Maternal Trauma In Men. As The Missing Link In Understanding Misogyny

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Maternal trauma as the missing link in misogyny

What happens to men?

Violence, sexual harassment is a topic that is being revealed in modern society, thanks to an increasing number of women who are ready to admit that they live in the reality of misogyny. The question arises: why do so many men have a disrespectful attitude towards women, pushing them to hatred and violence? Where does it actually come from? And how do you stop it?

Internationally renowned expert on the treatment of maternal trauma Bethany Webster, given the growing interest in the topic, discusses maternal trauma in men in this article. The author examines maternal trauma in the chain of understanding the origin of misogyny. Here she explores the development of boys in the modern world, anger that is not visible on the surface and what can be done to make a difference.

The Oxford Dictionary defines misogyny as "dislike, contempt, or ingrained prejudice against women."

To understand misogyny, we must examine the first man-woman relationship - the son-mother relationship.

For both girls and boys, relationships with mothers are some of the most important relationships in life. It cannot be overemphasized how fundamental these relationships are and how they affect our well-being in adulthood. In the first weeks, months of our life, mother is food, mother is the whole world, mother is body, mother is me. For both women and men, maternal trauma is the product of a patriarchy based on female dominance.

"The mother-child relationship can be seen as the first relationship broken by patriarchy." ~ Adrienne Rich

At the personality level, maternal trauma is a set of limiting beliefs and patterns that was unconsciously internalized in childhood in a relationship with the mother.

Maternal trauma can range from a healthy supportive relationship between the child and the mother to a traumatic relationship. Many factors influence the range of these frames in which maternal trauma manifests itself. For men, these factors are directly the boy's relationship with his mother and what influence (hindered or supported) the father had on their relationship. Since patriarchy is based on the principle of domination, the role of the patriarchal parent could be played by both father and mother. For example, some boys may perceive their mother as being overbearing and dominant and their father as passive and weak. Others may have perceived their fathers as dominant and their mothers as victims.

“The patriarchy requires men to become and remain emotionally crippled. Since this is a system that practically deprives men of access to free will, it is difficult for any man of any status to rebel against the patriarchy, to be disloyal towards the patriarchal parent, whether the parent is a woman or a man."

Today, as the boy grows up, his father, other men and society are introducing him to what it means to be a man. This function is also fulfilled by patriarchal culture through the media, education and religion. Unfortunately, the boy's socialization includes learning to dominate others, shutting off his emotions, and devaluing women. This represents individual and collective trauma.

Healing your own trauma is the key to destroying patriarchy.

Unlike our modern world, the history of civilization is full of examples in which boys need to undergo physical tests to enter maturity, which allows them to feel psychological maturity, thanks to severe tests. Thus, he emerges from a comfortable childhood state into adulthood. A positive aspect of such initiation is being in the circle of male elders, in which the boy can feel the support of men through a sense of community, and receive emotional or physical trauma that will allow him to come into contact with his inner strength, responsibility and confidence.

Today in the modern world, most boys are injured, but without positive changes.

Few formal rites, few wise elders, and few male role models outside of conventional wisdom.

Social expectation includes the devaluation of a woman, including a mother, leads a man to cognitive dissonance, including contradictions in his relationship to his mother, as well as the ability to express his emotions, affection, the ability to be vulnerable. The mother in this context can be viewed as a "lost source" for the boy, and the father as the boy's socializer in the world of men, where the boy essentially has to compete with his own father according to the laws of patriarchy.

There is a startling quote from Adrienne Rich in 1977 from the book "", which convincingly speaks about the connection between misogyny and maternal trauma in men: "Men fear feminism mainly because of the fear that, having become" full-fledged people ", women will no longer be mothers of men, to provide them with "breast", "lullaby", constant attention, which the baby associates with the mother. Male fear of feminism is infantilism, the desire to remain the son of a mother, to possess a woman exclusively for himself. These infantile needs of adult men for women have long been sentimentalized and romanticized as "love"; the time has come to recognize them as developmental delays and to rethink the ideal preservation of the "family" in which these needs have complete freedom of action, up to and including violence. Since the law, as well as the economic and social order, is largely male-oriented, the infantile needs of adult men are supported by a power mechanism that ignores the needs of adult women. The institution of marriage and motherhood enshrines the will of male infants as a law in the adult world."

