Gregory Mengel PhD
About My Guest
Gregory Mengel PhD is an educator, workshop facilitator, and writer, working at the intersection of the social, spiritual, and ecological challenges of our time. For over a decade, Gregory has been helping white-identified individuals and groups to examine their racial conditioning and access their inherent potential for transformation. He is a cofounder of Beyond Separation, which offers classes and workshops for white-identified people. In addition, he is a senior teacher for the UNtraining, in their UNtraining White Liberal Racism program, and a community teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center. Gregory has written for The Good Men Project and The Body is Not an Apology, as well as Medium and Cosmology of Whiteness.
Gregory Mengel (00:00):
... But then within 20 minutes of like seeing some of the emotional leaders in the group take that step to be vulnerable, then it just everybody, not everybody obviously, and not everybody to the same degree, but an opening happens that is really palpable. And the men step into that opening in ways that are transformative for what they see is possible for being a man and being a human.
Shervin Talieh (00:36):
This is On Misogyny, a conversation series exploring sexism and misogyny. Like many men, I have a blind spot when it comes to the female experience, especially as it pertains to the systemic hostility, prejudice, and violence they face on a regular basis. And this has resulted in me believing that I was a better ally than I actually was, and not fully appreciating how little it changed for women and just how much more needed to happen.
Shervin Talieh (01:04):
In each episode, I speak with a guest who wants to help me learn. They share their stories and in doing so, they're teaching me. While I started this project as a personal quest, the lessons here can help others, too. Pleading ignorance is no longer a satisfactory defense. With that, let's begin.
Max Velasco Knott (01:27):
Hi, Gregory. How are you?
Gregory Mengel (01:29):
I am very well. Thanks. How are you?
Max Velasco Knott (01:32):
I'm doing really well. Thank you so much for joining me in this conversation today. You and I have worked together through some of the programs that you've facilitated, and I want to give you a chance to introduce yourself to anybody who's going to be joining us and listening, as well as anything you think might be relevant for context going into our conversation today. So please, who are you and why do you think we're connecting around this topic today?
Gregory Mengel (02:03):
Okay. My name is Gregory [Mengel 00:02:06]. I grew up in the Midwest in the rust belt, specifically, Youngstown, Ohio during the height of its collapse, it's post-industrial collapse, which I think has shaped me in many ways. And to describe my journey toward men's work, I started out in the environmental movement where the question was, what are we humans doing to the planet and why? What is the story that we as a species have about ourselves that is causing us to reek havoc on that ecosystems we depend on for life?
Gregory Mengel (02:45):
And I went to graduate school at the California Institute of Integral Studies in a program called Philosophy Cosmology and Consciousness, where that was the focus. And from there, I volunteered for an environmental organization that had a similar focus. And so that was the general idea was anthropocentrism is the word for that notion that humans are the center of everything, everything exists for our sake.
Gregory Mengel (03:12):
And then gradually, or suddenly actually, it was more suddenly, I realized, oh, wait, that, that we are referring to in the environmental movement, that is not all people. There's actually only a small subset of people who are carrying out this exploitative extractive process on the rest of humanity. And one of the major fault lines around that we and they is race.
Gregory Mengel (03:39):
So I came to understand that white people who are dominant under white supremacy are actually benefiting the most from what is happening. It's an environmental, and a social, and a spiritual problem. And so that was a really a radical awakening for me. And that led me eventually to doing more and more work around whiteness. Starting out with the environmental org that I was volunteering for at the time, working with other white people in that org to try to turn the focus more toward including racism and white supremacy in our analysis.
Gregory Mengel (04:23):
And that eventually led me to the untraining where I first went through as a participant, and then later became a teacher. And I've been working, in that capacity, working with white people for the past 10 years.
Max Velasco Knott (04:36):
And the untraining is a Berkeley based program. That is where I met you.
Gregory Mengel (04:41):
Exactly. And their program is called Untraining White, Liberal Racism. And so we really work with well-meaning white people who want to look internally and figure out, what is it about the way that we've been conditioned that causes us to perpetuate white supremacy and racism?
