I’m Ash Rehn, counsellor, coach and Medicare Provider. Take a look around to find out more about my in-person and online services.
Recently I visited Devils at Cradle, a sanctuary for Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harisii). These Tassie devils are carnivorous scavengers of the food-chain, feeding on dead and injured wildlife including the carcasses of their own. They’ll even eat smaller devils when hungry enough. To watch them snarling, screaming and fighting over food and sex is both fascinating and disturbing. Like many species that relate through pecking orders, dominance is displayed by fighting and physical size. Males fight other males over access to females. Females fight off males and males forcibly subdue females during sex. As devils age, their bodies amass the wounds and scars of these battles. They appear damaged quite quickly in their short 5-6 year lives.
‘Damaged’ is a word some men use when they are speak to me about their relationships with women. They tell me they have struggled to meet, and even to talk to, women and say they feel disappointed, sometimes ashamed, even confused about their identity or sexuality. Men who want to be ‘more masculine’ are not a minority either. By most accounts, masculinity is a sought after quality despite it being subject to vastly different interpretations. With current fashion, appearing masculine can have men sculpting their abs or grooming a beard. Others indicate it is a performance: acting and talking tough, aggression or violence, the epitome of not caring. Still other men relate it to the capacity to ‘get a woman’, as if women are objects of sexual gratification, status symbols of masculinity, rather than other human beings.
At the devil sanctuary, I felt somewhat jarred when I heard the guide referring to dominant animals as the ‘alpha-males’. That’s because I’ve read lots of stuff on the Internet that extends the ‘alpha-male’ concept to human behaviour. According to particular web commentators, all men can be divided into either ‘alphas’ and ‘betas’. Alphas are described as the dominant variation, men who achieve their choice of partner by behaving in certain ways including competing with other men. It’s evolutionary biology they say. The underlying theory behind their argument is the oft quoted but vastly misunderstood ‘survival of the fittest’.
Many of these bloggers – if you are interested, you can find their articles by Googling ‘Manosphere’ – claim it’s men’s genetic programming to find a female mate and attempt to procreate. They preach a creed of biological fundamentalism that positions human beings on par with, or at least not barely different to, other animals when it comes to sexuality and relationships. And they use this to justify antagonistic attitudes towards women and their ways of relating to women and other men. But how therapeutic is it for men who think of themselves as damaged or deficient to be striving to be ‘alpha-males’?
The ‘alpha-male’ model might provide some useful explanations for devil behaviour but I reckon it gets clunky when applied to relations between men and women. Let’s start with the question of how helpful it is. I’m very used to undertaking therapy over webcam and in-person with unhappy and disturbed men as they confide in me about their anxiety, depression and other mental health concerns. And in my professional experience I’d say that splitting guys into these two categories and then instructing them they must choose between ‘the red pill’ or ‘the blue pill’ tends to do a lot more harm than good. This is despite claims of manosphere bloggers who often hide behind pen-names (that doesn’t seem so alpha does it?). Some insist men will not be happy unless they participate in their supposed ‘natural role’ or they promise happiness to men who do. So making a conquest of one’s relationship with a woman becomes the entire point of associating with her. I’ve seen men who start following these ideas set themselves completely in opposition to women. And then, like the Tassie devils, we have a battle going on. Someone is going to get injured.
Watching devil behaviour it might be easy to imagine their existence parallels that of humans albeit at a very primitive level. They forage, they fight, they fornicate. Then they fall asleep. But, according to the guide at the sanctuary, female devils are actually the dominant creatures in mixed-sex groupings. This shakes up the assumption that dominance is a male trait. The complexity of nature is not such that it is possible to explain either animal or human behaviour in terms that are limited to dominance and submission. Try Googling ‘dominance in female animals’ if you want some evidence.
And the Manosphere authors tend to be skip over a few important differences between humans and animals. Take human ethics for instance. Some might say it’s the human capacity to self-reflect that sets us apart from other animals. And the extension of that capacity for self-reflection is that we create values and make moral choices. We are driven, or not driven, by ethics as well as whatever descends through us down genetic lines. Our cognitive capacity might be said to be a product of our evolution but whether or not we choose to use it, or to consider and be guided by particular ethics, is up to us. It’s what separates a rational male from an instinctive one. By the way, when I refer to ethics or morality I’m not referring to the passed down, unquestioned dogma of a church, government or even one’s parents. Most people are in a bit of a mess about what they really believe and it doesn’t work so well to blindly follow what someone else says is right. I’d say testing it out with your own experience and checking in with your gut-feeling are important too.
