Cali Alpert:

Welcome to Dropping In from Omega Institute. I'm Cali Alpert. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our Rhinebeck New York campus is temporarily closed, but we're still here for you. Now, instead of dropping in on campus in real-time, we're dropping in to our treasure trove of audio archives to offer you talks, teachings, and practices from some of Omega's most memorable workshops and conferences.

In this 35-minute clip from Omega's 2014 Women in Power Conference, social justice advocate, Mallika Dutt hosts a powerful conversation on gender socialization and empowerment with activists Tony Porter and Omega co-founder, Elizabeth Lesser. Mallika then leads a short visualization meant to foster interdependence. So put some time aside for yourself, get comfortable, make sure you're not behind the wheel, and drop in.

Mallika Dutt:

Give me a story about the challenges and contradictions that you're still dealing with in your own lives around some of these issues. One story from you, and one story from you, Elizabeth, because I think there's lots of us who are engaged in this work. There's many people who want to embark on this journey, and it's not an easy one, even at a personal level. So let's just start us off like that.

Tony Porter:

Me?

Elizabeth Lesser:

Men before women.

Tony Porter:

So I have six children, married twice. I have four grown children, and then I fell in love with a woman eight years younger than me who didn't have any children. And she's like, "Well, what about me?" So out pops Kendall and Jade. And God has a heck of a sense of humor because I got two teenagers at home.

Mallika Dutt:

Ah.

Tony Porter:

I know. So the interesting thing is, when I look at the two of them—so my story is about the two of them. So Kendall, even with what I know, with all I know, and I know a lot, he can still walk me down the driveway to the car and I would say to him, "Kendall, you got it?" And that's our code language for hold everything down. I've been going now from home for about eight days.

So I had a real good, you got it conversation with him before I left. "You got it?" And the truth of the matter is, he's 16. Truth of the matter is, he ain't got nothing. But it's like, you want it for him. Even with what I know, I still want that aspect of manhood. And he ain't got none. I mean, he's a good kid. He's a good student but you take football out of the equation and a few of those things, he ain't got nothing, right? Then Jade on the other hand, my daughter, who's 15 months younger than him, this sister is on it, right? Chief of police, my house, fire marshal, right? She's a softball player. I can remember she's a catcher first base. I can remember her being behind the plate. She's about seven years old. I was behind the fence there. She's about seven years old.

And she turned and looked at me and said, "I just got stung by a bee." And she just turned right back around. She ain't no joke. And she'll be yelling to me from the porch, "I got it, Dad." And I said, "I know you do, Jade." And I looked at Kendall and I said, "You got it, man?" So I guess what I'm saying is these notions of manhood that even as I challenged them, I trip over it. I trip over it a lot. I still trip over this. It's no graduation, there's no arrival. I'm no expert. That's why I'm here to be with the man. I don't have this down pat. I'm in my journey like everybody else.

Mallika Dutt:

Elizabeth. Three sons, three daughters in law. I'm sure lots of stories.

Elizabeth Lesser:

Yeah. But I think I'm going to talk about work because I already embarrassed my husband. So I think I'll talk about work and like you, I am no expert. Apparently we can see in the whole world, no one's an expert or we wouldn't still be in this mess. But I have been so tested at work in the old stories of what it means to be a woman. And one of the ways I feel women do power is in a very backhanded way because we're such newcomers to it and we have been told through the myths that we should hide our powerful urges. That to be a woman, you do not look powerful. You do not act powerful. You do not speak your mind. You don't speak clearly. You get what you want through the back door. You always act nice.

Now try to be a good leader who always wants to be nice. It's a terrible recipe for not being a good leader. So I would say that being a leader here at Omega and in other places where I have worked learning to really speak my mind and to say what I want and to know that my wanting it is valid and to not try to get power through the back door. To know I deserve it, that I'm, like your daughter Jade, I can be the fire marshal. It doesn't mean I'm less than a woman. Doesn't mean people are going to hate me. And even if they don't like me, the goal in life is not to be liked. And I think that's a real problem for women, sugar and spice and everything nice.

Even though we think that's the long, distant past, it's not. So training myself to stand in what I know is so, to be true to my own voice, come what may, because I trust myself that as a leader, at work has been a real challenge and continues to be one for me.

