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.<br>
<br>
I have a few thoughts of my own to share, which might come out a bit jumbled.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/1/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Lisa Heft</b> <<a href="mailto:lisaheft@openingspace.net">lisaheft@openingspace.net</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;">The two other
things come to my mind: </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;">-- Ask.<span> </span>Often we make well-intentioned errors by
assuming what people want or need, and we don't ask the people
themselves. <span> </span></span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;">-- Trust your
intuition, and ask your host team to trust their intuition – and to
listen for the answer inside.</span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"> </span></font></p>
<div>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"> </span></font></p>
<p><span><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;">This, plus trusting in the process and the people, have</span></font></span><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2">
<span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"> helped me in great measure.</span></font></p><span class="q">
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;">Lisa</span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"> </span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: black;">___________________________</span></font><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"></span></font></p>
<p><b><font color="blue" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: blue; font-weight: bold;">L i s
a<span> </span>H e f t</span></font></b></p>
<p><font color="blue" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: blue;">Consultant, Facilitator, Educator</span></font></p>
<p><font color="blue" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: blue;">O p e n i n g<span> </span>S p a c e</span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;">2325 Oregon</span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;">Berkeley, California</span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;">94705-1106<span> </span>USA</span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;">+01 510 548-8449</span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"><a href="mailto:lisaheft@openingspace.net" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><font color="black">
<span style="color: black;">lisaheft@openingspace.net</span></font></a></span></font><font color="black"><span style="color: black;"></span></font></p>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"><a href="http://www.openingspace.net" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)"><font color="black">
<span style="color: black;">www.openingspace.net</span></font></a> </span></font></p>
</span></div>
<p><font color="black" face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: black;"> </span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left: 1.5in;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span> </span></span></font></p>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Warmly,<br>Tree Fitzpatrick<br>"It is never too late to be what you might have been." George Elliot