[lbo-talk] The power of women

[joanna bujes]

It's interesting to me that the subject how many het men feel powerless in 
>their relationships with women has not come up. Most feminists have a 
>simple view: as you say, women don't have power; men do. Men rape women; 
>women (hardly ever) reciprocate. Therefore, it's impossible for men to 
>feel that women have more power than they do.

I wonder, to begin, what this "powerlessness" is relative to? Is it relative to the expectation that they ought to have power? Is it relative to their ambivalent relations to the mother figure (the giver of life and death) and the fact that they measure their maturity in terms of overcoming/rejecting the mother? Or is it that they are uncomfortable with the experience of intimate relationships to an other who operates by different rules?

My experience with many men is that they are seeking something like the gratification they experienced from their mother (or compensation for the love that wasn't given).... they want to reproduce that time when a woman anticipated and met their every need...but they do not want to acknowledge that they desire this because this would reflect badly on their autonomy, independence, etc. So, the woman, has the power to withhold that which they cannot even acknowledge they desire.

It's also the case that women are often better able to express and negotiate emotional issues, which can make a man feel helpless if he does not have those skills...and make him feel that he is always operating at a disadvantage.

So,that's a start...

Joanna