Allan G. Johnson's guest appearances

Allan G. Johnson

The Chauncey DeVega Show

Safe Place on Race Podcasts 

Breaking Down Patriarchy

Tim Wise

Jane Crow

Gloria Steinem

Donald Trump

Bill Clinton

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Lester Spence

Eve Ensler

Anthony Bourdain

Jared Diamond

Joe Kenda

Bernie Sanders

Michael Eric Dyson

Jim Jones

Glennon Doyle

OwlTail

Amy: Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy! I’m Amy McPhie Allebest. Today’s book is called The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, and it’s the first text we’ve read that was written by a man since we read John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women several months ago! I have loved reading all of these books by women, but as I read this book it hit me how important it was that a man had written it, and here’s why: One of the biggest lessons I’ve realized in my education on racism recently is that society often places the burden of changing racist structures onto people of color… when the responsibility should be on the people who uphold those structures. So racism is a problem for white people to solve. White people need to own it. Likewise, sexism - which exists in all cultures in various ways - is often treated as a “women’s issue,” so as Jackson Katz says in his TED talk, men often tune out and don’t pay attention. So I love that Dr. Allan G. Johnson, who was a sociologist and college professor - and a man - took on patriarchy as his life’s work. And I was really gratified to see a lot of online reviews of his book written by men, who said this book helped them see things they had never considered before. So I’m really excited to discuss this book today, and want to welcome my friend Kasey Cruz to our discussion. Hi, Kasey!Kasey: (Say hi - I’m so happy to be here! Or whatever comes to your mind) :)Amy: I met Kasey a few years ago - she became part of our family’s little bubble of safe people during the Covid lockdown and she was our family’s fitness coach when all the gyms were closed down. She is so incredibly energetic, cheerful, optimistic, and hard-working, and she’s just a couple of years older than my oldest daughter so she became a dear friend as we spent hours together chatting between burpees and jump roping. :) So one day while we were working out Kasey, you told us about your grandmother and about your great-grandmother, and we were so mesmerized that we stopped mid-exercise and wanted to know every detail. And that conversation led to me asking you to be on the podcast. So I wonder if you can tell us about yourself, and start with the story of your great-grandmother.Kasey: My name is Kasey Cruz, I am the oldest of two children. Just me and my brother. My father’s family is Guamanian and my mother’s family is a mix of German and Cherokee and Palentin Indian. I was born and raised in Los Altos, California where I currently live. I recently graduated from Chico State University in the year 2020, sadly during the pandemic. I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Kinesiology and a minor in Adapted Physical Activity. For anyone that doesn’t know Kinesiology means, it is the study of the body and its movement. I had many life changing experiences during my time at Chico. I was involved in programs that helped individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities of all ages be involved in sports and exercise. Also, I interned at an elderly care facility for those with dementia and memory loss. There I led group exercise classes.  I also played soccer since I was four years old and ended up playing for about 2 years at the collegiate level. I’ve always had a passion for sports and exercise and loved the physical and mental challenges. At the university, I found a passion for helping others achieve their goals and challenge themselves through physical activity. Which leads me to what I am currently doing, I am a personal trainer, a strength and conditioning coach for athletes, and a group trainer at F45.Now a little bit about my great, great, great grandmother. As a little girl, we had this family tree project where we had to make a visual board of our family lineage on both sides. My mom was helping me with her side of the family and she told me that my grt grt grt grandmother was Cherokee and she was the chief’s daughter. Her name was Starshine Chitwood and she was traded for a saddle and a horse to be married to my grt grt grt grandpa. She birthed 13 children and her name was later changed to Sarah. As a little girl I was so enamored that I was related to a chief’s daughter. My friends and I would play imaginary games and pretend to live off the land like  but as I grew up and learned more about treatment of Native Americans in our country, broken treaties, murder, etc. . .I started to think about the story told to me years ago and how sad and frustrating that her legacy was about her baring many children and she was traded for goods. Amy: What does “breaking down patriarchy” mean to you?Kasey: When I visualize “breaking down patriarchy,” I think of an old dilapidated building that has cracks, shattered windows, and its foundation is still standing but needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Creating conversations about the history of. . .and sharing our stories of the significance of gender roles in our culture, workplace, school, and our society. Sharing experiences allows for a space for education, compassion, and relatedness which can allow us to break away from these old and outdated perspectives of men and women in society.  