Jersey Association for Family Therapy

The Jersey Association for Family Therapy (JAFT) aims to to encourage and support the practice and training of professionals in family and systemic psychotherapy and related therapeutic approaches.

JAFT organises training in Jersey and online and offers bursaries to support people in undertaking family-based or systemic training.

On 21^st April 2023 we welcomed Dr Ged Smith to share his ideas on Rethinking Masculinity with us. The workshop was attended by a cross section of the community, with Liberate (a local equality and diversity charity), MindJersey, the Salvation Army, Family Nursing Home Care and the Recovery College, as well as CAMHS, Children’s services, Adult Mental Health and representatives from local schools in attendance.

From the beginning of the session, when Ged invited attendees to share their hopes from the day, it was clear that attendees held different beliefs regarding gender, masculinity and their various effects on wellbeing. Ged’s use of humour facilitated an atmosphere in which attendees could actively engage in discussion, questioning and collaboratively building upon one another’s ideas. We were encouraged to think about the interacting structures of power; Ged acknowledged his privileged position as a white man, and how this sat alongside his working-class background when thinking about his experiences of masculinity.

Some attendees highlighted the shared humanity across genders, and how the othering process which strengthened the power of patriarchal structures appeared to come from a place of fear. We undertook a sculpt in response to the statement “men and women are fundamentally the same”; and although the positions people took were initially binary (agree/disagree), subsequent discussion between groups enabled us to hold multiple ideas alongside one another and the group was able to sit with a position of safe uncertainty (Mason, 1993).

Ged differentiated between men and masculinity, with masculinity and patriarchy problematised and traced the negative impact of these power structures on the wellbeing of both men and women (Smith, 2013). Working with a social constructionist approach to gender, we were encouraged to think about how we might work with families to challenge the socialisation process of masculinity, by asking questions like “how has growing up in this society made you behave in this way?”.

We later considered how cultural expectations of gender change, across time, geography and other levels of context (Pearce and Cronen, 1980). However, the cultural beliefs can also be held so strongly and persistently that it can feel impossible to resist or challenge. This tension between the cultural expectations of how gender is performed (Butler, 1988) and how a person wishes to be, or behave, can cause a gender role conflict (Betz and Fitzgerald, 1993) resulting in confusion or depression when a person feels unable to meet society’s expectations of them.

Although the construction of gender was acknowledged to be culturally and temporally defined, we also considered the powerful effect of masculinity on the barriers to inviting men into therapeutic spaces which are constructed as feminine. Ged presented the conflict between the demands of masculinity (eg. keep your private life private) with the demands of therapy (e.g. talk about your distress). Ged’s research (Smith, 2013) on engaging men in therapy was considered by the group, and applied to thinking more broadly about engaging members of the community, from boys in a single-sex secondary school, to fathers in family support work. We also reflected on our own prejudices, and how internalised ideas of masculinity impact the behaviours of professionals attempting to engage men, with research indicating that family therapists do not try as hard to engage fathers in therapy, despite acknowledging it’s importance (Flynn, 1998).

The dialogic style of presenting invited discussion on a range of topics related to the workshop, from Andrew Tate, Pornography, Hypersexuality and Incels, to victim blaming, transphobia, and women adopting masculine leadership styes when in positions of power.  That is not to say that we left the workshop with all the answers to these difficult and divisive issues. We noted the tension between seeing gender as a socially constructed power structure, within a specific cultural time, whilst also holding people who benefit from this power to account. This includes acknowledging how people benefit from the power which comes with masculinity and asking what they/we can do to change this.

So, no straightforward answers, but we agreed that we were a group of people who wished to continue these discussions. We plan to meet again to think about the implications of some of the ideas we discussed with Ged, and how we might put them into practice in our professional interactions, in our personal lives or wider opportunities for structural and political change.

References

Betz, N. E., & Fitzgerald, L. (1993). Individuality and diversity: Theory and research in counselling psychology. Annual Review of Psychology, 44, 343-3

Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre journal, 40(4), pp.519-531.

Flynn, J. K. (1998). Mothers and fathers in family therapy: a survey of family therapists. Dissertation submitted as partial fulfilment for the Degree of M.Sc. in Family Therapy, Birkbeck College, University of London in collaboration with the Institute of Family Therapy.

Mason, B. (1993) Towards positions of safe uncertainty. Human Systems, 4: 189 200.

Pearce, W. B. and Cronen, V. E. (1980). Communication, Action, and Meaning: The Construction of Social Realities. MLA 9th Edition (Modern Language Assoc.) Michigan: Praeger.

Smith, G. (2013). Working with Men in Systemic Therapy: Challenging Masculinities. Human Systems, 24,  51 – 64.