Simply explaining heterosexual relations through a frame of competitive evolutionary biology doesn’t make for a scientific argument. There are plenty of instances of animal behaviour that demonstrates co-operation, collective care, harmony, equality and egalitarianism between males and females as well as between same sex mates. But you won’t discover these examples if you start out Googling ‘alpha-males’ or ‘biological reasons for sexual behaviour’, you will only find what you are looking for! Science happens when we look for evidence to try to prove an idea false. Simply going after evidence to confirm an idea is known as pseudoscience.
Men who are struggling to meet up with popular expectations of manhood and masculinity, not to mention the human desire for intimacy and companionship, are often won over by what seem to be convincing arguments supposedly based on science.
Some of the most convoluted pseudo-science around alpha-males’ and men’s relationships with women is coming out of the Pick Up Artist (PUA) movement. It produces books and runs courses advocating manipulation of women, aspects of which are known as ‘Game’: the techniques of picking up women. Those running PUA courses purport to be helping men to learn strategies and tactics, develop self-esteem and feel better about themselves as men. Others say PUA is basically a scheme to profit from men who view themselves as somehow deficient when it comes to engaging with women. From what I have seen and heard, men who get involved in Game end up more confused, with a heightened sense of conflict around what is ethically right for them. They also seem to become dependent on the dogma of the movement to continue to feel good about themselves. One of the most extreme cases is Elliot Rodger who cites his frustration over not being able to find a girlfriend and his hatred of women to justify taking a murderous course of revenge.
Let me offer a question, particularly to anyone reading this who might be at least partly convinced by ramblings from the Manosphere and starting to try out Game on women. What would you think about your sister, or your niece, your daughter or even your mother being on the receiving end of the tricks and tactics of Pick Up Artists?
Such a question often has men in a double-take. Guys who start exploring Game and the PUA movement are often thinking only short-term about their ‘success’. They might be focussed on convincing a woman to accept a date, have sex with them or on ‘getting’ a girlfriend. But they aren’t necessarily considering how living this ideology might affect them in the longer term. What happens for the man who becomes a successful Pick-Up Artist? How does he proceed with his life if in the future, for instance, he becomes interested in living with someone or raising children? How does the PUA and Game dogma affect him when transitioning into new and different roles as a man: as an uncle, a partner or a father, for example? Or does he become trapped in Game, contained by the identity of ‘seducer’ he has tried so hard to construct?
I also wonder what happens to our relationships with other men when we judge masculinity primarily through the alpha male-beta male model of evolutionary biology in the animal world. For a start, it doesn’t leave much space for closeness or intimacy between men, including that which is fraternal rather than sexual. Do we really want our relations with other men to be limited to those that are competitive?
It strikes me that, if you want to meet women, it probably won’t happen reading books or absorbing ideas while on your computer in your bedroom. It’s more likely to happen if you physically put yourself in environments where there a relatively large number of women. In other words, not places where there are a few women and a relatively large number of men competitively ‘hunting’ for them (I’m aware that this is a chilling concept for many people but it is the language that is used by Game and the so-called Pick-up Artist Movement, not something I endorse in any way).
The fact that many men are convinced they must compete with other men for the attention of women has me wondering what is more important to them: their relationships with women or how they are perceived by other men. Or perhaps how their masculinity is perceived by other men. Do you think you are less masculine in a yoga or pilates class full of women, for example? If so, isn’t that ironic?
It’s said that Tasmanian devils differ hugely in personality. They aren’t all as much into fighting or motivated by food or sex as each other either. When we consider animals or humans simply as species without taking account of individual diversity or difference, it’s likely we will overlook aspects that might be quite important. Some devils make a lot of noise to bluff and intimidate their peers and some will sustain more damage than others. Like people, their personalities depend on whether they have been frightened or hurt in the past and how they have been raised. But, unlike people, devils don’t reflect on their experiences and rationally choose to become more manipulative towards their mates.
