Preamble
In an era that champions diversity and inclusivity, what is the value of an exclusive space also known as an affinity space? More specifically—what is the value of a space built entirely for men?
As co-producer of the upcoming Cascadia Men’s Conference, these questions have been front of mind in my world lately, and a regular topic of conversation in and out of my direct circles—not just with men, but with many women as well.
But this essay isn’t just about a men’s conference. It’s more accurate to say that the men’s conference provides a prism for my perspective on affinity groups to be articulated through.1
For many people, the idea of a non-marginalized group gathering together on purpose is viewed with immediate suspicion. It is often seen as a step backward, and a reinforcing of the patriarchal status quo. And of course, sometimes it can be that.
But if we want better mixed-group relations, we cannot bypass the work that needs to happen at the affinity-group level. We need to stop conflating separation with alienation, and treating exclusion as a problem no matter the context.
This is edgy territory, I know. But growth happens from the edges.
The writing of this essay has taken over my writing life these last many months (RIP to the regular publishing schedule I upheld for the previous 16 months), and I called in an immense amount of help to make sure that it stayed on track.
Many good people answered that bell, and their questions, challenges, and insights greatly expanded and grew up my own views on the very matter I was writing about. I am deeply indebted to them, and honoured by their willingness to engage in this challenging and nuanced effort alongside me.
In particular, I would like to thank David Drury, Tad Hargrave, Amber Samaya, Celena Krahn, and Ian MacKenzie. These fine humans gave hours and hours of their precious time to ensure what I was saying was as clear as possible and not un-necessarily contrarian or sharp. And they didn’t let me coast on lazy assumptions or half-cooked ideas: they continually held me to account for what I was saying, encouraging both considered expansion and acute distillation whenever each was called for. To say their input was invaluable brushes my appreciation off too much to the side. It was very, very valuable.
Would it be that all of you reading this have people like that in your life. I commend that to you.
Now, on to the essay.
A note on the footnotes: though a few are attributions in the standard style, most of them are expansions of whatever is being discussed. Think of the numeric markers as little signposts that say “click here for more.”
On Affinity Groups
A quick internet search yields the following definition of Affinity Group:
A gathering of individuals connected by a shared interest, ideology, background, or identity. An affinity space is a place or set of places where people affiliate with others based primarily on shared activities, interests, and goals.
This definition casts a wide net and brings up some immediate questions in me that I don’t have ready answers for, such as: Can you be in an affinity group unawares? Is every delineated group, no matter the delineation an affinity group?
For the purpose of this essay, I am referring to an affinity group as any group of people defined and recognized both internally by its members and externally by those outside of as these specific people and not those specific people, which as I will speak to later in the essay, is also the definition of what a culture is in its broadest sense.
An affinity group or space is not so much subjective and arbitrary as it is contextual. If this essay achieves what I intend, it will expand that context.
A Vignette
My first encounter with the term affinity group happened at the tail-end of a three week vision fast guide training program a few years ago. The concept was not new to me, but the phrase was.
The elder guide of the training program, a beautiful and kind man in his 70s, who had been guiding vision fasts and training guides for four decades—was set to retire at the conclusion of our program. He was understandably experiencing many deep emotions during the closing circle. The co-guide, who had worked alongside him for many years lavished praise upon him for his years of life-affirming service and soul-work. It was a teary and heart-pulverizing affair.
And then things took a turn.
The elder guide received the praise, took a deep breath, and then hung his head in shame. He apologized to all of us, and to the co-guide, and to the animate world holding us, that for the vast majority of his career, he had worked primarily in affinity spaces, with people who were “more or less like him”.
The other guide struck a note of compassion, saying in a coo-ing tone that he had done his best, and reminded him that he had made a powerful impact in the lives of many people. But in that moment, by responding with comfort and confirmation, rather than a strong, full-stop correction, the younger guide corroborated this man’s shame, agreeing that though maybe forgivable, it belonged, and was his ticket to allyship.
