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In the midst of a brave wave of women exposing documentation of sexual harassment in various industries, many of us, women and men alike, are beginning to grasp the breadth of this reality of rampant misogyny. As a culture, we must ask: why do so many men have the urge to belittle, hate, and harm women? Where does this reality come from? And what can we do to stop it?
What’s Going on With Men? The Mother Wound as the Missing Link in Understanding Misogyny – Bethany Webster – translated by Yasmine Bergner
As a globally recognized expert on the mother wound in women, I am often asked to speak about the mother wound in men. At this critical time of exposure of sexual assaults, I wanted to write an article that explores how the mother wound is the missing link in understanding the phenomenon of misogyny. In this article, I examine how boys develop in the modern world, analyze the unprocessed rage lurking beneath the surface in men’s lives, the role of privilege, and the internal work that men and women can do to change the situation.
The Oxford Dictionary defines misogyny as: “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.”
In order to understand misogyny, we must explore the first-ever relationship a man had with a woman: with his mother.
For both girls and boys, the relationship with our mothers is one of the most significant relationships we will experience in our lives. The fundamental importance of this relationship and the way it affects our well-being into adulthood cannot be overstated.
In the weeks and months of our early life, the mother is nourishment, the world, the body, and the self. For both women and men, the mother wound is a product of patriarchy, a product of living in a society based on control over women.
“The mother-child relationship, blurred as the first relationship harmed by patriarchy.” – Adrienne Rich
On a personal level, the mother wound is a system of internalized limiting patterns and beliefs – arising from the relationship with the mother. The mother wound exists on a spectrum between a healthy, supportive mother-child system and a traumatic, abusive mother-child system. Many complex factors define the uniqueness of how the mother wound manifests personally and where it lies on this spectrum. In men, it largely depends on the specific dynamic between the child and his mother, and on how the father supported or opposed this initial bond.
Patriarchy is a principle of dominance and can be embodied by both men and women. The role of the patriarch in a boy’s life can be expressed through both mother and father. For example, some boys experienced their mothers as neglectful or domineering. Some experienced their mothers as victims of their fathers, while others experienced their mother as the dominant parent and the father as the more passive parent.
“Patriarchy demands that men become and remain emotionally crippled. Because it is a system that prevents full access to free will, it is very difficult for any person from any class to adopt a rebellious approach toward patriarchy, to be disloyal to the patriarchal parent, whether father or mother.” – bell hooks
A boy growing into the modern world today is socialized by his father, other men, and society regarding the meaning of being male. Media culture, education, and patriarchal religion perform the same function. Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that this socialization process includes internalizing control over others, repressing emotions, and devaluing women (see sources at the end of the article). This creates both personal and collective trauma.
Healing personal trauma is central to dismantling patriarchy.
Unlike the modern world, the history of civilization is full of examples of cultures that provide boys with initiation into mature masculinity through periods of physical challenges, helping them symbolically cross a psychological bridge from the relative comfort of childhood to the challenges of adulthood.
These boys are supported by ELDERS (mature men), who provide empowerment and positive connection. In this process, emotional or physical “wounding” occurs that helps the boy connect with his inner powers, self-confidence, and sense of personal responsibility. In today’s modern world, most boys experience this “wounding” without positive transformation. There are very few authentic initiation rites, very few mature men (ELDERS), and very few masculine role models beyond the toxic status quo.
The societal expectation to devalue women, and in this context their mothers, creates cognitive dissonance in the boy regarding the significance of his mother, destructive to his ability to express emotions, allow himself to be vulnerable, express physical affection, and more. In this way, the mother is generally experienced as a “lost source” for the boy. And the father, as the facilitator of the boy’s integration into the world of men, is experienced as severing the bond with the mother, the source.
For white men, privilege plays a critical role. In addition to repressing their emotions and enhancing their dominance, society grants them unfair advantages denied to other groups, including women and minorities. According to American sociologist Prof. Michael Kimmel, privilege is invisible to those who have it. This leaves white men with a triple wound: an impaired ability to process emotions, blindness to the privilege they possess, and a lack of empathy toward those they harm. This triple wound in white men remains relatively unconscious and causes immense suffering in our world.
I encountered a striking quote by Adrienne Rich from 1977 in her essay from the book “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence” (not translated into Hebrew), speaking powerfully about the connection between misogyny and the mother wound in men:
“Much of men’s fear of feminism is the fear that by becoming fully human, women will cease to be mothers for men, to provide nourishment, lullabies, and continuous attention associated with the mother-infant relationship. Much of men’s fear of feminism is actually infantilism – the desire to remain the mother’s baby, to fully dominate a woman for his own needs. These infantile needs of adult men toward women have been treated sentimentally and romantically, too permissively, as ‘love.’ This is the threshold of violence. Because the social, economic, and legal systems heavily favored men, the infantile needs of the grown man were validated by power structures, which did not grant the same validation to the needs of adult women. The institution of marriage and motherhood perpetuates the infantile male needs as law in the adult world.”
