Tom Matlock - Why Being a Good Man is Not a Feminist Issue

I disagree with the title of this piece by Tom Matlock - Why Being a Good Man is Not a Feminist Issue - but I mostly agree with what Tom has to say here.

I want to offer up a couple of quotes from this very long article, some of them out of order, in order to make my own points on this topic. So I am going to start at the end:

From a macro perspective The Good Men Project was founded just as The End of Men went to print and the likes of Tiger, Charlie Sheen and John Edwards hit the front pages. In other words just as most men I know, and the thousands I met during the course of working on GMP, were digging deep for real answers to the questions about meaning and importance as a man, our whole gender was getting thrown under the bus.

According to the media we are less employable, less educated, inferior stay-at-home parents, and sexual deviants to boot. We are really good at going to jail, leading our country into meaningless wars, and taking down massive financial institutions.

The stereotype of what it means to be a man actually crystalized into a narrower stick figure as the ground under our collective feet gave way.

I look at the revolution in the work and family life patterns of men as not the end of men but the birth of something new and better. That is what GMP is all about: exploring that potential from every possible angle. And why viewing manhood from the perspective of a feminist wrecking ball, that leaves every one of us men guilty of gender oppression, a death spiral in my view.

In the end I think we all want the same thing: a new kind of macho in which men are allowed to express themselves as fully formed human beings who change diapers, are capable of intimacy, do meaningful work, and aspire to goodness in whatever way they define it.

But I refuse to see the world with a reductionist lens that dismisses the possibility that men can have their own stories of struggle for goodness that can be shared man-to-man in a way that changes the teller and the listener alike quite apart from what a woman or a feminist might say about that story.

I agree with all of this - the media has horribly misrepresented the shifting culture of masculinity in the U.S. This is not the end of men, it is the end of the unitary option of a traditional, authoritarian, emotionally numbed, and relationally-challenged version of masculinity that existed in the 20th Century. There are had been multiple forms of masculinity and there are now re-emerging multiple shades of masculinities . . . we are not one kind of man anymore than all women are submissive housewives.

But this is a process of transformation and it will take time. It may take decades before men accept all of the new options open to them - work-at-home-dad, house husband, primary caretaker for the kids, single father, domestic partner, gender rebel (able to embody both masculine and feminine traits), poly-sexual (not specifically gay, straight, or bi), and just about anything else men can imagine and feel comfortable living.

And I agree, in part, with Tom when he says men need to do some of this work as men with men, not with women:

What happened in that classroom in South Boston and in the bowels of Sing Sing with those inmates was a kind of man-to-man honesty that benefits women but isn’t going to happen if the frame is feminism or, when men are grappling with the deepest darkest secrets of their lives, if women are present. At least for me, there’s a kind of deep bonding that happens when a guy looks me straight in the eyes that is different than a similar conversation I might have with a woman. The transformation is only possible when I see that I am fundamentally not alone in my struggles to be a good man.

There is a lot of truth in this, and some truth in this as well:

I have often said that the conversation amongst men about what it means to be a good father and husband has obvious benefits for wives and mothers. The aspiration is to figure out how to do and be better men, and that means in relation to the women in our lives.

But here comes the problem. The stories that transformed my life where not told by women. They were told by men. My fundamental view is that there is a male experience that is too often squashed in our society by a culture that perpetuates a deeply flawed view of manhood. What I hope to do is not dictate what replaces that simplistic view of what it means to be a man, but simply create the space for a more nuanced discussion.

I don't really disagree with Tom on these points, but I want to say, "Yes, and . . . ."

The "and" has to do with the fact that we are relational beings, and certainly it helps us and deepens us as men to be relational with other men (so few of us ever learn how to do this as young men, and it's something that I still feel challenged by sometimes), but we eventually have to leave those classrooms or church basements with other men and rejoin a world where women are slightly more than 50% of the people we will meet.

And you know what? If the women in our lives do not support the version of masculinity we are trying to adopt, it will be nearly impossible to do it - most of us will give it up to keep the women we love and need. I have seen women complain that their men are not sensitive enough, or that they don't share their feelings, but when the men change, them women realize they now have lost respect for them because in their hearts, they like the hyper-masculine guys who are strong and brooding.

We need for the women who love us, who want us to change, to look into their own needs and wants and explore exactly what it is they really want. We sometimes feel that we are stuck in a double bind - we are told to change, but when we do we are no longer desirable.

This is where being a good man does become a feminist issue.

We need feminism to reclaim the moderate perspectives that seek equal pay for equal work, that want the right to choose what happens to theirs bodies free from government interference (although we would also like to be included in the decision-making process when it is also our fetus), and that sought the right to serve in the military for their country and now face rape by their fellow soldiers far too often.

We need feminism to stop hating men - we are not the patriarchy, they're a bunch of ultra-wealthy, mostly-white guys (and a few gals). They oppress us, too. Consider that 99% of the people doing the 25 most dangerous jobs are male, and many of them are minorities. Consider that only men are required to register for Selective Service in order to get college grants and loans. Men are not the patriarchy, we are its forced servants.

We need feminism to accept that fathers are as essential to the emotional (and physical) health of our children as are mothers. We know that sometimes being a single parent is the only option - but we also know that we too often are denied custody or visitation by the courts (and the mothers) for no justifiable reason. Feminists helped write many of these laws.

It probably sounds like I am anti-feminist, but I am not. Feminism in general is important and necessary, and I think of myself as a feminist. Radical feminism, however, which has become the mainstream in academic circles and on university campuses, is often hateful toward men and focused on removing our rights as fathers.

As long as there are highly visible and often hateful versions of feminism dismissing men as unnecessary or inherently violent, feminism will be an issue for any men working to be good men.  

Call for Proposals: “Multiple Masculinities and Intersecting Identities” for the 2013 Men and Masculinities Conference

For those who might be interested in presenting at a conference . . .

Call for Proposals for AMSA’s 2013 Men and Masculinities Conference

June 28, 2012 by Editor  
 

 

AMSA is now accepting proposals for the American Men’s Studies Association‘s 21st Annual Interdisciplinary Men’s Studies Conference to be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan April 4-7, 2013. The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2012.

The conference theme, “Multiple Masculinities and Intersecting Identities,” reflects the importance of exploring gender as it shapes and is shaped by other aspects of life experiences. Proposals related to this theme might include the intersection(s) of gender with age, race, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, economic status, career choice, religious identity, disability, or other identities. While we particularly encourage proposals that address the conference theme we also invite proposals on a range of other topics relevant to the critical study of men and masculinities which reflect the AMSA’s mission (see the AMSA mission statement at www.mensstudies.org).

Four types of submissions will be considered:

1. Individual paper presentations (20 minutes allotted)
2. Panel presentations of three or four papers on a specific topic or theme organized by the presenters (90 minutes allotted)
3. Applied workshops addressing topics relevant to working with males, teaching men’s studies, or related applied experiences (90 minutes allotted)
4. Poster presentations.

Proposals are invited from scholars, practitioners, activists, students, and other individuals interested in men’s studies and the critical examination of men’s lives and identities as men. Presentations from other venues (i.e., art, films, etc) will also be considered. AMSA conference presenters typically come from a range of academic disciplines, as well as clinical, educational, social services, and related fields but are not limited to these areas.

• Download the complete call for proposals (pdf).

• Submit proposals online or for more information about the conference, at the 2013 AMSA Conference Information Page

• For more information, please email the AMSA Conference Chair, Dr. Daphne C. Watkins.

A disturbing number of men tend toward the opinion that if we are devoted to helping men, then we must, by default, oppose feminism. There seems to be a tendency toward defining all feminism (and feminists) by the rantings of the most extreme voices in the feminist cause - the radical feminists.

Clearly not all men's movement guys are SNAGs (sensitive New Age guys) or misogynists, so it is equally true that not all feminists are man-haters. Why is that so hard to accept?

