Where Did the Men Go?

Navigating this complicated space of collective female grief — and a longing for the presence of the Sacred Masculine

I have a problem and I don’t know how to solve it. I am surrounded by women who have been deceived or abandoned by the men they loved and trusted. Sometimes not just deceived or abandoned — sometimes bullied. Sometimes assaulted. Sometimes terrorized.

Find a new circle of friends, you might say. But this has been my experience my entire life. I don’t think I ever met a woman who hasn’t experienced this on some level.

And don’t forget: I’m one of them.

Anyways, you misidentified the problem. I don’t need to find a new circle of friends. That’s not the issue.

The issue is, why have so many of us experienced this? Not just once but again and again?

Why are we all here, experiencing this overwhelming collective grief?

Honestly, I have another problem that comes along with this one. It’s not bigger, but it’s no less intimidating to me.

How do I talk about this in the world in a way that honors this grief?

Year after year, I find myself tending to emotional and physical traumas I experience simply from the act of dating men. Year after year, I see my friends similarly afflicted, similarly heading back into therapy in order to deal with the latest rounds they just took right to the chest.

This isn’t happening because all men fall somewhere between self-serving and abusive, of course. But I feel at this point in the game, seeing the amount of damage out there that I have witnessed, and enduring what I have endured, it’s fair to say that too many fall somewhere on that spectrum. Far, far too many.

How do we talk about this? This happens so often that generalizations cannot be avoided. And yet, in general (sorry), I abhor them.

How am I supposed to find and understand the nuance of all that I see and have experienced? I know it is there, because life is all nuance.

And yet, all these nuanced situations still leave us in the same place. They still cause the same problems again and again. They still leave the same kind of pain and destruction in their wake.

So how do I do this? How do I talk about this — something so huge, so rampant, so commonplace — in a way that both honors the injustice of it, while somehow acknowledging the nuance in which it must be rooted? How do I share and explore the story of this collective grief — one our culture must come to recognize and respect if we are to transmute it — while not causing further damage?

I am aware of what is happening here. I think anyone who isn’t at the top of the food chain eventually makes it their business to know what’s happening. Some choose to find a way to power by aligning with the system. And some figure out that that’s never going to work and so we fight like hell to create a more just world.

So yes, I am deeply aware that this system, despite rewarding men with power, also surreptitiously strips it from them when they aren’t looking. The dominator system ultimately destroys everyone in it, not just those on the lower rungs.

I’d go so far as to say that men (yes, in general) are deeply oppressed by this system. It isolates them and rewards them for treating others in ways that further entrench that isolation. It forces them to suppress their feelings and to carry physical and emotional burdens that they should not have to carry on their own.

But while this is all true, what I can’t figure out is why so many men cling to the system with all their strength. Even in the midst of their mistreatment by this system, they choose to remain in relationship with it and then perpetuate that mistreatment onto those lower in the hierarchy.

Whose job is it to clean up this mess? To heal these wounds?

As I struggle to find my way, I am constantly shocked by the amount of men — strangers to me, I might add — who drop into my email and lay the responsibility for this at my feet.

Sometimes, they ask me — even challenge — what I’m going to do about this, as a feminist. Don’t I want equality? Doesn’t that mean for them, too?

Sometimes, they tell me what I should be doing and what I should be writing about in order to help men break free from this system.

And sometimes, they blame me, telling me that the reason men hurt so many women is because of bitches like me who write hate speech about them.

The details don’t really matter to me, anymore. After a few years of doing this, I’ve heard it all.

I can’t say that I agree with any of these assessments. It took a lot of years of this work and 45 years of living as a woman in a misogynistic patriarchy for me to come to the conclusion that I’m not here to fix the system on behalf of men. I’m here to fix it on behalf of people like me and the people with less power than I have.

It seems absurd to me that people with more power so often demand the labor of those with less power to fix the inequities of the world — and that includes my fellow white people. But I suppose that’s the nature of the system, isn’t it? It’s nothing if not consistent.

I’m going to respectfully decline, though. Though not in the way or for the reasons you might think.

I have one endgame in this: I want to see our patriarchal white supremacist hierarchy replaced with a more egalitarian system. I truly believe that everyone’s well-being depends upon this.

I want this for myself. For my nieces. For my friends’ daughters.

I want this for all women of all races.

And yes, I want this for men, too.

I will always do my best, for the good of us all.

Helping those in the lowest positions of power benefits everyone. And so that is where I will continue to focus. And I’ll always keep an eye out for the ways I can help soften the spaces in men’s lives. (Like here, here, and here.)

But…can I ask something I know I’m not supposed to ask?

Why do I feel so alone in this work? Why aren’t men lining up to help us, to lend us their power so we can demolish this system all the faster?

Where are they?

Smashing the white supremacist patriarchy is no easy task. Let me assure you.

And so many of the women working to that end are also trying to heal from the wounds the system has inflicted upon us. We are bleeding in battle.

I long to impart this on anyone who needs to hear it: Women are crippled under the weight of our collective grief and trauma. It is deep and it is painful.

And I feel like we can’t even talk about it because, for some reason, it seems to antagonize, anger, or ostracize men.

But god, I want to talk about it. I want this to be known and understood. I want, I suppose, compassion. Collective compassion.

Is that too much to ask? Maybe. My collective compassion for men comes with a side order of fear and trepidation. Is this hand I reach out going to be struck yet again?

Maybe men feel equally wounded. Maybe they feel equally afraid and hesitant.

But also, I can’t help but return to the very important point that they have more power than anyone. Didn’t someone once say something about the great responsibility that comes with great power?

And hey, you can believe it, because a man said it.

I’ll be honest here and say I don’t know what to do or what to say about this issue. I don’t have a clever ending planned or even a particular agenda beyond my longing for this grief to be seen and acknowledged.

Or…maybe I do have an agenda. I want answers, after all.

I want to know why so many of my friends, and other women in America, are raising children without the emotional or financial assistance of the men who made those children. (Between 20% and 57% — depending on race, which comes with all kinds of intersectional nuances — of kids in America have no father in their lives, and the emotional, physical, and economic impact of that is egregious.)

I want to know why I hardly have any friends who weren’t sexually abused or raped by a date, boyfriend, husband, father, or stepfather. (One out of every six women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape — and this statistic is the result only of those cases that have been reported.)

I want to know why men think it’s okay to acquire sexual consent through false pretenses, why so many of them stealth, ignore women’s request for them to wear a condom, or talk a partner out of using protection, altogether.

I want to know why they say, “You’re so amazing, you’re so beautiful, I love you so much,” and then completely disappear from your life.

Something is deeply wrong here. I’ve experienced it. So many women around me have experienced it, too.

And yet, I don’t know what to do about it. Except grieve with my sisters.

As I said, I have no answers. No clever endings here.

All I can do is ask: Where do we go from here?

© Yael Wolfe 2022

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