Jim Veteto

Happy to chat, sent you a pm :)

Ethnobotanist, Daoist, anthropologist, musician, ballad singer, gardener, orchardist, forager, writer, poet, hsp, infj.

Looking to start the second phase of my life with some positive feminine energy in the form of a friend and potential partner. I live in southern Appalachia and have spent many years working with Native American and Mountain elders. When I was 24 I went to a talk by Hopi elder and messenger to the UN, Thomas Banyaca, who died in 1999 at the age of 90. He was revealing the prophecies of his people and imploring everyone to get back to the land and sacred, simple ways. In the years that followed I took several trips out to Hotevilla village in northern AZ and visited with elder Martin Gashweseoma and other Hopi elders. I have been following their prophecies and living as simple as I can in my own bioregion that some of my Cherokee elder friends call Giduwagi~'the soil that was placed here by a higher power.' We just went through a powerful hurricane on this sacred land but my gardens and buildings are still intact. According to my knowledge, the prophecies are winding down and we are at the end of this world age. Only small numbers of people will make it through to the next if a few of us can still walk the sacred path. I've went through periods of activism, researcher, and university professor. Now I just try to take joy in the simple things with what is left here in this 4th world and teach plant classes, host seed/plant/song swaps, and tastings of fine tea from my tea garden and other artisanal growers. I greet the sun and the Creator everyday at dawn, heat by wood, and grow much of my own food and medicine. I order bulk grains and spices and don’t drive my old truck much. I write poetry and sing old-time Appalachian ballads and pick a little acoustic guitar. A pretty simple life but rich in meaning. I have a 27 acre property with an heirloom fruit orchard, veggie/medicinal herb/flower gardens, and a tea (Camellia sinensis) garden. I’m a storyteller and a teacher so it would be good to be in a partnership with a good listener who loves to learn. Luckily, I also like to hear other peoples stories, love to learn, and value open and excellent communication. I’ve found it difficult to find a partner as I get older and haven’t dated anyone in 6 years. So I get a bit lonely but still have some hope that I might find a deep-thinking, deep-hearted woman to share a life with as the chaos of the end of this cycle winds down. If any of this resonates with you feel free to reply here or by email: jrveteto@gmail.com  

Yeah, I think it's probably good to keep to the original intention of the post. Honesty, men have almost no outlet for this type of discussion without being darn near immediately cancelled these days, and we don't talk amongst ourselves about such things as much as women do. So, I think it is productive.

For me personally, I think it is assumed that love is what we are after. I think the issue is that male/female relationships are so contorted these days and it's so much of a warzone of misunderstanding, that basic rules of respect need to be shown to give space for love to blossom. This might not be self-obvious to someone who has been married for 50 years in an older generation. Which is fine, but I agree with what Megan said on that. I've had relationships in the past decade where love has been declared very early and very strongly, which surprised and excited me at first, but I've learned to be very wary of now. I'm all about friendship first, developing a basic level of respect and trust, and letting the love bubble up from below. However, also allowing that matters of the heart are out of my control and I don't make the rules. I've just been burned a fair amount at this point, and it seems like a lot of single people feel that way nowadays.

"I think the reasons why 'modern' women emasculate men is complex. My basic understanding is that women are being conditioned from every direction to be more masculine. That's combined with a lack of female role models who know how to behave as queens and treat their men like kings. And it's reinforced by their interactions with 'modern' men, many of whom who are as you described in your previous reply."

Thank you once again Megan for listening. I agree with what you are saying here and think it is very insightful.

"The modern masculine woman is sort of trying to have her cake and eat it too.  For well raised guys beating her is off the table and as long as she doesn't raise the consequences to being worth terminating her she can throw her weight around without consequences that even the normal guys would face interacting with other guys"

What C. Letellier is saying here is absolutely correct from my perspective. Cake and eating it too indeed. I had come to this conclusion myself previously but forgot to mention it in the post. If you are a decent man, the woman knows you aren't going to strike her. She takes advantage of this and & acts with impunity in ways that would get a dude's you-know-what kicked. This is a very unfortunate dynamic that was less likely to occur in the past. There is no chance for positive male-female dynamics with this sort of interaction going on unless the guy is totally passive, which usually ends up not being what the woman really wants anyway. As C pointed out, the basic issue is respect, and that's a street that has to run both ways.

