What do you think is the future of women's lives, feminism, and culture?

I didn't actively set out to "become" a feminist, as if it's some type of club or group to join to get points or impress my wife. In fact, I tried to find this weird balance between wishy-washy feminism on the one hand, and Maxim magazine on the other. But the further I go into this work, the longer I live, and the more I see, the harder my feminist line becomes. It's as if there's a whole other world that parallels mine, and yet most men never see it. I've entered a world that can't be forgotten; I've heard things and had things shared with me that I can't un-hear or give back, and it engenders a certain responsibility to DO something because of it.

It wasn't feminism that I was seeking, it was inspiration. I have felt so overwhelmed, so despairing, so SAD, at rape work in the past. Five hundred rape victims as patients can get to you...that's 500 stories of trauma in a matter of 10 years. And you're not just listening to them, you have to RESPOND to them, help resolve them! And here's the hard part: not every woman who has been raped is "ready" for recovery at that particular point in time, so sometimes you have to recognize that and see them continue on, after therapy, still suffering. Some of them even hate me, lash out at me, and even hold me personally responsible for their pain. This hurts me--I'm not a cold stone--but it's part of the work, too.

But I've noticed something amazing, too. When I've needed that inspiration to keep me adrift, it's almost always come from women. I have guy friends, of course, and there are times I need to set this whole part of my life and profession aside and have "guy time" and just hang out and do "guy things" (don't ask unless you really wanna know). Sometimes my wonderful wife senses this too, and blesses me with a bit of her attempts at "masculine" humor or "guy talk" with me.

I love my guy friends, but truthfully I'm seldom inspired by them. They're good guys, good dads, but you know what's missing? The sense of personal struggle. The sense of activism. The resistance to cultural disempowerment--"we're not gonna take it anymore!"--and the miracle of transcendent, existential thought. I DO see all of those things in a certain small group of women who have become "beloved survivors" to me. I'm curious about it, I'm drawn to it, and I'm even a little envious of it. I just don't know how to stay connected to it without becoming the "pestering outsider" trying to trespass on another community.

It's a natural process, then: I need to feel inspired, and I am drawn to what inspires me. And that source happens to be strong women. It's not that I think either men or women are superior, but sheesh, men just aren't trying very hard! We've never HAD to! There's no sense of desperate survival, of urgent seizure of power, of strength in spite of culture-wide adversity; we men get to take our power and happiness for granted, almost. We seldom have to penetrate through our surrounding culture and question it, because the culture BENEFITS us and we hardly even notice.

But women have activism built right into their survival. If God made this world from nothing, women often to have make theirs from even less.

And so I sit in front of groups of women every day, and I simply cannot see them as fragile, delicate beings on pedestals. I see miracles. I see possibility, sometimes even when their own FATHERS and HUSBANDS are blind to it. I find myself sad and annoyed at how many fathers/husbands cannot see the miraculous prophets that their own daughters/wives are becoming, and yet I am astonished by these living prisms of insight. Of course, I can't say any of this DIRECTLY to my patients, because it would make them feel weird and unsure how to respond, but it's simply true that I could not still be doing this work after ten years--and still loving it--if I didn't see this.

I see a girl with cuts up and down her arms, and she despises herself while I see a future role model.

A girl vomits and starves because she feels she doesn't even deserve to be nourished, but I see an artist.

A girl lays drunken and still, vacant in her mind, while boys treat her body like a soulless wastebasket for their own self-loathing, but I see a future poet.

This doesn't mean that I have an exaggerated, sensationalized, or over-dramatic view; certainly at times there are personality clashes and women who just aren't ready for this work at that time. But I see a strength and resolve in survivors that I haven't been able to find in a comparable way among men, and when I look for a source of inspiration I know without a doubt where it can be found.

So here are my questions to you:

What do you see as the inner strength of survivors? What differentiates between women's and men's strengths?

Why do you think your strengths are seldom seen, even by the men in your lives? Did you experience a father's or husband's indifference or lack of recognition to your own inner strengths? Why was that?

When someone else remarks on your strengths, and when those remarks come from a male, is it refreshing or suspicious? Why?

Other than the typical "compliments" you get from guys--sex, looks, sweet, cute, nice--what qualities of yourselves do you wish were noticed more often?

What would be an appropriate way for me to assure someone who despises herself that I see her worth, without it feeling like a phony platitude, a creepy pick-up line, or the kind of compliment that makes her nervous that she may not deserve?