The Good Men Project has convened a roundtable on men and feminism - some views I understand, some I do not. I'll let you decide which ones are worthwhile.

Men and Feminism: A Good Men Project Roundtable

June 28, 2012 By the Editors  

 

If there’s one thing we’re all about here at the Good Men Project, it’s discussion. So when our erstwhile founder Tom Matlack wrote a controversial post about how he sees the role of feminism in discussions of men’s issues, we figured this was something worth talking about. Below you’ll find Tom’s original post, as well as a collection of response pieces from a number of our favorite contributors, representing many different points of view on this important issue.

Why Being a Good Man is NOT a Feminist Issue

Tom Matlack envisions a place where men can share stories of their struggle for goodness man-to-man apart from what women or feminists might say about that story.

♦◊♦

Why Being a Good Man is Definitely a Feminist Issue

Noah Brand makes the case that gender theory applies to both genders.

♦◊♦

These Are The Stories that Change Everything

Lisa Hickey responds to an article in The Atlantic about ‘having it all’ and debates feminism and Tom Matlack along the way.

♦◊♦

Is Men vs. Feminism Even a Relevant Discussion?

Jesse Kornbluth asks why, with women’s rights under attack in America and around the world, we should argue about who gets to be in the club against these abuses.

Daily Om - Releasing Guilt: Permission to Forgive Ourselves

This was the Daily Om from a while back. I wanted to share this because I see so much of myself in what this brief message conveys. It's easy for me to forgive others, but it can seem like turning lead into gold to forgive myself - a nice idea in theory, but unrealistic in practice.

And yet, holding myself accountable is essential to growing and learning. And guilt can be a part of that - but when it is held over time it can transform into shame - the sense that I am bad.

It's important to distinguish between guilt (I did something that was wrong or that feels bad) and shame (I am wrong, I am a worthless person). Guilt can be useful in inspiring a change in behavior, but shame is destructive.

As I said above, my experience is that guilt not released when the necessary changes have been made can transform into shame. Learning to forgive our own mistakes is essential to avoiding the toxicity of shame. I have been working at this for years and I am finally getting it.

Releasing Guilt: Permission to Forgive Ourselves

by Madisyn Taylor

Dwelling in guilt is like living your life with an anchor tied to your ankles dragging you down.
Learning to accept the things that we perceive as wrong can be a difficult task for many of us. Often we have been brought up to accept that it is normal to feel guilty about our actions and that by doing so we will make everything seem alright within ourselves. Even though we might feel that we have a reason to make up for the choices we have made, it is much more important for us to learn how to deal with them in a healthy and positive way, such as through forgiveness and understanding.

When we can look back at our past and really assess what has happened, we begin to realize that there are many dimensions to our actions. While feeling guilty might assuage our feelings at first, it is really only a short-term solution. It is all too ironic that being hard on ourselves is the easy way out. If we truly are able to gaze upon our lives through the lens of compassion, however, we will be able to see that there is much more to what we do and have done than we realize. Perhaps we were simply trying to protect ourselves or others and did the best we could at the time, or maybe we thought we had no other recourse and chose a solution in the heat of the moment. Once we can understand that dwelling in our negative feelings will only make us feel worse, we will come to recognize that it is really only through forgiving ourselves that we can transform our feelings and truly heal any resentment we have about our past.

Giving ourselves permission to feel at peace with our past actions is one of the most positive steps we can take toward living a life free from regrets, disappointments, and guilt. The more we are able to remind ourselves that the true path to a peaceful mind and heart is through acceptance of every part of our lives and actions, the more harmony and inner joy we will experience in all aspects of our lives.


What do you think? Discuss this article and share your opinion

Neuroecology - How little we know about the neuroscience of fatherhood

Neuroecology offered this brief research review on Father's Day weekend - it's a little late, but it's still good information on the neuroscience of being a dad. The study looked at the two primary hormones/neuropeptides associated with paternal behavior - prolactin and oxytocin. The results revealed different behaviors associated with each chemical:

Each were associated with a specific paternal behavior: prolactin with facilitation of a child’s exploratory behavior and oxytocin with how much the fathers matched their facial emotions with that of their children.  Since this is only a correlational study, we cannot say for sure whether or not these neuropeptides are directly causing these behaviors.

Interesting - and we know that each of these chemicals is associated with lower testosterone levels, which can lead to post-natal depression and other health issues. On the other hand, we want men to engage in these paternal behaviors, especially mirroring, which was correlated with oxytocin.

The trick, then, is to balance paternal hormones with enough T to prevent depression and other health issues.

How little we know about the neuroscience of fatherhood

June 19, 2012

 

Fathers caring for their children is the general rule across most vertebrates; almost all nonmammalian vertebrates use fathers as a prime caregiver.  And yet, the world of neuroscience knows little about paternal care. This is partly because the males of our common laboratory species, the lab mouse and rat, are more likely to eat their young than show any special care for them.  The resulting deficit in knowledge is obvious with any cursory look through a textbook on the neurobiology of parental behavior: after ten chapters detailing maternal behavior, there might be one perfunctory chapter detailing how little we know about paternal behavior.  But here’s a cool fact I learned from one of those chapters: did you know that male Djungarian hamsters assist in delivering pups by tearing away the membranes just after birth.  They play midwife!

It seems like the precise neural circuitry for maternal and paternal care are different; lesioning the amygdala decreases paternal care and increases maternal care.  Likewise, many neurohormones that cause maternal behavior have little effect on males.  But some of these pathways are likely to be the same.  I’ll quickly discuss a paper which describes the influence of the neuropeptides prolactin and oxytocin on paternal care.  Oxytocin is the ‘love hormone’ and strongly stimulates pair-bonding, influences social recognition, and has strong effects on general sociality.  Although it is typically thought of as having a pro-social influence, the reality is a bit more complicated (of course!).  Prolactin is a bit of a sex hormone, providing the body with sexual gratification after intercourse and counteracting the effects of testosterone, estrogen, and dopamine.  It clearly has a stronger social effect as well or I wouldn’t be talking about it in relation to child-rearing!

In order to assess the relationship between these two neuropeptides and fatherhood, Gordon et al. first measured  their concentration in fathers across time and found them to be fairly stable.  When they compared the of these neuropeptides to the propensity of the fathers to play with their children, they found them to be strongly related.  Each were associated with a specific paternal behavior: prolactin with facilitation of a child’s exploratory behavior and oxytocin with how much the fathers matched their facial emotions with that of their children.  Since this is only a correlational study, we cannot say for sure whether or not these neuropeptides are directly causing these behaviors.  However, these are similar to what are seen with maternal behaviors, allowing the researchers to compare their results to the richer maternal literature in the future.  It will be interesting to see if future work can relate receptor variants for these neuropeptides to differences in paternal behavior.  Perhaps we can get a genetics of daddyhood?

Reference
Gordon I, Zagoory-Sharon O, Leckman JF, & Feldman R (2010). Prolactin, Oxytocin, and the development of paternal behavior across the first six months of fatherhood. Hormones and behavior, 58 (3), 513-8 PMID: 20399783

Men Willing to Betray Morals to Maintain Masculinity

A recent article in Scientific American suggests men are willing to compromise - "cut corners" is the phrase they use - on their moral beliefs if they feel their masculinity is at stake.

Although this collection of studies makes men seem like weasels, we should keep in mind (as the authors point out, although not until the last paragraph, by which time most readers have already clicked on to something else) that each of these studies used competitive negotiation scenarios, a domain inhabited by men seen as strong, even cutthroat, are those who are successful. For a man to fail in this "historically male-dominated situation" results in lower income (money = power), loss of professional respect, and - at the bottom line - loss means being seen as weak.

We all know that for many men, at least traditional men, one must be seen as strong in order to hold the respect of other men. If your masculinity is threatened, and your sense of value is based on being viewed as masculine and powerful, it's likely you will cut moral corners here and there (unless your fear of "losing face" is less than your fear of eternal damnation - religious can be a powerful deterrent).

