The Aubert Report
a calling out and a calling in
The name of Aubert Bastiat, one of the original co-founders of the popular men’s work organization, Sacred Sons, has been called.
I’m not clear whether he’s being called out, or in, nor do I know which direction is most useful in this case. What is apparent is that Bastiat violated multiple women, some his coaching clients, some of whom are coming forward with testimony and evidence of his assaults—some of which apparently involved “putting someone in a K-hole and climbing on top of them.”
Sacred Sons removed Bastiat from the organization in May 2023, citing ‘professional and ethical violations.” The leadership team claimed they “worked extensively to call Aubert into integrity,” including engaging outside mediation.
Bastiat refers to these conversations in recent marketing emails, but never quite says why they were taking place:
”As it became clear that my path was diverging from Sacred Sons and there was an inevitable end in sight, I had to lean into trust…”
”While negotiations for my exit from Sacred Sons were intensifying…”
”…as I was letting go of not only my business stake in Sacred Sons, but letting go of my identity as visionary founder…”
”We ultimately decided to sever the relationship,” Sacred Sons announced in an IG post recently.
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I am deeply disappointed by this news. Disappointed, but not surprised.
The fact of Aubert’s radical departure from integrity and accountability, as well as his subsequent unwillingness to come into relationship with the harm he caused, confirms for me that anyone, even a leader surrounded by men also supposedly doing their own work and holding space for thousands of others every year, can get caught in his shadow material, and cause massive harm and distrust.
Over the past eight years, Sacred Sons has grown into a beacon of connection and healing for men all over the world. In many ways, the took up the torch from ManKind Project—a men’s rites-of-passage and leadership organization which began when the Sacred Sons to-be were in diapers, and which has suffered since the pandemic around cultural appropriation and lack of retention.
Sacred Sons offers a host of containers that thousands of men engage with every year, including annual Convergence weekend gatherings, smaller regional weekend EMX (Embodied Masculine Experience) gatherings, online community, as well as opportunities for men to lean into their own leadership capabilities by training within the organization, mentoring youth, or simply taking home their inspiration and being more present with their partners and kids, starting men’s groups, coaching practices, or working out and sitting in ice baths.
I attended a Sacred Sons Convergence event on the Oregon Coast in October 2021. 333 men from all over the world (but possibly mostly from San Diego) descended on a remote Boy Scout camp. We broke bread together, teamed up to practice smaller containers of sharing vulnerably and supporting each other in different ways, engaged in heartful competition and deeply cathartic processes, as well as circled up for the now-famous Sacred Combat.
I was and am grateful for the experience, but have not engaged further with the organization or its events.
I was turned off by what I experienced as a lack of interest or willingness in the leadership to hold real conversations about power, privilege, systemic oppression, misogyny, and in general the things that tend to byproducts of male-exclusive time and space.
What I did hear, especially from Kale Kaalekahi, was a vision of some future in which patriarchy was not the toxified monolith we think of now, but a healthy ecosystem of accountable male leadership which calls on the Good Father in each of us to show up, shoulder our responsibilities with grace, humor, and kindness day after day, to do the work with spacious, loving awareness that is honed by deep practice in connection, not in isolation.
What I did not hear was an acknowledgement of where we are currently, nor a path nor a plan to get from here to there.
If we are going to create male-exclusive containers intended for healing and connection, we need to talk about what got us here.
It’s far easier to create a space where men feel safe enough to share secrets, cry, and deeply connect with one another than to create a space where a man feels safe enough to examine how he’s 1) been trained and coerced into perpetuating harm, and 2) actually played out those behaviors in his life.
This type of container requires the facilitators to be engaged in that work for themselves in a deep and consistent way over time.
To be clear, I’m not digging on Sacred Sons. I love what they’re working toward, and firmly believe that any time men gather together in service to practicing vulnerability, authenticity, and deep connection with each other is a net positive for planet earth.
And, we need to do better. To oust Aubert Bastiat from the organization with keywords like Accountability and Integrity may be aligned with the organization’s values, but it’s just a PR move—a political distancing act—if you are not really diving into what created the conditions for his violations, and addressing them in yourselves as well.
That goes for all of us in the work.
I’m loathe to rely on the old “it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility” trope, but in the case of men on planet earth in the last ten thousand years, it’s often true.
This work is not easy. Many of the men who show up in these spaces, and indeed lead them, show up with lots of disconnection, trauma, and shame.
For a long time, I was one of them.
Many men from many cultures, including me, carry a thousand generations of toxic patriarchy and its violent progeny in our bodies. While some of us are doing our best to stop that freight train of violence in a single generation, it continues to be true that anytime that power is concentrated in a single male body, it alters that man’s values, perceptions, beliefs, and expressions toward isolation, exceptionalism, and entitlement. Some handle it well, possibly.
At any point, but particularly in positions of power, we can become blinded by the person who we think we are, the person others have reflected back to us as having integrity, great leadership, depth, connection to our hearts, etc. In that blindness, we lose connection to that core essence that we worked so hard to cultivate. This is the place from which we can cause immeasurable harm.
And the need to re-connect begins again.
As a leader myself in the world of men’s work, I am no exception to this rule. While I strive to be a good husband, loving father, and wise leader, I am as capable of disconnecting from my heart and causing harm as Aubert Bastiat.
Which is why it’s so important for us to believe the stories of the women who speak about their experiences of Aubert. Not only to hear them and honor them, but to feel the impact of the ways that we can disconnect, dissociate, and lose touch.
I hold that no one is broken or beyond repair. While many men will die before being willing to unpack their wounding and practice to repair the harm they’ve done, I believe that a precious core essence is in each and every one of us, even if it’s stuffed so far down that it will never again see daylight, or love.
I wonder what would happen if Aubert, and so many other men in similar positions, lay down his arms and defenses and, somehow, his shame, and really heard the women in his life, as well as his brothers in life and business.
What would happen if he said, wow. I fucked up—big time! I’m going to take a long, curious look at these parts of myself in connection with my support system (therapist, men’s group, etc etc). I am open to hearing more about your experience, _______, and will keep showing up to repair, if that would be helpful for you.
I just wonder.
I also hold that no man is equal to the worst thing he’s ever done. How he chooses to relate to that moment and its impact, as well as to himself and others in the present moment says more about who he is and who he has become, which is more valuable to me than punitive frameworks that keep those who have been convicted of felonies and served their time from being able to rent homes, open bank accounts, work many jobs, etc.
This is not an out, or a way to excuse Aubert or anyone else. I would just offer the possibility of forgiveness if he is ever willing to truly step into repair and sit in that fire for as long as it takes to build trust again.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, JJ. You're pointing to the nuance and grey areas that are so rarely clear and well-defined. Where is the line between a woman's self-responsibility, and the influence that a coach, therapist, community leader, or other man in a power position has in that relationship with her?
One question that I resonate with, from Kylea Taylor's book The Ethics of Caring, is "Who is this for?"
I think about that question when I read and heard Aubert's messages to his 'clients', or that he would ask them to move closer to him. This is all before we even start talking about sexual assault.
And, to answer your thought experiment: I would show up tor the conversation. I know I have blind spots and I want to see them clearer. Even if "she" was totally in her own trauma and reliving things that had nothing to do with me, I would do my best to gather my resources, ground my body and nervous system into mama earth, and to listen, and let them know I heard them.
Excellent read. In my opinion, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Collectively, we tend to frame the process of “calling someone out” as negative, violent and hostile, but it can be done constructively (if both parties are willing to recognize it as such and receive it). To call out is the simultaneous action of calling in. 🙏🏽