Max Velasco Knott (05:03):
Right. I just wanted to add I still, after so many years love the title of that program. It just, it's so loaded in all the right ways. It's a very apt title for the work that the group does.
Gregory Mengel (05:18):
Yes. Provocative. So I've been working with the untraining as a teacher for about nine years. And the one thing that I've noticed in that context also, I co-founded an organization called Beyond Separation, which also did classes for white people. And I taught classes for white people at the East Bay Meditation Center. And in all of those situations, I noticed that almost all of their participants are women with just a sprinkling of men here and there.
Gregory Mengel (05:53):
And I started giving that a lot of thought early on, but I went the default route in that thinking, which is men don't take this seriously because it's hard and we don't have to. And I'm not saying that I've changed my mind about that. I've just complexified it a little bit. But in more recent years, I've just become more and more focused on that aspect of this work, the aspect of men looking at ourselves and how we contribute to dominator culture.
Gregory Mengel (06:32):
And so the trajectory, in case you haven't noticed, is we humans to we white people, to we men, always staying focused on who's the perpetrator in these injustices? And how can we, as the major beneficiaries and major enactors of domination and oppression fix ourselves, or fix our relationships? Look at the way we relate to those around us.
Gregory Mengel (07:00):
I actually, I'm backing away from fix ourselves deliberately because I think sometimes that aspect of transformation, especially in progressive new age circles, is gets a little too much emphasis. We're going to have an awakening and a magical transformative moment after which we will see clearly, be enlightened, do everything right.
Gregory Mengel (07:25):
And it's really about the messiness of being in a relationship in constructive ways. And it's a constant practice. In recent years, I've been just looking more and more at specifically how we as white men, our role, our various roles in upholding white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.
Gregory Mengel (07:52):
So that's where I am now. And I'm in this really challenging phase of, okay, so men don't show up to the untraining. I mean, they show up in very low numbers. They're not super motivated to do self improvement, personal growth work in general, apparently, or to do group work. And so how do we get men in the room? That's the real hurdle in this moment that I'm grappling with because I don't know the answer.
Max Velasco Knott (08:28):
Yeah. Before I get into some more of the questions about your journey, I want to get to, I want to expand on that a little bit. You had mentioned the line, which I loved that I don't have to do the work. Right? I'm doing air quotes with my fingers because that's the pressures and motivations of society that have led to that.
Max Velasco Knott (08:50):
What do you think specifically it is that creates that friction or resistance for men broadly, other than not wanting to do it? What are some of the things? Is it discomfort? Is it violence? Is it trauma? What are the reasons why they're not engaging and continue to feel like they don't have to engage just at a high level?
Gregory Mengel (09:10):
I mean, all of those things. Right? I feel like male socialization in the society is traumatic. We are taught very early on that showing any kind of in vulnerability is super dangerous. And I don't mean that you show a little vulnerability and gangs jump on you and kill you. I just mean it's very rarely rewarded emotionally, socially, and sometimes people beat you up. So, we learn to really disconnect ourselves from those kind of vulnerable emotions.
Max Velasco Knott (09:52):
Danger as a concept of negative interactions versus necessarily the kinds of dangers people of different privileges experience in society?
Gregory Mengel (10:01):
Right. The danger of social ostracization more than anything else. Right? We have to fit in. We want to fit in. Right? I mean, a primal human need is belonging. Right? And belonging is usually not available. So we settle for fitting in. That's the next best thing. And it's safer than not fitting in.
Max Velasco Knott (10:24):
Safety, yes.
Gregory Mengel (10:25):
Yeah.
Max Velasco Knott (10:27):
Thank you for all of that. It's again, really, I think, great context to where we can go with the rest of this conversation. And I wanted to hear a little bit more about your journey and story. I thought it was interesting we'd worked together for so many years and I didn't even know what you did for work and all of those things. I don't think that's necessarily relevant, but I am interested in learning a little bit more about what's made you, you? And the first question I want to ask is, is what is your earliest memory of sexism or misogyny?
Gregory Mengel (10:58):
I grew up, I came of age, became a conscious being in the early '70s. And so women's liberation was just coming into its own in those days. So I have memories of classmates in second grade who were identifying with that. And then just being curious about it.