 

When Men Are Less Moral Than Women

If males feel their masculinity may be at stake, they are more likely to cut ethical corners

By Cindi May  | June 19, 2012

What do Barry Bonds, Bernie Madoff, and James Murdoch have in common? They were all, in their respective areas, in it to win it – whatever the cost. Their appetite for success apparently disabled the moral compass that would have otherwise kept their dishonesty, greed, and hubris in check.

The magnitude of these highly publicized ethical infractions may lead one to wonder whether folks like Barry, Bernie, and Jimmy were absent the day their kindergarten teachers talked about lying, cheating, and stealing. Recent research, however, suggests that ethical violations are somewhat predictable, that in fact there are specific circumstances, contexts, and individual characteristics that beckon us away from the moral high road.

One of the most notable risk factors for ethical laxity is one that all of the above offenders share: Being a man. A number of studies demonstrate that men have lower moral standards than women, at least in competitive contexts. For example, men are more likely than women to minimize the consequences of moral misconduct, to adopt ethically questionable tactics in strategic endeavors, and to engage in greater deceit. This pattern is particularly pronounced in arenas in which success has (at least historically) been viewed as a sign of male vigor and competence, and where loss signifies weakness, impotence, or cowardice (e.g., a business negotiation or a chess match). When men must use strategy or cunning to prove or defend their masculinity, they are willing to compromise moral standards to assert dominance.

Shall we blame it on testosterone, the Y chromosome, or other genetic differences? The current evidence doesn't point in that direction. Instead, a recent series of studies by Laura Kray and Michael Haselhuhn suggests that the root of this pattern may be more socio-cultural in nature, as men - at least in American culture - seem motivated to protect and defend their masculinity. These scientists suggest that losing a "battle," particularly in contexts that are highly competitive and historically male oriented, presents a threat to masculine competency. Apparently manhood is relatively fragile and precarious, and when it is challenged, men tend to become more aggressive and defensive. So a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. To ensure victory, men will sacrifice moral standards if doing so means winning.

To test this theory, Kray and Haselhuhn conducted several experiments in which they examined not only the kinds of moral decisions made by men and women, but also the personal and situational factors that influenced those decisions. In one study, participants evaluated an ethical scenario in which an elderly couple was selling their home of 40 years with the expectation that the buyer would maintain their cherished abode. The buyer, however, intended to raze the structure and build a new home on the property. Participants had to indicate whether the buyer was morally obligated to reveal the conflicting intentions. Participants also completed a separate questionnaire that assessed the extent to which they perceived negotiating as a masculine endeavor.

Consistent with other findings, men in this investigation were more tolerant of withholding information from the seller. Moreover, this leniency was more prevalent for men who perceived negotiating as a masculine endeavor. Thus men found it more acceptable to deceive if they believed that successful negotiating was an indicator of male prowess.

In two follow up studies, participants considered different viewpoints as they made moral decisions. In one scenario, participants were to consider the moral necessity of revealing a buyer's intentions (which were in conflict with the seller's) in a real estate deal. The twist is that they were asked to do so from the perspective of either the buyer's agent or the seller's agent. In another scenario, participants were to judge whether it was ethical to deceive a potential buyer by fabricating other offers. Here, participants were to imagine that they themselves had lied or that another person had lied, and they were to evaluate the moral appropriateness of the lie.

In both studies, men generally set lower ethical standards than women, as they were significantly less likely to recommend disclosure of conflicting intentions in the first scenario, and to condemn a lie in the second. Notably, across both studies men altered their ethical evaluations depending upon their perspective. In the first scenario, men in the seller role were far more likely to recommend that the buyer's true intentions be revealed than men in the buyer role. In the second scenario, men were far more willing to justify a lie when making judgments about their own actions than those of another.

Thus, men's moral judgments varied in such a way as to maximize their own advantage in each negotiation process; when necessary for personal gain, ethical missteps were acceptable. By contrast, women made similar ethical judgments across all perspectives. Even when the ethical choice was clearly detrimental to personal success, women maintained their ethical standards.

A final study used the aptly-named SINS scale (self-reported inappropriate negotiation strategies), which assesses individuals' willingness to violate ethical principles in a variety of negotiation settings. Once again, men were more willing than women to engage in shady tactics: they were more accepting of techniques like making false promises, misrepresenting information, and sabotaging their opponents. This was especially true for men who believed that negotiation prowess was an innate and integral part of their masculine nature – that good negotiators are born, not cultivated. Men who believed that their negotiation skills were a fundamental, fixed part of their identity had higher SINS scores than those who believe that negotiation tactics could be learned or developed.

Before we uniformly cast men as self-serving, cut-throat schemers devoid of moral backbones, it is important to consider the fact that these investigations all used competitive negotiation scenarios, where strong men have, stereotypically, been successful. Failure in these historically male-dominated situations is associated with diminished financial status, threat to professional rank, and - at least to some - weakness. It is possible that women may demonstrate similar vulnerabilities to their moral standards when faced with dilemmas that challenge their feminine competency or identity, or in arenas were women are (stereotypically) expected to be successful (e.g., skill as a mother, navigating social interactions, effectiveness as a writer). Nonetheless, these findings suggest that if ethical standards are a significant factor in your choice of financial advisors or real estate agents, it may be safer to go with Bernadette than with Bernie.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Cindi May is a Professor of Psychology at the College of Charleston. She studies ways to optimize cognitive functioning in college students, older adults, and individuals with intellectual disabilities.

 

I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news. It's good to know that we should not be doomed by age to suffer the effects of low testosterone (muscle loss, increased fat storage, heart disease, depression, loss of sex drive, decreased bone density, and on and on). On the other hand, low testosterone in aging men is so ubiquitous that we assumed it to be a normal part of growing old.

The study only looked at a five year span, but it still seems useful to know that, according to this research, lifestyle factors play a greater role in declining testosterone than age.

Declining Testosterone Levels in Men Not Part of Normal Aging

ScienceDaily (June 23, 2012) — A new study finds that a drop in testosterone levels over time is more likely to result from a man's behavioral and health changes than by aging. The study results will be presented June 25 at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

"Declining testosterone levels are not an inevitable part of the aging process, as many people think," said study co-author Gary Wittert, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Adelaide in Adelaide, Australia. "Testosterone changes are largely explained by smoking behavior and changes in health status, particularly obesity and depression."

Many older men have low levels of the sex hormone testosterone, but the cause is not known. Few population-based studies have tracked changes in testosterone levels among the same men over time, as their study did, Wittert said.

In this study, supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the authors analyzed testosterone measurements in more than 1,500 men who had measurements taken at two clinic visits five years apart. All blood testosterone samples underwent testing at the same time for each time point, according to Wittert.

After the researchers excluded from the analysis any men who had abnormal lab values or who were taking medications or had medical conditions known to affect hormones, they included 1,382 men in the data analysis. Men ranged in age from 35 to 80 years, with an average age of 54.

On average, testosterone levels did not decline significantly over five years; rather, they decreased less than 1 percent each year, the authors reported. However, when the investigators analyzed the data by subgroups, they found that certain factors were linked to lower testosterone levels at five years than at the beginning of the study.

"Men who had declines in testosterone were more likely to be those who became obese, had stopped smoking or were depressed at either clinic visit," Wittert said. "While stopping smoking may be a cause of a slight decrease in testosterone, the benefit of quitting smoking is huge."

Past research has linked depression and low testosterone. This hormone is important for many bodily functions, including maintaining a healthy body composition, fertility and sex drive. "It is critical that doctors understand that declining testosterone levels are not a natural part of aging and that they are most likely due to health-related behaviors or health status itself," he said.

Unmarried men in the study had greater testosterone reductions than did married men. Wittert attributed this finding to past research showing that married men tend to be healthier and happier than unmarried men. "Also, regular sexual activity tends to increase testosterone," he explained.