De-Shaming This Story
I don’t claim that the other people in the circle that day saw this the same way as I did, nor do I mean to imply that there was any ill intent. But as someone who has spent many years looking for, praying for, and perhaps even conjuring elders, this interaction was as much of a threshold moment for me as anything that happened in the 4-day desert vision fast.
That elder’s shame radiated me— first with anger, and then with sorrow, and finally with a grief whose ripples are still fanning out.
Imagine how many people in 40 years of guiding soul-work that this man had touched, witnessed, and validated. Imagine how many people he midwifed into their own soul’s unfurling, allowing them to step further into their unique gifts so that upon their return to their families and communities, they were deeply deeply in touch with their innate being and their reason for being here. It’s very likely that many of those people became life-affirming servants of their communities and the ecosystems.
And now imagine those decades collapsing into something so shame-worthy that upon retirement, they became something to apologize for, simply because subjectively and in hindsight, the ‘group’ wasn’t diverse enough.
When did working with “people more or less like you” become reprehensible no matter the context? Here the context is king: this man was guiding and teaching soul-work and nature-connection. There is not a hint of domination, alienation, or dehumanization—the main tenets of unhealthy affinity space—to be found. (More on that later).
What are the cumulative and ongoing consequences to the elder function of European-descended people in North America when over and over again the younger people of that group, radiated in a similar way with that mix of shame and good intentions, predominantly look for elders and teachers “that aren’t like them?”.2
Is this progress? Is this life affirming? Is this generative?
I would call it tragic, and sad, and destructive, and heartbreaking. And all too common.
On Allyship
“European-descended people who are connected to their ancestry and their ancestral stories make the best allies.”
I heard this quote second-hand, attributed to Pulxaneeks, a member of the Eagle Clan of the Xenaksiala / Xai’sla First Nation who works as an Indigenous relationship consultant.3 I think about these words at least once a week, and hold them as a compass bearing in my own approach to culture work.
With this quote in mind, and being that the likely affinity group the older guide was referring to was white folks of European descent, this man spent 40 years making better allies.
Or at the very least he sowed the seeds for that to be possible.4 I know that my community and my ancestors are more healthy as a direct result of my meeting that beautiful man, and by my learning from him.
I told him all of this at the end of the circle as we were parting ways, but I don’t know that it landed.
I hope it did.
Affinity Groups and Mixed-Group Relations
Upon the return to my community after that powerful time in the California desert, producing a men’s conference was not on my radar. But that closing circle stayed with me, a pebble in my proverbial shoe.
I thought a lot about affinity groups from that point on, and wondered what was being asked of me as a member of the primary non-marginalized affinity group(s) that I was obviously a part of: cis, white, straight, male.
Only work in my group? Only work outside my group? Strengthen the group? Renounce the group? Deny that there is a group?
Through this ongoing wondering, I have come to realize that the healthy articulation of non-marginalized affinity groups—the only ones I can speak from—looks very different than that of marginalized affinity groups, or of groups that are not seen to be at the top end of the patriarchal pyramid.
At the time that story took place, every ritual and passage program I had participated in or facilitated had been “open to everyone”.5 I had a very strong sense that the way forward was not to convert my existing offerings into men only, or European-descended folks only, or fathers only, or delineate them in any other way than their current organic melange.
Affinity groups are not meant to erase or replace mixed-group gatherings; they are meant to augment and expand them.
Healthy affinity group work focuses and clarifies how things are both in and out of that group, it notices what is missing, and where balance and power lies. In that learning, when undertaken honestly and deeply, the mixed-group relations are strengthened, and conflict is attenuated.
And it works in the other direction concurrently: Lessons gleaned in mixed-group relations are what seed the work for the affinity groups that are in that larger mix. When they are healthy they are living, evolving reflections of each other. They are symbiotic.
A year into pondering all of this, Ian MacKenzie reached out to ask if I was interested in building a mythopoetic men’s conference together. That closing-circle story immediately shot through me. And I knew the next step that was being asked of me.
I have learned to say yes to those feelings in my chest.