Mallika Dutt:

So let's stay with the question of power because this is a perfect segue into the fact that really, when we're talking about men and women, we're talking about a power equation. We're talking about a power over equation and that power equation plays itself out at the individual level, at the relational level, at the global level, at a systemic level. I mean, it isn't just about how we treat one another as individuals.

There are entire systems and structures, economic, social, political, religious, where this power then gets instituted that is then perpetrated through violence or the threat of violence, right? And so in embarking on this journey, we're also talking about a transformation of power relationships in our society and moving from a paradigm of power over to a paradigm of power width to the interconnectedness framework that you mentioned in your speech. So I'm curious to hear from you about how you connect the individual stories and examples to this larger question of institutional transformation that has to accompany this process if this planet is going to survive. Thoughts.

Elizabeth Lesser:

Yes.

Tony Porter:

She said it right.

Mallika Dutt:

How do you talk about it in your work, Tony? I mean, I think a lot of us who are trying to unpack this are trying to find ways to have this conversation in a way that doesn't catapult it into then after sitting there going systems think talk, but how do we talk about systems change from a heart place?

Tony Porter:

So if I was to talk about violence against women, which is at epidemic proportions in our country, and while there's a minority of men who perpetrate violence against women, a minority in comparison to the rest of us, there's a majority of men who don't. But that minority of men don't do what they do, absent of the presence of the majority. We would not say that we're part of that because our definition of being part that is we don't hit, we don't assault, we don't hurt. But what we're missing the beat on is that the collective socialization of manhood, which we are very much a part of, is the foundation for the violence. So our work with men is to help men to understand that we are part of the problem and our silence is part of the problem. And it's a fair question to ask, "How is it that this many men do what they do to women in the presence of all of us good men?"

So where are we at? So, systemically and from that perspective, what your question makes me think of is that we as men collectively create this fertile ground that allows men who are abusive to be who they are in the presence of all of us good men. And so systemically, is really for us as men to really understand how our notions of manhood, so we don't perpetrate violence, but it's a fair question to ask, "Do we do less value?" Whether it's in the workplace, at home. Probably not a man in this room and nor myself that can say, "We don't do anything that promotes less value in womens." Do we do property? Do we treat women as property? Do we treat women as objects, as sexual objects? We kind of see that as a call to men as an equation that equals violence against women.

So while we're good men, are we part of the problem, are we part of the solution, are we part of the fertile ground to foundation that creates an environment of men's violence against women? So when I think systemically about—you know, that's what comes to my mind when I think systemically about the collective body of men and how that then filters out in the workplace and everywhere else.

Elizabeth Lesser:

When we started Omega 36, 37 years ago, we saw ourselves primarily as a place that works on what you're talking here, changing the world from the inside out. You change the heart of a man and you train that man to think differently and to take a stand. And for many, many years, our main work here was changing the hearts of each individual. And over the past 10 years, we've really began to question, "Is that enough?" I always used to think that nothing will change until each one of our consciousness changes and to take responsibility for your own little corner of the world. But we're beginning to do a lot of work in what I like to call spiritual warriorism, which is bringing your enlightened heart into what you're talking about. So becoming more involved politically, environmentally and not thinking that just because we're becoming good, that's going to magically change the world.

And I think a lot of people who've come to Omega for years suddenly are understanding, "Oh, I'm never going to be ready. I'm never going to be enlightened." I can't wait to change the world when I become a perfect human being. We've got to work together. We've got to say, "I'm ready enough." And wherever we are, whether it's working in the schools or working politically or environmentally or in women's organizations, I really think it's time for those two worlds to come together. And what's been amazing at these women in power conferences—and it's been kind of scary for us like political activist women will come into this room thinking this is a women's movement. And then suddenly we're doing meditation and chanting. And they're like, "Whoa, what have I come into?" Or women who are used to doing more work on ourselves will come into the Omega space and it's a call to get involved in their communities. So I think bringing these two streams together, the consciousness work and the work of being involved in the world is really like the next edge for many people.