I’ve no doubt those from the PUA movement may dismiss my article as ‘Beta Game’. But whatever line the so called dating-coaches and ‘seduction artists’ are pushing, no man should have to compromise his integrity and exercise power over another human being just because he feels frustrated. It’s quite human to want to experience intimacy, companionship and a sense of well-being. Start by sharing what you want for your life and talking over your fears with a person you can trust. Learn to relax in unfamiliar environments. Practise being true to yourself and your own ideals rather than trying to live up to the man someone else says you should be. That’s a much better strategy for the long term.
© Ash Rehn, 2015.
Porn Addiction recovery groups for men sound like a good idea. Telling your story to a supportive audience has been demonstrated as an effective way to gain more influence over your life. But what about challenging men to be more manly? Is this kind of ‘masculinity therapy’ really in the interests of men trapped by gender expectations and ever-tighter definitions of what it means to be a man?
Less than two weeks ago I read a newspaper article promoting peer support workshops for men struggling with their use of pornography. Workshops are an interesting addition to the landscape of therapeutic responses out there. Some men have tried, and abandoned 12-step groups like SLAA and SAA because being labelled an ‘addict’ was not so helpful to their recovery or because the dogma of the group did not fit with their personal experience. So if men get to discuss their own relationship with pornography in more open ways, it could only be a good thing, right?
A couple of aspects concerned me. This program was obviously not neutral towards, but decidedly anti-, porn. Of course this begs the question of the definition of porn, but in any case it seemed there was no room for men in the groups to negotiate their use of erotic imagery or literature. If you are told what you must think about porn, does it leave space for you to make up your own mind?
“They feel their natural libido return and feel more alive, more masculine, more in touch with their natural sexuality and they notice how women feel that.”
- taken from the pornography workshop group website
Secondly, I always wonder about the ethics of promises for such programs. ‘We will transform your life’ sounds to me like an impressive claim. Can therapists make that promise to a person? The other thing I noted were remarks about natural sexuality. What is that? How possible is it to experience sexuality outside the influences of culture? And who decides what is ‘natural’ and what isn’t?
What about men who are not particularly interested in feeling more masculine or being drawn further into the gender binary? And what about gay men? According to the group promotion, these pornography use problems all come from our wounded child and yet the program still challenges us to be man enough. How often did you hear the following questions when you were growing up?
If you poke around the Internet you will find many articles and websites addressing men’s loss of masculinity and even the crisis in masculinity. Of the crises that come to mind, ebola and the spread of religious fundamentalism through terrorism would be at the top of my list, but I am not sure what to make of a supposed crisis in masculinity. I’ve had quite a lot of men contact me reporting they don’t feel masculine or manly enough, but is the answer simply to boost masculinity?
After seeing this article, I heard about another violent attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach where a man was hit with a ‘coward punch’. Apparently this is the preferred term to ‘king-hit’ these days, yet it suggests that using more than one strike or to have a ‘proper fight’ is somehow more honourable. The same weekend, one of the games of the Super League Grand Final at Manchester was interrupted when one of the players held down another on the field, repeatedly punching him in the eye. Then there was a report from Sayreville in New Jersey that a number of high school students had allegedly been sexually assaulted and anally raped, with objects and fingers, by older players on the school football team.
Are you man enough?
Back in Australia, we had the government Finance Minister refer to the leader of the opposition as a ‘girly-man’.
Aren’t you a real man?
To this, another politician made the observation: If we use ‘girly’ as an insult, what are we telling men & boys about being a girl? Isn’t it suggesting they are less confident or weak?
What do all these stories of violence and abuse by and towards men have in common? Well someone (most likely a man from the mythopoetic mens movement) coined a term for the kind of masculinity that involves aggressively competing against and dominating others: Toxic Masculinity. What strikes me most is that the usual response to men not feeling masculine enough and the claims of crisis in masculinity is just to offer up competing brands of masculinity. And this seems to be the point of the pornography addiction workshops as well: return men to their natural sexuality make them feel more masculine and everything will be okay again.
The light in this dark week was an opinion piece by the English actor, comedian and writer Robert Webb of Peep Show fame.
