"Good Guys," Here's What Women Need When Talking About The Epstein Files

14 Tips Guys Who Care Can Use To Help The Women In Your Lives Metabolize The Epstein Files

I just recorded the second episode of a podcast I’m starting with musician and IFS practitioner Axel Mansoor called Hot Buttered Epiphanies, wherein we accept letters from people seeking IFS-informed guidance and healing, we fumble through trying to answer those questions, I lead an IFS guided practice, and then Axel writes a song for our letter-writer or call in person.

This week’s letter was from a young guy whose girlfriend is really upset about the out of control misogyny, male entitlement, and patriarchy evidenced by the rampant nature of the abuse of women in the Epstein files. Understandably. He considers himself a “good guy” and has compassion for why she’s reacting the way she is, given her own sexual trauma. But he feels flooded by the tsunami of her rage- and even though he’s in a men’s group and has good support- he feels like she’s projecting the entirety of her trauma at the hands of men directly onto him.

Axel did such a great job talking to him with tenderness for his plight, “good guy” to “good guy.” I wish I'd seen it sooner, or I'd have read it on the podcast, but Kayleigh Ceedar posted a meme on this thread that said:

THIS! This is what we want you to know, dear men. To be a “good guy” when it comes to patriarchy, you have to risk upsetting the one overtly sexist guy in the room, even if it means losing power, money, belonging, or even your job- because not doing so is a betrayal to us women.

I tried to help this "good guy" from the letter understand what it’s like to be a women in the wake of the Epstein files- and what we need. So that conversation inspired this essay. The podcast episode is in production now, but I’ll share it as soon as it’s ready. (Register for my newsletter at LissaRankin.com if you want to be alerted when that podcast is ready.)

Why I Prefer To Talk About Power Rather Than Gender

Typically, I avoid talking about gender. Even though I’m trained as a gynecologist and consider myself a feminist, I don’t do exclusively “women’s empowerment.” I don’t exclude men from my workshops, write about matriarchy, or participate in “goddess” culture, the way some of my colleagues and girlfriends do. I tried that- and it felt good for a while- but the circles I was running in often felt like a lot of spiritual narcissism and women stabbing each other in the back in the name of the goddess and sometimes behaving just as badly as the men they were hating on. I'm sure there are groups that get that right- and I do attend Shiloh Sophia's women's circle- but other than that, I've kept my distance from those who teach about female supremacy as an alternative to male supremacy.

And…as Celeste Davis pointed out so poignantly and painfully, now is the time to say the one word that explains the Epstein files, the Gisele Pelicot trial, and why 1 in 3 women is sexually abused- patriarchy. (Read Celeste here.)

Because my partner Jeff has been severely abused by several sociopathic women in his life, and because men have generally treated him better, he frequently goes bananas if I try to talk about gender, patriarchy, male entitlement, white male fragility, or any of those gender, race, or power discussions. But as a woman getting hit by the tidal wave of awareness coming our way in the wake of the Epstein dump, my viral blog post about Deepak Chopra in the Epstein files, and the intensity of people telling me their #MeToo stories, I need to talk about male entitlement, patriarchy, and rape right now.

I waited for our couples therapy session to bring up the issue of patriarchy with my partner, because it’s just too hot to discuss without a mediator. But here’s the gist of what I said to my partner in our RLT therapy session yesterday, and what our therapist advised. I hope this lovingly-intended feedback helps other men show up for the women in their lives in times like this.

1. Patriarchy Is The Water Women Swim In

First off, when women talk about patriarchy, collective misogyny, or sexual abuse, remember that, even if you as a heterosexual or queer male have been sexually abused yourself, and even if you’ve been abused by women, you do not and cannot know what it’s like to walk around a patriarchal culture in a female body. No amount of imagining “as if” or attempting to empathize can give you that understanding, just like I will never know what it’s like to walk about Black. Accept that- humbly. You can’t know. No matter how many books you read or workshops you’ve attended or therapy sessions you’ve done or men’s groups you’ve joined or Tantra classes you’ve taken to try to earn the “good guy” title, you still can’t know what it’s like for us women.

2. Don’t Get Defensive

If you want to be supportive when we’re losing our shit over this stuff, please, I beg you, contain your defensiveness. Even if we’re looking you straight in the eye while raging about Jeffrey Epstein and all his pedophile cronies, even if we shouldn’t do that, even if you’re the goodest of the good guys, please, we beg you, do not make it about yourself and do not get defensive.

3. Hold Space For Our Feelings

We’re having a lot of big feelings right now. If you can ground yourself and avoid making it all about you, it helps if you can listen and Hold Space the way Heather Plett teaches us to do.

4. Practice Generous Listening

Listen generously, not defensively. (Listen to my teacher Rachel Naomi Remen teach medical students about generous listening here.) Listen to hear what her experience is like, without making it about you. That doesn’t mean you have to be the unwavering almighty oak tree while your little female emotional butterfly flits around you. (Don’t even get me started on how infantalizing such teachings are.) Just breathe. Ground. Don’t make it about you. Don’t get defensive. Don’t make us call out your male fragility, please.

