by Nora Bateson
Watching this clip, I was shivering. The definitions of marriage, of sex, of rape, of culture, of communication, and of healing were tumbling. The video of this therapy session became a watery reflection of the serrated borders of my cultural frame. I plunged into this blur and found a clarity I hope never to lose, a treasure in the pool of cultural confusion. But it did not come easily. Without the mixture of perspectives on the panel session we had after the clip was shown, this incredible opening might never have occurred.
Apparently, to get any new vista within cultural blindness one has to meet the edges, and go beyond them. After the clip, I was raging. The way in which the video played into my sense-making process set my meter for gender injustice into the flaming red danger zone. Just when I was considering taking a bathroom break to escape the room, Maimunah (Mai), the conference chair leaned over and whispered in my ear: “Would you mind leading the discussion panel after this tape, and talk about patterns?” “I don’t think that is a very good idea.” I whispered back. But it was.
So much illusion fills the cultural lens that not only do we not know we are looking through it, but we also do not imagine that others could possibly see differently. I live in a culture other than the one I was born into. In a way, you could say, I have been primed for this moment for decades, perhaps my whole life. I still did not see it coming. I knew the videotape had made me uncomfortable. I am always ill at ease with therapists’ videotaped sessions being presented in conferences. For me as a filmmaker, the violence of this voyeurism is a no-fly zone. I would never expose someone’s personal pain in this way publicly. Even though the patients’ identity is protected, these films still feel exploitative to me. Video is public. Sex troubles between husband and wife are private. The representational ethics of these tapes are, at best, troublesome for me. But on this day, and with this particular video, the trouble grew exponentially. My disorientation pushed me through the atmospheric haze of my limited perception into a world of entirely new and urgent possibility. Perhaps I was so freaked out by the whole situation that I simply broke through the cage my perception was roosting in. I learned to see the couple’s troubled relationship through another set of lenses—less clearly, more complexly.
I am always curious about the way that each member of the audience watches film footage on the screen through the eyes of the other people in the theater. The theater experience is not the same as watching something alone on your TV or computer. As human beings, we cannot help but monitor the way the others in a group are perceiving something. Are they laughing? Are they bored? Are they crying?
On this day, the rest of the room was filled with a large audience of young family therapists, social workers, and their mentor practitioners. Many were Muslim, many were women, some were Malay, others Indian, others Chinese; we were a mixed gathering. But I was the only western white woman in the room.
I tried to imagine what the room was seeing. I tried to imagine what I was seeing. The video was dark and scratchy, with the faces smeared to protect the confidentiality of the couple. Subtitles translated their conversation with their therapist into English at the bottom of the screen. But the subtitles did not translate the cultural frame in which the conversation itself existed. That is a craft no translator has yet managed.
I wondered if the women in the room were boiling with the injustice of the film. If so, I could not read it. Perhaps it would be impolite to reveal indignation with the therapist in attendance—the therapist whose work was being presented. I tried to watch the film in a wider view. I wondered if the audience was looking at techniques. Were they gathering know-how? Was this a moment for them to raise their observation to perceive in a new way? Would the issue of gender inequality be talked about within the frame of marriage? I wondered if it was even a safe platform for the participants to raise an emotive reaction.
Sex is not an easy topic. It is difficult to watch a film about someone else’s sex life in a public space. It was a brave choice to screen this clip. Is it possible to watch such a clip and not relate personally to it? I know, as professionals there is supposed to be a distance there, but is that distance real? Was there anyone in that theater who did not resonate with the clip on some level? Were there not many men who felt their needs were unmet? Were there not many women who felt they had been pushed, or manipulated into providing their bodies for their husband? Were there not people who had friends and family who joked and cried about these things?
The lights came on, and the panel began. We were: an Englishman, Hugh Palmer, who is a therapist specializing in systemic therapy; Takeshi, from Japan, also a therapist; Wen Tao, the therapist from Taiwan who screened the clip; Mai (the conference organizer), who is a Malay Muslim woman working in family therapy; and me.
I was asked to address the patterns. “Well,” I said, trying to sidestep the possibility of offending anyone in the room, especially the therapists I was sharing the stage with, “there were a number of double-binds in this session.” That was my opening for the panel, and while it was not a head-on invitation to discuss the difficulties of sex, marriage, rape, and communication, at least it was a beginning. The double-binds were everywhere. Traps of what can and cannot be spoken, traps of staying in the marriage, traps of divorcing. Traps of threatening divorce, traps of imagining a future together. On the positive side, it was obvious that if the couple were willing to speak about their sexual troubles in this way, they had a deep intention to heal the situation.
At first I spoke to that, and let the next person on the panel continue. I tried to wait and watch, wondering where the conversation would go. What will the men say? What will Mai say? What are the cultural boundaries I am within here?
