by Rebekah Tinker, ASW

EVEN AS WE TRY TO BE FEMINISTS…

Paul B. Preciado, Ph.D. published an essay in Les Éditions Grasset (Paris) in 2020 entitled, “Can the Monster Speak? Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts.” Preciado is a trans-masculine writer and philosopher. He called out the academy for emphasizing female voices within psychoanalytic research. This emphasis, he says, is a blatant act of sexism against the female intellect. That, rather than lifting up female voices, we must first acknowledge the voices of cis-White males that are intrinsically dominating the field. By pedestaling the female we bypass the necessary deconstructive work on intellectual sexism, and thereby are performing/faking gender inclusivity, rather than embodying/practicing it. 

He read his essay to a crowd of 3,500 analysts in the fall of 2019 at the 49th Study Day of the Ecole de la Cause Freudienne on the theme, “Women in Psychoanalysis” (Preciado, 2020). He was escorted off the stage a quarter of his way into the presentation. Analysts in the audience applauded and cheered, calling him Hitler. His rhetoric, the reaction of the audience and Academy, and the larger discourse on sexism he presents, brings to mind the function of silence and who benefits from it. 

The systemic homosocial relationship of cis-men has gone underexamined, masked by the manipulative efforts of gender equality initiatives. I wonder about what is not being spoken. What questions are looming and unexamined? And how does this silence collude with cis-male fear and shame? Should we not first normalize talking about the influence of cis-white-male voices? Or find ways to deconstruct the overt, as well as the subtle tones of power differentials? Or even discuss why we need to have more female voices on the front lines to begin with? Merely highlighting non cis-male voices, without a conversation around the why, seems to be bypassing important historical understanding. 

An ex-partner once told me, “your angry, feminist verbiage pushes me away.” A poet and artist, he used to paint my body curled on the studio floor, in praise of the female form, and yet, discussing the female body and the ways it has been objectified was out of the question. My mind pressed within the floorboards while he read the complete works of Kenneth Rexroth, the godfather of the San Francisco Renaissance. Presenting his drawings at a gallery in Vergennes, pedestaling the curves and crevices of my form, praised across New England for his “feminist” aesthetic.  

I find myself sitting with these questions: How do we have the conversations surrounding historical sexism and gender inequality, and how can we uplift non cis-male voices so they are heard in ways that are not colluding with silence? I wonder if these conversations are even possible in the climate we live in today. What kind of uprooting and reconstructing are men willing to engage in, for women to feel safe, valid, worthy, and not manipulated or pedestaled on a stage for show? I believe these conversations must begin with an examination of cis-male voices, bringing us out of their silent dominance. Talking with a friend and colleague on Friday I was reminded that the work begins with curious ears. How do we teach men to listen humbly? And how does that teaching enter the larger organizations and systems that rule us?