The Contemporary Women’s Issues Workshop and Handling Attacks
At the Contemporary Women’s Issues Workshop, I was moved by Tokumbo Bodunde’s and Diane Balser’s relationship—by seeing a Black female leader putting herself out with courage and honesty while backing the leadership of a Jewish woman, and by seeing a Jewish woman and the primary leader of the workshop getting so completely behind the leadership of a Black female leader. As we say at Passover, “Dayenu! That would have been enough.” But there was so much more. The following are a few additional highlights:
Diane’s work with us on sexual violence and sexual exploitation. I could discharge hard on having given up my integrity, in order to get closeness, in a sexual relationship when I was younger. I now want to look at the horrors of sexism that had set me up for [predisposed me to] doing that.
Tokumbo’s class on racism and female oppression. Tokumbo was open and vulnerable. She showed how difficult it is to talk in a mixed group about the violence targeting Global Majority females, and Black women in particular. That helped me face the raw brutality of racism experienced by Global Majority women and made me want to reach more for deep sisterhood.
Diane sharing the history of women’s liberation. Diane poured out her heart as she shared struggles fought and won, the erasure of females in a culture steeped in sexism, and the struggles still before us. We saw the primacy of women’s liberation work.
A topic group for wives. It is always a huge relief for me to be with other married women as we figure out how to take on [confront and do something about] sexism and the oppressiveness of the marriage institution, while we reach to stay close and connected to our partner. I was reminded that I can’t be in a marriage without a strong gang of other women with me.
Appreciating the organizer. Beth Edmonds beautifully modeled the role that an organizer can and should play. It was lovely watching Diane rely on her throughout the workshop.
A topic group on women handling attacks. A report on this topic group follows.
HANDLING ATTACKS
Below are excerpts from Diane’s and my comments in the topic group on women handling attacks.
My comments:
Organized attacks can be connected to our work, our leadership, our relationships. The attackers often try to remove a person from leadership or a job. There are personal attacks and work-related attacks. As females, we need to learn how to handle attacks.
We often carry distress recordings from the sexism and sexual violence perpetrated against us as females from early on. These recordings make us scared of being attacked. And fears of being attacked make us feel like we can’t be ourselves and be visibly powerful out in the world.
Attacks on us as females are often based on our specific identities. For example, there are jokes that degrade Jewish mothers, that portray them as the problem instead of naming the problem as anti-Semitism. There are no similar jokes about Jewish fathers.
As females we often want to disappear, go invisible, or blame ourselves in the face of an attack, while men often respond to an attack with another attack.
Attacks often occur around sex, children, and child abuse—places where people feel vulnerable and are easily restimulated. Most people don’t have access to discharge and perspective on these highly restimulating issues.
Re-evaluation Counseling has survived numerous attacks over the years, endured, and flourished—even when whole RC Communities have been lost because of them.
I have seen many times that people can “survive” an attack, flourish, and be much stronger afterward. They get stronger because of what they have learned and from having had a chance to discharge. The groups or people that organize the attacks don’t usually get stronger, because their cause is based on painful emotion. We can’t organize effectively when painful emotion is all we have in common. Over the years I have survived many attacks on RC Jewish liberation work, and I am stronger for having faced and discharged on them.
Here are some key principles about attacks:
- Attacks are always a sign of powerlessness, never real power.
- Those not being targeted often try to figure out what the attacked person or organization has done wrong, what mistakes they may have made to justify the attack. Doing this while the attack is still happening is always, always the wrong thing to do. If we are powerful and out there in the world, we will of course make many mistakes. But mistakes are always just the excuse for the attack, never the reason for it. This is important: never look for the mistakes. Attacks are never justified. Only after the attack is completely over, and only then, can it be helpful to think about what may need to be improved.
- Attacks create seeds of doubt about people and the work that they do. We can reach out, one-on-one, to people we have a relationship with who have gotten confused by an attack. We can reach for them while being as undefended as possible.
- Working on early distress is always essential during an attack. The present attack situation may be challenging, but the feelings about it are always, always old. The more we can discharge the early hurts that are restimulated by a current attack, the better we can handle it.
- We don’t have to be so afraid of attacks. Fear of attacks is getting in our way of reclaiming power. If we are powerful (and hopefully we all want to be powerful!), we will get attacked. We need to know that we are stronger than any attack. We can flourish after attacks! “Bring it on!” can be a useful direction for sessions.
- Anytime another woman is being attacked, we want to immediately “leap over mountains” to back [support] her. We need to build a support team in the face of an attack. Every female needs to know that she will not be left in isolation if she is attacked.
- It can be helpful to work on any negative feelings we have about RC, so we can’t get pulled into believing any attack on RC. I call this working on “internalized RC oppression.” We internalize negative things we have heard about RC and sometimes believe they might be true. These undischarged internalized negative attitudes about RC make us vulnerable to believing the content of an attack on RC. It’s important to work on these feelings in sessions. For example, “Where do I doubt RC theory? RC practice?” In the face of an attack on RC, we need to be clear that RC is totally good.
- Capitalism is collapsing. There will be more and more confusion, more attempts to attack people who are doing powerful work and putting out key ideas for changing society. Learning how to handle these attacks is part of reclaiming power as female leaders.
- “Cancel culture” is big these days. It means dismissing or firing anyone who says or does anything oppressive. Soon no one will be left. We need to talk about the harmfulness of “cancel culture.” We need to help people separate humans from their oppressive behaviors. We need to give people a hand [assistance] when they do or say oppressive things instead of trying to “cancel everyone out.”
Diane’s comments:
- Hillary Clinton was attacked daily. Women cringed watching this, yet in the end many women stayed involved in the political system.
- Women need to take a principled stand to never attack another woman. We need unity. We can learn how to disagree with each other. We need to know that if we are attacked, we will have powerful support; that we are not alone and isolated.
- It is a struggle for us to be a key leader, to put our thinking out there, to be visible, because as women we feel vulnerable to being attacked. Just hearing stories of women being attacked scares us. But if a woman does something significant in the world, she will be attacked.
- Attacks do not always have permanent effects. After her political losses, Hillary Clinton told younger women not to be discouraged, that “a woman will be President of the United States one day.”
- In handling attacks we need to know the difference between the past and the present. It is important to work on early defeats.
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 204, July 2021)