5. Co-Regulate With Us

If our nervous systems are on fire because of what we’re seeing in the news, if we’ll let you, help co-regulate us. Safe touch helps. Giving us a hug when we’re losing it helps. Rubbing our feet or offering a massage helps. If you’re defensive, we may not let you touch us, but that’s why. Because we cannot handle your defensiveness on top of our own feelings.

6. Ask Us What We Need

You don’t have to be a mind reader, but it can cue us to check inside and see what we need if you just prompt us- “What do you need right now? How can I best support you?” Because women are so busy trying to figure out what everyone else needs, we very well might have no idea what we need, so don’t be surprised if we look dumbfounded. But if you do ask- and you’re interested and resourced to help us meet those needs- that feels supportive. And if we actually trust that you’re interested in helping us get our needs met, that can instantly help deescalate the fire in our nervous systems.

7. Do The Nervous System Work To Tolerate Your Own Shame

You can’t co-regulate with us if you can’t self-regulate your own shame. It’s understandable that it’s uncomfortable to talk about gender inequality, sexism, misogyny, male entitlement, and patriarchy. White women are very aware of what it feels like to talk about race with BIPOC women. It feels awful. We feel horrible about what white women have done to BIPOC women, how we’ve betrayed them to get more power and privilege for ourselves, how we’ve humiliated ourselves by committing micro and macroaggressions against them, for our own personal gain.

When BIPOC women need to talk to us about race, the way Layla Saad did in her viral blog post “I need to talk to spiritual white women about white supremacy,” which got taken down and turned into the wonderful book Me & White Supremacy, we cringe. We deflect. We get defensive. We get all kinds of squirmy. Because hearing how BIPOC women experience white women elicits shame- as it should. We’ve betrayed our own kind, our own gender. We’ve allowed ourselves to be privileged above BIPOC women for our own personal gain. And it can flood us with so much shame that we get defensive. We say “But I’m an ally.” “But I have a Black sister.” “But my best friend is Black.” “But I’m colorblind.”

If we do that, we are not listening to the BIPOC woman’s pain. We are making it all about us. And that’s the very thing we women are sick of when we try to talk to men about gender inequality- the narcissism, the self-absorption, the defensiveness, the male fragility.

Either way, whether we’re talking about race, gender, social class, sexual preference, ableism, trans rights, neurotypical privilege, or any of the myriad social justice issues, if we’re in the privileged group- and we’re with someone who lacks that privilege, it is our job to listen, to care, to do our best to empathize even if we never really can because we lack the direct experience of not having that unearned privilege.

Men, it’s your job to do the work to become less fragile, to do the nervous system “reps” Resmaa Menakem writes about, from a Somatic Experience perspective, in both My Grandmother’s Hands (about race) and Monsters In Love (about couples.) Just like white women must do the work around white supremacy, to be able to become more loving and intimate with BIPOC women and men, men must do the nervous system regulation work to be capable of not collapsing under the discomfort of the shame of patriarchy.

Feel your own shame for being part of a privileged group that historically abuses women, a group you didn’t choose to be part of by being born male but you still benefit from being part of. But metabolize that shame and don’t dump it all onto her.

8. Be Man Enough To Call Out Other Boot-Licking Men Who Degrade Women

The internet was up in arms when the Men’s Olympic hockey team laughed out loud when Trump suggested that he was bummed that he’d, of course, have to have the Women’s Olympic hockey team to the White House too- because they also won a gold medal. “Sexist!” the internet said. And, yes, of course that’s sexist. But as Liz Plank wrote, Stop Calling It Sexism. It’s Cowardice.

Every time you laugh at a sexist joke your boss makes or stay silent when someone in a position of power over you expects you to go along with their sexist, patriarchal whatever, every time you fawn a sexist guy or even just stay silent, we women lose respect for you. If you don’t call out sexism every time you spot it, if you don’t have our backs and stand up for women, to protect us, we can’t help feeling disappointed in how weak you are, no matter how big your muscles are or how tall or powerful you might be in other aspects of your life.

We feel disgust at how low you’ll go to prop yourself up because some asshole you want to benefit from getting the approval of wants you to go along with degrading women. If you’re willing to degrade yourself- and betray us women, the ones you claim to love and respect- to win the approval of your boss or your bro’s or your President, then don’t be surprised if we withdraw from you and feel betrayed. It’s your loss, because the incredible intimacy you could have if you were brave enough to call out powerful sexist men would be worth whatever money, power, status, or job approval you’d lose by not going along with it.

9. Own Your Part

While you’re probably not named in the Epstein files and you probably didn’t rape teenage girls, you probably are guilty of some bad behavior related to patriarchy, whether you’re aware of it or not. No matter how much of a “good guy” you think you are, chances are the women in your life, if they feel safe enough with you to be honest, are far more aware of your sexist, patriarchal, misogynistic, bullying, overbearing, dominating, or defensive behavior related to patriarchy.