What is happening now, thanks to the #MeToo movement, as women share experiences of sexual assault and expose their abusers, is that men’s overall control over women in domestic and workspaces is diminishing. Women increasingly refuse to remain silent objects onto which men project their unprocessed pain and remain unaccountable. Additionally, male witnesses are increasingly unwilling to look the other way.
Sexual assault as hostile power
Sexual assault is not about sex, but about control. Alexandra Kettahakis, a sexual therapist and clinical director at the Center for Healthy Sexuality in Los Angeles, explains: “Men involved in this behavior hold immense rage toward women and often suffered abuse in childhood. For example, their mothers may have been emotionally abusive or failed to protect them from paternal abuse. As these men grow, they project the rage they feel toward women through sexualized behavior. They assign a sexual character to their feelings because they have no other way to act.”
It appears the inner child in men is unconsciously trapped between the painful longing for the “lost source” represented by their mother and social conditioning to hate her as a woman. In other words, men are caught between their natural desire for full humanity (the ability to be emotional, vulnerable, and empathetic) and their desire to maintain privilege and dominance. One cannot be both. Holding onto dominance (patriarchy) gradually erodes your humanity. True humanity means letting go of the desire for control and all the horrific ways it manifests. No amount of privilege (wealth, power, fame, or status) can ever compensate for the destruction patriarchy wreaks on the inner child. Only through internal work can one reclaim this lost inner essence.
A man can find this ‘lost source,’ not in a tangible woman but through inner inquiry, attempting to understand what the mother or feminine represents within himself. For example, the significance of emotional functioning, the world of feeling, the experience of deep connection with oneself, and the sense of authentic belonging with those around him. However, to connect with these essential qualities in the dark, the man must connect with the inner child enraged over the meager gains he received in exchange for abandoning essential aspects of his self.
It is easy to project rage onto a “mother substitute” or “father substitute” somewhere in the world. Male privilege allows a man to remain blind to the mother and father wounds while the world burns.
It takes courage to trace these consequences and process the rage toward the inner patriarch, the archetypal cruel, unfeeling father, who admitted him into the world of men at the heavy cost of disconnecting from his authentic self. The innocent child who entered the world with an innate ability to express empathy, emotion, and vulnerability. The rage belongs to the patriarchal father (personal or collective) who broke the boy’s bond, forcing him into male fraternity at the cost of cutting off an essential part of himself to be accepted as a man. The rage also belongs to the mother who could not protect him from the patriarchal wound or caused it herself. (See my article https://womboflight.com/the-most-insidious-forms-of-patriarchy-pass-through-the-mother). When men direct their rage there, where it truly belongs, things can begin to change.
“Misogyny is the outward-projected rage of the son against the mother who could not protect him.” – Gabor Maté
For both men and women, the core task of healing the mother wound is the same: to separate the symbiotic “mother” membrane from both internal and external life in order to connect with full potential and self-realization.
In his book “Under Saturn’s Shadow,” Jungian analyst and author James Hollis summarizes:
“When we understand that patriarchy is a social invention designed to compensate for helplessness, we realize that men, contrary to popular belief, are actually the more dependent sex. The Marlboro man, the rugged individualist, may find himself attacked by his inner femininity, which he completely denies. Whenever a man is required to be the ‘good boy’ or feels he must be the ‘bad boy’ or ‘wild man,’ he is still compensating for the power of the mother complex.”
I am not saying it is the man’s fault that he is so vulnerable, so dependent, so human. But his responsibility is to recognize how much every child needs positive motherhood and how much this need shapes his psyche and operates beneath the surface. He may pretend to be an empowered man, holding government offices or wallets, but stress fissures penetrate deeply into his relationship with his mother. Men must recognize this and take responsibility, or they will continue to embody these infantile patterns forever.
Healing the mother wound in men involves redirecting rage away from women and processing it directly with its true object—the patriarchy itself—and the specific traumatic events of their childhood.
For men to do this deep inner work, they critically need support from other men who have already undergone significant parts of this inner journey, including professional support from experienced male therapists in this field.
Broadly defined, internal and external work for men includes:
Processing rage toward the parent (father or mother) for parental betrayal that forced them to give up essential parts of themselves to be considered a man, mourning the heavy cost.
Examining life honestly, acknowledging hidden secrets, and taking responsibility for actions.
Finding the lost inner source and reclaiming it. Connecting with the inner child.
