White Men Are From Mars

I’ve been reading Men Are From Mars; Women Are From Venus. So far, this book gives me little hope for finding satisfaction in a heterosexual relationship. Gray seems to make excuses for men’s behaviour and poor social skills and I’m becoming annoyed with his metaphor of men as martians who just need be understood as these beings who lack human qualities. No point trying to do anything about that; just accept that men have these deficiencies.
One useful thing though is this: The book may be helping me to understand WHITE men. White men don’t like offers of assistance. Nor to do they like collaboration. They like to assert their individuality by doing things on their own. White men like autonomy more than collectivity. Also, they like to think about things on their own. This is very different from the Kwakwaka’wakx men (and other Indigenous men) that I know and known of. This collective action is even reflected in our architecture. Think: Big House (as opposed to cave); think Awakwis (as opposed to cave); think a large group of people putting a canoe in the water. Think sharing. Think Uncle Tommy coming to visit Papa and the two of them sitting TOGETHER in silence. Maybe this all comes as such a surprise to me because my Dad, a white man, managed to fit in so well with our Kwakiutl family. I never saw him do the cave retreats or the rubber banding. I saw him accept suggestions for help or offers of advice with thanks. His own autonomy never seemed threatened by the connections he made with others.
At about the half-way point in this book, I’ve concluded that white men might need Indigenous feminism even more than white women need Indigenous feminism. But don’t tell them that: the very suggestion (any suggestion!) would threaten their autonomy.