On Inclusivity and Exclusivity
An affinity group by definition is both inclusive and exclusive, depending on whether viewed from the inside or from the outside. Each group can be broken down to smaller and more specific groups all the way down to the level of the individual, while also being seen as part of a larger whole.
This is exactly how a healthy ecosystem functions: an organized group of interacting, interdependent, or interrelated elements act together as a unified whole to accomplish a specific purpose. The health (or unhealth) of the parts affect the health of the whole. That whole is a part of an even larger whole, and on and on, and out and out it goes.
A healthy and intact culture mirrors this: the culture itself is an affinity group made up of smaller diverse and interconnected affinity groups working together and alongside each other. Both the differentiation and the interaction between the smaller groups fosters sustainable and deep diversity in the whole, and influence moves in all directions.
Troubles arise (and ‘trouble’ is a benign way of stating it), when power-with (working together or alongside) becomes power-over (domination), turning that differentiation into division, and making the flow of influence unidirectional and top-down.6
Affinity groups that congeal around their power-over and see their dominance as an entitlement will almost always use dehumanization of all other groups to maintain their own group status.
Dehumanization is at the root of colonization, racism, sexism, and a myriad of other social ills that are defined by their subjective division of upper and lower castes. Dehumanizing is a most vile form of exclusion, perhaps the most vile a human group can be towards another human group.
But we need to be careful not to toss out exclusion as the inherent problem.
Psychologically, your boundaries are exclusions, and your discernment comes from your ability to exclude. Physically, your sense of touch, your skin, and your liver are filters of exclusion. In relationship, consent only exists if exclusion is as available as inclusion.
It is possible to exclude without dehumanizing, alienating, or dominating, and that form of differentiation-as-exclusion is as much a hallmark of a healthy culture as dehumanization is the mark of an unhealthy culture.
Traditional cultures knew this: there was men’s work, women’s work, gatekeeper or two-spirit work, elder’s work, hunter’s work, weaver’s work, and so on. These separated groups coming together made the village or the tribe, and the villages or tribes coming together made the culture.
A culture has always been: these groups of people but not those groups of people. And those other people? Their culture is also these groups of people but not those groups of people.7
Separation is not Alienation
“[A]wareness of radical separateness is a prerequisite for individuation.” - Edward Eddinger8
While this quote orbits around the psychology of an individual, it can easily be extrapolated outward, for a culture’s psychology is reflected in both the individuals and the groups that are nested within it.
Separation is the physical or formal state of being apart (or a part).9
Alienation describes the physical, emotional, and spiritual estrangement that can occur as a result.
Separation is an external reality, whereas alienation is an internal construct.
In human terms, separation can be turned into alienation either by the intention behind the separation (de-humanizing, othering, power-over), or by the separated group or individual’s perception of being set apart. One does not necessarily lead to or negate the other. These are two parallel processes: what is being sent out, and what is being received and perceived.
Here we must note that not being included in a particular group, space, or activity is not the same as being alienated, provided you are welcome and included in the larger group outside of the affinity space.
This caveat makes all of the difference.
When a person or people come from a history of separation-as-exclusion or alienation, they are more likely to experience any form of separation as alienation. They are more likely to experience being a part, (being a piece of a larger whole), as being apart, as in: not belonging.
When a person comes from a history of being a part of a group whose ongoing and deliberate separation relies on alienating others through the fist of domination via, for example, their economic privilege, or their place of birth, or their gender, or their ideology, or their skin colour, they are more likely to experience separation that alienates others as normal, and even as their entitlement. Furthermore, they will see integration and coming together in conciliation with any group that they have cast out as a threat and as a challenge to their privilege and power.
The roots of this separation-as-alienation conflation go deep in human history. Etymologically, religion means to bring disparate parts back into alignment.
It is interesting to note that trafficking in alienation (original sin, the fall) to sell your salvation back to you, is one of the main tenets of monotheism. So often in human affairs, the “solution” to a trouble has the trouble baked into it.
