Gender Healing
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What are people saying about The Hand That Rocks the World:
Tim Goldich
"The “hand” in question is the hand of Woman. We’re used to thinking in terms of MalePower. But, for a complex web of reasons, humanity has never engaged in an extensive, official, scholarly examination of FemalePower. Instead, we prefer to assume either that there’s no such thing as female power or that such power is too “trivial” to take seriously.
Ironically, the myth of female powerlessness is protected from exposure as fraudulent by . . . FemalePower. Feminism frames the female experience in terms of female victimization thus enforcing the myth of female powerlessness because it is a myth that allows feminists, Woman’s self-appointed spokespersons, to come to the bargaining table saying, in effect: You men have everything, we women have nothing, so just give us what you’ve got because that would only be “fair.” Man is thus manipulated into pouring from his glass half “full” into Woman’s glass half “empty” and thus women are empowered to take without giving. As a result, Woman is on the ascent and Man is in decline.
A faction of humanity rationalizing its “righteous” entitlement to take more and give less, is one of the pillars of Shackleton’s brilliant definition of “evil.” At the core of Shackleton’s outlook on evil is a phrase made famous when Hannah Arendt applied it to Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was the Nazi bureaucrat in charge of keeping the trains running to and from the concentration camps. As such, he was personally responsible for appalling evil at an appalling magnitude. But, far from radiating anything sinister, Eichmann radiated only a rather dim, shallow, cliché-ridden ordinariness. Hence the phrase: “The banality of evil.”
To Shackleton, evil is banal, it is an ordinary part of human reality. But, by its nature, it will be invisible to those engaged in it because those who succumb to it will blind themselves with a “cover story”—a cover story within which their attitudes and actions are rationalized as right and proper. Accomplishing this blindness requires another pillar of Shackleton’s definition of evil, a Moral Panic. A Moral Panic is concocted (i.e., “Rape epidemic” within “Rape Culture”) in order to rev up the emotions needed to overcome reason and sideline basic ethics.
If you value truth above conformity, this book is for you."
Sam Foxvog
"Five Stars! In this bold examination of knowledge, power, and gender, Shackleton joins critical examination of social phenomenon with vision and deep insight into matters of the human psyche. Shackleton shares much clarity and wisdom in his examination of how things are between the genders, why things are so, and how things can change for the best. Life stories he shares support his perspectives. These stories demonstrate both the deepness of the troubles our societies face and the hope for transformation. This is a profound book I know I will read a second time and beyond. One thing I found particularly insightful is Shackleton's model of "the journey through dualistic imbalance to personal wisdom." Overall, this book left a refreshing taste in my mouth. I recommend the text to anyone, especially someone wondering how to help society heal and grow in areas of gender."
Zuzana Zachar
"An excellent, honest and thought provoking challenge into sourcing, truth. For those preferring to keep their current beliefs, best give it a miss, but for those intent on understanding themselves, their beliefs and sources of cultural /gender stereotypes, this is THE book. Or to paraphrase a quote in the book, for the faint hearted, you may read this and think, you're thinking, and love it...for those with the fortitude to seek truth, this book will force you to think...and as such, you may resent it at times. I will be buying copies for loved ones. Many, many thanks to the author."
Fayer Weather
"David Shackleton has done something remarkable and rare with his book. He has openly challenged some of our human culture's most untouchable taboos about women and men and how they operate in society in order to expose the ideological evil inherent in much of gender politics. He has attempted to unclothe the wolf in grandma's nightgown.
I found his book also to be much more than an uncovering and a stripping away of falsehoods and limiting beliefs. I found it to be a work of love. Deep love for men and for women, for human beings as a whole is a ribbon you'll find woven through every paragraph and every chapter of his work. I was moved to tears at times by his vision of true non-codependent gender unity and by the sadness he feels when contemplating the damage we've done to each other with accusations, rage and blindness.
I have always found stark, painful reality to be much preferable to a sweet and happy dream that obscures the truth we might not want to accept. This book is a call to all of us to seek out and discover what lies beneath the convenient fairy tale, and to own our role in what we find there. People like Shackleton give me hope that one day, maybe those involved in the sad and costly witch hunt that comprises much of feminism can instead work to see the truth behind the fear and anger and to take a step towards real gender equality."
Click here to purchase on Amazon.com
The Hand That Rocks the World... An original and penetrating exploration of gender grounded in social psychology, the psychology of societies. The riddle of how feminism has been so powerful under a banner of powerlessness is solved. Women's social power is explained and explored and discovered to be equal to but different from that of men. Original and fundamental models of male and female power in codependent relationship and of psychological growth are presented and illustrated with story and example. The task of social advocacy around gender equality is explored and developed in a context of what has worked historically. The book ends with a moving appeal to transcend ideologies of gender judgment and work together to create a future desired by and good for both women and men. The Hand That Rocks the World is presented as a detective puzzle, in which the reader is challenged to discern the deeper gender reality behind the codependent cover story of male power and female victimhood. Not to be missed by any serious student of gender or psychological growth.