The study findings were presented by Andre Araujo, PhD, who was a visiting professor at the University of Adelaide and is vice president of epidemiology at New England Research Institutes, Watertown, Mass.

Citation:

Endocrine Society (2012, June 23). Declining testosterone levels in men not part of normal aging. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 24, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2012/06/120623144944.htm 

Alan Turing: Church, State, and the Tragedy of Gender-Defiant Genius

Today is the 100th birthday of Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician who died far too young just shy of his 42nd birthday in 1954. Blogs and magazines across the internets are singing Turing's praises today - and rightfully so. It is not hyperbole to suggest that Turing reshaped the world we live it with his innovations in computational intelligence.

Here is a little bit from Daniel Dennett (at The Atlantic Monthly) on Turing's impact:

The Pre-Turing world was one in which computers were people, who had to understand mathematics in order to do their jobs. Turing realized that this was just not necessary: you could take the tasks they performed and squeeze out the last tiny smidgens of understanding, leaving nothing but brute, mechanical actions. In order to be a perfect and beautiful computing machine, it is not requisite to know what arithmetic is. 
 
What Darwin and Turing had both discovered, in their different ways, was the existence of competence without comprehension. This inverted the deeply plausible assumption that comprehension is in fact the source of all advanced competence. Why, after all, do we insist on sending our children to school, and why do we frown on the old-fashioned methods of rote learning? We expect our children's growing competence to flow from their growing comprehension. The motto of modern education might be: "Comprehend in order to be competent." For us members of H. sapiens, this is almost always the right way to look at, and strive for, competence. I suspect that this much-loved principle of education is one of the primary motivators of skepticism about both evolution and its cousin in Turing's world, artificial intelligence. The very idea that mindless mechanicity can generate human-level -- or divine level! -- competence strikes many as philistine, repugnant, an insult to our minds, and the mind of God.

A celebration of the life and work of the pioneering computer scientist
See full coverage

Consider how Turing went about his proof. He took human computers as his model. There they sat at their desks, doing one simple and highly reliable step after another, checking their work, writing down the intermediate results instead of relying on their memories, consulting their recipes as often as they needed, turning what at first might appear a daunting task into a routine they could almost do in their sleep. Turing systematically broke down the simple steps into even simpler steps, removing all vestiges of discernment or comprehension. Did a human computer have difficulty telling the number 99999999999 from the number 9999999999? Then break down the perceptual problem of recognizing the number into simpler problems, distributing easier, stupider acts of discrimination over multiple steps. He thus prepared an inventory of basic building blocks from which to construct the universal algorithm that could execute any other algorithm. He showed how that algorithm would enable a (human) computer to compute any function, and noted that:

The behavior of the computer at any moment is determined by the symbols which he is observing and his "state of mind" at that moment. We may suppose that there is a bound B to the number of symbols or squares which the computer can observe at one moment. If he wishes to observe more, he must use successive observations. ... The operation actually performed is determined ... by the state of mind of the computer and the observed symbols. In particular, they determine the state of mind of the computer after the operation is carried out.

He then noted, calmly:

We may now construct a machine to do the work of this computer.

Right there we see the reduction of all possible computation to a mindless process. We can start with the simple building blocks Turing had isolated, and construct layer upon layer of more sophisticated computation, restoring, gradually, the intelligence Turing had so deftly laundered out of the practices of human computers. 

For all his brilliance, he was a man living in the wrong era, and the system punished him for how nature had created him - a gay man at a time when it was illegal to be gay.

Of all the tributes to Turing the mathematical and computational genius, the column from Maria Popova at Brain Pickings, posted yesterday, is the most moving to me.

She examines the life of the man, the human being struggling to find his place in a world that could not accept him as nature had made him. A man who is described as seeming often out of place, uncomfortable in his clothes, or living in the wrong century (belonging either three centuries back or two forward).

Here is some of Popova's article, much of it quoted from David Leavitt's biography of Turing, The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer:

In 1952, Turing was criminally prosecuted by the U.K. government for his homosexuality, illegal at the time, and forced to take female hormones to “cure” his unlawful “disorder” — a process known as chemical castration — as an alternative to a prison sentence. Less than two years later, shortly before his forty-second birthday, Turing committed suicide. In The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (public library), David Leavitt offers a poignant lens on how Turing’s homosexuality factored into his intellectual and creative triumphs and tribulations:

In a letter written to his friend Norman Routeledge near the end of his life, Turing linked his arrest with his accomplishments in an extraordinary syllogism:

Turing believes machines think
Turing lies with men
Therefore machines cannot think

His fear seems to have been that his homosexuality would be used not just against him but against his ideas. Nor was his notion of the rather antiquated biblical locution ‘to lie with’ accidental: Turing was fully aware of the degree to which both his homosexuality and his belief in computer intelligence posed a threat to organized religion. After all, his insistence on questioning humankind’s exclusive claim to the faculty of thought had brought on him a barrage of criticism in the 1940s, perhaps because his call to ‘fair play’ to machines encoded a subtle critique of social norms that denied to another population — that of homosexual men and women — the right to a legitimate existence. For Turing — remarkably, given the era in which he came of age — seems to have taken it as a given that there was nothing wrong with being homosexual; more remarkably, this conviction came to inform even some of his most arcane mathematical writings. To some extent his ability to make unexpected connections reflected the startlingly original — and at the same time startlingly literal — nature of his imagination.

To further illustrate this odd duality of the disenfranchised and the prodigious that defined Turing’s existence, Leavitt cites the writings of novelist Lyn Irvine, whose husband was the mathematician Max Newman, and her brief recollection of Turing published in the late 1950s — an insightful portrait of him as a man unable to fit into the standard social molds, torn between the past and the future:

Alan certainly had less of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in him than most of his contemporaries. One must go back three centuries (or on [forward] two perhaps) to place him…

This tension of belonging, elusively just beyond reach, comes up a few paragraphs later, where Irvine writes:

He never looked right in his clothes, neither in his Burberry, well-worn, dirty, and a size too small, nor when he took pains and wore a clean white shirt or his best tweed suit. An Alchemist’s robe, or chain mail would have suited him, the first one fitting in with his abstracted manner, the second with that dark and powerful head, with its chin like a ship’s prow and its nose short and curved like the nose of an enquiring animal. The chain mail would have gone with his eyes too, blue to the brightness and richness of stained glass.

Leavitt laments:

The alchemist took logical principles, wire, and electronic circuits, and made a machine. The knight defended the right of that machine to a future.
If only he had been able to save himself.

The most tragic irony — or, perhaps, greatest frontier for redemption — is that today, we’re still debating the very civil liberty and basic human right the violation of which precipitated Turing’s suicide, but we’re waging our wars, fueling and following that debate, largely via the machine he invented. More than half a century later, how many Turings are we forcing to be smaller than they are, and how many are we losing completely?

This is a sad and tragic tribute to a man who was punished for his innate and natural desires for physical affection. Popova's point at the end here is spot on - we are still fighting over the rights of LGBT folks to live as full and free citizens in this country.

Never again should someone choose death as a more pleasant option than life simply because s/he is denied the freedom to live as s/he was born to live, and to love as s/he was born to love. 

Justice is served . . . .

Sandusky Convicted of Sexually Abusing Boys

Jerry Sandusky walked with his wife, Dottie, into the Center County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Penn., on Friday.

By JOE DRAPE
Published: June 22, 2012

BELLEFONTE, Penn. — Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach, was convicted Friday of sexually abusing nine young boys, completing the downfall of a onetime local hero in a pedophilia scandal that seized national attention. 

The jury in Centre County Court returned its verdict on its second day of deliberation. He was convicted of 45 of the 48 counts against him. 

The charges against Sandusky, 68, shook Penn State to its roots last year, ending the careers of Joe Paterno, the university’s famed head coach, and its longtime president Graham B. Spanier, and prompting debate and soul-searching over the role of big-time college sports and of trusted men in children’s lives.

