Power Is Tricky

“The #MeToo movement, the Time's Up initiative, and the pink wave have all made it clear that lip service isn’t enough to redress the unequal balance of power between the sexes.” So reports Belinda Luscombe, a columnist with Time magazine.(1)

Power is a complex concept that cannot (or should not) be separated from powerlessness. We can distinguish power over (domination) and power to do (freedom) and the various dimensions of power: economic, political, military, social, moral/spiritual, and the media and social media. Also, there's hard power and soft power, plus the degrees of concentration or dispersal or countervailing power. Hence the three branches of the U.S. government and the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press. And erotic power,(2) as well as the use or abuse of power, legal or illegal, moral or immoral.

Lord Acton’s comment is still valid: “All power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”(3) So in this view, power is the problem. But Ronald Reagan stated in his inaugural address in 1981 that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Feminists say men are. And I’m not sure if masculinists have a simple answer yet. (And of course, lip service is not enough to redress the unequal balance of power; no one ever said it was.) But at least we can check the balance.

Certainly, the gender balance of power is unequal, but so is the gender balance of powerlessness or impotence. The most powerful people in the U.S. are mostly men, but so are the least powerful, most impotent, people. Here, we interrogate the reality of this unequal balance of power.

The Powerful

The politics gap: Women are increasingly joining the patriarchy and the powerful. In the 2018 mid-term elections, 126 women were elected to Congress, nearly a quarter of the total, 84 percent of them democrats—a record. (4)

And in 2016, Clinton won the majority of the popular vote and almost the presidency. Indeed were it not for the 52 percent of white women who voted against her and, effectively, for the patriarchy, she would have won. Why would they vote for the patriarchy if they found it so oppressive? The fascinating thing here, as elsewhere, is the speed of progress since women first got the federal vote in 1920, just under 100 years ago. And currently, moving toward the 2020 election, two of the top three Democratic candidates at the time of writing are women.

In Canada, the situation is more egalitarian, and women are more powerful, with female MPs representing 26 percent of the total, and 46 of the 105 Senators are women. In Britain 29.4 percent of the MPs are women.

Women have been prominent in politics from Bandaranaike (who was the first female elected Prime Minister in 1960, and led Ceylon to independence as Sri Lanka) and Thatcher (three times PM from 1979-1990) to Angela Merkel (now in her fourth term) and Theresa May (just resigned from her second term), and over 20 other heads of state and government, including Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and from Iceland to New Zealand and Trinidad and Tobago, Slovakia and Denmark.

Many other heads of state have been elected or appointed over the years from Australia to India, Israel, and Ireland to Liberia, Canada and more. They have the power and are elected by men as well as women. The balance of power is being capsized, and the old patriarchy is no more. Only vestiges persist, but they do persist.

The faith gap: the three Abrahamic faiths are still dominated by males: remnants of the old patriarchy. Still, the first female rabbi in the U.S., Sally Presand, was anointed in 1972, and hundreds more have been anointed since then. And though the Catholic Church remains obdurate, my local Anglican church has a female bishop, the first in Quebec. “The times, they are a-changing”—but slowly, in some cases.

Violence: Man + gun = power = violence, potentially. The back-to-back mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso over the weekend culminate the 151 mass murders so far this year: more than one a day. The Republicans, following the President's lead, tend to blame mental illness, video games, and the Internet. The Democrats as usual demand background checks and bans on military-grade weapons and 100-round magazines. Even though the majority of Americans, about 64 percent, favor increased gun control, Congress defies the electorate while favoring the NRA. (5)

Many have pointed to the dangers of domestic terrorists and white supremacists, now linked to the sovereigntist movement, the militia movement, the neo-Nazis, and the anti-immigrant voices through the global dark web. The terrorists define themselves as patriots and their dead as martyrs. (6)

Timothy McVeigh (1995: 178 killed and 680 injured), Columbine (1999: 15 killed including the two shooters), and so many others were forgotten in the blaze of 9/11, and the focus first on the Taliban and Afghanistan and then al Qaeda, Islamic State, and Iraq. And if Sandy Hook (2012 with 26 people, mostly children) could not sway Congress, well, one might give up. Domestic terrorism has been largely ignored, despite its global links from Anders Breivik (2011 who killed 77 in Norway) and the Christchurch mosque attacks (March 2019 which killed 51) who cited Breivik, and the El Paso shooter who cited Christchurch. This white nationalism is now a global network.

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Still, others blame Trump and his racist rhetoric or racism: the Obama birther scandal, the anti-Muslim, anti-Mexican rants, even anti-black with his attacks on Colin Kaepernick, who explained: “I want to help make America better”. (7) And the NFL players who took the knee, then the squad, and then the congressman, Elijah Cummings. The results are evident in the increased number of hate crimes, including the targeted murders of Jews, Sikhs, blacks, and Muslims.

All, or almost all, the killers have been white males. Moore argues that “Make America Great Again” not only means make America white again, it is also a longing for a particular kind of manliness.” Perhaps that slogan is nostalgic for a 1950s era of patriarchy and white male privilege, Mad Men revisited, when men were heroes after winning World War 2, before second-wave feminism and before the Civil Rights Movement. (8) (9) The “again” is certainly odd, given that America is already the greatest country not only in the world but in history.

As to the Trump “inspired” part, there are many factors in play, but the El Paso shooter’s manifesto did cite the Trump word, “invasion,” twice, and Trump has condoned violence both explicitly and implicitly. So blame the media, gun laws, Congress, Trump, men, white men, or all of the above.

Or denial. Trump’s remark that “mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun” seems to me absurd. Like the guns are irrelevant, and the magazines, and his own tweets.

Conclusion: Clearly men dominate the pinnacles of power in the U.S., Congress, the corporate world of the F500, the military, the churches; but equally clearly, women are climbing up to the pinnacles fast, and many are already at the top, both globally and in the U.S.

Call it patriarchy or call men obsolete. Opinions vary and are summarised in the Munk debate "Are Men Obsolete?" between Hanna Roisin and Maureen Dowd on one side and Caitlin Moran and Camille Paglia on the other. (10) Equally clearly, though men dominate the pinnacles, they also dominate the valleys.