Gregory Mengel (11:25):
At the same time, television was fore fronting powerful female characters in ways that had not happened before. And so I feel really blessed that I came of age in this moment of radical and short-lived shift in the way that women were portrayed in the way that women's perspectives were brought to the forefront in media. That happened for both women and for black folks and other racially marginalized people in the early '70s. And then it, we backed away from that later.
Gregory Mengel (12:12):
But the earliest memories of misogyny, I think I would just say the relationship between my parents, because I felt like early on, on some level, I understood that the power relationship between my parents was weird. It didn't make sense to me, especially because I was taking in these other messages about equality at nine years old or whatever. I was taking in these messages about equality.
Gregory Mengel (12:40):
But what I was living was this traditional, patriarchal situation where my mom would get up from watching TV and go in the kitchen to get my dad a snack and bring it to him and then sit back down. And that was just normal. And I personally resisted that and I feel like my resistance to that, it has its own patriarchal dimensions. Right?
Gregory Mengel (13:06):
There was a way, I was at that time uncomfortable with my mom fetching me things. And there was also an element to that was about independence. Right? So there's this weird mix of how it was both anti patriarchal and another kind of patriarchal. But yeah, my mom would be my first victim of misogyny that I am aware of that I was aware of.
Max Velasco Knott (13:38):
Did that solidify for you later in life? Or was that something that you explored when you started becoming aware at that time? I'm curious how resident that was for you through your journey since?
Gregory Mengel (13:54):
It just planted a seed for the way I saw the world. As I just grew up, whatever, I was always more aware of gender inequities than most of my male friends. But I'm also gay. And so I wasn't out even to myself until a lot later. But I still think that somewhere deep inside, that gave me a slightly different perspective because I understood that something was off.
Gregory Mengel (14:32):
If you're just a straight CIS male, the worry that patriarchy is just normal and natural, it's a much, it lands, it has a place to land without a lot of friction. Right? I couldn't quite take that in because it didn't, there was some level of my consciousness where it just didn't fit. And so that helped me always have a little bit of an outsider perspective.
Max Velasco Knott (15:00):
Got it.
Gregory Mengel (15:00):
Around gender and ultimately around a lot of other things.
Max Velasco Knott (15:04):
Got it. And so it sounds like you observed the impact of misogyny and sexism on the interpersonal relationships around you, like with your parents, and just observing this dissonance between the messaging you'd been seeing, starting to surge in the '70s, and the life and the environment that you're leading and living in.
Max Velasco Knott (15:26):
Is there a time or moment that you felt that sexism or misogyny impacted you personally in terms of holding you back or creating some sort of friction for you? Or was there any opening, or realization, or reflection back to a time that you found yourself not able to thrive, or grow, or whatever in the structure as it was?
Gregory Mengel (15:57):
Yes. Practically from birth. So the way I think about misogyny is, it's not about the hatred of people assigned women at birth. It's about the hatred of ways of being that are attributed to those people who are assigned women at birth, i.e. femininity, so-called femininity. Right?
Gregory Mengel (16:20):
And so anything, literally anything outside an ever narrowing circle of what is considered appropriately masculine in a given subculture, literally, anything outside of that can be feminine. Right? Anything that is associated with weakness or with too much expressiveness, wearing bright colors, dressing with any kind of flare. There's a way in which within a social capital, those things can become available to men without actually having that much social cost.
Gregory Mengel (16:57):
But in my rust belt, industrial subculture of masculinity, they were not. Right? And I distinctly remember that in my nine, 10 year old age range, I was very expressive with my mode of dress. I wanted to wear bright colors, stripes, checkers, I mean, in hindsight, really horrifically, dialistically problematic attire, probably because I was eight or nine years old. But I felt this need to express myself through my mode of dress.
Gregory Mengel (17:38):
And I just really enjoyed wearing bright colors. I had a strong sense of this is what I want to wear. So I would go clothes shopping with my mom and there would be like, "Maybe you should get this." "No, I want this." I just felt very strongly. And this was fifth grade, sixth grade.
Gregory Mengel (17:59):
By seventh, eighth grade, that was all gone. I just wanted to be invisible because I had learned, and I don't really distinctly remember learning these things specifically. I don't remember moments where people made fun of the way I dressed.