Sandusky, who had been Paterno’s longtime defensive coordinator, founded a charity, the Second Mile, to work with troubled youths, which prosecutors said he used as his private hunting ground, scouting for potential victims. What no one disputed was that he was continually in the company of one or more of those boys, taking them to workouts and football games, giving them gifts, having them sleep at his home and even showering with them.

Eight men who said they had been victimized by Sandusky as boys testified during the trial, offering graphic and disturbing accounts of repeated assaults by Sandusky — on the Penn State campus or in the basement of Sandusky’s home.

Documentary - My Reincarnation (A Father and Son Story)

A new film aired last night (June 21) on the PBS documentary series, Point of View (POV) - My Reincarnation - that chronicles the life of exiled Tibetan Buddhist Master Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and his son, Yeshi Silvano Namkhai (who is thought to be the reincarnation of Norbu's uncle, Khyentse Rinpoche Chökyi Wangchug— a revered Tibetan Buddhist Master who died in a Chinese prison) over an 20 year period.






Silvano resists the identity his father wishes him to assume, that of a reincarnate Tibetan master, and wants to live a Western life, which is quite understandable for a young man who has grown up in Italy among other Italians. But he also does not deny the identity that has is his birthright as a reincarnate master.

I have not seen this yet - it did air in Tucson last night - but this film covers two major interest areas for me, Tibetan Buddhism and father/son relationships. I look forward to seeing it.

POV: My Reincarnation

PBS Premiere: June 21, 2012

Check local listings »

Online: June 22, 2012 – Sept. 20, 2012

Watch now »

Synopsis

My Reincarnation tells of the tireless work of exiled Tibetan Buddhist Master Namkhai Norbu to transmit the highest path of Tibetan Buddhism — called Dzogchen — around the world. Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche ("Rinpoche" is a Tibetan honorific title for Reincarnate Teachers meaning "precious one") feels enormous responsibility for keeping an ancient spiritual and cultural tradition alive in the face of a 50-year long diaspora that threatens Tibetan identity.

But Fox's film goes beyond reporting on the state of Tibetan Buddhism in exile. It enters Namkhai Norbu's story in unprecedented fashion. Filmed over 20 years, My Reincarnation follows a long, gentle, sometimes amusing, yet intense struggle between him and his Italian-born son, Yeshi.

Namkhai Norbu, along with the Tibetan Buddhist community, is convinced Yeshi is the reincarnation of his own master and destined to take up Namkhai Norbu's work. Yeshi, however, was raised in Italy and feels and looks more like an up-and-coming young businessman than anybody's spiritual master. Yet he can't quite turn away from his father's legacy. There are physical proofs of his reincarnation according to Buddhist tradition and his own spiritual yearnings. And there is the quiet, implacable determination of his father.

Yeshi Namkhai being brought to the monastery of his previous reincarnation where he will be enthroned during a large ceremony. Credit: Luigi Ottaviani
Fox began filming Namkhai Norbu in 1988 when, as a filmmaker and student of the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, she took a four-year sabbatical from filmmaking and worked as his secretary. She started out recording his everyday life, including his work, family and travels, intent on documenting a spiritual life to which she'd been given unusual access. She returned 13 years later, and periodically after that, until 2009, amassing more than 1,000 hours of footage from Italy and the family's travels all over the world, including Venezuela, Russia and the United States (in Massachusetts and New York).

Using this footage plus archival material, My Reincarnation achieves a remarkably intimate and vivid account of Namkhai Norbu's life and work. Fleeing Tibet in 1959 in the wake of the Chinese takeover, along with thousands of other Tibetans including the H.H. the Dalai Lama, he settled in Italy, married an Italian woman, Rosa, had two children and began the work that brought him worldwide recognition as a Spiritual Master and Scholar. The film shows 20 years of constant travel as he lectures, counsels, leads ritual Buddhist observances and Tibetan gatherings and hosts the Dalai Lama. He ages, of course, but also appears to take on an extra burdens — not only the hopes, fears and challenges of spiritual seekers and Tibetans scattered in foreign lands, but also the survival of Tibetan Buddhism itself.

And so a movie-within-the-movie unfolds, because the struggle to preserve Tibetan Buddhism — to pass it on as a living legacy — extends to Namkhai Norbu's family. Tibetan Buddhism depends greatly on unbroken lines of reincarnated lamas, who continue to teach and interpret the scriptures. Namkhai Norbu is himself a reincarnate master, and Yeshi, his first-born son, was recognized from birth as the reincarnation of his great-uncle, another famous Buddhist master, who died imprisoned by the Chinese after their invasion of Tibet. Various traditional proofs of reincarnation, particularly involving a child's familiarity with the late lama's objects, convinced not only Namkhai Norbu but also other Tibetans that Yeshi is a reincarnate master. The only one who isn't convinced is Yeshi himself.




Yeshi is first seen in My Reincarnation as an intense, intelligent 18-year-old (he ages to 39 and Namkhai Norbu ages from 49 to 70 in the film) listening to his father's teaching or helping with ceremonies, but hanging on the margins of events. Later, he's an intense, intelligent young man on a fast-track to business success and all the things this can bring in Western society. Alternately amused and awe-struck by his Tibetan status, he can't quite shake the overwhelming implications of it. He's drawn along in his father's wake but resists all the way. He doesn't want to take up Buddhist study or teaching or to go to Tibet, as his father urges. Yeshi is especially unnerved by the idea of visiting the very monastery where his great-uncle had been master and where students await Yeshi as their master's reincarnation.

One of the delights of My Reincarnation is sharing Yeshi's views of his father and thoughts about the spiritual legacy to which he is heir. Even more striking is witnessing Yeshi's spiritual evolution, the highlight of which is his visit to the Tibetan monastery of his great uncle, where the local monks and villagers greet him with ancient ceremony and respect as their reincarnate Master. Such a profound demonstration of faith and spiritual continuity cannot help but have a great impact on Yeshi, and begins to awaken the heir to Namkhai Norbu's great mission.

NPR - Can Men And Women Be Friends?

An old debate - can men and women ONLY be friends? Personally, I think it's lame - most of my friends over the years have been women, and yes, some of them I found attractive, but no, contra the research, I did not think they were attracted to me. Just because a woman (or a man) is attractive does not mean there is anything other than friendship in my mind (but your results may vary).

Where do you fall on this question?

Can Men And Women Be Friends?

June 17, 2012

by Linda Holmes

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Weekend Edition Sunday

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It's a question that kicks around endlessly without resolution: Can men and women really be just friends? On Weekend Edition Sunday, NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Faith Salie and Mario Correa, hosts of WNYC's RelationShow, about this very topic.

As it happens, Faith and Mario are friends, but they put that down in part to the fact that Faith is straight and Mario is gay – they describe some research that makes them think perhaps platonic friendship between straight men and women is not, in fact, really possible. Some of the research indicates that men, in particular, are somewhat likely to both report some level of attraction to their female friends and to believe their female friends feel some level of attraction to them.

Now, I will make a confession: I have very little patience for this debate under normal circumstances, because my male friends include straight guys, gay guys, married guys, single guys, flirty guys, not-at-all-flirty guys, and yes, even the odd guy I've dated here and there. (Exes are a much more controversial question in my experience, and, I admit, a trickier proposition, but it absolutely happens.) But I am always willing to listen to research. If it turns out that I am not actually friends with any of them, that would be sad, because I would have to return a lot of dudes to the Friends 'R' Us store at once, and that would be very disruptive socially. On the other hand, they're worth quite a lot, so I'm sure I'd get good trade-in value.

The Secret Lives of Men - iDisorder: Larry D. Rosen

From Dr. Chris Blazina, this episode of The Secret Life of Men - this episode from back in May (2012) looks at the impact of technology on our brains: increased stress, sleeplessness, and compulsivity.