"It's helpful for me to remind myself of my locus of control. I don't get decide in what direction society goes. But I can keep de-conditioning myself, choosing to be embrace my femininity, and improving my relations with men. :)"

Yeah, I think that's about all we can do. Society as a whole has headed in a negative direction but as individuals we can resist and try to decondition ourselves and be better people with more old-timey values and gender roles that have been mostly devalued and discarded.

I'll share one thing that has been immensely frustrating to me as a man, as women have become more forward and aggressive in our society and exhibit more behaviors traditionally associated with men (although good men try to avoid these types of behavior as well, particularly as they mature in life). As women's behaviors have become more male-like, they lack the proper training to understand the rules. Men (at least of my generation and culture) have certain unwritten rules to avoid violent confrontations. You have to have a certain type of courteous neutrality in dealing with other males. You have to give them their space (unless you want to end up in fisticuffs), both physically and verbally. In the south, this is often achieved either through humor or silence. Lighten the mood by cutting up, or just button your lip and keep to yourself. Do not come off as arrogant or insulting. A lot of modern women don't seem to understand these rules whatsoever. Which makes sense, since that are not men. I think one of the most disheartening things I have ever experienced in life is when women I have dated have rudely undercut me in public in front of other people. This had abruptly ended two relationships for me. For some reason, the male psyche (or at least mine) can't handle this very well. If you are having a problem with me, feel free to bring it up in personal conversation later, but do not confront me about issues you are having with me in front of other people in permies. It makes me feel abandoned and betrayed and all trust is gone. And it's not like I'm a very insecure person either. It just doesn't work for me. And I don't do it to women I am dating either. If I'm treating you like a queen, don't throw me out to the dogs. I think perhaps 'modern' and younger women are more prone to this, but I don't claim to properly know what is going on with that. On the flip side, I will say this to men who are prone to angry outbursts: avoid alcohol at all costs. Drink more tea.

"I agree that, in general, both sexes seem to be cut off from their emotions, so to speak. And I think a big part of that is that the vast majority of us never learned how to understand and regulate our emotions, so most of us are afraid of our emotions and do everything we can to distract ourselves from them, and society offers endless options through which to do this. I'm still learning to do this foot myself. We can all learn to do this as adults if we choose."  -- very well said, pretty much exactly what I was talking about.

"I agree that traditional gender roles allow women and men to be powerful in their own ways, and powerful together. To further emphasize that I'll mention that one of the books I recently read on this topic discusses some of the ways in which men's and women's brains function differently. For example, it's said that men have single focus, which allows you to focus all of your attention on doing a project well until it's done (or tracking and hunting a large animal). It's said that men's brains screen out anything that's not pertinent to their current project/mission. That sounds amazing. And women have diffuse awareness, which allows us to keep track of numerous things in our environment, to multitask, and to connect and communicate with many others. As you said, they're all equally important."

Some lines of theorizing in evolutionary anthropology explain this in the following way. I've always thought it was insightful. Current anthropological thinking has the human species as existing for about 200,000 years. Up until 5000 years ago, our primary mode of organization was in band-level or tribal societies. That's about 98.5% of our history as a species. Much of this experience has been as mobile foragers in small bands of around 30-50 individuals. Imagine you are a woman in such a band with several children and you need to move camps to a new foraging site that is several miles or tens or even a hundred miles away. Let's say those children are babies of less than three years old and you are also pregnant. You have two babies feeding off your body and one growing within it. This is going to make the journey difficult in a different way than say, your male partner, who is a strapping 20 something tribal male. It's very much more likely that he and other males are going to be scouting ahead, focusing on the path and the trail, hunting if needed. Making sure the way is safe for the women. There are likely other small foraging bands all around you, and some may be hostile. if there are climatic stresses, resources may be scarce, which may be why you are moving. The women will likely band together to help each other and the children and there will be a lot of multi-tasking to pack up the household and get the children moving, taking care of their needs, perhaps foraging medicinal herbs and small foodstuffs around the way. The female gaze will likely be on the immediacy of their environment, taking care of children and elders. The male gaze will be focused intently on the horizon and making sure the whole band gets from point A to point B alive and healthy. This does lead to different ways of thinking over time in an evolutionary sense, and our bodies back that up with different biological functions and chemical makeups.

