I am struggling to articulate something at the moment – it is like a bubble of undefined proportion and make-up. It feels altogether strange; natural, frightening and a bit of a weird thing to admit to myself.
I wrote an initial sentence to this article and then deleted it, almost out of shame at the bashing of my sex in explanation of my title. But I do find that women that I meet can at times be ungracious towards men in a way that they would not be towards women.
It seems odd to me that when we are at times ‘doing battle’ on every sphere for equal pay and equal rights, we are also establishing a verbal and sexual superiority over men which feels worryingly like a playground victim turned bully. Facebook networking groups set up for JUST women are ok - would we feel okay about Facebook groups set up where ONLY men are allowed?
The reason why I am ashamed of myself is that I find I am having an opposite reaction. Far from desiring a verbal battle I am experiencing a strong and powerful reaction to a call to defend. I call this a lioness reaction because female lions play a crucial role in the pride.
They hunt, defend and play a critical role in the group dynamics. I am experiencing exactly the same reaction! On hearing a pretty wild story from a colleague I instantly wanted to be there, defending. I am not quite sure how I would have done it, but I wanted to give it a go.
Struggling to understand
I am struggling to understand how to place myself in this debate; why do I experience a reaction like this when so many women may hear a story like that and it leave them cold? When women I know are so ready to slam men for the way that they are, why am I often the first to leap to their defence?
As an example I was doing some training with colleagues and saw one female colleague call my male colleague a spastic; in jest of course! She I am sure, meant it in a jokey way but I leapt to his defence and said that was not OK! He took it of course, but I felt as though I had to say something!
We are SO, SO ready to bring down the other person and it feels sometimes a bit like you are doing/saying something for the sake of saying it. Bringing another man or woman down makes you look worse. But there is more to it than that.
We know the Adamic curse was placed on the male and female relationship. We know that this is worked out manifestly in every sphere of life; from the professional to the personal. This curse has brought a lot of suffering, pain and exhaustion to marriages and relationships all over the world, throughout time.
The curse; surely is that relating to men will be hard and understanding them even harder. We understand that men find women difficult to read and that equally, they choose not to “read” what might be critical in saving a relationship or marriage. Women say men are single-minded and uncommunicative; yet will talk over them when they finally do speak. This relationship is the one that has been so fraught and tension-filled over the years. What is the difficulty based upon?
We struggle to deal with our own hurts; which is a case of, so far so pedestrian. We need to be on a wholeness and awareness journey, with or without a partner but it DOES help if you can always be learning about yourself and others. But is there another message creeping in that refuses to die?
There was a time when people were wearing bracelets with “w.w.j.d” which is simply “WHAT WOULD JESUS DO” and it became a big thing in England. People would wear it like a reminder of – in every situation they are called to ask themselves to be like Jesus. It is simple to say and the hardest thing in the world to actually do.
My title
Translating this back to my original title the solution to my problem seems clear – treat men like I would treat Jesus and all will be well. Hard to do! There is also this slightly unresolved emotion called “in defence” which, yes could be a bit like you might do if you were discussing apologetics but does not explain what goes through my mind when I want to leap to a man’s defence and put my own relationship at risk. So what is this and how does this work?
Something came to mind and it may not be the right answer to the question but here goes; we all talk of and discuss the jealousy of God. We see how he is “jealous” for us and how his anger gets “flared” over disobedience and when Israel does not follow him. I also know that we have a slight awkwardness over jealousy in relationships. We are all supposed to be fine with our partners having male / female friends and with ex-boyfriend/girlfriend drinks.
To express otherwise would seem old fashioned and not very hipster. But I have to say that there is nothing remotely hipster or fashionable about real, gut-wrenching love. There is NOTHING dignified about it whatsoever. The cross is not dignified. Neither should our love/defence or reaction be. In writing and thinking as I write I confess that this may not appear to be a neat “answer” A B C or D to the question of why I feel like a lioness at times.
I may even grow a tail! The one thing I do know is that we can and must endeavour to approach relationships the old-school way. LOOK like a new-school hipster. LOVE like an old-fashioned warrior.
Rosie Robinson is an English Press Service International young writer
Rosie Robinson is a PSI young writer based in England.