Gregory Mengel (18:15):
I just got on many levels that it's better to be invisible, to not stand out. Either in my dress or in my way of being, like dancing. I mean, in my subculture, the industrial Midwest, men don't dance except at weddings, maybe. So in high school dances or whatever the men, boys stand on the sideline and the girls dance with each other.
Gregory Mengel (18:42):
That's the way it generally works. And except maybe sometimes when a hetero cover will slow dance, but that's different because that doesn't require any kind of a somatic expressiveness to stand close and rock back and forth as they do.
Max Velasco Knott (18:59):
So, what I'm hearing is the opportunity around experimentation and expression during this formative years was discouraged, or repressed, or blocked because of the conditions of where you were where multiple avenues of expression. Physical movements, dress, visual expression were all things that you didn't get to interface with or interact with on a more conscious level because of what you look back on is, is the impression of the misogynistic culture, where you were at the time?
Gregory Mengel (19:35):
Right. And let me be clear. There was very explicit bullying. I mean, I experienced very explicit, verbal and physical bullying in seventh and eighth grade, especially. I just don't explicitly remember it being about my clothes or about what it was about. It was just about me, there was something wrong with me. That's how it landed for me. And the solution was to dial, just to dial myself back as much as possible so that I didn't stand out. And I can see in hindsight how that was gendered. Right? And related to misogyny and patriarchy.
Max Velasco Knott (20:16):
So the bullying itself being a result of that need for aggressive posturing, or dominance, or pushing out others, is that what you're saying was some of the impact it had on you?
Gregory Mengel (20:30):
Yeah. And seventh and eighth grade eight are really, it seems to me from hearing many stories from many different men over the years, that's the hard time. Those are the difficult years. And I think it's because that's when young men, boys are starting to organize themselves more into hierarchy.
Gregory Mengel (20:49):
So it becomes imperative to find your place. And so that might be dominance, but it might also be submission depending on we calculate, I think we calculate who can I dominate and who can't I? And where, how can I find a place in the hierarchy so that I can just have peace? Right. Because everybody can't be at the top.
Gregory Mengel (21:10):
Everybody can't try to be at the top. So things just sort themselves out. And then some of us, whether we're sexual orientation minorities, or whatever, we end up pretty close to the bottom, if not the bottom, very often because hetero modes of thinking become so central to the way that hierarchy is formed in mysterious ways. Ways I don't completely, I can't completely put my finger on.
Max Velasco Knott (21:44):
I'm curious to hear you speak a little bit more about that. I think that was probably one of the more awakening concepts to me in working with you and some of the work that we've discussed is the idea of how critical hierarchy is to patriarchy. And how critical it is, is as a part of misogyny. I was wondering if you could maybe elaborate on that a little bit, or rather how hierarchy is a masculine trait in this sense or this context?
Gregory Mengel (22:15):
Sure. I mean the whole system of patriarchy is about the domination of men over women. Right? The domination of men over women in heterosexual relationships. And that has specific social/cultural roots at various points in history where that was intensified. And one of them was the industrial revolution because the system itself needed this division. The social division really intensified or clarified so that we would know who's going off to work to produce goods and services for the owning class, and who is staying home to produce the conditions by which this other person can do work, and reproducing the next generation of workers.
Gregory Mengel (23:01):
That's the model of modern industrial patriarchy is we have this rigid domestic division of labor where one person works and the other person does everything else to make it possible for that person to work. So part of the ideological layer of that separation, that separation or division of labor came to be around what is masculine and what is feminine?
Gregory Mengel (23:25):
I mean, what was already in the field in terms of what was masculine and what was feminine informed that, and then that division of labor also shifted what was considered masculine and what was considered feminine. Right? So I mean, this is when we get the domestic fear to be more associated with the feminine. Right? And work and particularly industrial factory work. And the qualities it take, the personality qualities that requires become more associated with the masculine. Right?
Gregory Mengel (23:54):
So stoicism and ability to endure long periods of standing on your feet in front of an assembly line, or whatever it is. These are the traits that are masculine because we need men to be able to... We're valuing men who can do this kind of work to make money for other people. So we get in here a hierarchy between the masculine and a feminine that's increasingly rigid and clarified.
