A Father's Journal, Vol 3, No. 4
August, 1997
Over my morning coffee, the house peaceful and quite while my wife and daughter are at the gym, windows open to the cool late summer, just me and a half-listed to public radio station, I tune in just long enough to hear a thought provoking statistic: According to someone on the radio, there are 82 institutions of higher learning in the US which admit only women, but, now that various military academies have grudgingly opened their doors to female cadets, there is only one college left for men alone. While I cannot verify the veracity of these numbers, I sense that something like this is probably true. So why is this so?
I have not historically been much for institutionalized single sex experiences. As a teen, when my parents divorced and my mother found feminism, I came to see the strength and benefit to her and other women of being with only women. Later, when I was divorced, I found some solace in a yearly all male retreat, though, being a silent Jesuit retreat, it was not much for building camaraderie. Though I cannot claim to have done anything near a scientific survey, I have found the few all male groups I have participated in, though seeking to help us be better men, to feel forced and shallow, somehow ungrounded.
That is, until I met the sex offenders.
In pursuit of my Masters of Social Work, I have, for the last six months, sat in on a weekly therapy group for adult male sex offenders. The men in this group come from diverse backgrounds; some are college educated, some are not; they range from late teens to senior citizens; some are gay, some straight; and their offenses vary from the simply distasteful to the violently criminal.
What they all have in common is that they were caught. Perhaps because of this, there is among them a shared humility. I am reminded of how Robert Bly uses the term "katabasis" from Greek myth and drama, which implies a falling from grace, where the hero, due to his hubris, descends to live in the ashes or earth a while in order to be redeemed. Bly suggests men in general need this sort of purging experience in order to become whole and honest. I see this group of sex offenders as living this katabasis.
For sex offenders are the scourge of our society. If anyone has fallen from grace it is they. While we do, paradoxically, tolerate high levels of physical and sexual abuse in our culture, sex offenders are none the less universally despised. It is as if they are despised specifically because they were caught. They are forcing us to deal with a reality about our world that we'd much rather deny. Even in prison, where everyone's been caught, pedeophiles in particular are at the bottom of the inmate pecking order. I've seen this experience, of living under the weight of this social sanction, literally drive offenders crazy. What the group is about is helping offenders learn how to not reoffend, as well as how to cope with their new adverse position in society.
The first time I sat in on this group I was very wary. I knew most of the members were required to attend by the courts, and I expected a high degree of resentment about this. Much to my surprise, these men were cheerful and thoughtful, respectful of the group therapist, reflective about themselves, and honestly concerned about fellow group members.
Perhaps most amazing was the way older straight men and young gay men were able to discuss the intricacies of gay dating in a rural environment. It is rare to see men share so comfortably across the seeming cavernous divide of sexual preference. This side effect of our society's rampant homophobia may contribute more than any other factor to the fledgling quality of any men's movement: straight men and gay men simply fear each other too much. Among these sex offenders, however, it is specifically their sexuality, whether straight or whatever, that got them in trouble in the first place. In order to stay out of jail, they have to talk openly about their preferences, history, masturbation practices, spouses and so on.
To most of us this may seem like an agonizing prospect. But aren't these the very topics many men need and long to be able to discuss among themselves? Aren't these the topics early feminist discussion groups were organized around? Issues regarding men's sexuality, including sexism, rape, relationships, violence, are exactly what men's groups try to cover, with varying degrees of success. I've never seen this done so well as among the sex offenders who are working in this group.
At best our society is ambivalent about emotional honesty between males. On the one hand there are plenty of all male sports teams and clubs of various sorts, from golfing to drinking. On the other hand, our society prescribes emotional honesty between men as a consequence, as a sort of punishment, meted out to those who have broken what we believe to be our most sacred taboos. And, we cannot find the will and vision to maintain or establish all male institutions of higher learning. Whether it is homophobia or simply emotion-phobia, it seems we don't really want to learn too much about our fellow man, or maybe ourselves.
Nancy and Emily return. The daily din begins. I try to integrate into my life what I learned from watching these sex offenders work on themselves: Their honesty at all costs. Their humility. Their bravery. I find I do not mourn the loss of all male military academies, in fact, I suspect they may have contributed to the dismal state of many men's emotional lives. But I do regret the limited options men have to meet in our society and talk about the things which pain them. And I admire the men who have made space in their lives for these conversations, even when, or maybe especially when, they were once sex offenders.
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