I was recently in a discussion where it was stated that we need a new male narrative in our culture. This is true.
But it got me thinking about narratives and what my experiences have been with them. I’ve been thinking about the narratives that were given to me, the narratives I have given myself and continue to give myself. And I’ve been thinking about the new narratives I need as well.
An online search says that narratives:
· Help us to describe and define our identities, values, and relations to the world.
· Create a sense of order and expectations from the overwhelming data of experience; and provide models for solving problems.
· are the kind of stories a people—a nation, an ethnic or minority group within that nation, a gender, a band of pilgrims—tell about themselves.
And each of us has our own narrator in the brain, providing us with narratives about just about everything we experience; what things are, what they mean, how they measure up, and so on. These narratives FEEL real and true, but they are simply subjective.
And regardless of whether they are subjective or not, narratives can be positive or toxic. They can produce both positive and negative behaviors in individuals and societies. If my cultural narrative values individuality and achievement and yours values homogeneity and equality, we will have two very different results in both the culture and the individual. And each of us will feel that our own outcome is superior.
My culture gave me some narratives. It told me that the sky was the limit, and if I dreamed it, I could do it. This was the classic “American dream” narrative. My dad told me I could do anything I set my mind to do. A similar narrative and one he absolutely believed in.
The trouble with both of these narratives is that they are just not true. While I recognize that as a white, upper-middle class female I had more chance of them being true than most – they still were not true. The narrative told me there were no limits, but there were. Financial limitations, social limitations, intellectual limitations. I would have loved to have been a quantum physicist, but no matter how hard I try, I just don’t have THAT type of a brain.
I passed the “you can be anything you want to be” narrative on to my kids. When my son was two or three, we were driving and he began to cry suddenly and inconsolably from his car seat in the back. I asked him what was wrong and he said, “I’ll NEVER be a bird!!!” I was confused at first, then realized that he had just realized that the "you can be anything you want to be" narrative I had given him just was not true. No matter how hard he tried in life, he would never be a bird; he would always be a human.
When I was twenty, the narrator in my brain told me I weighed too much. I weighed 105 pounds and wanted to get back down to 100. When I was thirty, the same narrator told me I weighed too much. I weighed 128 pounds and wished I could get down to 110. When I was forty, the same narrator told me that if could only get down to 125 pounds I would look perfect. I weighed 135. And now? The same narrator tells me that 135 would be perfect. Clearly the weight narrator has no objective standard.
With gender narratives, the cultural narrative was confusing and ambiguous for me. Imagine if it was confusing and ambiguous for a straight, white female, what it must be like for so many others!!!
On the one hand, my culture told me I was equal to men. But the truth was - I wasn’t.
Other conflicting narratives were given. Women should be quiet and gentle. If not, we are bitches. We should be smart, but not too smart or we will intimidate men and threaten their egos and perhaps be undesirable to them. We should pursue our interests, but only if they do not interfere with the interests of others. We should take care of ourselves, but only after we have taken care of others first. We should be desirable, but chaste. We should maintain our bodies so that they are desirable to men, but we should not be a slut. We are responsible for the sexuality of men. These narratives came through my family upbringing, my religion and my society.
Here are some of the words of those narratives that echo in my soul:
· “Your beauty should …come from the inner disposition of your heart, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in God’s sight.”
· “No one will buy the cow if the milk is for free”
· “If you wear that, you are going to cause men to lust. You will just be asking for it.”
· “The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband.”
· “Wow, she’s really let herself go.”
· “Don’t come across too strong, you might want to tone it down a little. “
· “Stop being so emotional”
· “If you’re always in the driver’s seat, no one else needs to be.”
· “If you never say “no” to your husband, he will never have any reason to look elsewhere.”
· “You are so lucky to have a husband who helps around the house.”
· “It’s great that you’re dating again, but you don’t want to get a reputation as a slut.”
· “Now that you’re single again, you need to work on your body.”
· “Smile!”
There is a great twitter feed called @manwhohasitall . In it, narratives are flipped to point out just how alarming or ridiculous many of them are. Here are some examples:
· “MEN! Accentuate parts of your body you like, e.g. nice face , to draw attention away from the problem areas.