Gregory Mengel (24:26):
And that plays out, not only between men and women, but within groups of men in terms of establishing hierarchies of regular masculine social life. Where incidentally, because of this new division in the industrial era, we have men and women more in completely separate spheres of life on a daily basis. So in the factory we have men together competing or whatever around what we've now deemed to be masculine values. Right. And judging each other.
Gregory Mengel (25:05):
I'm simplifying a lot because the military is a big part of this as well, because the values around who's a good soldier, and bravery, and all these kind of things are also mixed in there. And that goes back much further than... As a matter of fact, probably a lot of those military ideas of what is a good soldier are imported into factory life, are imported into the ideology that fosters a good industrial worker. Right? Stoicism and ability to endure pain and not complain.
Max Velasco Knott (25:45):
That's interesting to think of those particular attributes that we still identify as masculine and tracing those two factory lines and military expectations and these productive environments that require or rewards certain behaviors. And then those behaviors becoming masculine. Rather than I think because of how I learn things growing up, I associate them with masculinity, and then I look around, I'm like, "Oh, that's a masculine environment," here and there. And I see that as coming from masculinity rather than feeding into masculinity, but it sounds like it's constantly a self perpetuating loop of behaviors and ideologies and stuff that keep feeding into itself and reinforcing those biases and expectations.
Gregory Mengel (26:31):
Yeah. One of the things about this whole general area that we're talking about here is there's the nature/nurture question. Right? The nature/nurture question always finds its way in here because people are wondering, what parts of masculinity are just natural? Meaning when they say that, not changeable. And what part are nurture? Meaning they can be changed.
Gregory Mengel (26:57):
And the fact is nature and nurture are always in a reciprocal relationship. So, nature provides certain passive least resistance for learning and development to follow, but it's not deterministic. Right? So I mean, certain things about men are undeniable, physically. On average we're larger, stronger or whatever. But those traits by themselves determine very little in terms of the whole scope of what passes for masculine.
Max Velasco Knott (27:33):
And it's almost as if like nature provides a whole menu of options for people to leverage as they grow into being human beings. But the nurture, the society says ignore these menu options. Only take these ones. And even though there's the potential for maybe less of a dichotomy and gender identities and expression, it seems as though that's definitely reinforced by society, even if there was more flexibility from the nature side, so to speak.
Gregory Mengel (28:07):
Right. And then in addition to that, I would just add, and there's no way to get to the bottom of where that, where the chicken and the egg are because the reciprocity runs very deep.
Max Velasco Knott (28:23):
So I have to admit, I loved hearing you talk about this, and it's a little selfish for me to just want to go into some of these more academic approach perspectives at all of this. And I don't want to spend too much more time on that just because I feel like that's done by a lot of folks in the world. And I really would be interested to what your unique experiences kind of feed into this conversation that men are having and we're having today, and we want to have more of.
Max Velasco Knott (28:55):
So going back to your journey, what are you working on today? What is your relationship to masculinity or misogyny today, 2021? You're older than you were when you were in sixth and seventh grade. You've done these programs, you've worked through things. What are you working on either with yourself or with your community that is your focus or drive right now?
Gregory Mengel (29:21):
That's a great question. In some ways I feel a little stuck. I'll just be a honest with you about that. Besides my day job, which we didn't, and don't need to talk about, unless you want to.
Max Velasco Knott (29:33):
Is it a patriarchal environment?
Gregory Mengel (29:35):
It's engineering. Right?
Max Velasco Knott (29:37):
Oh.
Gregory Mengel (29:38):
And 19 out of 20 of my coworkers are men in that environment. But with the time I have available outside of that, I spend a lot of it with the untraining. And so I'm teaching phase two now, which is new to me. So I'm having to learn that whole curriculum.
Max Velasco Knott (30:01):
So the program has three phases. This one's really introductory, and then two is next level. And three is I guess, the phase that you're in that goes back and helps continue to support phase one and phase two, and continued exploration? Is that fair or accurate?