Listen to internet radio with Secret Lives of Men on Blog Talk Radio

The Secret Lives of Men - iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology with Larry D. Rosen

IDisorder: changes to your brain’s ability to process information and your ability to relate to the world due to your daily use of media and technology resulting in signs and symptoms of psychological disorders - such as stress, sleeplessness, and a compulsive need to check in with all of your technology. Based on decades of research and expertise in the "psychology of technology," Dr. Larry Rosen offers clear, down-to-earth explanations for why many of us are suffering from an "iDisorder."  Our world is not going to change, and technology will continue to penetrate society even deeper leaving us little chance to react to the seemingly daily additions to our lives. Rosen teaches us how to stay human in an increasingly technological world.

NPR - Many Who Are Sexually Abused Keep Quiet

The tendency to stay quiet is especially true of men, although I am pleased to see this changing in only the last ten years. But there is still a lot of stigma for men, as though they, often as boys, should have been able to fight off an adult abuser. Part of the reason men remain quiet is the shame they feel, and the fear of "losing" their masculinity in the eyes of others. The Sandusky case highlights some of these issues - how many of the survivors stayed quiet until someone else came forward?

Then there is the whole issue of sexual identity that comes up for boys who are molested by men or older boys - because our culture still stigmatizes homosexuality, boys fear that being sexually molested by a male might mean they are somehow gay.

The layers of reasons that men stay quiet are deep and profound, but I have seen real healing come simply in being able to talk about it in a safe environment with other men who have been through it as well.

Many Who Are Sexually Abused Keep Quiet

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Talk of the Nation

[30 min 18 sec]

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 June 19, 2012

Psychologists say many people who are sexually abused as kids carry the secret for decades. Many never reveal what happened at all, and few file charges. Sarah Pleydell, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and clinical psychologist David Lisak talk about the challenges of carrying those secrets.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

NEAL CONAN, HOST: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Last week on the first day of the sex abuse trial of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, a 28-year-old man referred to as Victim Four in court papers took the stand and offered graphic detail of years of abuse.

He also expressed regret for not coming forward earlier. He told the jury he had spent, quote, so many years burying this in the back of my head forever that when he heard there were other cases like his, he felt responsible.

But his reluctance is not uncommon. Earlier this month, an article in the New York Times raised allegations of widespread sex abuse of studies at the Horace Mann School in New York City, most of it in the 1970s and '80s. Psychologists say that many people sexually abused as children are silenced by fear and shame and never reveal what happened. Those who do can carry the secret for years or even decades.

If this is your story, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org. Later in the program, the art of the ultimate counterfeiter, but we begin with Sarah Pleydell, who joins us here in Studio 3A. Thanks very much for coming in.

SARAH PLEYDELL: Hi.

CONAN: And this is your story.

PLEYDELL: Yes, it is.

CONAN: When did you become aware as an adult that you needed to say something?

PLEYDELL: Oh, well into my 20s and into my 30s. It was an experience that, you know, had lain buried for 25, 30 years.

CONAN: What happened, briefly?

PLEYDELL: I grew up in a household in London, in the '50s, '60s. My parents were professionals. My father was one of those sort of debonair charmers, you know, sort of a Cary Grant kind of type. But he was a profound drunk. And my mother couldn't stand him. He totally exasperated her, and she would, you know, fly into a rage and pack up and leave.

And so he repeatedly abused my sister and me between the ages of eight and 11. I was left to give him dinner and put him to bed. I think one of the most poignant pieces of it is that in that kind of strange, childish heroism, I thought that if I were his caretaker that I could prevent him doing any damage to my sister.

CONAN: So you didn't know at the time that your sister was being abused, as well.

PLEYDELL: No, and when I discovered in my late 20s, it was just horrifying. It was, you know, one of the most devastating things.

CONAN: How did you find out?

PLEYDELL: Well, we didn't talk about it until we were in our late 20s, and by then, I was flooded with the kind of graphic dissociative images that survivors, you know, are flooded with. And I began to share them with her.

But up until that point, you know, none of it had really made any sense to me. I think that people don't speak up because of the way that sexual abuse impacts the body and the mind and the heart. My father was, when he wasn't drunk, my primary caregiver. I adored him. I was the apple of his eye, and the idea that he could betray me in this way was unthinkable. You know, I just couldn't engage it as a complete thought. And so my mind just scrambled up the images, scrambled them all up.

CONAN: And what did your sister say when you started to talk about it?

PLEYDELL: She asked me what I remembered, and I told her the kind of strange, dissociative, graphic images that I had that, you know, they were out of sequence, that didn't make any sense but were very vivid, had, you know, free-floating sort of sensory horror to them, smells and sounds and words. And, you know, she sort of revealed that she had the same things, the same things.

CONAN: And that's the devastating moment.

PLEYDELL: Yeah, well, we helped each other piece together what our immature brains could not do.

CONAN: Were your parents still alive at that point?

PLEYDELL: My father, because he was an addled drunk, unfortunately, well, in some ways fortunately, had a massive stroke in his 50s. So by the time I was ready to talk to him, he didn't really know who I was or not for more than five minutes. But my mother was still alive and still very together.

CONAN: And did you talk to her?

PLEYDELL: Finally in my 30s I made the choice to talk to her. I don't think it's the only choice to be made, but I did make that choice. And I confronted her when she came to visit me. And she at first was very defensive. She was - denied it, and I was very angry. So I can see why, in some ways.

And gradually she accepted it, and then she became incredibly sorry that she had not left my father earlier because she did leave him. And to fair to her, I mean, the symptoms that we were demonstrating would now be considered classic symptoms of child abuse, I mean, bedwetting and anorexia and all the rest of it, but then, you know, she just knew we were being hurt, and she did kick him out.

But we did this over a period of 10 years. Every time she came, we would go through this until finally I felt I'd done it enough.

CONAN: The range of emotions that must have warped back and forth between you and your mother, and your sister of course, too, feeling abandoned, lack of protection, a mother's obligation, her guilt yet her own need to be out of a situation that was clearly - she didn't know what was going on but clearly not healthy for her, either.

PLEYDELL: No, no, but it was the '60s, and it was a hard thing for a woman to get up and leave a husband. And the information wasn't out there. So, you know, I respect her for doing it; I wish to hell she'd done it a whole lot earlier.

CONAN: We want to hear from people in the audience today whose story this is, too. Give us a call if you've kept these memories quiet for years or decades afterwards, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And we'll start with Al(ph), Al's calling us from Phoenix.

AL: Yeah, thank you for taking my call. I was abused by several different people, cousins and neighbors and a few other people, as was my wife. And she was repeatedly abused by someone that she had babysat for, which led to later on choosing I guess abusive relationships as an adult.

And by the time she was really ready to deal with what had happened, when she and I came together, and she sort of started trying to heal and deal with things, the statute of limitations had run out to prosecute this man. And he's now in his late 60s and is now married to a 19-year-old girl, and we have since also found out that in the years when my wife had moved away from where he was, he had abused several other girls.

And to me the statute of limitations is extremely problematic not only because you can't prosecute someone but because it sort of implies that the victim should have gotten over it already.
CONAN: It does vary state to state.

AL: If you haven't done something about it in a certain amount of time, then you really couldn't have felt that bad about it is what it seems like.

CONAN: I understand, just - I don't think you could hear me, Al, but it does vary from state to state. In some states, there's no statute of limitations on rape, as there is none on murder.

AL: Right. Where we are, it is, so...

CONAN: How did you and your wife find each other?

AL: How did we meet, or how did we find each other?

CONAN: Well, how did you find out that you shared this background?

AL: Well, I think I have dealt with mine much earlier. I've lived on my own since I was a very, very young man and also had a lot of friends that had been molested, and I had helped some friends sort of move out of their homes or move out of abusive relationships. And so I think very early on in my relationship with my wife, I recognized the personality traits.