Nobody ever told me: you don’t have to waste years trying to figure out how to be a “man” because the whole concept is horseshit.
- Robert Webb
Webb describes the orgy of make believe violence that was his childhood, learning to be a real man.
If you have time and it is still online, read the article in the New Statesman. Unlike the blurb for the porn addiction workshop, I can’t promise it will transform your life, but it might point you in the direction of an alternative.
Notions of gender pointlessly separate men from women, but also mothers from daughters and fathers from sons. The whole thing is – at best – just a stupefying waste of everyone’s time.
- Robert Webb
Resorting to calls to be more of a man seems pointless, especially when these competing definitions of masculinity are what trap men into violent ways of being in the first place. Perhaps the competition between masculinities is toxic too. It would be inspiring to see less about being a man and more about being a human. That doesn’t minimise the principle of taking responsibility for your actions, it just suggests that perhaps it isn’t so important to obsessively define yourself in relation to women or the gender performances associated with women.
As for groups for men concerned about pornography use, I think they are a great idea but how about a workshop program which does not simply problematize porn use or require men to live up to new standards of masculinity. The Australian men’s mental health initiative softenthefckup argues…
We don’t need to redefine masculinity, we need to undefine it.
That makes a lot of sense to me. If you want to have a private conversation about being a man, your masculinity, your porn use or being more human, send me an email. I won’t tell you to stop what you are doing or expect you to be manly. You are welcome to be yourself and let me know what you want out of our time together.
Treatment for Pornography Addiction often focusses on the act of watching pornography and assistance to try to reduce the ‘behaviour’. But if such an approach doesn’t work, what are the alternatives and why don’t we hear more about them?
I’ve been working with concerns about addiction to pornography for a number of years now. When men started to contact me seeking help (and it was mostly, although not always, men who wanted help with porn use) many of them came to me equipped with a glossary of terms from 12-Step programmes like SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous), SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous), SCA (Sexual Compulsives Anonymous) and SA (Sexaholics Anonymous). They spoke of concepts like ‘sobriety’, ‘healthy sexuality‘ and ‘bottom-line behaviours’.
Some of these men had invested quite a lot of time reading about these models of addiction, understanding the group concepts and attending groups. At the same time, they were consulting me because the groups and 12-step programmes had not completely worked for them: they were still using pornography or were dissatisfied with the amount or type of pornography that they were viewing. Ironically, most of the men who had turned to the 12-step model seemed to want to continue to use the terms and concepts the programme had taught them, despite deciding it hadn’t worked.
It is not always possible to continue to view our actions through the same lenses to which we are accustomed, particularly when those lenses fail to provide us with clarity or vision. One of the difficulties of trying to develop what I call ‘self-agency’ when working within a 12-step model is that the model itself tells the person he is powerless. So it is kind of at odds with the idea of gaining more influence over one’s own life and actions.
The ‘brain chemistry’ model supports a sense of powerlessness as well. If we don’t understand the chemistry of the brain – and perhaps even if we do – we are at its mercy. But dialogue can create meaning. Do we really need to pretend pornography use is all about complex science only specialist medical doctors understand?
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Both of these approaches assume that pornography use is a disease. And many people are surprised to find out that there is no diagnosis of pornography addiction according to the major disease classifications, I realised quite early on that simply accepting that addiction to pornography was a disease would spin off a number of assumptions about a person’s use of pornography that might go unquestioned. So instead of looking at what was the same for these men who were consulting me, I started exploring what might be different for them. And I found many differences. In fact, every man who contacted me had a unique story. While there were some common threads, failing to approach their stories as unique narratives of porn use clearly meant I was missing crucial details about what was significant in each man’s history and the way porn had found its way into his life.
I believe it is disrespectful and fundamentally flawed to use a ‘colour-by-numbers’ approach to concerns about porn use. We need to look beyond the act of a man looking at pornography and instead consider the ways in which that act might be a response. And to what it might be a response. Focusing on porn use as a problem rather than as a response is like simply focussing on cars as the cause of traffic accidents without ever considering transport needs. People watch porn for many different reasons. What I offer is a chance to explore those reasons and investigate how pornography has taken such a place in a man’s life.
