Man-woman brainstorms
Nicholas Albery
One of the main ways in which the Institute for Social Inventions has explored new and imaginative ways for improving the relationships between women and men, has been to host a number of brainstorming groups. In case any reader would like to try running similar groups on this theme - the participants found the meetings very stimulating and refreshing - the format for these two-hour sessions is normally roughly as follows:
The brainstorming ground rules are explained: state ideas briefly like telegrams; no criticism of another's ideas; if you do not like someone's idea, improve it or go off on a tangent of your own; go for quantity of ideas, do not worry about the quality; weird, wild, outrageous ideas are welcome. All ideas are recorded (in our case on rolls of lining paper using felt tip pens).
First there is a ten-minute warm-up exercise such as: imagine it is the year 2020, you are the benevolent leader in a tiny country of Lichtensteinian proportions. You have managed to introduce laws, structures, customs and changes of lifestyle that have helped improve the way women and men get on out of all recognition. What measures did you take?
The remaining time is divided more or less equally between participants, and each in turn is invited to outline a personal problem in their relationship with the opposite sex. The others in response brainstorm ideas or projects for helping tackle that class of problem (not necessarily that person's personal problem, so there is less need for defensiveness on the proposer's part. It is more an assumption that other people probably have similar problems and that social inventions might help).
'Each in turn is invited to outline a personal problem in their relationship with the opposite sex. The others in response brainstorm ideas for helping tackle that class of problem'
The trial one-off groups that the Institute has experimented with have been too short to come up with very worthwhile or weighty projects, although a group committed to carrying out a project and meeting once a week for say ten weeks using the above formula in the initial meetings would no doubt be able to do so - just as our school groups routinely succeed in creating projects from brainstorming their own topics of concern. But these new groups have proved to be a superb and creative way to bring together men and women with very diverse views, ranging from unreformable macho men to radical feminists, where normally a discussion would have stood no chance of getting going. I would recommend this type of meeting to any group wanting to break the ice and discover more about each other's views and approaches to life.
Here are a just a few of the many hundreds of ideas the participants proposed:
- A group at the Association of Humanistic Psycho-therapists' conference came up with the idea for popularising heterosexual Non-Pen-Friends (non-penetrative sex), (developed in an item below by Nicholas Saunders), as one response to the AIDS threat.
- There should be a menu of several hundred different legal marriage contracts that a couple could choose from, with varying conditions and lengths of contract, or they could have one designed a la carte.
- There could be a charity or housing co-op for single parents (or for parents who do not get on very well), with each adult having their own accommodation, but sharing a communal garden totally enclosed by the houses, so that the children can play safely, with access to a multitude of adults. In fact all new family housing in cities in these violent days should be designed with a communal garden totally enclosed by clusters of seven or eight houses.
'All new family housing in cities in these violent days should be designed with a communal garden totally enclosed by clusters of seven or eight houses'
- How to meet girlfriends or boyfriends if new to a city? Any permutation of sexes would work,but in this example it is two men who go to a tourist spot together, they wait until they spot two women they fancy, then buy four ice-creams, and offer two to the women, saying that their friends have gone off, and it would be a shame to waste them.
'Two thirds of the participants on a two-week course ended up pairing off and were still together a year later'
- Where is the best place in Europe for people in their thirties and forties to meet new mates? Answer: the Skyros Growth Centre on the Greek Island of Skyros, where two thirds of the participants on a two-week course ended up pairing off and were still together a year later. The combination of a romantic setting, massage and therapy in the morning, nude beach in the afternoon and home-made theatre and parties in the evening is very powerful. (The Skyros Centre, c/o 1 Fawley Road, London NW6, tel 071 431 0867. For those that prefer sport to therapy, the Atsitsa Centre, run by the same organisation, offers sporting holidays on the other side of the island.)
- Advertise a competition for the best design for a research programme into what are the significant factors for long-term compatibility, the prize being enough money to carry out the research, leading perhaps afterwards to a computer-based pairing service.
- The couple at the start of a relationship to put their ideas on life in order of importance (for example concerning having children or willingness to earn money conventionally), so that each partner is warned from the start.
- When arguing with your spouse, half way through the argument, agree between you to switch and play the other's part. It is easier to give up arguing if you are gleefully surrendering on the other's behalf.
'When arguing with your spouse, half way through the argument, agree between you to switch and play the other's part. It is easier to give up arguing if you are gleefully surrendering on the other's behalf'
- Boss time, where each partner in turn gets what they want from the other for half an hour.
- Teach co-counselling at schools, so that children learn to listen to their partner for half an hour without interruption and without constantly planning their own reply.
- Forum Theatre sessions for arguing couples, where they re-enact their argument to the audience of similar couples, and at the second re-enactment any spectator can call a halt and go in the middle and take over one of the parts, going on to demonstrate a more creative continuation or resolution. (For further details see the item on Forum Theatre in this book's chapter on Education.)
- A couple need to find other ways to get high together besides sex - chanting, dancing, yoga, church or whatever.
- 'The only social invention a couple needs is to relax and tell the truth.'
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