HAVING OPPOSED Kim Campbell the individual potiti-
cian in her campaign to become prime minister, but having
secretly admired Kim Campbeil the woman for having the
guts to fight it out for the top jeb in the land, I face some
real arabiguity in myself, going i into the autumn federal

election.

Personally, | would like the
country to be run by a woman,
for a change, even if Ms. Camp-
bell the person strikes me as being
too full of herself to be anything
more than the latest in a string of
egomaniacal disaster zones we
called PM,

-But if you’re going to have an

egomaniacal disaster zone anyway,

why not try a female one? It cer-
tainly seems way overdue. :

We routinely talk about the im-
portance of giving an Englis':-
Canadian and a French-Canadian
each a turn at being poobah of us
all, but left out of the equation
entirely is the idea of alternating
between a male and female prime
minister. :

: That actually makes a heiluva
‘lot more sense. If sheer numbers
; were the sole factor in democracy,
then worrying about whether
Someone came from Quebec or
* somewhere else, as opposed to
_worrying about their gender,
‘would be ridiculous.
_ Maybe someday raw numbers
will be all there is to it.
In the meantime, it would be

STRICTLY PERSONAL

all of society's ills.

Back in the 1976s, when we
went off into a corner to huddle
we hetercsexual, white, anglo,
WASP-type males (those of us
who could read, anyway) would
start off by admitting frankly
among ourselves that they were
right: we were chauvinist pigs.
Then we'd joke about it.

Today, 4 it’s not like that.

44 We had help. We had help from women.
‘A lot of women. Women collaborated in

splendid to get a new rhythm
method going in Canadian poli-
* tics.
- It is fascinating to me that Kim
Campbell should have become
- prime minister at this particular
moment, when, for the first time
in a generation “(maybe centuries,
maybe forever) the tide of sexist
feminist ideological power would
appear to have reached some kind
of plateau, if not a high-tide
mark.
What I'mean is that most men
- have overriden their guilt. En
masse, we have quit buying the
argument that we are to blame for

staggering numbers. ad

The conversation instead drifts
to the latest tale of a divorced fa-
ther being screwed over custody or
alimony, or a guy being forced
into early retirement, to make way
for a ‘‘minority” stereotype of -.
some kind who'll theorciically
help the company’s image, at least
according to the whiz-kids in the
PR department.

: Or appease some ‘‘Human
Rights Commission.”’ I put that in
quotes because tribunals are

| essentially there to grind some in-

| dividual down, hopefully the
guilty party, but if not, somebody.

1 The corruption of the highest is

the worst, as we should all know
by now, ‘‘Hutnan rights’’ still be-
ing up there, however mistakenly.

Individual males that | know,
and this includes a fairly wide —
wider, I would say, (han most,
just because of the nature of my
work — spectrum, have talked
among themselves, and with me,
enough to have arrived at a new
consensus.

While it is true that we gringo
male pig-dogs, especially, for
some reason, those of us of Euro-
pean extraction, have created, and
do, indeed, maintain a
disastrously dehumanized,
destructive, industrialized, cor-
porate military system that is
raping the planetary biosphere, the
truth is we didn’t do it alone.

We had help. We had help from
women. A lot of women. Women
collaborated in staggering
numbers,

I'm still wading through a book
by psychologist Sam Keen called

’ Fire In The Belly: On Being A

Man.

I have been reading it, on and
off, for over a year. This isn'ta
criticism. A page-turning book is
fine entertainment, but if some-
thing provokes you to think for
yourself, you should take it slow-
ly, achunk at a time. It may take
me the rest of my life to read this
book. It is that good.

But here is one of its best
passages:

“Feminists ... are... right to
indict men for their role in ,
creating and maintaining this
system, and right to insist on
masculine guilt.

“They, however, are
disastrously wrong in excusing
women from responsibility and
culpability for the destructive
aspects of a cultural system that
can only be created and perpetu-
ated by consensual interaction of
men and women (especially the
men and women of the elite,
powerful, privileged, and ruling
classes),

“The rhetoric that pronounces
men responsible and women in-
nocent belies everything we know
about psychological dynamics and
the interaction between persons in
a system. Perhaps the greatest
single advance in psychological!
and social theory in the last 50
years has been the emergence of
systems-thinking. .

“Group therapy, family thera-

ENCOURAGING CARPOOLING AMONG OUR STAFF,

py, the Alcoholics Anonymous
movement are all based upon the
discovery that power, responsibil-
ity, action, blame are shared by all
participants within a system.

“Ia intimate systems, such as a
family or a sexual relationship, all
parties play dovetailed roles. The
bumps on her head fit the holes in
his head. An alcoholic wife re-
quires an enabling husband, a
rebellious teenager requires a fam-
ily that avoids its problems by
designating him the patient, the
woman ‘who loves too much’ re-
quires a ‘dance-away lover.’ In
short, the relationships of persons

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within the intimate systems are
co-dependent.’’

This is a pretty seminal insight,
if you ask me.

{tis one, basically, that most
men have now figured out for
themselves,

That’s why | think it is so
interesting that Kim Campbeli
could achieve political power right
now, when men no longer blame
themselves for women’s problems.
We're all in this together, sweet-
heart. And, sure, by all means,
you take a turn at the wheel, see
how much fun it really is!

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