Gregory Mengel (30:16):
Phase three brings together everybody who's been through phase one and phase two and the the summer weekend just to do ongoing work together, not necessarily to support phase one and phase two. And traditionally the teachers have been in phase three, but along with a lot of other people.
Gregory Mengel (30:36):
So right now I'm on that learning curve to learn to teach phase two. And I'm in an ongoing extended conversation with John Signs, who was the co-facilitator of the men's group that you participated in last spring about what to do next. And so a lot of the work I'm doing around just patriarchy and my own masculinity is in my relationship with my husband, both in the relationship aspects of our relationship.
Gregory Mengel (31:08):
Because these dynamics play out regardless of the sexual identity of the people involved, and also supporting him in the, some of the mentor work he's doing, because he's a psychotherapist, drama therapist, who's leading groups of men to look at the historical intergenerational wounds of patriarchy. So I get to have a lot of great conversations around that topic and how to frame those issues, because I've thought about these things more than most people.
Max Velasco Knott (31:46):
Right. I want to go back to masculinity after patriarchy. So that, as you said is a new program that you put together and it's a men's group. I participated in it. And what was striking to me was just seeing 10 men, 10 strangers talking about things that in 20 years of some friendships I've had with other men haven't talked about ever, or explored, or whether that be safety or expectations from society, or just whatever those structures are. They just would never come up.
Max Velasco Knott (32:17):
And so I personally learned a lot through that experience of six classes or workshops. And I'm curious what you observed maybe at a higher level? What have you learned from doing that, that maybe not the wise, but you indicated you don't know where to go next. Right? So you're not just seen to do this again or over again necessarily, or you want to maybe change it or transform it, or you feel like there's some unmet goal or something that maybe needs a little bit of transformation? But what was your takeaway from doing that working program, and what are some of the observations you had that either were revelatory or not revelatory that we could make be talk about a little bit?
Gregory Mengel (33:00):
Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because while I've spoken about how hard it is to get men in the room to do this work, once we get in the room, it's a whole new ball game, to use a sports metaphor. I've had this experience more than once. Once the men find out that it's actually safe to tell the truth about themselves to other men, that in and of itself is a radical awakening for most of us because we've never had an opportunity... Because all of our social interactions with men in a regular, dominant culture are framed by these really, really strict constraints around how you're allowed to show up, how vulnerable you're allowed to be, or how vulnerable you feel safe to be.
Gregory Mengel (34:02):
And it's not just like, I'll be unsafe if I bring up this thing that I'm concerned about, or scared about, or confused about. It's that I will make my male friends uncomfortable because they're not ready to go there.
Gregory Mengel (34:20):
Right? So the constraints work in multiple directions at the same time. And it's like all of us men were just being polite by sticking to sports or whatever the safe topic is, because we don't want to take a risk. We don't want to push somebody else into a risk. It's just so much easier. And that's a big part of why I think men don't show up in those rooms is because they have no idea what it's going to be like.
Gregory Mengel (34:52):
They don't have any, and I didn't until a certain point have any experience with that kind of environment. And so it just seems terrifying and nothing good could possibly happen. Right? But then within 20 minutes of seeing some of the emotional leaders in the group take that step to be vulnerable, then it just everybody, not everybody obviously, and not everybody to the same degree, but an opening happens that is really palpable. And the men step into that opening in ways that are transformative for what they see as possible for being a man and being a human.
Max Velasco Knott (35:43):
How does that dynamic compare to other types of existential realizations or opening up in other contexts, whether that be untraining white, liberal racism, or with other types of groups, or anything else? I haven't done group work before outside of the two programs we'd done together. I haven't done AA meetings or anything like that. But how fundamentally similar or different is it for this type of radical kind of awakening that you're describing to other types of social engagements or awakening? Is this really a unique thing or is there a way that it's learning from, or building on other types of work that you've seen or witnessed?
Gregory Mengel (36:26):
I think it's a continuum or a it's on the spectrum with other kinds of work I've done. So my whole history going back to graduate school where I was studying philosophy, cosmology and consciousness, where we were looking at how we as humans and our relationship to nature and our disconnection from our bodies and the natural world informed the consumerist, extractive mindset. We were looking within to try to find those aspects of our conditioning.