But there is another point to be made here. It’s not my place to judge a person’s porn use. The medical model suggests we give ourselves up to the doctor or psychotherapist who presumably knows best. The risk is that the patient or client becomes more or less a helpless victim. When men contact me, I’m interested in their concerns and why they are finding their porn use a problem. I don’t start with an agenda that I know best. So these therapeutic meetings are dialogical: they happen through conversation. They aren’t about instructing men what to do or passing judgement on their actions. Instead we explore the topic brought to the session and develop meaning around it together, in dialogue. That is the way to new understanding and more influence over the choices made in life.
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I was recently contacted by a student who was writing a paper about ‘sexual addiction’ for a college course on sexuality. As a counsellor and therapist in private practice, I’m not usually in a position to offer so much assistance to students (I receive many requests and my time with people is my livelihood) but my curiosity was drawn to the theme of his particular course: Healthy Sexuality.
To date there has not been so much written about the idea of sexual addiction from a narrative therapy perspective. When I saw the course title, what immediately struck me was the lens of healthiness through which sexuality was being judged. I know this is a very common way to consider sexuality because I hear it all the time. And I began my career working in the field of sexuality as a ‘health educator‘. In a state, culture and era when public dialogue about sex was largely taboo, health (and specifically HIV) provided an entry point to talk more openly. The rules were that our sex talk had to be the interests of public health.
When people consult me about sex addiction, they are often describing their actions in terms of whether they are ‘healthy’ or not. These days the concept of healthy human sexuality has become such a norm it is a cliche. It seems to me that, particularly since the onset of AIDS, ‘healthiness’ is the primary lens through which we tend to view sexuality. It is taken for granted that sex and sexuality must be ‘healthy’ first and foremost. And this makes me curious about the division that is made between ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ sexuality. How useful is this binary? And who determines what is ‘healthy’ and what is not?
It also has me wondering about what happened to other perspectives or lenses through which we might view sexuality. What does sexuality look like, for instance, through a lens of Pleasure? Or a lens of Community? Or a lens of Power? Or Spirituality? Or – dare I say it – ‘Fun’?! What does your sexuality look like if you view it through those lenses instead? Or how about through the lens of Self-Knowledge, finding out about yourself?
It does strike me that when we start looking at sexuality through a lens of ‘healthiness’ we might also be standing firmly within the disease model. It’s no wonder these fears about addiction figure so strongly when we are viewing ourselves with the presumption of a deficiency or possible health disorder. We lose the context. In the stories I hear, people tell me about the steps they are taking in exploring desire. They describe themselves acting on urges they have had for 30 years but done nothing about due to shame or fear of ridicule. Others tell me about strategies of using pornography for stress relief, or to relieve boredom or to escape from grief that has overwhelmed them. Some people tell me how good they feel when they have sex but say they can’t share this with others because of taboos around discussing sex. I find myself engaged and interested in the courage, skills and abilities of those who consult with me and we draw on all of these in our work together.
In his book series The History of Sexuality, the French philosopher Michel Foucault claims that the concept of Sexuality itself was developed to ensure power remained with certain people. Sexualities are proscribed in the same way that particular activities or behaviour might be regarded as disordered or pathological or unhealthy. In narrative therapy there is an idea that people can be experts in their own lives. This certainly challenges the standard model supporting doctors, psychologists and psychotherapists as the experts, but it is a way of thinking I personally find exciting and empowering.
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How was 2013 for you? What does 2014 have in store? Do you have any New Years Resolutions?
When out socially, I’m regularly told that my work must be demanding, difficult and depressing. It must take its toll on you, people say.
I don’t want to pretend that being a therapist isn’t challenging and personally tough at times. It is. But it is also a vocation full of inspiration and motivation. I thought I would take the time in this post to appreciate and reflect on the meaning and fulfilment I gain from therapeutic consultations and to share some of the most rewarding aspects of my work from 2013.
This year, I have met and continued to work with some wonderful people, journeying with them through confusion, uncertainty and change. An ongoing therapeutic relationship is like travelling with someone. You get to know them over time and through different moods and experiences. You see their ups and downs, are privy to their fears and share their relief.