And she and I had been friends for many, many years, and she had been dating someone else, and I had recognized the type of relationship that she was in was also very abusive and a symptom of someone who had been abused as a younger person.

CONAN: Well, David - Al, thanks very much for sharing your story, and good luck to you both.
AL: Thank you very much.

CONAN: And Sarah Pleydell, he raises an interesting question. The effects later on, abusive relationships, clearly in your case it could have led to alcoholism, abusive relationships, a lot of things.

PLEYDELL: You develop a vulnerable personality, and you're susceptible to patterns that have been imprinted from childhood. And it takes a lot of work to change those patterns.

CONAN: David Lisak is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He's a clinical psychologist, a founding board member of oneinsix.org, an organization that serves men who were sexually abused as children, and he joins us today from member station WUSF in Tampa. Thanks very much for being with us.

DAVID LISAK: Thank you, Neal.

CONAN: And this is not just a topic you research, this is your story, too.

LISAK: That's right. I was abused when I was a kid.

CONAN: And when did you come to terms with it?

LISAK: Well, that started really only in my late 20s into my 30s. I either completely repressed the memories for about 25 to 27 years, and then over the course of several years began to come to terms with it and eventually told my surviving parent, my mother, about it.

CONAN: It was your father who abused you, too?

LISAK: No, no it wasn't. It was a babysitter, a boarder who was taken into our house to help pay the rent.

CONAN: So again, the emotions are unbelievably powerful. Your mother, again, is supposed to be your protector.

LISAK: Yes, and one of the - you know, there are so many effects that children who are abused suffer, both at the time and then as the years go by. And for myself, as for so many, when you're five years old, even though your mother does not know what's happening, you inevitably interpret it as an abandonment, as a betrayal, and why isn't she protecting me, why isn't somebody rescuing me from this.

And there's really just no way that a child that young can see it as any other - in any other way. And that really can so undermine the child's relationship with their parents, with adults, with authorities, and that can last a long time.

CONAN: We're talking about carrying the painful secret of childhood sexual abuse for years or even decades. If this is your story, give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. I'm Neal Conan. Stay with us. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. Jerry Sandusky's defense team continues to call witnesses in the former assistant coach's trial on dozens of counts of alleged sexual abuse. High-profile cases like this often spur conversations and sometimes revelations of past abuse.

As we've heard, victims often suffer in silence, alone, in many cases blaming themselves. We're talking today about why it's so difficult to talk about childhood sexual abuse and what happens when the truth comes out. If this is your story, our phone number is 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That's at npr.org.

Our guests are Sarah Pleydell, herself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. She teaches writing at the University of Maryland, College Park. And David Lisak, associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He researches the effects of childhood sex abuse. He's also spoken out about his own past abuse.

And David Lisak, some of these effects down the years, they can vary with different individuals.

LISAK: Yes, and they do, and that's an important thing to remember, that - the circumstances of the abuse, the context in which it occurs. You know, in my case, I was abused by somebody who was really outside the family. I had, I at least had a mother who was a good mother in so many ways. And in my other work, I do a lot of forensic work, I evaluate men who have committed serious crimes, most of whom have also been terribly abused as kids.

But most of them had no parents who were there to help them in any way, and that's one of the factors that can really alter what happens over the long run. So despite the abuse, I was able to get an education and get a foundation under me and recover from those experiences, and that's not always possible.

CONAN: That vulnerable personality that Sarah was talking about a moment ago, was that you too?

LISAK: Oh yes, for many, many years, and you know, to this day, you know, I - I'm an adult, I'm a professional, I do all kinds of research, I do forensic work and so forth, but the abuse lives on in me. And you know, there are still nights when I wake up with nightmares because of things that have triggered me during the day, and that's just part of, at least in my case, that's part of the reality that I live with, and it is for many survivors.

They can thrive in many ways but still suffer many of the symptoms.

CONAN: Sarah Pleydell, you were nodding there, yeah.

PLEYDELL: My sister has a very strong image. She says that childhood trauma is like a house with a horrible room in the middle of it, and you do your very best to keep the doors locked, but every now and again you wake up and there you are, and you're eight years old, and your heart's racing, and it's happening all over again, and you have to very slowly and carefully turn on the light and pick yourself up and take yourself out of there, and the room never goes away.

But the house changes, and the house over time can become a safer place.

CONAN: Let's get Tammy on the line. Tammy's calling us from Buffalo.

TAMMY: Hello.

CONAN: Hi, you're on the air, Tammy, go ahead, please.

TAMMY: (Unintelligible) bring back so many memories because as a child going through the same experiences, and coming from an African-American community, sometimes you could be alienated when you're up front about the experiences that happened to you as a child, especially molestation.

And even as an adult with my kids, I'm like very, very protective. I don't do overnights over at a friend's house. Certain smells trigger off, like, depression. And when I decided to finally get counseling, a part of my childhood, when my daughter was asking me about things, what happened to you when you were nine, or - I can't remember anything.

So when I decided to get counseling, and they suggested maybe I should, you know, rethink what happened to me when I went to the court and just get the information about my case, I was denied because in order for me to even - for them to even open the books on my case, I would have to get a lawyer, then the lawyer has to go to the judge. It was just really, really a stressful process. I mean, I'm still dealing with it, even today like with relationships and commitment.

And it's just like a lifelong struggle that you go through on a constant basis.

CONAN: I'm intrigued - smells?

TAMMY: Yeah, just certain smells like the cologne, it just triggers it off.

CONAN: You too, Sarah Pleydell?

PLEYDELL: Yeah, the book I've just written is called "Cologne."

(LAUGHTER)

PLEYDELL: And it's about this very topic, yeah, smells, absolutely.

CONAN: David Lisak, I know smell is a very powerful stimulant to memory. Is this common?

LISAK: Oh yes, it is, and it's just as your guests have been saying. All of the senses record just very sometimes microscopic but incredibly vivid details. And they are profoundly etched in memory, and they come back, sometimes because they're triggered by something that you've encountered, and it can be quite overwhelming when they come back.

CONAN: Especially 'cause it jumps up at you when you least expect it.

LISAK: Exactly, there's no (unintelligible).

PLEYDELL: And they're dissociated from one another. They don't add up. They just, you know, assail you.

LISAK: Yes, that's right.

CONAN: Tammy, are you continuing to get counseling?

TAMMY: Yes, I am. I mean, some people think, you know, I think there are a lot of misconceptions. People think you just go to counseling, and then after a certain period of time it just gets better. It just doesn't. I mean, just - it's a lifelong struggle.

CONAN: There's no cure certificate they hand you after a certain period of time, yeah.
TAMMY: Exactly.

CONAN: Well, good luck to you, Tammy, thanks very much for sharing the call.

TAMMY: Oh, thank you. Bye-bye.

CONAN: And David Lisak, she raises an interesting question. Are cultural differences in different communities - is it more or less - it's always going to be difficult, let's be honest about it, but is - some factors can exacerbate that?

LISAK: Yes, certainly, and there are differences amongst communities and the degree to which a child or an adolescent feels that they can speak about this. Of course there are differences between families and the degree to which a child may feel like they can disclose and speak out.

There are also gender differences, and we have very good data, there's good research that boys who are abused are far less likely to disclose at the time. They're far less likely to disclose over the years. There are many more obstacles that boys seem to have to tell anybody about the abuse and also then to seek help, whether professional help, any kind of help as they get older.

CONAN: Here's an email from Charlie(ph) in Portland: I was sexually abused by two women, first at the age of three or four by a church nursery volunteer, later at the age of 14 by my own alcoholic mother. I haven't been silent about this but have received a lot of denial by those who refuse to believe that women are capable of committing such abuse.

Others seem to think female abuse is somehow a lesser crime than abuse committed by men. The biggest impact of the abuse on my life has been a lifelong aversion to physical and emotional intimacy, leading to four divorces and no children. And Sarah Pleydell, that aversion to physical and emotional intimacy, I don't mean to probe too much, but is that something that has happened in your life?

