Like you, I've been awash in the disturbing news of the CNN story about a men's private network where they trade techniques on how to drug and r_pe their wives, as well as the cultural wake sparked by both men and women.

I've been having a lot of conversations offline, though now, on the cusp of heading to hold my latest men's weekend AWE (Awakening the Wild Erotic)- which specifically deals with alchemizing men's sexual shadow - I feel called to share some thoughts.

It feels akin to the metoo moment, when a tide of women flood the web with their outrage, fury, and calls for real change. This is often (and understandably) unfiltered and rooted in the real trauma they have experienced...and men (often) immediately respond by trying to perform surgery on her logic.

We see it with the 62 million number from the CNN report. Men are rushing to point out that this was the number of visitors to the site, not those "attending" the r_pe academy. They want to be "accurate." But for someone responding from a deeply felt truth, this appeal to logic lands as a strategy to avoid the actual contact. It’s a different vector entirely.

It’s also the "Man vs. Bear" debate all over again. When a woman says she’d rather meet a bear in the forest, she isn't making a statistical argument. She’s giving us a piece of vital, somatic data about what it feels like to move through this world. When guys bristle and quote percentages to prove "most men aren't attackers," they are missing the point.

I recently spoke with another men's coach who sits in the Christian "traditionalist" worldview. When I asked him how we felt about women's responses to the 'academy' he pushed back with against what he calls the Feminist frame that women are "special victims" and men are the "ultimate perpetrators."

He cited the harm that women perpetuate on men as well as children. Which of course, is also true. Yet for him, the solution is purely individual: deal with your own pain, accept we all harm each other, and stop trying to fix the world.

He dismissed the existence of a structural reality entirely.

This is where the conversation usually dies. To me, this is a deep form of gaslighting. It’s an attempt to use an individual lens to bypass a systemic crisis.

It’s an unwillingness to see the Hyperobject that folks call Patriarchy.

I get the challenge. If you know my podcast, I've had numerous conversations around unpacking the nuance of this. Naming Patriarchy does not mean "men are evil and we don't need them."

It means that we need more good men and good fathers willing to step outside the dysfunctional conditioning we received on how to relate to women, children and the earth.

Riane Eisler has offered the term "Androcracy," to point out the what she calls a culture of domination. This is the toxic organism that influences how we raise boys and men, and the cultural poverty around proper rites of passage and initiation, especially around a man's relationship to his sexual being.

For men doing men's work, my colleague Sophie Strand recently wrote an incandescent piece sharing her personal story and her fury, and in it, she issued a challenge that I think every man in this field needs to sit with:

"I’m not sure men’s groups are the answer right now. [...] men in groups tend to embolden each other’s worst behaviors. Even when they believe they are doing good. Maybe especially when they are confirming each other’s goodness.

I’m not interested in male grief or male tears. In men beating drums and creating “sacred” rituals. [....] I’m interested in radical male solidarity. In men fighting alongside me and screaming ENOUGH. NO MORE."

I can affirm Sophie’s mirror & challenge - that a lot of men’s work can be indulgent, ego-affirming, consumerist wellness bubbles. If the work doesn't translate into social-ecological impact, it's missing the mark.

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Painting: William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Orestes Pursued by the Furies, 1862