Connecting with genuine remorse for how they have harmed others and the planet through unconscious projections of pain, both personally and collectively, and initiating empathetic actions regularly.
Creating community with other conscious men on the path of healing and reconciliation.
Men must commit to long-term internal work and also experience the immediate consequences of their actions here and now.
Sean Wastal explains that sexual assault in the workplace is not due to lack of training or understanding by men, but because men understand too well: that they can avoid punishment. They can rationalize, hide, justify, and no one will hold them accountable. “In other words, until men achieve enough internal integrity to restrain them from sexual assault, real intervention is required in workplaces and relationships to stop toxic behavior. Fundamentally, men require global intervention. Social ‘no’ echoes calling for awakening and recognition of realities they have been blind to until now.”
To support this process, women must say “no” in every possible way to the angry boys inside the men in our lives, whether they are friends, colleagues, brothers, or husbands. Referring again to Rich’s quote, women must withdraw from over-functioning or acting as mothers for the men in their lives.
“We must step back with the demon, the lullaby, the ceaseless attention associated with the mother-infant relationship.” In this way, men can feel the weight of the difficult situation, which is the first step toward meaningful and lasting change.
Only when men feel the painful gap of what women are no longer willing to tolerate for them, will they experience sufficient motivation to finally act and fill the gap from within themselves.
The process gradually develops paths of:
-Taking responsibility for their emotions, containing and processing them internally, and obtaining support.
-Engaging in sexual relations from a place of intimate connection, not as a means to feel powerful.
-Comforting the inner child when activated.
-Differentiating past pain from what is happening in the present.
-Developing awareness of the consequences of actions and the ability to see women in their lives as humans, not objects.
-Amplifying marginalized voices, developing listening skills and learning from them.
As women, we must continue to use our voice, speak out against abuse of power whenever possible, and amplify the voices of other women suffering male abuse, especially among minorities and indigenous cultures.
As women, we must cease:
– cooperating with male illusions arising from ignorance regarding their entitlement.
– remaining silent to avoid friction.
– internalizing the consequences of unprocessed male rage.
– minimizing our feelings in their presence.
– accepting crumbs of respect instead of what we truly deserve.
– giving power and strength through therapeutic relationships.
– giving time and energy to men who refuse to do inner work.
The truth is women are very limited in their ability to assist men in healing. We can hold space for them, but cannot do the work for them. This is their journey, and they must want it. Meanwhile, let us expand our self-worth consciousness away from the male gaze, prioritize our inner work, and heal our childhood wounds. Let us maintain clear boundaries with people in our lives who are not doing inner work and spend more time with those who are. True female fellowship is a crucial source of nourishment at this time.
Harnessing our rage as fuel for wise action
The more we connect to the truth of our power as women, the more we feel rage at the destruction caused by toxic masculinity. Rage is an essential tool at this time to sharpen refusal to align with oppression of any kind, including internalized misogyny directed at ourselves. For white women, this is a refusal to play the role of the patriarch toward others and to acknowledge how we mediate oppression of men and women in ethnic groups different from our own.
“We suppress what we fear.” – James Hollis
Healing from patriarchy requires that every group benefiting from entitlement confront its ignorance and develop genuine empathy for the ways its privilege harms others.
Allowing ourselves to be emotionally affected by the horrors committed as a result of our entitlement is often avoided but is essential if we wish to create true equality among people. Just as white women must connect to a genuine shock at how we mediate white supremacy over minorities, white men must do the same regarding their ignorance toward the entitlement they enjoy and internalize the immense pain it creates in the world for women, minorities, and the planet.
“The artist’s role is identical to that of the lover. If I love you, I must make you aware of the things you do not see.” – James Baldwin
May this growing surge of female rage inspire a wave of brave men willing to explore their inner space, embrace the abandoned child within, process legitimate rage, and mourn what patriarchy stole from them: their full humanity. Collective change will occur when enough individual men change. May men take full responsibility and humbly embrace exposed discomfort as the remedy they need to heal their personal and collective mother wounds. And may women refuse to allow the behavior of unconscious men to define them.
All rights reserved to Bethany Webster 2017
Translated from English by Yasmine Bergner
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Resources for Men:
Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men by James Hollis
Understanding Patriarchy by bell hooks
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette
The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife by James Hollis
The Eden Project: The Search for the Magical Other by James Hollis
Iron John: A Book about Men by Robert Bly
Castration and Male Rage: The Phallic Wound by Eugene Monick
Finding our Fathers by Sam Osherson
Phallos: Sacred Image of the Masculine by Eugene Monick
The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help by Jackson Katz
The Mankind Project
Jackson Katz
Link to the original Bethany Webster article in
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