Amy: Thanks so much, Kasey. I’m so interested in your point of view as we talk about this book, because you bring all of those parts of yourself to this topic: the cultural background of both sides of your family, and as a Californian, as an athlete, and also as a young woman. Most of my readers have been in my own age bracket or older, so I’m really excited to hear how this stuff strikes you as a member of the rising generation who will soon be running the world. :) So I’m really eager to hear your thoughts. Before we start digging into the book, I’ll just quickly share a bit about the author: Allan G. Johnson was born in 1946 in Washington DC. He earned his bachelor's degree in Sociology and English at Dartmouth College, and his PH.D. in Sociology at the University of Michigan. His dissertation focused on women's roles in Mexico City, and after receiving his PhD, he worked at Wesleyan University in the sociology department. After he left Wesleyan, he worked at Hartford College for Women, teaching sociology and women's studies. During this time, he wrote a number of books, including The Gender Knot: Unraveling our Patriarchal Legacy, in 1997, and afterward he became a corporate speaker and freelance lecturer. He was a husband, father, and grandfather, and he passed away in 2017. And now, let’s start sharing our highlights from the book! The first thing that I want to say is that Dr. Johnson does briefly address gender as a spectrum and devotes a chapter to LGBTQ issues, but the great majority of the book refers to “men” and “women” as a binary and as cis-gender.So we’ll start trading off chapters! I have the first two chapters.Chapter 1: Where Are We?Dr. Johnson starts with a description of a workshop that he does on gender issues in the workplace, where he asks them to list how gender shapes their lives at work (and beyond). He divides them into a men’s group and a women’s group, and describes how both groups describe a system that advantages men and disadvantages women in many, many ways. He says,“The accumulated sum hangs heavy in the air. There are flashes of anger from some of the women, but many don’t seem to know what to do with how they feel. The men stand and listen, muted, as if they would like to find a safe place to hide or some way to defend themselves, as if all of this is about them personally. In response to questions about how the lists make them feel, one man says that he wants to hang onto the advantages without being part of their negative consequences for women. “Depressed” is a frequent response from the women. (4)On a scale both large and small, we are faced with the knowledge that what gender is about is tied to a great deal of suffering, injustice, and trouble, but our not knowing what to do with that knowledge binds us in a knot of fear, anger, and pain, of blame, defensiveness, guilt, and denial. We are unsure of just about everything except that something is wrong, and the more we pull at the knot, the tighter it gets.” (4-5)One of the most important points from this chapter is this one:“Male dominance promotes the idea that men are superior to women. - and here I want to say that I don’t personally know any men who would say that they believe men are superior to women. BUT they are often in denial of the structure that we all live in that really does place men in a superior position, even if individual men don’t claim superiority. Dr. Johnson says:“If men occupy superior positions, it is a short leap to the idea that men themselves must be superior. If presidents, generals, legislators, priests, popes, and corporate CEO’s are all men (with a few token women), then men as a group become identified with superiority. It is true that most men in patriarchies are not powerful individuals and spend their days doing what other men tell them to do whether they want to or not. At the same time, every man’s standing in relation to women is enhanced by the male monopoly over authority in patriarchal societies. ...To see herself as a leader, for example, a woman must first get around the fact that leadership itself has been gendered through its identification with manhood and masculinity as part of patriarchal culture. While a man might have to learn to see himself as a manager, a woman has to be able to see herself as a woman manager who can succeed in spite of the fact that she is not a man. (7-8)Also on this topic…Living in a patriarchy means that every woman must come to grips with an inferior gender position and that whatever she makes of her life will be in spite of it. With the exception of child care and other domestic works and a few paid occupations related to it, women in almost every field of adult endeavor must still labor under the presumption of being inferior to men, interlopers from the margins of society who must justify their participation and their right to be counted as ‘one of the guys.’ Just last month I was talking with a man I know well and he was talking about having to go to the doctor. He said “I have a woman doctor. She’s actually really good. I really like her. She’s smart, she’s very thorough. I tell her, ‘wow, you’re the first woman doctor I’ve ever had. And I really like you.’ I just tell her she’s not allowed to touch me.” Can you imagine someone saying that about a man? “I have a man doctor, and you know what? He’s actually really smart! He’s really capable!” So I told him “you’re a really good man doctor - you’re just not allowed to do part of your job by examining my body, because, you know, you’re a man.” (Eye roll) Just think of that doctor getting that all the time from people, and then let’s wonder why women report higher anxiety in the workplace. Female in the fitness industry Being underestimated because I am a femaleBack to the quote...Men may have such experiences because of race or other subordinate standing, but not because they are men. It is in this sense that patriarchies are male dominated even though most individual men may not feel dominant, especially in relation to other men. (22)This still comes up in conversations with men all the time. Patriarchy does not mean that all men are tyrants or even that all men feel empowered! Being a human is hard, and men and boys struggle with all kinds of things. I see my husband and my son and my brother and my nephews struggle with all kinds of different challenges that are no different than my daughters and sisters and nieces. But in addition to those individual struggles, girls and women have to struggle with structural inequities. (And in addition to those struggles, women of color have to struggle with additional structural inequities.) Just to drive the point home, he goes on to say that some men claim that men are oppressed, and proof of this is that men are drafted into wars:“Even the massive suffering inflicted on men through the horror of war - which I will add is one of the most tragic horrors of our world, and is also caused by “dominator” mentality - even that is not an oppression of men as men, because there is no system in which a group of non-men subordinates men. (23)We must remember that as deeply as the patriarchal tree shapes our lives, we are the leaves and not the roots, trunk or branches. We are too easily blinded by the good/bad fallacy that says only bad people can participate in and benefit from societies that produce bad consequences. ...men do not have to feel cruel or malevolent toward women in order to participate in and benefit from patriarchy as a system. This is a crucial distinction that makes the difference between being stuck in a defensive moral paralysis and seeing how to participate in change. (25)Amy:Chapter 2: Patriarchy: An It; Not a He, a Them, or an UsThe something larger that we all participate in is patriarchy, which is more than a collection of individuals. It is a social system, which means it cannot be reduced to the people who participate in it. If you go to work in a corporation, for example, you know the minute you walk in the door that you have entered ‘something’ that shapes your experience and behavior, something that is not just you and the other people you work with. You can feel yourself stepping into a set of relationships and shared understandings about who is who and what is supposed to happen and why, and all of this limits you in many ways. And when you leave at the end of the day, you can feel yourself released from the constraints imposed by your participation in that system. You can feel the expectations drop away and your focus shift to other systems such as family or a neighborhood bar that shape your experience in different ways. (29)This is such a great way to illustrate this phenomenon. This was something I noticed right away when I started my masters degree and started to have male colleagues and friends who were not Mormon for the first time in my life since high school. There was one class period in particular when I was sitting by my friend Mark, who is probably around my dad’s age, and is a super successful investment banker and board member on all these fancy organizations, and he gave me some compliments about how I had contributed to our cohort and our program, and I remember saying “Oh, I’m just a mom, I just care about people.” And he said “I call it leadership.” And that sank in deep, and I noticed how completely opposite it was from the environment I operated in in my life outside of school, where women only lead children and other women, but are never leaders of adult men. I started to discern that very noticeable culture difference of when I would be on campus with men as my peers… and at church or certain family groups where men were my leaders.And you can definitely feel that difference in different countries again, and different companies, and all kinds of environments.Have you ever noticed that difference between more or less patriarchal environments, Kasey?Being a female athlete I always wanted to play with the boys because I wanted the aggression and to be challengedMany times men would take it easier on me or if I was fouled other men would bag on their teammate saying “She’s a girl”An old client of mine that I discontinued working with because of the way he spoke to meBeing a young, female he felt like when a conflict came around that he could speak over me and he was to decide when the conversation endedHe did not like that I had my own opinions and feelings that I would speak about If it was my father speaking to him, he would’ve handled things way differently---So while on one hand, a system and an institution like a company is more than the sum of its parts, on the other hand, it’s not. If all the people that comprise the company or the church or the family vanished, then that institution would vanish as well, because “Stanford” or “The Catholic Church” is just a construct inside people’s heads. So Johnson says:Because people make systems happen, then people can also make systems happen differently. ...When a man objects to a sexist joke, for example, it can shake other men’s perception of what is socially acceptable and what is not so that the net time they are in this kind of situation, their perception of the social environment itself - not just of other people as individuals, whom they may or may not know personally - may shift in a new direction that makes old paths (such as telling sexist jokes) more difficult to choose because of the increased risk of social resistance. (31)And here I want to say how grateful I am that things have already changed so much!!! Sophie and I were just talking to my aunt the other day, and she was telling us how when she was in theatre in college, she would get literally chased around backstage for guys, and they were always saying sexual things to her, trying to touch her, one guy threw her on a bed backstage and she had to physically fight to get away, a teacher asked her out on a date and when she said no, he said he would make sure she could never get a master’s degree at the university… it was absolutely awful, and I had it so much better. But at the same time, I did get sexually harassed CONSTANTLY, and even people I respected would tell me “that’s just because he likes you.” So I never told anyone when a guy would say explicit things to me, or a guy once shoved me against a row of lockers, or a guy friend of mine just lifted up my shirt in a big group of people. I didn’t know I could say anything - I felt completely powerless.So to compare, do you feel like things are better than that? What was the environment for you in high school and college? You were in college during the #metoo movement, right?Lived in a bubble in Los Altos and it wasn’t until college I started piecing things togetherMeeting new people from all over who had different perspectives Sexually harassed and intimidated Its better than beforeAllies everywhere and there’s an open conversation about speaking upOn male privilege, he says “you don’t have to feel privileged to have privilege,” and in fact in one of my favorite TED talks, Michael Kimmel says “privilege is invisible to those...