As the other speakers contributed to the discussion, I glazed over. My attention turned to the audience before me. A sea of eyes, hearts, and minds, respectfully attending our presentations. The tilt here is different. Is the experience of sexuality and pain so different? Where is the human experience? Is there such a thing? What are the boundaries in therapy that define the self and professionalism? What are the professional boundaries around the therapist and the self of the therapist? And where are the cultural lines? Can we know? No.
I have my own personal story that in this case cannot go unmentioned. Into my observations of this interaction on the videotape I could not help but place my own version of the story. This is what we do in human communication, we share stories. The potency of story as medicine lies in the way many versions can be read into a narrative, and perhaps reread as well. A story is a representative adventure to play our own lives into. Sometimes, watching movies with my son when he was young he would declare, “I am Robin, not Batman. Who are you Mommy?” The story is our own, the characters are transferrable. In the video clip that was shown in Singapore, I was not the therapist. I was the wife who had been forced into having sex with her husband.
In real life, I was never forced into having sex with my husband. Let me be very clear about that. But, like so many women around the world, I have been raped. In my case it was no one who was familiar to me, but a taxi driver who pulled a gun on me in Hungary. It was decades ago now. But my cells still know the loss I experienced on that day. I am not going to compare my story to the wife in the film, because that would be a wild oversimplification. Still, it is hard to imagine what kind of apology that taxi driver could make to me that would change the way my body responds to the memory of him. And I have already discussed forgiveness (in ‘An Ecology of Hurt’). Luckily I never have to see that man again. Now I prefer to use public transportation.
As the panel spoke and reflections on the clip were shared, we drew to the end of the session. Wen Tao was last. Mai asked him if he could change anything about the session, what it would be? I was still mentally wandering around the minds of the audience, when I heard Wen Tao say that he thought the session went very well and that there was nothing he would change.
Something clicked. I realized our panel discussion was ending.
We had not begun the real conversation yet. I was not sure what that conversation was going to be. It was unscripted, unprecedented. I looked at Mai, and at the other presenters, and then launched the rocket. I piped in:
“I want to share with you what I saw in this clip through my cultural lens.” I went on to say that from what I saw, it seemed like the wife was essentially raped and that it seemed to me there would be very little her husband could do or say to get her to return to a healthy sexual relationship with him. I questioned if it was ethical to ask her to do so. Additionally, I questioned the notion of his “needs” that were “not being met.” What kind of needs? Surely they could not be sexual needs because those would be better met by seduction and making himself more enticing to her, not force. So, were the ‘needs’ he had actually a need to dominate? In which case, if she was not interested in playing domination games, why on earth should she go back to that? Is it not true that sex is a conversation between two people, and that conversation is much richer with lovers who are both engaged and enjoying the experience? Who actually benefits from negotiating to get a reluctant partner to allow access to their resistant and limp body? Is that a healthy sex life? Not in my book. What about her ‘needs?’
This is the playback of the story in the clip through my filters. I knew I was speaking across cultural topographies. I took the risk that Wen Tao would be offended. I took the risk that the whole room would be offended. I tried to be as transparent as possible that the questions, the deductions I made public were only from my frame of reference. I put myself on trial. I was watching the room watch me watch the clip…
Me watching you watching me watching you. The interaction between cultures in today’s world are so many as to be untrackable. The mixing of messages through advertising, social media, movies, immigration, music and the financial markets has removed all possibility of ‘pure’ culture. We cannot expect ourselves to fully separate out one culture from another with any clarity. When we ask: ‘how has the idea of family therapy in the west with its techniques and analysis positioned practitioners in the east?’—can we expect to unravel the influences?
This moment marked a rare opportunity for a profound set of reflections to take place. The stakes were high, and fortunately the alchemy of the group was prepared.
The stories that room held took place in another set of expectations, another set of interactions that read differently. To this day I am not quite clear on what the version in the room was. As I tried to see the story through the eyes of the people around me, I could feel the chasm between our interpretations opening like a great canyon. The ground beneath all of us turned fluid. With many see-able stories surfacing in this one clip, the rigid boundaries of cultural assumption towered and crashed.
It is much easier to celebrate cultural differences when they are less acute. When we get to the topic of rape, the binary between right and wrong is a reduction of the real complexity. A binary lens renders the richness of the situation invisible. The scope of visible cultural complexity in the subject of rape funnels to a narrow line of legal and illegal, good and bad, right and wrong. Seeing other angles requires a kind of muscle of perception that can stretch to see through another window of life. What do you see me see? Can I see how narrow my own perspective is?
Wen Tao was ready to look through my window. After I described my seeing of the clip he said, “Until this moment I never saw the situation in that way.” He had been trying to protect the couple from divorce. In the clip he was trying to help the man stay in the marriage and not wander. He was doing everything he could to help the couple feel better about the life they were in. In the most honorable and dignified way, Wen Tao was helping the couple to heal. His version was so different from mine. Divorce would have meant another realm of pain, shame, and devastation to the family in ways that my math cannot calculate. I had not seen the situation the way he did. We both learned from publicly exchanging versions of our interpretations.