While you don’t have to stand in the lava of her volcanic reaction to the Epstein files, it does help if you don’t try to pretend you’re getting this all perfect. If she brings up something that upsets her about you- because it’s getting stirred up by the Epstein files, own up to what you can. Even if you can only own 1%, fess up. You’ll only get her more riled up if she knows how patriarchy plays out in you- and in your relationship with her- and then you gaslight her by denying it.

10. You Get To Have Boundaries

You don’t have to take in the whole lava dump. You can practice inner boundaries to prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed by her inevitable projections that really have nothing to do with you. She shouldn’t be projecting her past traumas onto you, but if you’re her intimate partner, she probably will. That’s her work, to own her projections.

But if you can handle it, stay by her side, while you let the lava flow around you. It’ll help calm her down if you own up to the ways you’ve abused your male privilege or power or entitlement with her. But it may not calm her all the way down, because it’s a firestorm all around us women right now. And it’s stirring up all our past traumas related to male entitlement and patriarchy.

That said, you do get to have boundaries. If we’re really piling it on because we’re upset about the Epstein files or patriarchy in general, you don’t have to stand in the fire of our rage beyond your own capacity. If you can take the heat, by all means, stick with us. Let us vent. But if you’re flooded, you’re only going to make it worse by trying to stick it out. If you need a 20 minute time out, you get to ask for it- to calm yourself and to give you both a chance to relax. It’s good for you both, as long as you take distance responsibly and don’t use a time out as an excuse to avoid picking the conversation back up later.

11. Shake It Off

Both men and women need to get this stuck energy out of our bodies. Dance it off. Go to a safe “smash room” (like this one in the Bay Area) and break some plates or keyboards. Go outside for a hike in nature. Do some kick boxing or martial arts or team sports. Help her get out of her paralysis and stuckness too. Maybe you can even dance together. Feel free to put on my Sweat Your Prayers playlist.

12. Encourage Her To Write Down Her Story

Every woman I know has kept secrets to protect men in our lives- myself included. I just named some of the names of the abusive men (and women) whose secrets I’ve kept- and I’m sick over it. I’ll be writing one of my stories, maybe alongside a fellow victim of his scam who I'm writing with, about “spiritual teacher,” “healer,” and grifter Trevor Hart, who claims that he used to work with Deepak Chopra. I promoted Trevor, helped platform him, co-taught a Sounds True workshop in Boulder with him. And he abused my trust, betrayed me, hurt me, abandoned me in my darkest hour without any explanation, and caused me to lose over a hundred thousand dollars. He also deeply hurt another woman, someone who met him because of me, and I feel awful about that. As part of making amends to her for the harm I’ve caused, I am naming his name here and will tell more of our story in forthcoming posts. I’ve protected Trevor for 9 years because I didn’t want to hurt him, because I loved him, because even though he broke my heart, I wanted to protect him from public humiliation and scandal. But keeping his secrets means I’m betraying the other people he’s probably still scamming.

In times like this, we need to tell our stories of men (and women, because many mothers deeply hurt their own children) who have abused their power over us. We need to name the spiritual teachers, the gurus, the self help authors, the therapists, the ones whose secrets we've kept because we're scared of them, because we care about them, because we don't want lawsuits or conflict.

Those stories make us sick. Every woman I know has kept secrets to protect men in our lives- myself included. I just named some of the names of the abusive men whose secrets I’ve kept- and I’m sick over it. We need to tell our stories of men (and women, because many mothers deeply hurt their own children) who have abused their power over us. We bury those issues in our tissues and those traumas make us sick. Memoir As Medicine author Nancy Aronie and I will be teaching a weekend writing workshop in April on Zoom called Enough Already: How To Let Go Of The Stories That Shaped Us, The Stories We Thought Were Who We Are, The Stories That No Longer Serve Us.

Join us for Enough Already here.

13. Get Your Own Therapy To Deal With The Impact Of Our Pain On You

When you are grieving and/or traumatized by our stories of the incest, rape, groping, relentless sexual harassment, or anything else that has happened to or triggered us, please find your own therapist and/or trusted people to talk to about how you’re feeling. Do your own work to build emotional resilience. We’re doing ours. We do not necessarily want to process our trauma with you, just to help you metabolize how it impacts you.

14. It’s Too Heavy To Hold On Your Own

Whether you’re male or female or non-binary, all of this is too big to carry ourselves. We need community support. She needs a women’s circle. He needs a men’s group. We need excellent facilitators who are skillful enough to hold space for real truth and reconciliation between the genders. Don’t feel bad if you do everything I recommend on this list, and it’s not enough. This shit’s big. It’s a collective trauma, or in IFS language, a “legacy burden.” We can’t heal legacy burdens individualistically. We need each other. Get help, in therapy, in safe enough, brave enough circles that can handle this kind of discussion. And encourage the women in your life to do the same.

We try to make it safe to have these kinds of discussions in LOVE SCHOOL, so join us there if you feel inclined to do so.

Join LOVE SCHOOL here.

If you’re a dude, pass this on to other guys. If you’re a woman, maybe share it with your man. And please- tell me in the comments, what did I miss? How did I get this not quite right? I’m happy to listen to your suggestions!