When women tell their stories of sexual, physical, emotional abuse and identify their abusers, then the “leeway” that men have used to dominate women at home and in the workplace is increasingly limited.

Women are less and less inclined to remain silent screens onto which men can project their denied pain with impunity.

Attack as Sexualized Hostility

Sexual abuse is not sex, it is a manifestation of power. describes it this way: “Men who exhibit this type of behavior are incredibly angry with women. This anger comes from childhood abuse. For example, they may have had mothers who were emotionally abused themselves or did not protect them from abusive fathers. As some men get older, they express their anger towards women in the language of sex. They sexualize their emotions because they don't know any other way to express them."

It is as if the male inner child is unconsciously caught between his painful longing for the “lost source” given to him by his mother and the cultural conditioning to hate her as a woman.

In other words, men are trapped between their natural desire to be human (able to be emotional, vulnerable, and empathic) and their desire to remain privileged and dominated.

The fact is that both of them cannot be at the same time. Holding on to the image of the master (patriarchy) means increasingly losing access to one's humanity. And to become fully human, you need to abandon the dominance regime and all the insidious ways in which it can manifest itself. No amount of privilege (wealth, power, fame, prestige) ever compensates for the devastation within itself that the patriarchy inflicted on the little boy. No amount of power over others will ever make up for this lost part of yourself. It can only be found by doing the inner work of your own restoration.

A man can find this "lost source" not in the form of real women, but in the form of exploring and reclaiming what the mother or the feminine represents in him.

For example, your feelings, the world of emotions, experiencing a deep connection with yourself and a sense of true belonging to others. However, in order to gain access to these vital abilities that were in the shadows, men first need to start interacting with their inner child, who is angry about being denied such important life needs.

It is easier to project rage onto the "substitute mother" or "substitute father" in the world. It takes courage to abandon these projections and work through anger towards the inner patriarch, the archetype of the cruel, unfeeling father who gave him access to the world of men at a huge cost, at the cost of separation from his true self, an innocent boy who came into this world, capable express empathy, emotionality and vulnerability.

Anger refers to the patriarchal father (own and / or collective) who betrayed the boy, who taught him to give up a vital part of himself in order to be accepted in this world as a "man."

Anger also refers to the mother who failed to protect him from this patriarchal trauma, or may have inflicted it herself. When people can direct their anger to where it really needs to be, things really start to change.

At its core, for both men and women, the task of healing maternal trauma is ultimately the same: to separate the inner and outer life of the individual from the dominance of the “mother” so that one's full potential can be realized.

In his book, author and Jungian analyst James Hollis summarizes it brilliantly as follows:

“When we remember that patriarchy is a cultural invention, an invention to compensate for powerlessness, we understand that men, contrary to popular belief, are more often sex dependent. The Marlborough man, a stern individualist, is most often ambushed by his inner femininity, as he denies it the most. When a man is forced to be a good boy or, conversely, he feels that he must be a bad boy or a wild man, he still compensates for the strength of the mother complex.

I'm not saying that a man is to blame for being so vulnerable, so dependent - he's just a man. And it is his human duty to realize how deeply every child needs "correct" motherhood. He may claim the rights and possibilities of an adult, hold power in his hands or hold a purse in his hands, but the lines of tension penetrate deeply into his relationship with his mother. Men must realize and accept this fact, and then take responsibility, otherwise they will forever reproduce infantile models."

Healing maternal trauma for men involves removing and reworking projected anger from women in order to achieve a true goal, as well as dealing with the very specific traumatic events of their childhood in which this anger appeared.

To accomplish this deep inner work, it is imperative that men receive support from other men who have already done a significant amount of work along the way, including professional support from male therapists with experience in this area.

