Sex, Ethics and Power

An Introduction
by Marc Gafni

I am preparing the website. I have just jotted down a quick introduction to the major article in the Sex, Ethics and Power section of this website. Please do not regard this introduction or even the essay itself as a polished article or essay.

What I have written below is much more in the form of some framing notes for this section.

My remarks here, like everywhere on the website, are “under construction,” evolving, deepening, I hope, and gradually reaching towards a form in which I will be able to share them as wisdom teachings that I know to be true.

At the present these teachings are still in the gestation process before birth.

Post Script:

Whenever something large happens, there are always many ways we can choose to narrate the story―many ways to tell the story of the events. For example, one might deploy at least ten different frameworks of meaning, explanation and interpretation. Each framework is both sufficient and woefully insufficient to describe the events.

Which framework one chooses depends on many variables that are beyond the scope of these few sentences, but which I hope to discuss in depth elsewhere.

It is my utter knowledge and conviction that not one but all of these perspectives actually need to be taken into account. The question is how to weigh them all. And that is largely in the realm of mystery.

I will list a few.

1. Justice and Injustice; Victim Feminism

2. Iago like Malice {described by Dr. Joseph Berke in his important work Malice through the Looking Glass}

3. Radical Personal Responsibility for One’s Own Karmic Creation {described in extreme form in New Age literature, and in more nuanced and balanced form in the classical Orthodox religious texts of the great religions.

4. The Murder of Christ―The Desire to Kill Life Force {described by Wilhelm Reich in his book by that name and described in the great religious literatures}

5. Invitation to Grace, The Gifts of Liberation and Enlightenment. These are offered to the seeker on his path: the more evolved the seeker, the more uncompromising is the divine Kosmic demand for radical liberation. {found in great religious literature from all the great traditions}

6. Karmic retribution for overreaching and hubris {found in Greek Myth and in Mystical and Mythic literature}

7. Karmic balancing for past lives {found in Kabbalah Buddhism and most other reincarnation belief systems}

8. Blind Spots of the Tragic Hero {major theme in Greek Myth}

9. Hero’s Journey ― involving crucifixion, followed by resurrection; initiation; followed by the dark night; followed by redemption {found in all the wisdom literatures of all time and all places}

10. Radical Mystery ― the humility of not knowing.

I will give an example below of the first perspective with some passing allusion to one or two other perspectives. The reason I choose this one to illustrate is because in Hebrew wisdom as I understand it, the perspective of fairness and justice needs to trump all others. In the prophetic encounter with God, the Samadhi of Justice took precedence over all others. The ethical must always trump the erotic―even when we are talking about the eros of hurt feelings and painful experiences.

It is this understanding that is the fundamental contribution of the Hebrew prophet to the evolving enlightenment of reality. And yet all the others are highly significant and compelling. In an upcoming book, Spiritually Incorrect, I will attempt to lay out all of these perspectives in a way which does not undermine any perspective; of course in a way which does not mention or refer to any individual; and in a way a way which honors all perspectives.

Sex, Ethics and Power

Bad Faith Assumptions:

-When a teacher decides to be involved with someone with whom he also has a teaching or working relationship –

The assumption of victim feminism is that what is referred to as the “power differential” –

-Insures that the relationship is somehow ethically wrong or abusive or whatever.

Simply put that argument is one of the more moronic, insipid and specious claims ever made in the long complex history of gender relationships. It is a bad faith assumption about both the nature of men and the nature of women.

Women are powerless – helpless victims – and men are Nazi like Predators.

{I have collected dozens of references from the literature of victim feminism that makes analogies between men as a class and Nazis. Describing women who make complaints about sexual behavior as “survivors” and the like supports the analogies.}

The negative casting of such relationships are of course is all to often, also deployed as a cover for other agendas of a far less noble nature.

Malice has many names. It never, however is prepared to reveal itself as Malice. Malice must always hide behind the high ground of ideological pretense, moral crusade, and altruistic self-sacrifice. It’s true face is to distorted to bear when one looks in the mirror. Even the simplest of men and women are often geniuses when it comes to self-deception.

It has become a key weapon in the arsenal of Sexual Mcarthyites and the emerging Sexual Fascism at the heart of liberal American culture.

Truth is; Power is distributed in many ways.

One needs to know the nature of the teacher student relationship. Is the teacher making false promises of enlightenment or spiritual protection? If he or she is doing so then the relationship is wrong. Is the teacher demanding spiritual submission or obedience of the kind demanded of the student in the Guru model? If so, the relationship is wrong. And of course any explicit or implied quid pro quo for sexual favors – sex for good grades – is wrong.

Or is the teacher one who teaches the students autonomy, who honors the individuality of each student, who acknowledges his or hers own complexity and who does not presume to tell his students how to live in their private lives.

What if our “teacher” would never presume to making spiritual promises of a manipulative or inappropriate manner?