Another insight from anthropology is if we have evolved for 98.5% of our human experience as band and tribal-level foragers, horticulturalists, and herders; the last 5000 years of civilization and especially the past 200 years since the onset of the Industrial Revolution has, from an evolutionary perspective, not allowed us enough time to adapt. We are evolutionary hard-wired in a certain way and modern development and technology has moved far too quickly for evolution of the species to catch up. This creates all sorts of problems. I can't speak for women, but for men, all the contrivances and distractions of modern life can really confuse our hardwiring for, as you say, focusing attention and screening out anything not pertinent to current projects. This can lead to a lot of malaise and apathy, lack of focus and concentration. In effect, because of the distractions of modernity, men start to think and behave more like women have traditionally, more diffuse and taking in more information (or having it fed to us by the digital overlords) from artificial environmental stimuli. This can lead toward tendencies of reversal of gender roles, as women try to take on more traditional male gender roles to balance things out. The problem is, our minds and bodies are not hardwired for this gender-role reversal and the result is much chaos.  

Hi Megan,

"As a woman, I have felt pressured to be much more yang than I feel or want to be. I think that's why, as you said, women in "boss" roles can be worse a-holes than men, because they're trying to be more masculine than they are and that's a stressful and tiring role to be in."

I think you really hit the nail upon the head there with what I was talking about. In addition, with the two female bosses I had, I think it's very sad to see women cut themselves off from their feelings. I think this happens a lot in modern society. Even with women who aren't in leadership roles in the capitalist economy. I see women willing to talk about their emotions on a surface level, but not on a deep level, at least not with men. So maybe that's a radical idea for you:  from my experience, women aren't very good at sharing their emotions either, generally speaking in today's world. Perhaps we're all bottled up. I'm going to share something that may be controversial here but let me preface by saying there are always exceptions and exceptional people in every generation. Since I was a university professor for 11 years, taught middle school, and take interns on my farm, and raised a son, I have a lot of experience with the two generations below my own (millennials and Gen Z). I am Gen X, which is the last generation that weren't digital natives, half-raised by computers, and my grandparents were just off the farm in the World World II generation, so I was deeply influenced by people who were raised without electricity. Additionally, I have spent a lot of time with Appalachian and Native American elders in the WWII generation, nearly all of whom have passed on. I can say the baby boomers (my parents generation) don't match up to them. Largely because of widespread capitalist materialism following WWII (some anthropologists call this 'the great acceleration'). My generation (X) is on the cusp of the digital revolution. Millennials and Gen Z are mostly raised my machines. This is huge. I can say this, from my perspective: millennial men are not the same as previous generations. It's tough to have a traditional male perspective with a sedentary lifestyle in front of a computer and always fidgeting with the cellphone. The women still seem like women to me (if you can catch their attention from their cellphones) but are often complaining to me about the lack of vigor in the males. I have had a fair amount of millennial male friends and every single one of them has let me down. And I have given a lot of second, third, and fourth chances. Most of it has to do with lack of clear decision-making, lack of attention span, and lack of ability to follow through on tasks until the end. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but it has been a prevalent pattern in my life.

My dad once said something to me that I thought was insightful. He said:  'When men left the farm to work in the factory, that was the beginning of the destruction of the American family. When women joined the industrial workforce, that finished it off.' Now we have over 50% divorce rate and male-female relations are in chaos, as you pointed out at the beginning of this post. Did I mention I'm largely a Luddite? I don't have a cellphone and am not on social media, heat by wood, and grow most of my own food. Occasional internet use is about it. As John Trudell once said, "The old ways are hard.' But so are the new. Maybe there's still something there in the old ways. Including traditional gender roles. This doesn't have to mean obedience and servitude. In any sense, in my opinion. If you subjugate women and don't listen to them, you are cutting off 50% of your chances of survival in an increasingly hostile world. We are all humans, and humans are frail and flawed. I'm interested in engaging women as women, not as proto- or quasi- males. As such, women often have different insights than men, and those insights can prove valuable in nearly countless ways. The yin can complement the yang and that can make a harmonious relationship.