PLEYDELL: You have to work very hard at it, and I'm very lucky. I have a wonderful husband and four children, but it's been a lot of work.

CONAN: Let's see if we can go next to - this is Debbie(ph), Debbie with us from Jackson, Michigan.

DEBBIE: Yes, hi, Neal. I have five children, and to our knowledge it was disclosed to us about nine years ago that at least three of the five have been molested by family members and by an ex-son-in-law. Now, one is male, the other two are female, and until it was disclosed by the daughter that was married to, you know, to our ex-son-in-law, we had never - we were never aware and had no idea this was going on, you know, prided ourselves on being aware and alert and, you know, thought we would know and thought we had taught our children that they had come to us.

And watching - I've been following - I follow everything I can, but watching the Sandusky trial, especially these brave young men that have come forward, I just as a mom, it's just heart-wrenching. And then to hear I think it was David talking about, you know, you think your mother protects you. And what do you do?

My children have not sought therapy. I've watched their lives, and I've watched alcohol creep into some of their lives. It's very difficult, very difficult.

CONAN: David Lisak, is there any advice you might be able to offer?

LISAK: Well, some of this depends on age. We know that with time, more survivors of sexual abuse become more able and more willing to seek help. It is - it's really impossible to make that happen from the outside. You can do everything you can to make it available, you can do everything you can to, for example, make sure you have the name of one or two good therapists, clinicians in your community that you've researched so that if the time does come where you have a child who's willing then to see somebody, you at least increase the odds that that will be a good experience and it will take, that they will stay in therapy and actually - and get some benefits from it.

But there are also, you know, there are a lot of resources now, online, on the Web, that men and women can go to get information. We know for male survivors that so many of them are loathe to disclose this to anybody, and so we know that, for instance, that the One in Six website, we know we have a lot of visitors to that website from men all over the world who are on their own, completely in private, visiting the site to get information, to begin approaching this. And then we hope, of course, that with time, that they will seek more help.

CONAN: And is it also possible that when, finally, you admit it to yourself, anger becomes so powerful that there is useful recourse to the police?

LISAK: Well, yes. But that's complicated, as I know you know. The - you know, the only sort of really sort of outlet for that anger, other than - you know, I spent months and months. For a long period of time, I put a mattress up on my wall, and I would go up there whenever I had to and just pound on the mattress. And that's useful for at least that - you know, for as far as it goes.

But if you want an actual outlet for that anger, something that you would actually do in the world or something, some way to hold the offender accountable, then the criminal justice system, the civil justice system, they're there. But as your callers have already noted, sometimes the statute of limitations gets in the way.

Very often, the criminal justice system itself is not a very hospitable place for victims of sexual crimes. It's a tough row to hoe. And that's why, I think, as several people have already commented, the courage of these young men in the Penn State case who've come forward to testify is really truly remarkable. And they're doing something for the whole community, not just for themselves.

DEBBIE: And - excuse me, but we discovered that the criminal justice service did us no favors. And then the statute, as far as civil lawsuits, statute of limitations, we're only one year past the age of majority. So that - you know, there's a lot that needs to be changed within the system that we've worked hard to try to get changed. But the - that's a long, long, long road, and has been a long road.

And we've been as active as we can in our community. And we have research and we have tried to seek counseling and made that available and offered it up to our children. But, you know, when they're in their 20s and 30s, and they, you know, they have to come to that - as you know - they have to come to that on their own.

But it's just so hard to sit back and watch their lives and - I'm not saying that they're destroying their lives, but in certain aspects, they are. And they're doing a lot of good, too. But to see that - and to see that - you can just see the, as you mentioned, anger sometimes. One of my children has now started taking boxing. So that's a good thing. I mean, she...

CONAN: The heavy bag taking the place of that mattress up in...

DEBBIE: Exactly.

CONAN: ...David Lisak's attic.

DEBBIE: She's a female, and she's, you know, in there with all the men, boxing away. And it's just very hard to watch, very hard.

CONAN: Good luck...

DEBBIE: Thank you.

CONAN: ...Debbie. Thank you very much for the call.

DEBBIE: Thank you, Neal. OK.

CONAN: We're talking about holding stories of your abuse in for years, even decades. Our guests are Sarah Pleydell, a writer and educator, and David Lisak, associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

And this email from Meg in Chicago: I went to Horace Mann School in New York City. Recently, The New York Times published an expose of decades of sexual abuse. I'm talking about this with fellow students, while more and more victims come forward. I wasn't sexually abused, but I was there. I feel overpowering guilt that I didn't help. I know I was a teenager at the time, but what can I do to support the victims? What can I do to overcome my feelings of helplessness?

And I wonder, Sarah Pleydell, it's not unlike you're feeling - you feeling you failed to protect your sister.

PLEYDELL: Yes. It's a - fortunately for me, I had my sister. I always had my sister to share my story with. We always had one another as touchstones. I always felt that I could - that she was there for me, and I was there for her. I think if I hadn't been abused and she had, it would have been annihilating, totally annihilating.

CONAN: Here's another email, this from Maka(ph): Yes, abused by father, older brother, tried to speak out, told to be quiet. Oddly, the phrase that was given to me was: Loose lips sink ships. I never got the meaning of that phrase until much later. When I finally did speak out as a young adult, family was angry at me for blabbing, for embarrassing them. The last two decades, mom, dad, rest of family rally with abuser. He has the will, I'm guessing is the reason. It's troubling as they know what was happening, yet I was called horrid names like slut or others. I am the ostracized member of the family for daring to speak out and say something.

Of course.

PLEYDELL: Mm-hmm. I know women who go - who've gone through that. I was fortunate to have my sister, as I said. But I know women who have spoken out and been the single voice in the family.

CONAN: It's your fault.

PLEYDELL: Yes.

CONAN: It's your fault.

PLEYDELL: And you shouldn't speak about it. You know, you are abusing us by talking about it.

CONAN: David Lisak, if there's one thing that I think we learn from this is that not speaking about it is the continuing crime.

LISAK: Yes, it is. And I think it - not speaking about it, not disclosing it is ultimately very hard, very harmful for the survivor. But it is also, of course, the cumulative silence that allows this to go on. So when we survivors don't speak out, when we are silenced by family members or by other members of the community, the silence is what these perpetrators rely on, and it's what they are camouflaged in. And that's why we need to speak out about it.

CONAN: Sarah?

PLEYDELL: I've also found that writing is a wonderful vehicle to work it through. It creates a context for exploring a lot of your feelings. In the book that I've been working on, I was able to kill my father.

(LAUGHTER)

PLEYDELL: It's satisfying symbolically.

CONAN: How'd you do it?

PLEYDELL: He dies in a car crash...

CONAN: Uh-huh.

PLEYDELL: ...at the beginning of the book, and at the end. And it was tremendously - I wouldn't say - cathartic.

CONAN: Cathartic.

PLEYDELL: Yeah.

CONAN: A car accident he caused, his own fault?

PLEYDELL: Mm-hmm. Well, yes. I mean, yes. And actually...

CONAN: I don't mean to steal your ending, but...

PLEYDELL: ...the character sort of wills it on him, and she knows she's willed it on him. And she has to struggle with that because, in a way, her fantasy is to kill her father, and she has to live with the consequences that maybe it did impact his ultimate, you know, his death.

CONAN: Well, I look forward to reading that.

(LAUGHTER)

CONAN: Thank you so much for being with us today. Sarah Pleydell, writer and educator, teaches writing at the University of Maryland, College Park. David Lisak, thank you for your time today, as well.

LISAK: Thank you, Neal.

CONAN: David Lisak joined us from member station WUSF in Tampa, where he's an associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I suspect it's not in Tampa, but in Boston. And thanks to everybody who called and wrote. We know these are difficult stories to share. We thank you so much for coming on and being willing to talk to us, and we're sorry we just couldn't get to everybody.

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