The animists and the many-god people of the world are not trying to unite with or close the gap between their Gods and the humans. For them, that separation is not a problem to solve. Their offerings, their rituals, and their prayers honour and sustain that gap, which they understand to be the fundament of both their cultural and individual health.
The Trouble With ‘Unity’
Most modern people no longer turn to religion to ease the pain of alienation; spirituality is their balm. The most common tenant of contemporary spirituality, and increasingly on the secular side of the world, is unity.
“We are all the same.”
On the surface, this sounds healthy. It’s inclusive, it’s equal, it’s welcoming. But in the treating of differences as either non-existent, or as problems to solve, including difference of viewpoints, another form of alienation through fundamentalism is conjured.
“We are all the same” obliterates the unique gifts, histories, and ideas that each person carries, which in turn desiccates emergence and starves meaning.
In many New Age and contemporary “consciousness” circles, differences are banished and separation is a problem to solve. Often grief and anger are cast out as miscreants.
One way to define grief could be the articulation of separation. And anger is the emotion that defends one’s boundaries when a person or group’s differentiation is threatened.
Boundaries and differentiation are hard on this brand of unity, which is really more bypass and fusion than unity (more on fusion later).
We Gather For Those Who Are Not Here
“If the men’s work you’re doing doesn’t leave you more in love with the women in your life, something is wrong.” - Martin Shaw10
The affinity group of the men’s conference is broad: it is simply men.
A healthy articulation of a non-marginalized affinity group in the culture / spirit / soul / community / political realm is that the group gathers so that they may better serve those outside of the gathered circle.
We gather under the intention and spirit of improving and empowering the lives of those who are not here.
This may sound like a lofty goal. To not be merely lip-service, power dynamics, privilege, and socio-political realities both in and out of the group need to be acknowledged, worked over, and accounted for, ongoingly.
Healing, growth, maturity, and trust do not come to or from those who do not know who and where they are in relation to others, especially those who are unwilling to know it.
As a whole, men do not make up a marginalized group. But, as is the case in any large affinity group, there are other smaller groups nested inside, and some of those small groups will be made up of marginalized people.
For example, in my corner of the world: Indigenous men are marginalized. Queer and trans men are marginalized. Unhoused men are marginalized.11
At the men’s conference, we stewards hold the awareness that the men coming represent a myriad of groups, life-ways, lived experience, geographical regions, and ideologies, and that our coming together temporarily places us in one very specific and delineated group that will not exist after the event.
And we understand that time-specific and self-selected affinity group to be the smallest and least accurate representation of who each man is in his family, community, ancestry, and ecosystem.
The ‘Work’
People who know me know that I shudder at claims of brotherhood, village, and projections of that ilk when people have spent a few days together at an event. It’s not that I don’t understand the appeal or the desire, or that I don’t long for brotherhood or village myself. I do, deeply.
It’s that too often these titles are used flippantly as a way to bypass the grief of these very things not being available on a deep level in our current culture. They are a projected hope, rather than an embodied reality, and projections are more liable to cast shadows than they are to plant seeds.
If the conference does what we intend, it will send men back to their communities not as missionaries or as members of an exclusive in-group, but as culture-workers with tangible skills to employ, gifts to share, and the potential to be better allies. Or at least, with the seeds to do so.
That right there, and the myriad of conversations happening between both individuals and various other affinity groups in the lead up to the conference is the men’s work that underwrites the potential usefulness of this men’s conference.
Of course a mythopoetic men’s conference falls under the wide umbrella of men’s work, but seen through a ritual lens—which is one of the primary lenses of mythopoetics—the conference itself is a threshold space more so than a workspace.
In ritual terms, work is not a threshold endeavour. It is what is undertaken before and after a threshold, in relation both consciously and unconsciously to the threshold. A threshold space is an immersion and an encounter, and is definitely not a retreat.
In threshold space big things happen, but there are no guarantees on what will happen. Translating what happened is part of the ongoing labour on the other side of the threshold. The rest of the work is honestly employing that-which-was-born out of that translation in your waking life.12 Not just “inside” you, but in all your relationships, human and non-human.
