Can we forgive men?

I know a lot of women (and men) are grappling with this today

Without going into the granulars (per my last post on commenting on the commenters), what is unfolding in the US right now (this very hour) is loaded with gendered signifiers and implications. It’s loaded with a lot and I’ve spent my morning here in Paris absorbing the news of the almost conclusive Trump win, responding to messages, emails and talking to friends and family in multiple timezones who are…scared.

But the gender stuff is particularly loud and hard. It weaves in and out of the Palestinian plight, what’s playing out in Sudan, Afghanistan and beyond.

For women all around me - and for many men - it becomes hard to square what is happening today in US with our relationship with the men in our own lives. I am struggling with it. In an enlightening conversation with a transgender friend this week I, arrogantly and blithely, decreed, “Men should have to live 20 years as a woman before they can apply for a licence to be a man and access all the privileges! That would fix things!?”

In coming weeks I may write more about how to fathom and live with what now is (we’re in it, this is what it looks like). I’m open to guidance on this.

But, for the immediate meantime, I just came across this contribution from

Anya Kamenetz

who spoke here with me a few months back about how to talk about collapse when you have kids and writes over at

The Golden Hour: climate, children, mental health

on such topics. I thought it captured a lot of what is coming up as a first response for many, and that it might provide some direction or solace. Anya weaves together her grappling with world events with techniques she’s used for growing her relationship with her husband. Her collated wisdoms, I think, are helpful.

With Anya’s permission, here’s an edited extract, with small comments from me inserted. I’ve also bolded bits that resonate and might for you too. She opens up by describing how she’s been with her husband 25 years and the marriage has had its ups and downs, particularly in the last few years, since the Dobbs decision came down. You can read the whole post here.

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Can we forgive men?

This has been called a gender gap election. That's a bit too binary for me. My queer and trans friends showed up for Harris like crazy. It probably makes more sense to call it a referendum on the patriarchy. 

And I fucking hate it. I hate that we still have to fight the patriarchy. I hate that we had to try to beat an adjudicated rapist by dragging bloody, dead women in front of the body politic and saying : here, please, we are human beings, you might even be related to one of us, please care. 

I hate that we failed. 

I understand that this may be specifically liberal white-lady outrage. Other communities have been dealing with this feeling of being dehumanized and devalued for a long time. The phrase Black Lives Matter expresses a feeling very similar to this. Palestinians have certainly expressed it. Missing and murdered Indigenous women. Many more.

My mother, who was 21 when Roe became law, asked me on the phone the other day: “Do women know how much men hate them?” My mother, who is from North Carolina and once wrote, “In the South all the big questions are left open: was slavery wrong, is Elvis dead, are women people?” She's been married 45 years, by the way. 

My husband knows women are people. So does my dad. 

But there are many things about the framework of heterosexual marriage that can be very trying, even when two people love each other very much and work earnestly to resist the scripts imposed by society. 

I felt the fundamental unfairness when I was going through two years of fertility treatments, followed by pregnancy, labor, postpartum, and breastfeeding and he… wasn't. We both wanted the kids but it was way harder on my body and there is no way to ever make that equal. And I feel something similar when I show up in a climate space, or a parenting space, and it is mostly women. Which is always. 

#NotAllMen. But how to not take it out on the specific man in front of you when being a woman in the world, and especially a mother, feels so categorically unfair?

[I shared this video, below, on my Instagram a few days ago - Sarah]

The Buddhist teaching is that being angry is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die. 

In our dark passage, we went to couples counseling. We read a lot of books. We went on retreats and hit pillows. We stayed up through harrowing, late nights very much like this one.

And here are some of the lessons I'm still absorbing that I think could be helpful as we try like hell to go forward as a country…

Lessons for a relationship, a nation, a planet

1. Esther Perel says that when facing a decision or dilemma, where there is by definition some ambivalence, couples externalize their internal tension by taking opposite sides of an argument, driving each other further and further apart. I see an analogue to the dynamic of polarization in our national politics, where we make the other side into the enemy instead of fully experiencing our uncomfortable feelings. One side says climate change isn't a problem and the other side says it's all the fault of the evil billionaires and corporations, and what we're not saying is : this is scary, this is chaotic, and yet I'm somehow not ready to make radical changes to my life to try to stop it. 

2. The Gottmans¹ say that 69% of conflicts in a marriage are unresolvable. They must be managed, not resolved. So our conflict management skills become paramount.

[This is where I’m at with …everything. What we are now facing has to be managed. It can’t be fixed, tidied up and ticked off as “sorted”. Not any more. This is the work ahead of us…managing together - Sarah.]

3. Within conflict, the Four Horsemen of marital apocalypse are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling². Of those, contempt, which comes from a pose of moral superiority, is the most destructive. And wow do I own that personally, and also see happening in politics on the left. Victimization breeds contempt. [The Gottmans] advise an exercise called “dreams within conflict” where you seek to understand the deep symbolic needs your partner is expressing when they dig into a position. This is a kind of enlightened imaginative empathy that also works well in the political and communal practice of nonviolence—provided you have the spoons, the energy, for it. 

4. Terrence Real does an amazing job explaining how toxic masculinity and particularly the myth of rugged individualism destroy heterosexual partnerships and cause misery. He talks about how, in close relationship, we can lower each other's stress levels and co-regulate each other; by the same token, the people we love can also cause us enormous pain.

You can read the full article over at

Anya Kamenetz

‘s Substack.

I much more to say on this theme. I don’t feel it said to be said just now; I’d rather read your thoughts and concerns and to know I’m not alone in this. As I said to my Dad this morning, we will now have to role-model like a warrior! Let’s do it.

Sarah xx

1. Relationship experts Dr. John and Dr. Julie Gottman

2. A Gottman thesis.