Some of these are short journeys, for example, adjusting to separation or the breakdown of a long term relationship. Others have been over longer periods or are ongoing: helping guys who are coming out later in life; assisting adults responding to memories of childhood physical or sexual abuse; supporting those in grief around the death of their partner or a loss of direction in life.
In both my short term and long term work, I admire the preparedness of those who consult me in treatment. I notice and call attention to their courage or their skills, their abilities. I’m curious about the sense they are making of their circumstances. I hear their stories and draw out the meaning they make of what is happening to and for them.
One of the areas in which I specialise is depression experienced by gay men. In these conversations, we often find ourselves pulling apart the way in which their identities as gay men have been constructed and taking a closer look at what might have contributed to depressed feelings. I’m very conscious that most of us seem to develop our identity against the backdrop of heteronormativity (and homonormativity). Many men feel constrained by the way sexuality has been defined in the last 50 or so years, by the prevailing assumptions about sexuality being fixed. For some of my clients, the only word that comes close to their experience of themselves is ‘bisexual‘, but they say this does not really work for them for a number of reasons.
There are also questions of masculinity to be explored and I always find these conversations stimulating because, as quite a few guys have pointed out to me, the representation of masculinity in popular media is quite limited. This year, I intend to develop my site www.GayCounsellor.com.au with short blogs and articles that will be of interested to all men.
Something else that has been on the radar this year has been the return to dating or relationships by both men and women who are in what they might describe as ‘middle age’. It might be that a long term partner has passed away, or that the person is beginning a new life post-separation. I might be speaking with a man who has lived most of his adult life with a woman, raised children together with her, but decided now to take a new direction, one that feels more comfortable and in keeping with his sense of sexual orientation. Or it could be someone who has spent the last 20 years having casual sex, who has decided they want to experience something different.
These new directions can be quite scary and also take some time. People often feel they have ‘messed up’ or ‘failed’ when trying to establish a new relationship. Sometimes they tell me that it is about learning to date again. They say they feel like a clumsy teenager trying to get a boyfriend or girlfriend. Often they end up finding themselves in treatment, recovering a sense of connection with something quite important about themselves they had lost.
Through this year, I’ve also changed and grown from my experiences. I was fortunate to attend an international social work conference in Kochi, India and present a workshop to an international HIV conference in Paris, France. I lived across 2 continents and worked with individuals and couples across the world. Due to my masters studies commitments, many of these conversation have been online over webcam. Colleagues are usually surprised when they hear I have conversations with individuals in cities as far spread as Moscow, Bangkok, Dublin, Stockholm, Baghdad, Perth, Capetown and Tokyo. But online clients continue to tell me that they feel more at ease working this way online. I’m convinced online counselling and therapy has a big future and can exist alongside ‘face to face’ therapy as another option for accessing help and support.
I’m now working in-person in Sydney Australia again, as a Medicare provider while I continue with my online clients. The Australian healthcare system is one of the best in the world, up there with the NHS in Britain and the public health system in Sweden. Each has its limitations but I feel quite privileged to work in cooperation with GPs to improve mental health outcomes for individuals. I am grateful to the AASW for representing my interests as a mental health practitioner.
My hope for the year ahead is to continue as a counsellor-therapist both online and in-person in this rewarding work with people and their stories. Specifically, I’ll keep pursing my professional interest in concerns about pornography ‘addiction’, ‘sex addiction‘ and mental health services for gay men. I plan to continue some supervision of social workers and complete my dissertation on community work with men who have sex with men. I’ll also be returning to my creative writing. I believe we make sense of our lives through telling stories, to ourselves and to others. This is also the therapeutic nature of narratives.
I look forward to more conversations with those currently consulting me and with new people who contact me. They are doctors, nurses, paramedics, software developers, IT engineers, mechanical engineers, teachers, academics, students, lawyers, journalists, artists, musicians, actors, sportspeople, business owners, business consultants, tradespeople and sales professionals. I find inspiration in their different experiences, stories and meanings, their different lives.
I’m grateful for the opportunity I have to journey with people through the toughest times in their lives. Regardless of whether you are in difficult circumstances right now, or you are travelling fine, I wish you well for 2014 and hope that you find peace and contentment in the year ahead.
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