One more story from an experience in a Native American community. In the 90s I was at an Indigenous environmental gathering on a reservation. The women were in a big tarped area preparing deer for the gathering that the men had traditionally hunted. Since I had somewhat recently dated a feminist and we had shared the washing of dishes, I decided to offer my services to the Native women to wash the dishes for them. As soon as I entered the kitchen area, I was escorted out immediately by a Native woman friend. She said: 'Jim, I know what you're doing here and appreciate it. But us traditional Native women don't go in for the white woman's feminism. We derive our power from this space. Our men hunted these deer, and it is our role to prepare it for the community. We take pride from this and get a lot of meaning out of it. How we prepare the food helps influence how people act. It is very important for human survival. Sorry, no men are allowed in this sovereign and sacred women's space.' 'Nuff said. It made perfect sense to me; it reminded me of my grandma kicking the men out of her kitchen when I was growing up.

I think a huge mistake people in the modern world make is the assumption that women's roles and 'women's work' are not powerful. From where I'm sitting, I think it's equally important to the role of men in the healthy survival of human communities. What could be more powerful than that?

Hi Megan,

I think this is one of the better and more mature postings I have seen on this forum. Kudos.

By way of background, I am 49 and grew up in a southern military family with traditional gender roles. And some of the strongest dang women I have ever known. There was and is a gendered division of labor, which is true of the vast majority of traditional human cultures (I am also a cultural anthropologist so have studied and taught about gender relations cross-culturally and particularly in Indigenous societies).

I had an interesting experience when I dated a feminist for a little while in college (I had never heard of a feminism before college). I opened a door for her. She read me the riot act. 'What, you think I'm not capable of opening the door!!!' I had no idea how to reply. When I was a boy, my grandmother and mother insisted that I always open the door for them or any other woman present. As a sign of respect. They indeed were dignified women and worthy of it. One time I forgot and walked in a door in front of them. You couldn't have even counted 5 seconds on your fingers before a wooden spoon whipped out of one of the purses and up against my backside. That thing hurt; I was just a little boy. I didn't make that mistake again. Indeed, I always got a lot of enjoyment out of opening doors for women. I think evolutionarily this probably makes sense when they are carrying babies or other household items. The feminist and I ended up holding open doors for each other, although this felt weird to me. It was ok, but the relationship never really went anywhere. I often tell this story to illustrate its sometimes 'darned if you don't, darned if you do' for men. Different women of different ages or generations or cultures or just mindsets have different expectations of men and can be quite judgmental and irate about it. This is obviously very true for expectations regarding women as well (and perhaps talked about more in this day and age since men are traditionally expected to keep their emotions buttoned up). It's hard being human. Period.

I think in cultures with traditional gender roles men take leadership roles among men and women take leadership roles amongst women. In Hopi society, and this is true among several Indigenous Asian societies as well, men and women have dialects that are mutually unintelligible. I literally learned this when visiting Hopi elders and I asked one what the women were talking about. He said, 'I don't know, they speak a different dialect when talking among themselves.' Ha! I have so many stories about working among Indigenous peoples and gender roles. In my family, it would be ludicrous to think the men would order the women around the kitchen, or childrearing, or planning the holidays. Any man who hung around my grandmother's kitchen too long was ejected summarily.  

Our society, unfortunately, is built around power, money, and selfishness so traditional gender roles are de-valued. Everyone is basically expected to fend for themselves and 'do you.' Women, who are traditionally more communally oriented, have fallen prey to this as well. Some of my worst bosses have been women. They can be bigger a-holes than men, which I had to learn to get used to, since I thought they were the fairer and more reasonable sex growing up (my mom was, at least, compared to my dad).

This has been a bit long winded. I think it's really about yin-yang balance. (I'm a Daoist). Traditionally men are more yang and women are more yin. This is simple biology and hormones. But in our society, everyone is expected to be more yang and more aggressive. Over time I think this has led to some reversed gender roles, especially in younger generations, and a lot of sort of genderless androgyny. I'm not going to hate on any individual for this, but I do think it makes humans less interesting if we all try to be the same or reverse what we were born into. In some sense, I think it tends more toward an AI reality. I hope we can retain some degree of humanness moving forward. That being said, there are also different leadership styles among men, women, and all humans, and this is ok too. I prefer traditional gender roles, but I think it's up to the individuals involved to figure out exactly how it works for them. We all have a yin-yang balance, and that can shift over time. I think men who aren't in touch with their feminine side aren't much more than beasts. This doesn't mean they need to reject their masculinity. I like a feminine woman to have a little grit in her too. This comes in handy during times of crisis. To paraphrase a Gary Snyder poem: 'a man should be in touch with the woman inside of himself and a woman should be in touch with the woman inside the man inside of herself.' Ha!