The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, by Allan G. Johnson

Sociologist Allan Johnson is the guest on this week's installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show. This is part 2 of the conversation which began on last week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show.    Dr. Johnson is the author of many books--non-fiction, memoirs, and fiction--including The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice, and Promise. He is one of the country's foremost experts on questions of race, gender, and social (in)equality.   In the second part of their conversation, Allan and Chauncey discuss masculinity, empathy, sexism, misogyny, "men's rights", and how best to talk with students and other people about systems of privilege.  During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Chauncey offers his thoughts on last week's Oscars, Super Tuesday, and "Trumpmania". Chauncey also shares his anger and advocates for a new Deacons for Defense after watching the assault on a young black woman at Donald Trump's rally in Louisville, Kentucky.

<a href="http://www.agjohnson.us/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sociologist Allan Johnson</a> is the guest on this week's installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show. This is part 2 of the conversation which began on <a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/thechaunceydevegashow/The_Chauncey_DeVega_Show_89--Allan_Johnson_Part_1.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">last week's episode</a> of The Chauncey DeVega Show.   Dr. Johnson is the author of many books--non-fiction, memoirs, and fiction--including The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice, and Promise. He is one of the country's foremost experts on questions of race, gender, and social (in)equality.  In the second part of their conversation, Allan and Chauncey discuss masculinity, empathy, sexism, misogyny, "men's rights", and how best to talk with students and other people about systems of privilege. During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Chauncey offers his thoughts on last week's Oscars, Super Tuesday, and "Trumpmania". Chauncey also shares his anger and advocates for a new Deacons for Defense after watching the assault on a young black woman at Donald Trump's rally in Louisville, Kentucky.

Ep. 79: Allan G. Johnson on Empathy, Power, and Privilege pt. 2 

Sociologist Allan G. Johnson is the guest on this week's installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is the author of many books--non-fiction, memoirs, and fiction--including The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice, and Promise. He is one of the country's foremost experts on questions of race, gender, and social (in)equality. Dr. Johnson is a wonderful guest who sat with Chauncey DeVega under the learning tree and did some teaching and sharing.  In this conversation, Allan and Chauncey talk about the changing same that is race and racism in America, how systems of privilege are reproduced while also being denied by their beneficiaries, whiteness and masculinity, fear and anxiety in White America, and the lack of moral leadership in the United States around questions of race and justice.  During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Chauncey talks about his frustrations with a forthcoming podcast guest, complains about the WWE's "Fastlane" pay-per-view event, continues to explain "Trumpmania", shills for Sasha Baron Cohen, and makes his Oscars 2016 predictions. Chauncey also shares how through his amazing powers of logic and reasoning he was able to figure out the cause of his facial skin blemishes.

<a href="http://www.agjohnson.us/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sociologist Allan G. Johnson</a> is the guest on this week's installment of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is the author of many books--non-fiction, memoirs, and fiction--including The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice, and Promise. He is one of the country's foremost experts on questions of race, gender, and social (in)equality. Dr. Johnson is a wonderful guest who sat with Chauncey DeVega under the learning tree and did some teaching and sharing.  In this conversation, Allan and Chauncey talk about the changing same that is race and racism in America, how systems of privilege are reproduced while also being denied by their beneficiaries, whiteness and masculinity, fear and anxiety in White America, and the lack of moral leadership in the United States around questions of race and justice. During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Chauncey talks about his frustrations with a forthcoming podcast guest, complains about the WWE's "Fastlane" pay-per-view event, continues to explain "Trumpmania", shills for Sasha Baron Cohen, and makes his Oscars 2016 predictions. Chauncey also shares how through his amazing powers of logic and reasoning he was able to figure out the cause of his facial skin blemishes.

Ep. 78: Allan G. Johnson on Empathy, Power, and Privilege pt. 1

<a href="http://safeplaceonrace.com/shows/AllanJohnson.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Dr. Allan G. Johnson</a>

Dr. Allan G. Johnson, Public Speaker, Sociologist, Nonfiction Writer, and Novelist. Author of Unraveling the Knot of Race and White Privilege 