Let’s say this “teacher” over a period of time has adult mutual relationships with a number of people in his inner circle based on mutual affection and attraction.

None of these relationships made any false promises. None were more or less then what they were. Moments of genuine authenticity and connection between people rooted in mutual affection and mutual respect.

Now of course if one has a hidden position that Sex is somehow bad, or worse threatening in the loss of control and vulnerability that it creates, and then the whole discussion is tinged with this hidden bias. And of course this implicit position appears even in the most liberal of circles. But let’s put that aside for the moment and return to our scenario.

Let’s even posit that the teacher requests that the relationship be held privately.

Perhaps the women engaged also request privacy for her own reasons.

To which the student or teacher each can agree or disagree always being able to leave the relationship with ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCES WHATSOVER.

Is all privacy wrong? Is there not a distinction between confidentiality between intimates, which is sacred, and the morally repugnant abusive father who rapes his daughter not to share the secret of his abuse? All great traditions, and all great relationships may have some shared space of radical privacy.

One kind of secret violated personhood. It is what we might call a pre-personal secret; the second kind of privacy emerges from a deep sense of share mutuality, which emerges from a genuine recognition of the personhood.

Let’s add some important questions?

Did the relationship begin from the matrix of a direct teaching relationship or perhaps the man and woman met – let’s say at a retreat center where he was teaching and she was on staff and decide together in a long, personal phone and email correspondence to explore what might be possible between them. Let’s say they agree to explore possible study relationship, friendship, and sexual adventure and perhaps romance. They agree from the outset NOT to be in a teacher student relationship.

Or perhaps they meet on the beach and have a romance and later he comes to work for her organization. Or let’s say he is her employee and he leaves to find another job. During the time he is employed elsewhere a sexual relationship – friendship develops between them. He then returns to work for him and the sexual relationship continues.

Or a thousand other possibilities all of which would require careful inquiry to understand the nature and dynamics of power existing between the people.

Is all of this ethically wrong merely because one of the functions of the man is teaching?

Is there not a great teaching and wonderful honest and vulnerability in the possibility of mutual pleasurable and agreeable dual relationships?

{For a possible positive views of this question see for example the work of Power Feminist Professors Bell Hooks, Janet Malcom, Christina Hoff Sommers, Laura Kipnis, Valerie Jennes and Jane Gallop. All of them write on the possibility in the academy of Erotic Faculty Student Relationships, some of them —as they describe – engaged in sexual relationships with “friend-students” during their careers. {On the nature of power and its distribution see the important Process work literature of Arnold Mindell.}

There are many forms of power. In order to determine if there was an abuse of power, either on the side of the student or the teacher or the side of the employee or the employer one has to carefully investigate the particular relationship at hand and the particular set of power dynamics in play with an open heart, an open mind and a deep commitment to truth.

For example, what if a woman and a teacher explore carefully, before they engage, the possibility of engaging on multiple tracks of relationship. Say the student says, I want to “co-create a relationship” with you which is not “conventional’.” The “teacher” in her words, “honors her sacred autonomy” in every way.

Let’s say the teacher agrees to the exploration but makes one impassioned condition. He might say to the woman. I am prepared to go on this adventure with you but in doing so I am making myself vulnerable to you. You will hold the power because if you are not a good person you might at a later time go and distort the relationship” in a way which might cause great damage.

The student discusses the relationship with a good woman friend of the teacher and they agree it is a wonderful idea to explore possibilities together.

At a later date the “student” feels “hurt” and makes complaints about the teacher that radically distort the relationship.

She significantly distorts the relationship and causes the teacher, his family and his life work ENORMOUS DAMAGE BEYOND IMAGINATION.

Could we not say that this was an inappropriate use of power?

Who in this story has committed Sexual Abuse, the teacher or the student?

Feminine Shadow. Masculine Shadow.

Men tell the truth and men Lie.

Men act justly and men commit acts of violence and coercion.

Groups of Men tell the truth and groups of men Lie.

Groups of Men act justly and groups of men commit acts of violence.

When men act badly it is rightly called Masculine Shadow.

Sometimes Masculine shadow acts out of fear and appears as a Lynch Mob.

Women tell the truth and women lie.

Women act justly and women commits acts of violence and intimidation.

Groups of Women tell the truth and groups of women lie.

Groups of Women act justly and groups of women commit acts of verbal violence and character assassination.

When women act badly it should be called Feminine Shadow.

All to often however the assumption is that women do not lie, intimidate, or commit murder.

Sometimes Feminine Shadow appears in the form of a lynch mob in which a there is an attempt to “character murder” a human being.

Of course both masculine and feminine shadow have their origin in hurt and untransformed wound. The tragic assumption of both shadows is that the hurt of wound justifies the evil and destruction that results when shadow runs amok.