Mallika Dutt:

So while we're talking, the next edge also is about maybe getting past the binary's, right. We've had this whole conversation today about men being a certain kind of way and women being a certain kind of way. And certainly many of us have been dealing with the union concepts of how their masculine and the feminine reside within each of us. And then for those of us who've been engaged in sort of even deeper spiritual work or then part of the LGBTQ community where really these gender binaries make no sense. And so we're almost in a world where we're beyond gender, right? So it's almost like we're having this conversation at multiple levels. And so far we've talked about the man box and the woman box, if you will, because there's really that corollary. I'd like to hear your thoughts about how we talk about the masculine and the feminine within us.

Maybe Elizabeth, you could explain that conceptually a little bit for folks who might not be familiar with that. And then also let's explore what happens when we get beyond gender and is it possible with sex as we are defined as men and women, and even that is changing, but is it possible for us to get to a place that is beyond gender?

Elizabeth Lesser:

Well, I imagine most people in the room are aware the way Jungian psychologists, but even before that, this idea that everyone has within him or her masculine traits and feminine traits. And I studied Jungian psychology for years and for a long time, that's really the way I saw the world that women, of course, were carriers of more of the feminine energy, the feminine energy being the energy that feels connected to, and therefore wants to nurture all. It's an embracing energy. It's an energy that sees connections everywhere. Whereas the masculine energy goes forward individually and is courageous and creates and ascends. So the feminine is embracing and the masculine is going forward. And women are more caring of the feminine, men more of the masculine, but it's really good and healthy for women to develop a little bit of their masculine and men, a little of their feminine. And for a long time, I really saw the world that way.

And I'm really don't know if I see the world that way anymore. I wonder now if it's even helpful to call certain human qualities, the quality of love, the quality of compassion, the quality of nurturing, I don't know if we should even call that feminine anymore. I don't know if we should call the quality of moving forward, exploring, protecting, masculine anymore. I know that I have a highly developed feminine, if we want to go back to calling it that. I don't know if it's because of my hormones and my biology or how much of it is nature, nurture. As the world evolves I am really questioning whether it's helpful to call certain qualities feminine and certain qualities masculine. I kind of don't know any more after many, many years of really living within that way of seeing things.

Mallika Dutt:

Yeah. Yeah. That's really helpful. Tony, do you want to talk about that?

Tony Porter:

Well, no, I can't talk about it the way Elizabeth did. The thing that does resonate for me... I mean, when we talk about the man box, we say heterosexism, homophobia is the glue that keeps it together. We really believe that. But at the same time, as-

Elizabeth Lesser:

Why do you think this? Explain it.

Tony Porter:

Why? Well, so when we say men are in this box, right, and what's holding this box together is our fear of being outside the box and being outside the box is where we define... The box, while gay men have privileges in that box, the box is most popular with heterosexual man. And just as this box creates an environment of violence and denigration and dehumanization against women, it does the same thing to gay men, while at the same time, they still do get benefits from it. So, it's heterosexism that keeps it together and the fear of being perceived as gay, that keeps men who really don't want to do this anymore. Don't want to be bothered with this here, but there's that fear, that anxiety of how we would be treated by each other if we chose to step away from that box.

But what I'm finding is more and more men finding comfortability, stepping away from that box. So when you asked the question, "Is it possible?" I always think about the fact that we're having this conversation tells me it's possible. We're having a conversation with as a woman of color, I'm assuming a white woman and an African-American man on the stage, and this audience is mostly white folks. There was a time we would ask the question, "Would that be possible?" Right? Well, we're here today. There was a time where we all be smoking cigarettes too. Right? Did you all ever used to smoke in here by the way now?

Mallika Dutt:

Nah.

Tony Porter:

Good. But was it possible?

Mallika Dutt:

I did.

Tony Porter:

I'm just saying in the place, not where the folks smoke, I'm just saying in the place. I remember when we would say lesbian, gay and BI sexual, right. Now, we say LGBTQ. They were going to go QQ. We can go questioning, queer, right. And why are we losing track of it is because more and more people are claiming their humanity, right? So we're doing it. It's happening, it's happening. So the place we may want to be may not happen in my lifetime, but I've sure seen a tremendous amount of change in my lifetime.