Gregory Mengel (37:04):
And so that was a version of this work, but it was leaving out both race and gender. And so it wasn't as personal. Right? So it wasn't as personal. It was more at abstract. Right? Because a lot of the the conditioning we're talking about, it's very universal in modern Western consumer culture. We weren't comparing ourselves necessarily to somebody on the other side of the room who's way more advanced, or immune or, well, let me just be explicit.
Gregory Mengel (37:46):
So if you're a white person doing anti-racism work, you already know non-white people who are the targets or the victims of the oppression that you're looking at. But when we're in a room looking at our human centric ideologies, there's no whales or bears in the room to shame us for our human centric perspectives. So we feel safer in that way. We can all meet and like, "Yeah, we're humans and we feel disconnected from nature, and it sucks and we want to be better."
Max Velasco Knott (38:30):
So what I'm hearing in your framing is it's like there's a certain amount of depth or personal depth that some of these conversations and topics go to. And it isn't a matter of the subject matter, it's that maybe potentially when we talk about humanity's broad existence in relation to nature of the world, that's maybe closer to of the surface. But then when you get into things like race, that's deeper.
Max Velasco Knott (38:57):
And then I'm not trying to hierarchy this, but the types of trauma wounds or learnings that we have around masculine expectations and how to interact with others and interpersonal, all the way down to our language, and the words we use. And all these things that might come up in something that's like masculine or patriarchy maybe touches more nerves, or goes deeper, or whatnot than some of the other ways that people show up in these conversations.
Max Velasco Knott (39:22):
So it's not the subject matter itself is that it exposes even more of the people involved in a way that is just maybe a harder, bolder, harder experience through that. Is that sound..?
Gregory Mengel (39:38):
Yeah, that is exactly what I'm saying. Thanks for summing it up so nicely. I actually think that I don't know this, this is pure speculation. But I feel like the way that this work feels, the way that anti-racism them feels for women is analogous to the way that patriarchy work feels for men.
Gregory Mengel (40:05):
Because women, I feel like from, I mean, I've worked with a lot of women over the years of doing my anti-racism work, because that's mostly who shows up. And they take it very personally. It's very personal because women in our society are conditioned. And I should just say, I mean, I'm not talking about biological women. I'm just talking about people who are conditioned as feminine and identify that way in our society are taught to value their relationship, their interpersonal relationships, and their capacity to be in interpersonal relationships above all else. And so their self-worth can be really rooted in that capacity. And when they fail at that, it's very painful. And so they-
Max Velasco Knott (40:46):
And so it's like an observable path for them through that type of work that is different than maybe what people are taught from a patriarchal perspective?
Gregory Mengel (40:54):
Right. So men show up to do that work and it's like, well, yeah, racism is important. And I want to think about my whiteness. But my self-worth is not tied up in my ability to be in relationship with people of color or anybody, for that matter, because my self-worth is a man in this patriarchal society is tied up in my ability to be in control of things or to be independent. Right.
Max Velasco Knott (41:26):
I feel like this is something that you've probably said to me in the group setting five or six different ways, but this is the first time I'm really connecting with it and hearing it. But you just that fundamental difference of the societal masculine expectations of interpersonal relationships and how that specifically works against men working on their interpersonal relationships in ways that you're seeing other people show up differently in some of this group work, regardless of the topic. Right? But I think that's a really critical observation that's going to help me understand the types of conversations I need to continue to have.
Gregory Mengel (42:00):
Oh, good. And this, I totally got this from the untraining is the central importance of our sense of worthiness. Worthiness of love and belonging, that has been put on probation in our society for very small children. We're told in this particular society, I feel like, and certainly in the experience, in my own experience and the experience of many people I've worked with. Very early in childhood, we learned that our worth or fundamental worthiness of love and belonging is conditional and it's conditional on showing up in certain ways.
Gregory Mengel (42:39):
And so that is a deep, deep wound. Right? Because our worthiness of love and belonging is unconditional as human being. There are no conditions on it. The universe does not put any conditions on it, but we put conditions on it for each other. And that creates a lot of suffering.
