Strongmen Leaders

Rebecca Traister who is  the author of “Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger.” published a piece on the allegations against Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York. Her perspective merits our attention. She is inviting us to see the connection between patriarchy, toxic workplaces and the desire for strongmen leaders. 

She is inviting us to question what we think leadership looks like, “and how the aesthetic of the tough, domineering male leader covers up, or contributes to, poor leadership.”

She is interviewed in “The Ezra Klein Show,” where she talks about:

Why we often mistake bullying for leadership, what blind spots the Cuomo story reveals among liberals, the trade-offs between projecting an aesthetic of power and actually governing, why white male rage is so accepted and even admired, the parallels between Cuomo and Trump, how this story recasts reporting on Hillary Clinton and Amy Klobuchar, the double bind faced by female politicians.

Cultural conditioning runs deep. We are often unaware of its impact on how we look at the world. I believe that there is such a thing as conscious masculinity, and that it can be expressed in our leadership. But in order to get there, we need to have a sense of what it is not.

Saludos,

Gibrán

PS You can still sign up for Post Patriarchy Futures with our own Lawrence Barriner. This is an 8-week workshop for men that will take you back in time to the earliest roots of your patriarchal conditioning and catapult you forward in time to meet and shape your beautiful and whole post-patriarchal self.