· “My boss respects men. She thinks they are every bit as equal as women. She’s great. I’m so lucky”
· “The word sportswomanship is obviously gender-neutral and covers both women and men. The world has way too many problems to be offended by language”
· “MEN! If you speak up in a meeting and want to be taken seriously, wear a neat hairstyle, a bold color close to your face and don’t forget to lean in.”
· “To all smart men. Don’t act dumb around women! It’s OKAY to be a man and be smart. Some women actually find it attractive. “
· “PRO TIP: If you struggle to get your wife to do her share of the childcare, it could be that you use the wrong tone of voice or you criticize too much.”
· “Talking to men is a minefield. You have to avoid touching them, even the young and handsome ones. Have I got that right?”
· “I actually don’t mind looking after the kids for an hour or so for my husband.”
· “Can sports provide a way for boys to see their bodies as powerful rather than flawed?”
You get the point and it’s a point well made. Check out his twitter feed or his book.
Of course these have all been examples of where narratives are untrue and damaging, but narratives aren’t all bad.
If we give our children a strong narrative about who they are, where they come from and where they are going, that’s important. If we give one another strong, positive narratives about who we are – that’s huge.
But even positive narratives contain within themselves the ability for great harm. The American dream narrative may inspire a person to rise up and make something more of their life, but it also led to manifest destiny and genocide, to the raping of the environment, and to any number of crimes against humanity based on greed. It can lead to shame and despair for those who believe it is true and just cannot seem to make it happen in their own lives.
So to return to the idea I mentioned at the beginning of this post of a “new male narrative”, in the discussion about this “new male narrative” and what it should be, someone mentioned that Jesus was the ultimate human and did not have a male or female narrative and perhaps this should be the goal instead.
Immediately, there was a defensive reaction from some who stated we shouldn’t be trying to do away with our male and female differences. We need strong positive narratives for whatever gender role we identify with.
And I agree. We shouldn’t try to do away with whatever gender identity we have, and for that we may need positive and life-giving narratives.
And yet, for me, where a gender narrative is concerned, I have difficulty with it. I personally, don’t want a narrative that is about my female-ness. I mistrust narratives. They have not served me well. I don’t like the way it feels to have a specific narrative for any of the categories and labels that might be attached to me; female, heterosexual, mom, introverted, sister, scientist, wife, INTJ, Enneagram 5. I don’t want to be known as a set of categories or narratives, regardless of how positive they may be. I want to be known as me, Heather. Not as a narrative. I want to learn how to move through the world as me, Heather, rather than based on narratives that come from without or within.
And even that is impossible. Who is Heather? She isn’t the same today as yesterday and will not be the same today as tomorrow.
So is an authentic and non-limiting narrative possible?
In our discussion, someone said that the true human narrative, the real non-limiting narrative is the Christ narrative. Even though Jesus was male and thus had male differences, and probably male narratives, the CHRIST was a different thing and was the ultimate narrative.
So I’ve been thinking that over. Is the Christ consciousness the true narrative?
The Christ consciousness is neither male nor female, neither slave nor free, neither Jew nor Gentile.
The Christ consciousness was in the beginning and was called the “word” or more literally, the” logos”, the logic, the story, or we could say, the “narrative”.
The Christ consciousness is the “I am”, which is a great narrative. Since who we are yesterday is different than who we are now, and who we are now is different than who we will be in the future, the only thing we ever really are who we are at this moment. The “I am”.
Those things that make us "male" or "female"; "masculine" or "feminine" are not the Christ consciousness. They are culture, and biology, and preference, and inclination, and socialization and power structures, systems of meaning and narratives.
As humans, we over-identify with things of the ego, of the flesh, of this world. We over-identify with our emotions, our thoughts, our bodies, our past, our future, our experiences, and our narratives.
So it seems to me that perhaps the Christ consciousness is that part of me that transcends all of that. It is that part of me that is neither male nor female, mom nor child, old nor young, introvert nor extrovert. It seems to me that it is simply ego that causes me to need to defend my masculinity or femininity or come up with narratives. What about just stepping outside all that? What about just opting out of a narrative altogether and just existing in the "I am" space?
It feels more free there .
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