Cross Cultural Facilitation

Sat Oct 1 10:16:39 PDT 2005

I agree with Lisa that Brendan should trust both his and his client's
intuition. . . and his client's intuition appears to be that a
non-Aboriginal male is not the optimal person to open the space.

I have a few thoughts of my own to share, which might come out a bit
jumbled.

I was a battered wife (in what now seems like a past life but which was
about twenty years ago). In the early years of my recovery, I never quite
felt safe with any males. If this refuge/hostel for indigenous women will be
embracing female victims of male violence, it seems res ipsa loquitur that a
male should not be in charge of anything. Yes, I know an open space
facilitator is not 'in charge' but the cultural paradigm of having a male up
front doing the talking is what most of the women will see, a WHITE male at
that.

I have a knee jerk reaction any time I find myself sitting listening to a
man talking in front of a group. My knee jerk reaction is to tune them out.
. . then, if I 'know' the male speaker is a good guy or if I think the male
speaker has a special expertise to share that I want to know about, I try to
shift away from my autopilot reaction and I try to listen. But I have been
living in a dominator culture for over fifty years and I am weary of it. I
have this little fantasy that if the whole world experimented with only
allowing women to be the experts and professionals, just, maybe (and
remember this is fantasy) for a few years. . . just to see what it would be
like. . . I'd like to see that. We have all of us lived with the dominator
paradigm that grants more rank and privilege to males, esp. white ones.
Males can't really know what it is like to walk through the world with a
women's reality. Is anyone familiar with Anne Wilson Schaaf's book "Women's
Reality"? In it she posits the theory that women have to understand male
reality in order to survive but men don't have to understand women's reality
in order to survive so they don't? Teasing out this theory, non-whites have
to understand white reality to survive/thrive in most cultures but whites
don't have to understand non-white reality so they often don't.

Harrison stated that he does not think it is necessary for a white male to
acknowledge his rank and privilege. I have been doing a fair bit of studying
on the topic of rank and privilege since the Seattle Practice of Peace week,
during which John L. Johnson convened a session entitled "rank and
privilege". As a black male, John L. speaks with an expertise no white
person can hold. John L. posited his theory that there are ALWAYS
disparities of rank in human interactions. ALWAYS. He further posited the
idea that unless and until the person with higher rank and privilege
acknowledges the rank disparity, there can be no conversations between
equals. And finally, if I recall John L.'s lesson well, ONLY the person of
higher rank can do this acknowledgement. Any males, especially white ones,
that think disparity in rank and privilege can remain unexamined and yet
still we can achieve a shift in plentary consciousness, is clinging to
illusions rooted in out-of-date paradigms. We can't shift chronic
disparities in rank and privilege as long as we have to go around pretending
it does not matter.

Harrison, I have now had the great privilege of being at several events with
you. I have seen you speak powerfully, with great wisdom and love. And every
single time I have heard women grumbling to find themselves in a circle full
of mostly women sitting around listening to a male. These women, and I count
myself amongst the grumblers, acknowledge you have a lot of good stuff to
say but they are all tired, including me, of listening to men. Period. I
challenge any male reading this and finding themselves resenting my words to
try and re-imagine their childhood: try to begin to imagine what it might
have been like to have grown up reading only textbooks written by women,
seeing only women reporting the news, seeing only women in elected office.
Heck, don't go back to your childhood: try to imagine that all books
published today are written by women, that all news if written by women,
that all politicians are women, that all multi-millionaire business people
are female. . . . Men cannot, usually, even begin to imagine women's reality
and I do not offer this as a criticism. Men are mired by these cultural
norms just as much as women. It is long past time for a shift. We need to
have visionary, brilliant men like you, Harrison, really get that male rank
and privilege has to be acknowledged by the men.

If a client comes right out and voices her intuition that a white male might
not be the way to go, I think that intuition needs to be honored. It is not
about rejecting males. It is about collective consciousness. We need for all
males to get on board with a shift in consciousness and this shift is going
to strip away the usually unacknowledged rank and privilege of males, white
and all. We can't get where we need to go by maintaining the status quo and
creating new culture at the same time. We have to shed the consciousness
that strokes the male privilege.

On 10/1/05, Lisa Heft <lisaheft at openingspace.net> wrote:
>
>  The two other things come to my mind:
>
>  -- Ask. Often we make well-intentioned errors by assuming what people
> want or need, and we don't ask the people themselves.
>
>  -- Trust your intuition, and ask your host team to trust their intuition
> – and to listen for the answer inside.
>
>   This, plus trusting in the process and the people, have helped me in
> great measure.
>
>  Lisa
>
>  ___________________________
>
> *L i s a H e f t*
>
> Consultant, Facilitator, Educator
>
> O p e n i n g S p a c e
>
> 2325 Oregon
>
> Berkeley, California
>
> 94705-1106 USA
>
> +01 510 548-8449
>
> lisaheft at openingspace.net
>
> www.openingspace.net <http://www.openingspace.net>
>
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--
Warmly,
Tree Fitzpatrick
"It is never too late to be what you might have been." George Elliot
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