sfgirl

I think you may have missed Katie's point. It is one that I identified with in whole. And it really is not so much about talking about ego deflation as the male problem but about what AA leaves out when not talking about the other side of the card. Women are raised and groomed to be caretakers, to think about other people. The language of AA is very heavy on ego-deflation and to someone who has spent their whole life taking care of others at the expense of their own selves it can be very confusing, infuriating, and alienating talk. I think that because of the different gender roles in society that this is a very real concern. While I definitely think that there is some crossover, egotistical women and caretaker deflated men, I would say that in general men need to be deflated while women need to be built up. Actually, I'll rephrase that to talk for me only because that is all I really know and that is I need to be built up. I was not a "selfish" addict. In fact with all that talk I have searched myself to ask myself if somehow I was blind to it. I just wasn't.

However, I do agree that the recovery ideas can benefit both genders. I do believe they are presented in a way that is much more palatable and attractive to men though. I was utterly disgusted by AA in the beginning. It took me reading a lot to now appreciate a lot of the concepts. I searched out literature specific to women— the 12 steps rewritten for women because I recognized the alienating nature of the language. Now I really take a lot from different concepts in AA but I had to break down through some barriers. I also probably had to break down through some of my own rigidity and issues. I do believe that it could seriously benefit from different language which I believe is one of the reasons AA can produce so much controversy. AA could benefit from less rigidity. I don't think that it is arguable that the Big Book is a book written for men by men.