Deprogramming

[TheSparrowhawk]

This is a thread for feminists (not our regulars who like to hang out here and tell us how pointless feminism is) to address the ways in which growing up and living in a patriarchal society has affected our thinking. Essentially a self-help thread.

I have struggled with addressing my relationship with my parents. For years I blamed my mother for their total emotional neglect of me. It's only recently I've opened my eyes to the fact that whatever parenting I got, she did it, while also working full-time and doing most of the housework. My father did little or nothing. But I expected a lot more from my mother and so blamed her more.

I think conditioning around sex is totally relevant to the thread, myown, but I'm not sure what you mean by abusive relationship being changed by women changing. Changing in what way?

Oh dear, this might be poorly thought out....

But there be a number of posters who have sex they don't want to be having to keep their partners happy. They seem almost bemused at why they go along with this. They don't feel coerced. They don't feel scared. Is it just another aspect of being conditioned to please rather than coerced sex or abuse as it's often labeled?

I do realise that coercion is not always obvious, especially to the person on the receiving end of the behaviour.

There are not be.

Conditioning plays a huge role of course -women are conditioned to believe, subconsciously at least, that men 'need' sex, that if they don't give sex as required their man will look elsewhere, that youthful, fun women are always up for sex in a wide variety of positions and that only dried up old crones have no sex drive.

Equally, conditioning plays a role for men. How many women would be keen on sex with an unwilling partner, no matter how cooperative they were? On some level many men feel it's perfectly fine to 'do' sex to women who 'let' them - the issue is not whether she actually wants or enjoys it, it's just about wearing her down until she gives in.

As for whether there's abuse, there's a simple test for that. If the woman tells her partner that she doesn't want sex and that his attempts to persuade her are upsetting her and he continues to do it anyway, then that's abusive. If at any point she refuses sex and he carries on touching her or having sex with her then that is a crime - either sexual assault or rape.

I ended up accidentally derailing another thread by mentioning this book but it's worth saying again. Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski is brilliant about sex and conditioning. I'm just reading the culture bit now.

I don't think abuse can be solved by women reacting in different ways, but certainly there is a societal/cultural aspect to abuse, it has roots in misogyny, that is why there's a clear trend that most abusers are men and most abuse victims are women. It can happen the other way around of course and within same sex relationships but when it's men abusing women, they have patriarchial and societal "support" behind them even though we wouldn't consciously see it that way.

And women are conditioned by society to turn a blind eye towards early warning signs of abuse, where really we should be weeding those relationships out early on and jumping ship. Perhaps that is what you meant? I don't think that abusers can be changed because it's not the behaviour of their victims that drives them, it's their own faulty beliefs and expectations.

Well I suppose I was wondering whether sometimes the men aren't wearing the woman down until she gives in, rather that the women feels she had to go along with it because of her conditioning and the man is unaware.

This was put to me by a Relate counsellor - not just about sex but, well everything really. I didn't accept it but never shook it off. Then reading some posts, I do wonder if there are lots of men completely unaware how the woman feels.

But yeah, I get your point re the test.

I think Relate counsellors are (sadly) pretty misinformed about abuse.

There are a lot of misunderstandings about abuse actually and I think it is helpful to talk about them.

I don't think abusers are generally unaware of how their partners feel. There may be some who are genuinely clueless but, actually, abuse victims quite commonly tell their partners how they feel and it doesn't magically change their behaviour. Whether they are not listening, they don't care, or are genuinely incapable of comprehending that other people (or women as a class) have emotions is another question. Likely it changes depending on the individual.

Indeed, abusers are quite often acutely aware of their own feelings and will make this known which causes their victim to run around trying to placate them all the time. You can see it in the script they do when their victim reaches a potential tipping point.

I guess I'm wondering whether we're labeling men as abusers when they are not. rather than women changing abusers. Not really a deep or complicated reasoning, just thinking about how deeply our own conditioning runs.

I downloaded a sample of that book Bertie but with no interest now or ever? in sex it seemed a bit pointless me reading it. Maybe it's one to go back to one day.

Oh hang on, you're talking about coerced sex. I'd got my wires crossed a bit.

I do think there's a lot of coercive/expected sex going on which is not happening within abusive relationships, and absolutely, where the woman is making the assumption that she should be doing it/going along with things rather than the man putting any actual pressure on, and most likely would be horrified if he knew, but because it's largely unconscious on behalf of both of them neither really are aware of what's playing out, and as a result she just assumes that she doesn't really like sex very much or falls back on (nasty, pernicious, I now find) jokes about how "He'll think it's his birthday!" or similar because actually it is a bit of a chore.