Through the many windows of multiple description, nothing is what it seems. Sex, marriage, age, divorce, money, death, love, success, honesty, respect—all of these fundamental human similarities are witnessed through the lens of culture. I cannot know the ins and outs of the similarities and differences of another culture, but I am fascinated by the paradoxes of identity within and between cultures. My interpretation of the clip was only one of many, and perhaps a damaging one. Wen Tao saw another version of the story. We were immeasurably lucky. We were a group of people with the tools to have a cross-cultural conversation; the tools of pattern, of knowing that our epistemological frames were limited. All of the presenters had traveled extensively and had worked in situations where misunderstandings, cultural or personal, have created both humor and horror. We were seasoned in the art of looking through other perspectives. We were ready to be humble, and most importantly, as Wen Tao showed, we were all willing to learn.
To see something, which you are sure can only be interpreted one way, being interpreted in another is a phenomenon that all of us need practice in. If you are right now questioning, “how can it ever be possible to see this situation as something other than rape?”—I will say that as I contemplated this situation and the quick villainizing and victimizing that my assessment of it led to, I began to think of my friends. Growing up female in the west was not exactly an experiment in female pleasure. My thoughts went out to all of the wives and girlfriends in my world, all properly indoctrinated in feminism, and conducting what they hope is a life of near equality with the people they call partners or husbands. But how many of them have felt pressured or manipulated into sex with their partners, at least a few times? Is our culture really so just and righteous that we can claim the moral high ground here? I think not. I know I have been in manipulative situations myself. There is no doubt that a large percentage of women have. There may be a statistic that runs the other way on the gender scale, and between same-sex couples as well. No matter the parties involved, the experience of having sex you do not really want is real and destructive.
Does that make every person who pressures and manipulates a rapist? Is every partner who receives that treatment a victim?
Consenting adults do not always want to consent, and the yes/no binary does not take into account the larger equations of home, family, finance, and reputation. These are complicated contingencies that bear upon consent in qualitatively transformative ways. Consent can be given with resentment, even hatred.
Is there one way that is better than another to perceive and analyze this story? Will one set of perceptions lead to a course of action that is more productive than another? I am not as sure as I might have been. What will hurt less? In western culture we have another form of support and acceptance for divorce, but it is still a disruptive upheaval to the family.
All I know for certain about this subject is personal. The juicy joy of loving another person in a physical conversation that is mutual and engaging for both parties, is a beautiful and healthy part of life. To shortchange that possibility with manipulation and force, in any culture, will deplete the avenues of contact and adoration between lovers. It would seem to me that in any part of the world, the capacity to love one’s partner to the fullest would only bring strength and resilience to the partnership. Why limit that?
To close, I return to the title of the conference, ‘Context.’ As a group of professionals, all steeped in the theory and practice of systems thinking, we were as prepared as anyone could be to address context. Culture is a context. This conference was a gathering of social care professionals and students; the context, as it were, was the health and wellbeing of families in Singapore. A marriage is a context. Our conversation in the big hall with the freezing cold air conditioning was a context. When contexts overlap, new contexts emerge, and in this case that new context was one in which to discuss context.
The truth is, we do not know how to hold such conversations yet, especially across cultures. Our blinders are not familiar enough to us to rec
ognize when we have ‘not seen’ the limits of our perception—especially culturally. Earlier I posited the notion of a ‘healthy’ sexual relationship. But what is a healthy sex life? Is that not a cultural prescription? Or a religious one? Is there such a thing as a universal concept of healthy sex? What is the context in which we can begin to even ask that question? Perhaps gender, culture, personal preference, the legal system, medicine, psychotherapy, media, social theory, and who knows what else all frame and reframe this question to the point of impossibility.
What other conversation can we churn if we put the idea of sexuality, marriage, or even the idea of equality within the frame of religion and culture? Would it limit or would it clarify? Would it offer consolation or would we discover more boundaries? Are boundaries necessarily to be feared? Are they discernible?
What is a healthy sexual relationship? I pondered this and then wrote to Dr. Danielle Egan, an academic colleague of mine who specializes in sexuality. I asked her to give me a definition of what she would consider a healthy sexual interaction. Her response was this:
One where both individuals are able to explore their desires in a context where curiosity, discovery and respect is at a premium. It is more about the context within which the erotic happens rather than a particular form of the erotic.
Dr. Egan brought the subject to the context of the interaction between lovers. The context of the interaction is more than what is said, more than what is done, but rather the overtones and sensibility of the relationship. When we draw out the boundaries of their internal contexts, these lovers are inside a community that exists within a cultural context, which is inside a larger context of moral restrictions. Within all of these concentric circles we can begin to explore this idea, with “curiosity and respect at a premium.”
There is no list of do’s and don’ts in Egan’s definition. Instead she points to the tone of the context. The aesthetic of curiosity and respect leads to activities that fall within a spectrum that does not require external limits. However, flip that around and any activities without curiosity and respect will, by proxy, be hurtful. The relationship is in the context.