In general, the inner and outer work of men includes:

1. Overcoming anger at the parent (mother and / or father) who betrayed him, forcing him to give up vital parts of himself in order to be considered a man in this world. Grieving for what it cost him.
2. A frank story about your life. Admitting your secrets and taking responsibility for your actions.
3. Finding this lost inner source within yourself and rebuilding it. Connecting with the inner child.
4. Sincere remorse for harming others and the world when he unconsciously acted out his pain, both personally and in the community, an expression of empathy and compassion.
5. Communication with other conscious people on the path of restoration and reconciliation.

In the long run, men must devote themselves to long-term inner work. And in the short term, men need to experience the real consequences of their actions.

“It's not about what men don't know. The point is that men know all too well that they can get away with it. That it will be justified, hidden, rationalized, and no one will be held accountable."

In other words, until men start calling things by their proper names and until they face the consequences of their violence, toxic behavior will continue. In fact, men need global intervention, a loud social “no,” to become aware of a reality that they were oblivious to.

To support this process, we women must do our best to say no to the angry boy in the man in our lives, be it a friend, colleague, brother or husband. Going back to Rich's quote, women should give up over-custody of men.

We must "remove the breast, the lullaby and the mother's constant attention to the child." Thus, men will be able to feel the full depth of their difficult situation, which is the beginning of lasting and significant changes.

Only if men sense a painful gap in what women no longer want to do for them will they be motivated enough to finally step in and fill that gap within themselves, which includes:

· Taking responsibility for your emotions, learning to experience and process them.

· Treat sex as a way to improve relationships, not as an opportunity to feel strong.

· Calms the little boy inside when he reveals himself.

· Distinguish the pain of the past from what is happening in the present.

· Be aware of projections and see women as real people, not objects from their past.

· Learn from mistakes.

As women, we must continue to exercise our right to vote and talk about the abuse of power by men at every opportunity and support other women who endure male violence.

As women, we must stop:

Be silent to avoid conflict

Learn to see your projections on men associated with rejection in childhood

Suppress your feelings in their presence

Settling for crumbs of respect instead of getting what we really deserve

Give your power in the form of emotional care

· Give your time and energy to men who refuse to do their own inner work.

The truth is, there is very little that women can do to help men heal. We can create healing spaces, but we cannot do the work for them. This is their journey, and they must want to go on it. In the meantime, let's expand our understanding of our value beyond the male gaze, prioritize our own inner workings and heal our own childhood wounds. Let's stick to strict boundaries with those who are not doing their inner work and spend more time with those who do. True nursing is the most important source of nutrition in our time.

Use your anger as fuel for action

The more we come in contact with our true feminine value, the more anger we will feel about the devastation that toxic masculinity has done. Our anger is an important tool at this time to refuse to submit to oppression of any kind, including our own inner misogyny directed against ourselves.

"One suppresses what he fears." ~ James Hollis

Healing from patriarchy requires each “privileged group” (be it gender, profession, status, position, income level, nationality, etc.) to actively resist their ignorance, through a sincere awareness of the harm done to others, which was done exclusively from feelings of privilege.

Healing from patriarchy is possible only through the rejection of the feeling of superiority and the undeserved privileges of the group to which this or that person counts himself.

May this ever-growing wave of female anger be followed by a corresponding wave of brave men willing to explore their inner territory, embrace the abandoned boy within themselves, and work through their anger and grief that the patriarchy has stolen their humanity from them. Global changes will occur when enough individual men change. Let men take full responsibility and humbly accept this necessary discomfort as the medicine they need to heal their personal and collective maternal trauma. And let women refuse to let men determine their behavior.

References :

“Under the shadow of Saturn. Male Mental Trauma and Their Healing James Hollis

“King, warrior, magician, lover. A new look at the archetypes of the mature man Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette

“Dreams of Eden. In Search of the Good Wizard James Hollis

“Finding meaning in the second half of life. James Hollis

"Pass in the middle of the way." James Hollis

Iron John: A Book About Men. Robert Bligh

Phallus: A Sacred Male Image. Eugene Monique

Castration and Male Rage by Eugene Monique

"In Search of Our Fathers" by Sam Osherson.

The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help Jackson Katz.

Illustration: Pursuit of Confusion by Andrew Salgado.

Translation - Natalya Vladimirovna Shcherbakova, psychologist