From a container standpoint, guaranteed outcome is the collapse of transformative space, meaning, and empowerment. Guaranteed outcome is the mark of theatre, performance, and pageant; it is the atrophy of ritual, deep diversity, and sustainable and embodied growth.
From a participant standpoint, guaranteed outcome shows up in the form of rigid autonomy, which seeds collapse of transformational space from the other direction. In his book The Alchemy of Initiation, Robert Moore talks again and again about the important skill of willed submission in threshold space. To surrender, and welcome all that comes.
With all this in mind, and a healthy amount of grace for the errors, missteps, and learning-by-hindsight that mark all human undertakings, it’s important to remember that sustainable change takes place slowly and intermittently. A healthy ecosystem contains and depends on life in all stages of development.
Emissaries and Gates
When a group is healthy, it is not a silo.
Cultures that are silos do not survive long, and affinity groups that are silos tend to affirm, amplify, and ossify the status quo.
The role of emissary is vital in group and culture work. An emissary is a person who delivers messages between the groups, ensuring that a group is influenced by the social, political, and cultural environment that it is nested in.
For an emissary to do their work, there needs to be gates between the groups.
In modern terms, “gatekeeping” has taken on a negative tone and is generally taken to mean something like “excluding” with a tone of “better-than”. But keeping (as in tending) a gate—physically or spiritually—is not just about keeping people out (or in). A healthy gatekeeping function ensures both that the hinges swing, and that the locks latch on a case by case basis.
If a gate never opens, it is a wall. The people inside are trapped. The people outside are shut out and shut down, permanently excluded. In nature this is the clearcut, or its inverted twin, the monocrop. In the human world, this is fundamentalism, racism, sexism and a myriad of other “isms”, including cynicism.
This is not me saying “we all need to become gatekeepers and emissaries.” That’s more of the “we are all the same” spell mentioned earlier. Consider that both gatekeeper and emissary are specific skills, and primarily functions and not identities. Like any skill, they must be learned and practiced, and some people will have a natural gift in their articulation.
Like any cultural function, they are community bestowed, which is to say that they are externally realized and employed, and not self-anointed. A function is temporal, situational, behaviour-based, and externally validated and realized. It is the opposite of an identity, or perhaps better described as the maturation of identity.13
If anything, this is an advocacy bordering on a plea to recognize the gates, and recognize that they need keeping. And then support those who are there to keep them, so that the emissaries may move between them. And to be on the lookout for emissaries and pay attention to what they bring.
Here’s a good rule of thumb: If your affinity group is upholding the status quo then your gates are shut too tight, because the status quo in this time and place is upheld by the toxic twins of domination and alienation.
When affinity groups do their work alongside but apart from the other affinity group(s), with gates, emissaries and a good dollop of grace, curiosity, and alertness, their coming together has a chance at being sustainable, healing, generative, and whole-ing.
That coming together isn’t some specific and one-off end point. It happens continually and concurrently. The potentiality of each reunion is marked by the health of the individual parts when they are separate and apart.
Healthy separation is the midwife of healthy connection.
Emissary-work in Context to the Men’s Conference
At the time of writing this, most of the in-depth discussions I am having about what men’s work could be have been with women who have stepped into the emissary function.
That wasn’t planned at the outset (which is a testament to my previous naivety and was another seed for this essay), and so it has come as both a surprise and a generative blessing. It also entirely goes against the narrative I am fed in my mainstream and social media bubbles.
In contrast, some men I have reached out to—the ones that aren’t immediately ‘in’, excited to support, or directly involved—have had a tepid and collapsing response.
I can’t promote something I haven’t been to.
Everybody I know is broke, so I can’t imagine anyone going.
What’s the point of a men’s conference?
This also came as a surprise, and with some heartbreak.14
Let us pause and notice here that the women I mention are actively supporting an event that they are excluded from attending. And it’s not just an automatic surface-level version of support. Many of them are responding with long-form emails and messages about why this work matters to them, and they are bringing questions to the table unabashedly, questions that are rightfully linked to their support, and that in their asking, expand the work and grow the culture.
