On Writing Like a Man
Books, Essays, Social Justice — By Matt Miles on April 25, 2012 at 10:37 am
It wasn’t until college that I learned men don’t have empathy. I had just switched majors from pastoral studies to missions, and looked forward to a reading lineup that included an anthropology book on culture. Before we’d start, however,the man who was our teacher and the head of the missions department wanted to survey the spiritual gifts of our small class. I believe he called on me first, and being Johnny on the Spot, I blurted out, “Empathy, I guess.” I said this not because I thought I had it, but because the people I most admired did, and I thought it to be a noble pursuit.
His response with a slight smile was “You might want to do a word search on that.” In subsequent classes he would inform us that some gifts were limited to one gender. “For example, only women can have the gift of empathy.” That explained a lot. About him, anyway.
I thought about this before I read this amusing post by regular Burnside contributor Larry Shallenberger. I know Katelyn Beaty is right, and that there is a damn good reason for the Red Bud Writer’s Guild and other groups like it. I also get, as a male, why it’s so easy to miss how male-dominated any kind of publishing is. We’ve been told empathy, and its most effective gateways including reading, listening and writing (at least writing well) are all effeminate, unless you’re writing about politics, sports or theology. Forget the fact that many of my favorite writers–David Foster Wallace, Craig Thompson, Doestoevsky, and Sherwood Anderson, to name a few–are so because of their ability to capture the thoughts and feelings of those outside their immediate world. Even C.S. Lewis’ greatest work, Till We Have Faces, had female lead characters. But this teacher of mine didn’t exist in a vacuum, so many of us soaked in this shit longer than we should have. As a result, sometimes we tend to stink a bit, not because we lack empathy, but because we were told we should. Ladies, please be patient with us. (“Us” meaning “me,” really.)
I’m amazed at the emergence of new voices with stories to tell, and upon reading works such as Junia is Not Alone, I’m thankful many sharing their stories are female writers. I hope this surge of new opportunities for voices to be heard means one of empathy in the world of authors who are Christians. I also hope it means we’ll ditch unnecessary and toxic conversations about who deserves to feel what and start reading, then sharing, each other’s stories.
That being said, I hope writer’s guilds like the one mentioned above are the means not the end. I hope there will come a time when more men read, and not only books by authors like them, but also others who are different. My favorite classes were the ones about comparative religion, and surprisingly enough, none of them made it into a competition where Christianity wins out, complete with muscle flex. I wish new authors well from different backgrounds, and I wish for more readers to emerge alongside them. I wish to see conservative readers sharing articles about the downside of Chuck Coleson’s ties to the Moral Majority, and progressives to share about his work in prison ministry. There are trickles in our insular dams, here and there; I’m hoping for a flood. I’m hoping we all lose track of what it means to write like a man or a woman, and just write honest human stories beyond our own. It’s a long shot, but if men can have empathy, anything’s possible.
Tags: Empathy, Femininity, festival of faith and writing, masculinity, Reading
6 Comments
Thought-provoking piece, Matt. I think empathy has various obvious manifestations – the ability of a writer to create depth in a character, the clinician to appreciate the situation of their patient, the aid worker to see the helped as a fellow human being possessed of dignity, the healed to help the hurt. I think empathy is not a matter of gender make-up…I think it’s a matter of power. Those who have not experienced deep and life-distorting disempowerment may find it hard to appreciate the dynamic that creates it. And a dynamic – not a mismatched set of chromosome – creates it. To say that men cannot empathise is perhaps a generalisation – and I won’t create another one by saying that perhaps men do not empathise as often because they are less frequently afforded situations where they might feel disempowered as opposed to women, and perhaps minority groups, and thus are able to develop empathic insights. I think it is more accurate to say that they “can” empathise, in that men are capable of it – but like most things I have found when it comes to men, unless something has a beneficial utility, it’s considered fairly redundant. Now, if empathy could help a man remove a six-inch bolt from a drill rig, he’d bloody well find a way to get it, and quick smart.
The other thing to consider is that because of the power dynamic, many men see expressions of empathy in themselves as a form of self-disempowerment, because to be empathic with someone weaker means to level the playing field between you. It says “no one here is greater or less than the other”, which can be a dangerous posture in a power-play. I am working on the assumption however that all men like to jostle for position and flex their muscles. But empathy can work in the reverse from the usual politic – sometimes, the one who is able to empathise has actually empowered and not disempowered themselves, by creating a paradigm where they can appreciate more perspectives and understand that of the other person. Further, to see everyone as your enemy, opponent or competitor – or to be abjectly indifferent to the situations of others – borders on symptoms of mental illness (sociopathy, narcissism). Are we mad because we cannot empathise? Many have argued that women are emotionally flawed because empathy is something we seem to be able to do better.
Id just like to conclude with this – while empathy is considered to be something the powerful do for the powerless, It is possible for someone with less social, political or financial power to feel great empathy for one who has greater position, assets and power. Women do it all the time
Great thoughts, Jo. I have especially seen examples of empathy like the one you described in the last sentence and it amazes me every time. I also believe empathy does have benefits for men and women, and that’s why I hope it can be seen as an “everyone” thing. But selective reading, fed by the harmful competitive power struggles you mentioned, would have to end first.
Indeed. I do like your piece Matt. I love these conversations :$
I’ve never heard that empathy is thought of as gendered. I know that the expression of it may be culturally perceived as gendered, though. I’ve also never thought of it as a “gift.” I thought most people, minus the aforementioned sociopath and a few others, have empathy. It’s just a matter of what people do with that empathy.
Wouldn’t even cynical, rebellious, call-girl-ordering Holden Caulfield be considered empathetic when he wonders what happens to the ducks in the winter?
Does having empathy matter without compassion? Is feeling for the hungry person a positive trait in and of itself? If someone recognizes someone is hungry but does not feed the person, what good is that empathy?
Therefore, is the converse thought that men are doers, fixers, to women being feelers, a negative one? Again, this is a gender stereotype, but men are often criticized for wanting to offer solutions to a woman instead of wanting to just listen. Now, I get the power-dynamic issue here, I certainly do. But maybe again we’re thinking too much in terms of gender. Maybe some people are just more likely to be fixers. And if they’re more often male should we hold that against them? Say they’re trying to dominate women?
There are a lot of people who share in the hope of getting empathy and not getting a solution, and in fact they get mad if a solution is offered, no matter who offers it. Maybe the onus isn’t only on the listener to be empathetic, compassionate, and to offer a solution, but on the speaker to be clear on what they need and choose the person with the characteristic they need to share with.
My wife and I are both fixers, so that makes the “listen or fix” conversations interesting.
This recent piece on the benefits of reading fiction suggests no one’s empathy is what it used to be. But it also suggests Michael Crichton books can be useful, so take that for what it’s worth.
http://artofmanliness.com/2012/04/29/why-men-should-read-more-fiction/