Perspectives on Relationships and Life

In today's blog, I want to ruminate around our personal perspectives on our lives, which include, of course, our relationships.  I learned about perspectives when I was studying art long ago.  According to Dictionary.com, in art, it is a way of showing volume and spatial relationships on a flat surface.  Another definition, however, is, "the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship: 'You have to live here a few years to see local conditions in perspective'."

While that second definition actually alludes to what I call one's Belief System, this definition still does not capture the personal nature of what saying, for example, "viewed from my perspective" entails.  In life, we are practically always, unaware that we are viewing everything from our own unique perspective.  It is made up, "part and parcel" of not only our roles in life, but our entire Belief Systems.  This is what is implied by the saying, frequently quoted, that, before passing judgment on anyone, you need to walk a mile in that person's moccasins.

On the other hand, as I have previously noted, most of us have no understanding of what it is like to walk in our own shoes, let alone another's moccasins.  As a result, it may be necessary to learn about, study, hear another person's or group's perspective, to get a better understanding on one's own.  For example, it took the women's consciousness raising groups that formed in the late sixties and early seventies, for many women to understand what was happening in their own lives.

In recent blogs, I have been writing around roles in life.  After the breakdown of extended families in the West, and the subsequent development of nuclear familes--husband, wife, and children--the new phenomenon of an interest in human relationships gradually developed, primarily in the form of Sociology.  It is hard to conceive of now, but people, until that time, gave no thought to how humans related to each other.  As noted in my last entry, the field of Anthropology further added to some awareness as to variations in possible human relationships in other cultures.

An example of how our perspectives can be greatly expanded, as well another example as to how real changes in society can result, from reading about aspects of our own society, has been that of learning about human sexuality.  Probably only those who grew up in the fifties, who are still alive, can truly realize just how profound the changes which have occurred have been.

No doubt as an outgrowth of all that female consciousness raising in the sixties and early seventies, Shere Hite, a sex educator and feminist, rocketed into the public eye by sending out, and distributing in various other ways, questionnaires, to as many women as she could manage, asking women to report on their sexuality.  Up until her appearance on the scene the, until then also controversial, Kinsey Report, based on laboratory experiments, was accepted as the primary authority on the subject.

The Kinsey Report was shocking enough, in its day, after all, as far as I can determine, no one talked about sex back then.  After having distributed a series of revised questionnaires, based on the previous responses, she produced a large volume titled: The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality.  Ten years later, she did a similar study on male sexuality, also based on questionnaires, and published them.  Ms. Hite has since gone on to write other books detailing various studies she has undertaken regarding human sexuality.  Even so, at least, to my personal knowledge, I thing we humans still talk very little about our sexuality with each other.

Many of the questionnaire responders reported that, in answering the questions, it was the first time they had even thought about their sexuality, and added that it was a personally enlightening experience.  I remember one man who wrote he had gone through several of the forms before he felt he had uncovered as much as he could about the topic in regard to himself.

While I, personally, did not complete one of the questionnaires, both these books gave me, and I am sure many others, a greatly expanded perspective on this previously taboo topic.  Having read both of these books, I felt a profound awe, after reading each of them, a number of years apart, at the openness and honesty of those who responded to the questionnaires.  Practically never are individuals so courageous and open with anyone, even their best friends, about anything, let alone sex.  I also found it quite interesting that a number of the men who responded to the questionnaires reported that they had read her book on female sexuality.  After reading the male responses, I have to say I came away with a much more positive idea of how some males view females than I had previously.

In another area, that of our relationships to our society, the book The Feminine Mystique written by Betty Friedan, in the early sixties, about the life of women in suburbia, was a great bombshell exploding in the collective social mind, published about the time Shere Hite was collecting her material.  That it was such a bombshell, was not really surprising given the still-strong patriarchal mindset of the time.  One had to live through the turmoil of that time to understand how powerful a revolution it was. 

Despite the mind-blowing effect such books had on many people alive at that time, much more still needs to be done, on an individual basis, to clear away the remaining social and relationship debris all of us still carry around to one degree or another affecting our lives.

Other than the last depression and the later struggle for the right to unionize, and the period of the sixties, until now, in my recollection, has there been such a wholesale, forced rethinking of, not only individual personal perspectives, but of the reworking of what is, in effect, the whole makeup of Western Society which is taking place now.

During the last depression, many men and their families faced the struggle for survival, and having to deal with their powerlessness in the wider society.  Only with the establishment of Roosevelt's New Deal and the later entry of this country into World War II, was the situation turned around.  While, it appears that a movement has begun to form men's consciousness groups recently, there still has not happened for men, anything equivalent to women's consciousness raising which began in the sixties. 

Since the fight for the right to unionize in the last Century, many men have become aware that most of them are no more privileged than is a bull kept in a pasture.  As current recent news reports indicate, that under-appreciated fight for the right to unionize, and have a say in the major part of one's life called, "work,"
while effective at the time, has to be fought anew.  In the current economic situation, many men and women have found that, rather than entering a life of privilege, through gaining a College Degree, they have only entered a life chained to a huge debt in order to gain that tenuous status.

I recently purchased a book by Susan Faludi, entitled, Stiffed, subtitled, The Betrayal of the American Man.  Ms. faludi is a reporter who has been known for her books about women and their lives. (The book was published over ten years ago, but I just came across it.) 

While what has been taking place in the development of women's consciousness regarding their roles and resulting relationships over the past half century has had a profound affect on the consciousness of many men, it is quite evident that many men are still bound by past conditioning as to roles.  While many men have, for most of their lives thought they were, "in the catbird seat,"  from a female perspective, I can only say that it is well past time men got over this particular perspective.  Unfortunately, in their inability to accept the changes in society that have resulted, not only from the raising of women's consciousness regarding their own abilities, but the critical changes in the state of Western Society, many men are obviously experiencing a breakdown in their ability to cope within relationships.  It remains to be seen how this will all sort itself out.

And so, I end this blog.

Shirley Gallup