For example: Before I publicly support this event, which I would like to do, can you tell me how this men’s conference serves women and children?15
Blessings abound.
The answer to a question like that is not, cannot be, a 5 point check-list on-the-ready. A good question is much more profound to carry than a quick answer is to deliver.
Questions that come from a place of care, curiosity, compassion with just the right amount of fierceness are mantras to pray over and pillars that hold up any worthy endeavor of depth.16 Most importantly, they are the midwife to questions that can be asked back through the gate that the original question opened, for example: How could men coming together better serve women and children?
And then listening, learning, and changing course as necessary.
What does this learning look like in the context of this men’s conference?
It looks like positioning the Cascadia Men’s Conference as an embodied, cultural-level response to the manosphere and the patriarchal power structures that divide our current society.
It looks like my co-steward Ian doing a 3 part podcast series with trans men, Trans Men: In Their Own Words.
It looks like booking presenters from both inside and outside the main affinity groups that Ian and I occupy.
It looks like compiling a board of advisors made up of elders, and leaning on them continually to ask them what they see, and just as importantly, what they notice is missing.
It looks like this essay, and the hundreds of conversations that have led to it, and will be conjured out of it.
It looks like doing this work in day-to-day life, not just in the lead-up to an event. And it’s the awareness that these small steps are just the beginning.
We have much to learn. There are many more groups to weave in, many more conversations to initiate, and many more gates to open and tend. Mistakes will be made. And big things will appear.
We welcome all that comes.
Differentiation Leads to Deep Diversity
We are not going to be able to hear or factor in every viewpoint, and we need to walk that fine line of discernment that is the hallmark of what psychology calls differentiation, which it contrasts with fusion.
Differentiation challenges you (the individual and/or the group) to remain yourself and in your power while welcoming, collaborating with, and empowering the other(s) outside of yourself or your group.
Fusion is losing yourself in the other, becoming “one”. The word confusion when broken down to its constituent parts is “Together, with” Fusion”. When disparate parts are fused together, confusion is the result.
What is it to be alert, aware, curious, and influenceable, while not diluting the medicine that comes from differentiation? What is it to deeply connect without collapsing into fusion?
That is the deep work - whether men’s work or otherwise, and that work is the foundation of deep diversity.
Deep diversity is not hand-selected, and it is not a checkbox that one marks to meet a certain quota, nor is it based on morality, ideologies, guilt, or shame. It is based on welcoming what (who) is there, and noticing what (who) is missing, and then honestly wondering if that missing piece is meant to be there.
If the missing piece is indeed missing, open your gate and both send and welcome emissaries. If the missing piece is not so much missing as it is misplaced, a healthy group ensures that there is another healthy group for that piece to belong to that is empowered by your group.
Mature power empowers.
Healthy and sustainable belonging affirms and conjures healthy and sustainable belonging.
Healthy affinity groups affirm and conjure other healthy affinity groups.
We gather for those who are not here.
This is some of the work that is both the occasion and the intention of this specific group of men coming together, this time, in this place. May our coming together benefit and be of service to the families, communities, and ecosystems that we are a part of.
An earlier draft of this essay had another 2000 words around the role of affinity group work in relation to settler / Indigenous (re)conciliation. In the end it became obvious that there are enough arrows in the air just using the men’s conference as an example. There are many other aspects of modern culture where healthy affinity group work is the foundation for healing, whole-ing, and positive change. I encourage you to extrapolate accordingly.
If you want to pull this thread further, Stephen Jenkinson’s book “Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble” is the book for you. I have read (and listened to) to this book more than any other book in my adult life. I do recommend listening to it, and having the physical book on hand for dog-earing and underlining. That’s my approach to a work of that stature anyways.
Simply engaging in the deep inner reflection work and nature connection that a vision fast offers does not automatically erase the pre-existing power structures of a culture, a community, or a family. It doesn’t necessarily solve or heal anything, nor does it ensure that a person turns towards their ancestral stories and histories as an outcome.