I tend to have extremely low interest in sex when it's not available to me. So I can definitely relate on that point. I found the first chapter about anatomy and masturbation and self examination quite difficult to get past, but it is worth it in my opinion - but the activities it suggests do assume that you have an active sex life. But you don't need to do the activities.

The most valuable/interesting thing I've got out of it so far is the idea that there's no such thing as a "sex drive" but in fact the desire for sex is, very much like other bodily systems, a system which is excited by certain factors and inhibited by other factors. When your sexual excitement exceeds your inhibition then you feel like you want sex. When your inhibition exceeds your excitement, then you don't. The author uses the metaphor of a sexual "accelerator" and sexual "brakes" and explains that how people talk about sex drive is slightly flawed - a person you'd think of having a "high sex drive" just has a sensitive accelerator and not very sensitive brakes, and that all of us will have varying sensitivity of both. If you want to read about this theory without buying the book you can find information under a google search for "SIS and SES".

I suppose alongside those who immediately think abuse there are always some responses asking the OP how her partner has or would react if she explained her feelings. A sensible conversation I didn't have. Wouldn't have changed the course of my relationship as this wasn't the only issues but I may have felt better about our ongoing separated relationship (young children). But I already feel different thinking about my own programming at play.

The book sounds interesting given how many couples seem to get tangled up over differing sex drives.

I am getting good at deprogramming myself with regards to sex. In my uni years I definitely felt a sense that men just liked sex more, and that it was mean to say no. Especially if I had led someone on by kissing and being walked home.

I do, however, need to stop worrying about how I'm not married and don't have kids. I don't particularly want those things, but I often find myself justifying my decisions. Especially to the people who do head tilt at me when I say I'm single.

I can relate to those who absorbed the message that so-called "wife work" (ugh) is of lesser value. My mum was badfly abused by my father in many ways and by the time I was 10 I knew that II never wanted to 'end up like that'.

I've just finished reading this thread while my DW put the DC to bed! and while I won't bullshit anyone that its changed my life around, I certainly have a lot to think about, especially on the detail of home life.

It has often occurred to me that work-life while success is measured by the achievement and status of the individual -- "my salary" or "my headcount" or "my place on the org. chart" rather than the success of the enterprise as a whole. Which leads me to ask: What would a feminist view of success in the workplace look like?

"The International Wages for Housework Campaign was a global social movement co-founded in 1972 in Padua, Italy by author and activist Selma James. The Campaign was formed to raise awareness of how housework and childcare are the base of all industrial work and to stake the claim that these unavoidable tasks should be compensated as paid wage labor."
and child benefit payments, tax credits etc are effectively this. Used to be the money my mum had that was hers, apart from the housekeeping she got (whilst never knowing what my dad earned). Odd that Lass should come up with this Italian Marxist concept!

I've been thinking about this thread for a day or two. The issue for me is not deprogramming as if the programming was set in place as a child and I now have to undo it. A bit like my old VCR, I think I was resistant to programming. I've always done what I want, my way. What strikes me, though, is the ongoing grind of gendering. I'm resistant to this in the sense that it doesn't change me, but it does affect me. Because I so often go against what people expect of me as a woman or publicly question it, I do get a lot of criticism and vitriol. For example, I chose not to give up my job (it was an entry level to a career job) to follow a partner, instead suggesting that if he wanted to keep the relationship we'd have to go LDR. OMG - the criticism from others! I was being mean, selfish, etc. Beyond this I had other well-meaning friends telling me just to pack up and go - I would not look back, etc. Besides this, there are the talk-overs, put-downs and suchlike in the workplace. For example, in a meeting a while ago I said 'I think if you look at the figures you will find x'. I was roundly put back in my box. But I had looked at the figures and I knew that x would be found. Sure enough, when a male found it, everyone fell at his feet, praising him. This is not a lack of assertiveness. In fact, I'm told I'm too assertive, blunt and even aggressive for a woman. That does not go down well.

I say this because I think the issue is not just about throwing off childhood conditioning. It is also about what I call the ongoing violence of gendering - in other words the reinforcement of conditioning and/ or chastisement or penalties for not conforming to accepted gender roles. This makes it harder and more complex for those who are struggling with deprogramming and just a constant grind for those of us who have less of an issue with this but just want to be able to live as we are.

I'm not sure if this helps or hinders the discussion, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

This was sent to me by a colleague today

www.facebook.com/MANWHOHASITALL/

Old news to many, I expect, but still.