Elizabeth Lesser:

Yeah. You know what I've loved about the marriage movement? It's kind of moved the conversation away from sex and into love because you can keep having sex with your same-sex partner, whether you get married or not. But the marriage thing is just showing this is love. These are people who want to love, and it's changing. It's changing so much. It's moving the conversation into one about people loving each other.

Mallika Dutt:

I think one of the really important points that both of you have brought up in your responses to my question is, how important it is for all of us to really look at all of these issues from a prism of intersectionality, right? That even as we are talking about women and men being the next conversation, we live in a world where there are multiple paradigms of power that are based on race, that are based on sexuality, that are based on class, that are based on racial and ethnic and religious status. I mean, there's just so many ways in which the power over paradigm plays itself out. And so I want to have the last question that we end our conversation with—I'm just being mindful of the time that we have—to explore with you how in the work that you do in your respective spheres and spaces, have you experienced this intersectional lens?

I mean, certainly in the United States right now, Ferguson has been a flash point for us to really understand the ways in which the criminal justice system and the treatment of African-American communities, which for a very long time has been a problem. But there is a way in which it has catapulted into our national consciousness perhaps long, long overdue, right? We've just had this conversation about heterosexuality and the LGBTQQI movement and sort of people claiming their humanity in all of these different ways. What you just raised, even this conversation with the three of us on the stage might not have been possible even five years ago. So when we're talking about men and women and this next conversation, there's also all of these other issues that we have to bring along with us in our journey and I'd love to get your last thoughts, at least for this conversation, on how we might embrace this.

Tony Porter:

I really appreciate you putting that on the table that it gets infused at least into our thinking and then have a space for it the rest of the time together. So my work is particular to ending violence against women and the responsibility of men. I have spent many years working with abusive men offenders, but I spend most of my time working with men who are not, and engaging us around our responsibility at the table, but my work had been rooted in his origin and back then what was called the battered women's movement. That came out of the feminist movement in which was, for the most part, a white feminist movement. And I can remember some clear distinctions around where white women felt law enforcement wasn't doing enough. Women of color felt they was going to do too much. There was a clear disconnect, right there. There was issues around policing when you talk about Ferguson, right.

So there's the need for law enforcement to do their job, right? And then there's the concerns about what that may look like. I was with folks today having a conversation... The conversation was around women of color and their experiences and deeply rooted in their experiences are their sons, their children. And when we talk in here, particularly their sons, when we speak of Ferguson and those things... So when you look at non-Christian women, immigrant women, women of color, financially poor women from whatever group, when you start talking about multiple forms of oppression that they're experiencing and in the socialization of manhood to begin with, there's a less value of women. And then when you add on the layers of group oppression, the value lessens, which is why women of color, financially poor women experience violence at 33 percent higher than white middle-class middle-aged Christian women.

There's a reason for that. And it's not necessarily because the men in their communities are more violent. It has a lot more to do that we, as a society, as our value lessens in them, the incidents of violence increases. We believe in a call to men. So we have this Violence Against Women's Act and when we put all forms of violence together, our wording is ending violence against women. That's the generic way of saying, we tend to say ending violence against all women.

Now we know we mean all when we say ending violence against women, but we don't believe we're at a place yet in society where that word "all" cannot be included because we don't think of the Hmong women in Milwaukee, unless we say all. We don't think of the tribal women in Klamath Falls, Oregon, until we say all or the Mexican women in South Padre Island, until we say all. So, we believe that word "all" needs to be there. And for us in our work, that then means that we got to work with all men because we have to work with the men they love. So the intersections of oppression is dear to me. So I appreciate you ensuring that it gets in this conversation before we leave this room.

Mallika Dutt:

Thank you. Elizabeth, we'll close this conversation with you and then we'll transition into the last part of the evening.

Elizabeth Lesser:

Well, start this way. About maybe six or seven Women in Power Conferences ago, I thought... When we are in this homogeneous group of people working on the same issues, we begin to think, "Oh, we're so open-minded. We don't otherize anyone. It's easy to think that way when you just hang around the same people. So I decided I was going to invite onto the stage... I wanted to have women who were pro life come to the conference, because if I... here's a bunch of progressive women. What's the group of people they feel the most out of sorts with? It's not going to be women of different colors or different sexual orientations. It's going to be women who are on the other side of the abortion issue. And so I found this group of women from Boston who actually were leaders of Planned Parenthood and NARAL and other choice organizations who had been meeting for years with women who were in the archdiocese and pro-life organizations.