I have written extensively on the pitfalls and challenges of contemporary initiatory passage work, and how these factors can lead to a person’s unique gifts withering on the vine, remaining unemployed by the community or by the culture, becoming simple elements of “personal growth” instead, leaving the community, the land, and the ancestors no better off from the labour.
To be clear, most of my programs are application based, so the “open to everyone” is at the application stage. In depth and transformation work, good gatekeeping is required to ensure that the program is a good fit for participant and guide.
There’s a caveat here around context, consent, and time. Teachers and students are one example of a temporary and consensual articulation of division and power over. Having children have equal power to the teacher would undo any semblance of education, trading temporary hierarchy for anarchy.
And empires have always been these people OVER those people, which brings us back to dehumanization being one of the main pillars of a toxic affinity group relation. (Thanks to Tad for this expansion)
'From the book ‘Ego and Archetype’, page 134. Also, interesting to note is etymologically, the word radical means “originating in the root or ground”. Individuation is “the physiological, psychological, and sociocultural processes by which a person [group] attains status as an individual human being [a unique group] and exerts themself as such in the world.”
Here we can hold philosopher Paul Tillich’s maxim: the courage to be is directly connected to one’s ability to be apart. This is deeply explored in his book, The Courage To Be. [He plays with both forms of a part / apart in his formulation as well]
Taken from Simon Yugler’s notes from a men’s event that Martin facilitated in 2025. Thanks Simon! (Simon is a main collaborator for The Cascadia Men’s Conference)
The CMC has a few scholarships available that attempt to begin at addressing that disenfranchisement within the group, to ensure the some men that couldn’t otherwise (or wouldn’t otherwise) be there can attend, but that is simply the beginning of a long journey towards the deep and sustainable diversity is possible in the future, one that is born out of time and trust in relationship.
If this translating is left solely to the individual’s conscious ego, most of the medicine is lost, kinked, and confused. A good therapist can help, but translating is truly the purview of elders, mentors, guides, dreams, myths, and further rituals.
You may be reading this and recognize yourself in one of these roles. I am not trying to take that identification away from you. What I am pointing to with the identity / function differentiation might be more obvious if we use another function as an example: If someone walks around announcing to all and every that they are an elder, it is unlikely that they are one. On the other hand, if you keep hearing other people describe a person as an elder, it’s likely that they are one.
A thread to pull for a future conversation: Are women generally more supportive than men? Does men's disposition towards competitiveness influence their willingness to support other men is something that they are not directly involved in?
This question alone has seeded hours of voice memo conversations back and forth between myself and Amber Samaya (the woman who first asked it), and Ian and I. It has become a question that I directly ask of others - men and women - in almost every long-form conversation I have had since it came across my transom. A emissarial gift of the highest order.
Another helpful differentiation between an expansive and life-affirming question that generates and a question that is a death knell is whether it comes from a place of grief or from a place of grievance. Question that come from grievance aren’t even really questions, so much as they are opinions and projections couched in the form of a question. Until that grievance moves to grief, there is no real conversation available.
Thank you Trevor for all the time and thought and heart you put into this essay. I felt hundreds of related conversations behind me as I read this. We’re fine tuning, questioning things that haven’t been questioned enough, sharing notes, and also taking into account our encounters with life-shaping forces we still don’t understand. I took a screenshot of my favorite paragraph and love your essential reason you’ve found at the center of the coming conference: we’re doing this for those for those who aren’t there. I feel that deeply. How can we share what we ourselves don’t have? Now to read some of your other essays!
Thanks for writing and sharing clearly loads of thought and care went into its creation. I feel a lot of sadness thinking about the elder and his shame. I dont think his shame was deserved and I bless his taking responsibility for trying to create a more inclusive world. I imagine his desire for the beatufiul work he was doing to be shared with people who are in someways different to him. Inspired the level of thought and I hope intentions and practical steps to make this mens conference your organising open to diverese men. Blesssings to you and your elders for doing the work!