The Gender Knot

We are all living deep inside an oppressive gender legacy called patriarchy. On some level, most people know that gender is tied to a great deal of suffering and injustice, from inequality in the workplace, to violence and sexual harassment, to the conflict between work and family roles. Millions of women are weary from the struggle simply to hang on to what's been gained, and many well-intentioned men do nothing because they can't see how to acknowledge what's going on without inviting guilt and blame simply for being men. The result is a knotted tangle of fear, anger, blame, defensiveness, guilt, pain, denial, ambivalence, and confusion. The more we pull at it, the tighter it gets. Unraveling the knot begins with getting clear about what patriarchy really is, about what it's got to do with each of us, and about how both men and women can see themselves as part of the process of change toward something better. Based on more than twenty years of work on gender issues, "The Gender Knot" charts a course organized around three questions: What are we participating in and how are we choosing to participate in it? How do typical ways of thinking about gender blind us to what's going on? What can men and women do to make a difference? Johnson writes as a man passionately committed to the belief that oppression is not an inevitable feature of human life, and that each of us makes it matter more than we can ever know. He offers a practical, compassionate, and readable guide to understanding what we're stuck in and how to search for a way out. Allan G. Johnson is a sociologist, writer, and trainer/consultant. He teaches at Hartford College for Women and works in major corporations and schools on issues of gender and diversity. He is author of several books, including "Human Arrangements: An Introduction to Sociology", "The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology: A User's Guide to Sociological Language", and "The Forest for the Trees".