And they'd actually been trying to just come together and be human beings together. Not try to change each other's minds, but to respect each other across an enormous gulf. And when I brought them here, I was so surprised. A whole bunch of women in the audience were very upset that we had done that. They didn't understand it. So what they have ice cream cones together and then go to each other's bar mitzvahs and Christenings. So what? They're still against abortion. And the whole idea was lost to them that in order to open up into the intersectionality of our world, the interdependence of our world, you have to reach across the gulf to someone you think is so different from you. You have to really work hard at it in your own life to have lunch with the Tea Party member or with your brother-in-law who doesn't believe in global warming or with... It's people who are different to find the humanness and to stop thinking that just because we're good people, we don't need to do it.

And to stand up, as you say, ending violence against violence against women has to do with good men who are letting other men violate women. So I think it's something we each one of us can do in our daily life. And we can do it here while we're here this weekend, is making an attempt to sit at a lunch table with someone you don't know, someone who may seem different from you and just find the human spark that is in everyone. There are very few people on this planet who don't want peace and don't want justice.

Mallika Dutt:

So we're going to shift gears a little bit from this conversation to actually moving into a collective meditation together, to really bring ourselves into this space, into this beautiful community at Omega, and really prepare ourselves for the remaining time that we have together. So I invite you to just get comfortable in your seats. Really just find a way to bring yourselves in. I have never led a meditation in a public space before. So this is an incredible honor for me to be able to be invited to do this at a place like Omega. So you're co-creating this with me and I'm really deeply honored. So I really just invite us all to get comfortable, just take a deep breath and send gratitude to everyone who is in this room and all of the folks who've made this possible for us. Everyone who's worked so hard to get us here. All of the people in our lives who have enabled us to be here to have this critical, critical conversation.

I want to share a story as I lead us through this visualization. Last week, I was here teaching the Women's Leadership Intensive with my co-faculty and Leslie, my Socrates sister led us in this beautiful ritual by the lake where we did a blessing of the waters, where we followed this indigenous teaching from the grandmothers, for the women to come together, to transform our waters, which have been so destroyed and polluted. And this ritual was conducted by 45 of us under the harvest moon, the full moon of last Tuesday. And you can imagine us standing in the water with the moon reflected around us, chanting this ritual. And with us 45 women, there was one man. There was one young man called Malik. A young African-American man who was here at Omega for not the Women's Leadership Institute, but for another Institute.

And this man was so honored and so pleased and so proud to hold the space for us 45 women. And for all of us who know the wounds of race and gender in this country, especially to have this young African-American man hold space for 45 women, most of whom were European-American was indeed a transformation of the world and the space that we live in.

And I invite us to open our hearts to that spirit, that spirit of embodiment and transformation that was with us by that late class Tuesday, and invite us into creating a field of our own for this time that we have together. A field that as Rumi says, "Is out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense."

And so in this field, I invite our full selves, our fearful selves, our scared selves, our shy selves, our terrified selves, our happy selves, our joyful selves, our magical selves, our creative cells, our full selves. Without judgment, let us enter this field together and let us invite all beings into that field and let us understand that we are manifesting a world where we live in this interconnected way, this world that we also deeply desire and let us commit to creating that space and that time together with Malik, his wife and his child, and all of our loved ones, part of that conversation. And now I just invite us to be silent for a moment and imagine this field that we are all in together.

And from my heart to yours, welcome to our field. Thank you all so much.

Cali Alpert:

Thanks for dropping in with us. If you enjoyed today's episode, please check out our many online learning opportunities featuring more of your favorite teachers and thought leaders. Visit The Learn Online section on eO mega.org for more information. Dropping In is made possible in part by the supportive Omega's members. Help Omega remain a source of hope and healing and receive special content, invitations and discounts designed to support Omega's engaged community of members. Visit eOmega.org/membership today.