Gregory Mengel (42:56):
And for those who are being conditioned as women, the conditions of self-worth are being able to be in relationship, because they are given all the responsibility for relationships in our society. That is offloaded onto those condition as women. They're responsible for relationships.
Gregory Mengel (43:17):
We, men are responsible for something else, civilizational progress or whatever, building bridges, whatever it is that's and defending, defending the homeland. That's a big one. However we define that. Right? And we define that in a lot of different ways that are self-serving very often.
Gregory Mengel (43:40):
So our ability to be seen as strong and in control, courageous, this is where our self-worth lies. Right? And so vulnerability itself, exposing vulnerability itself is a direct bullseye onto our sense of self-worth. Just the idea that we could be vulnerable to anything brings up shame.
Max Velasco Knott (44:06):
I wanted to ask a couple of other questions that are in a bit of a different direction. Just in terms of how this conversation can benefit both the people who listen to it, myself, the folks that I work with to put out different kinds of conversations that we're trying to have, and, and expose to people. I want to get your thoughts in, in some of these going forward areas. So first, what could men start doing more of?
Gregory Mengel (44:32):
Housework. Yeah. Admitting when we don't know. Admitting when we're wrong, admitting when we're scared. Expressing emotions that are not, that we can't be proud of.
Max Velasco Knott (44:50):
Maybe leveraging what you had said about the de-emphasis of interpersonal relationships with learned masculinity, taking that idea of expressing more, being vulnerable, talking about uncertainty more. I'll guess, but I don't know if this is the actual answer, is that to other men, or is that to create emotional burden on the women in their lives? What are the ways that that can be taken from just a man doing that, more of that? But who do they need to be more vulnerable to, and with to continue this effort of awakening men in society?
Gregory Mengel (45:30):
Right. I mean, absolutely for sure, with other men, little by little. For one thing, because we're dying of loneliness. There's an epidemic of fatal loneliness that is impacting men in our society. And it's because we can't be vulnerable with each other that we cannot connect with each other. And so even if we have male friends, since we don't tell them about anything about what's really going on for us, we can be with them and still feel lonely. Right?
Gregory Mengel (46:02):
So we need real, genuine male friendships. And the only way to have those is to tell the truth about ourselves and to share what is painful and scary with other men. With the women in our lives, especially if heterosexual men with their partners, they absolutely need to be vulnerable because that's the only way to actually be supportive of the women in your life. Right? Because they may have the skills and capacity to tell you their problems.
Gregory Mengel (46:35):
If you show up with fixes, I mean, as we know, that's not helpful. But if you can meet them with your own fears, then they will feel heard. Right. Because they will get that you get how hard it is being human, which is really what it all comes down to. It's really fucking hard being human and we have different ways of coping with it.
Max Velasco Knott (46:56):
Thank you for that. And thank you for your time. Before we sign off, I just wanted to give one last opportunity, or space, or breath for is there anything that came to your mind this past hour that you want to speak to that maybe didn't have a chance to come to of the conversation?
Gregory Mengel (47:18):
I want to figure out how to convince men the value of doing this work, the value for us of doing this work. Because obviously, the social benefits that we've been talking about, the epidemic of loneliness and these kind of things are important. But having seen what happens for men who show up, finally show up in a room with other men to actually do this work together, it's just so profound and I want more men to access to it.
Gregory Mengel (47:49):
And they don't know what they're missing, and I don't know how to get them to understand, or see, or feel what the value would be for them. So that's my project at the moment is thinking about how to frame this work so that it's attractive and appealing so that men can actually get that there's liberation to be found in doing this work.
Max Velasco Knott (48:19):
Right. Or you're almost starting to the point where a man would question, "Well, why do I need liberation? I'm a man. I'm fine. I don't need anything or have it the way that I am." Yeah. That's a tough problem to solve. It sounds like anti misogyny needs a good marketing team or something.
Gregory Mengel (48:41):
Very much so.
Max Velasco Knott (48:43):
Gregory, thank you so much for having this conversation with me today. And I hope it isn't the last conversation we have about this, but I really appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us.
Gregory Mengel (48:54):
You're very welcome. Thank you for having me.