One manifestation of feminine shadow is all too often very simple. The deployment – retroactively- of a false interpretive prism to explain relationships that have ended with hurt on both or either side.

Often it is motivated by a complex of emotions and agendas, sometimes spanning decades of conflict and acrimony which has little or nothing to do at it’s core with issues of sexuality.

To discern the hidden strands of malice, jealousy, shadow on all sides, the power relationships between not only the parties involved but also those who support and encourage the complainants, would require genuine effort, integrity and the wisdom of discernment.

Of course such complaints all to often hide behind the many masks of victim feminist jargon, breaking the silence, protecting future women and the like.

Imagine that the man is a good man. Let’s skip the knee jerk humility.

Perhaps he is a great man. A true and authentic teacher. Deeply committed to his students, to God and to his teaching. A lover of people and life in every bone and sinew of his body and soul.

Perhaps he is also vulnerable for a mixture of reasons.

1) His own bohemian life style and mistakes.

2) His own lack of wholeness in this or that area for we are all – each and every teacher out there – to greater or lesser extent – wounded healers!

3) Perhaps he suffered from Hubris; building to fast, taking on his shoulders more then was his to bear.

4) Old rumors are Internet attacks, which distort beyond recognition the tone and substance of two old moments in his life from twenty-five and thirty years before.

5) Stories in which the parties involved are for decades encouraged by his personal foes and victims feminists in an unholy alliance of pseudo righteousness.

6) Put that together with profound and deep-seated animus and Jealousy from some of his colleagues – all of course righteously and vehemently ridiculed and denied…

7) Add in the political correctness of victim feminism, which dominates most of the liberal culture in which he teaches…

6) Thrown in his own blind spots in.

What if his intimates who knew these vulnerabilities best betrayed his trust, confidentiality and love, set themselves up as feminist heroes, even as they attempted to their intimate knowledge of his weaknesses to murder him?

Just suppose?

Or perhaps this is all just impossible.

Could never happen. Never.

In Kabbalah talk Men are called lines and Women are called Circles. Aside from the obvious physiological references there is also an archetypal play at work here.

Men are more hierarchal and linear. More concerned with status and advancement.

Women are more inter-related and networked, more concerned with enmeshments and connectivity.

If Men feel like their line nature is offended it often produces violence and destruction. Masculine Shadow.

If Women feel like their circle nature is offended it often produces a different form of violence and destruction.

Feminine Shadow

Fuck with my Line Nature – Status, Success, Ambition, and I will fuck you screams masculine shadow. Hiding of course behind masks of piety and good intention.

Fuck with my circle Nature – Intimacy – Connection – Relationship, and I will fuck you screams Feminine Shadow. Hiding of course behind masks of high-sounding victim feminist jargon.

As Power feminists have correctly pointed out the identification of the feminine with the spiritual foisted upon us by New Age Thought and Establishment Victim feminism is a lie.

A dangerous lie for men.

A group of crying women with similar stories who say they are hurt.

A group of angry men with similar stories who say they were hurt.

Both are committed to hurting or even destroying the life of the person they feel hurt them?

Are they telling the truth? Maybe yes. Maybe no.

What is the nature of the hurt?

Do not all relationships involve some degree of hurt especially when they do not work out?

Are we not all suffering from the Pain of Eros and the Wounds of Love?

Is the desire to murder the other proportionate by any objective standards, with the hurt being claimed?

Has the issue been carefully looked into after consulting with all sides and hearing carefully all perspectives?

Of course, if one side is threatened–say by the filing of false police complaints, it might well be the case that that side which is threatened will be silenced.

Or worse, forced into a Trotskyite confession scenario…

Forced into an untrue position, taking inappropriate responsibility in order to save life and protect family.

It might even be that the women who are heroically “breaking the silence” are really doing all the talking.

That is happens often is well documented in the excellent work of Feminist Daphne Pattai, Heterophobia. It is documented as well in Christina Hoff Sommers work Who Stole Feminism. See also Feminist Cathy Young in Ceasefire in the Gender Wars.

It might even be that those claiming sexual abuse are actually sexual abusers. They may be abusing the sacred nature of sexual engagement by retrospectively reframing it’s meaning and distorting its nature out of anger, hurt or rage. In this way, they may inflict pain beyond measure or proportion on their former intimate partner. Is this possible?

Is it possible that a group of women will engage in a kind of GANG NAME RAPE all the while hiding behind the fig leafs of victimization and the jargon of false feminist virtue?

And that this will be supported by all sorts of folks who are deeply intimidated by the Sexual McCarthyism of the culture. They are scared – really scared – that their own sexual complexity will be exposed and their power position threatened.

Is not the ethic of justice, the revulsion against bearing false witness the ethical core of the prophetic voice of Hebrew Wisdom?

Anyone who has comments or input on the article is welcome to e-mail me at info@marcgafni.com.

Thoughts from Marc Gafni