable in themselves, while men need to go out and change the world. I argued that the female ability to make and nurture babies is a major factor that brings great satisfaction, which males are less inclined to have. Another man said that men have the power in society, but the subtext is women’s power. This is partly related to the fact that men are physically stronger than women.

Most symposium participants continued this valuable and civil conversation (as well as other talk) at the Rosa Mexican restaurant nearby. Thanks to Inna Rozentsvit’s generosity the meeting may be viewed and heard on cliospsyche.org. The conversation will continue in a future issue of Clio’s Psyche where David Lotto’s paper will appear since it has been approved by our referees as a symposium paper for which we are eager for commentaries. We also are searching for a distinguished female colleague to write a companion paper to submit alongside of it. We welcome submis-

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sions.

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