{"id":394,"date":"2009-10-10T22:32:26","date_gmt":"2009-10-10T22:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html"},"modified":"2009-10-10T22:32:26","modified_gmt":"2009-10-10T22:32:26","slug":"men-masculinity-and-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html","title":{"rendered":"Men, Masculinity, and Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of  <\/span>good stuff written about the Goddess,
\nGoddesses, and the Divine Feminine,. 
\n<\/span>The Wiccan Goddess is first among equals in traditional Wiccan circles.,
\nand in my view, should be.  <\/span>Certainly
\nShe has been the most important influence in my own life.  <\/span>I have even recently completed a book
\nmanuscript dealing with some of these themes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nBy comparison, there has been
\nlittle attention paid to the Divine Masculine, the God, or male Gods as
\nmale.  <\/span>There are two good reasons
\nfor this lack, but while they are good reasons why the Goddess has received the
\nmost attention until now, I think it s time to give more attention to the
\nDivine Masculine.  <\/span>The discussions
\nover Robert Bly, the men’s movement, sweat lodges and “muscular” spirituality
\nin some comments appearing in the preceding post have tipped me into entering
\nthese perilous waters.<\/p>\n

Speaking as a man who is pretty
\nnon-sexist, the images of masculinity that women author\/priestesses have put
\nusually forward in their writings have been pretty unappealing.  <\/span>They are OK, but nothing to get excited
\nabout.  <\/span>I think most men would
\nagree.<\/p>\n

More troubling, little distinction
\nseems to be made between men with traditionally one sided views of their
\nmaleness, and the dominator types who see all relationships in terms of who is
\non top.  <\/span>There are many of the
\nformer who are not only dominated, they honor the feminine and family responsibilities,
\nbut look to those qualities in their wives and partners far more than in
\nthemselves.  <\/span>They do not denigrate
\nthe feminine.<\/p>\n

Our society is developing an
\nattractive image of strong creative and loving women. It is not developing an
\nattractive image of men strong enough not to be threatened by such women, but
\nwho are still men rather than some unisex vision that does not appeal to many
\nwomen or men.<\/p>\n

Into this void step the
\npathological characters who define their ‘manhood’ by its NOT being feminine in
\nany sense.  <\/span>These usually right
\nwing folks, some religious who worship a god whom rese,bles an abusive and
\nmurderous husband, or secularists who fantasize that they will lead great wars
\nto make us an empire.  <\/span>These guys
\nare exposed as pathological when we look at the men who serve as their role
\nmodels: Ronald Reagan (the Gipper), Fred Thompson, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson,
\nJohn Wayne, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator).  <\/span>All are distinguished by playing pretend<\/i> heroes, never hearing a shot fired that might hurt
\nthem (Wayne was the only male star of his generation who did NOT serve his
\ncountry and risk his life) and entering every ‘fight’ knowing they were going
\nto win, and get handsomely paid while doing so.  <\/span>They are honored for the roles they played as actors.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Reagan and Schwarzenegger achieved
\na lot as individuals, rising from poverty and obscurity to become politically
\npowerful leaders.  <\/span>But they are
\nhonored as much or more for the pretend characters they played than the real
\naccomplishments they achieved on the way up.  <\/span>It’s weird until you realize that the right wing image of
\nmanhood is a fantasy modeled in part on a brutal deity and for the rest on a
\nrejection of the feminine.  <\/span>Thus
\nmost Republican legislators do not think military contractors should be
\npenalized for aiding gang rape among their employees, and so vote against
\npunishing rape<\/a> in a company that condones it.<\/p>\n

Thus major ‘conservative’ figures such as John
\nDerbyshire of National Review<\/i> can
\nwistfully imagine a world where women cannot vote<\/a> as better than today’s.<\/a>  <\/span>Thus these pathetic people’s eagerness
\nfor <\/span>other <\/i>people to fight wars
\nall over the place.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Against this degeneration stands
\nthe sensitive male always careful of others’ feelings, always careful to know
\nhis place. Yuck.<\/p>\n

For many years I myself wondered
\njust what was so wonderful about maleness other than our contribution to
\nreproduction.  <\/span>There was no very
\navailable positive image of strong masculinity available in our society.  <\/span>Happily for me, a powerful experience
\nwith Cernnunos ended my confusion, though I am still striving to live closer to
\nwhat he showed me.  <\/span>But in doing so
\nhHe made more obvious the severe lack of a vision of healthy maleness that
\ncould attract a great many men.<\/p>\n

<\/span>These are complex issues, and even a series of blog posts
\ncannot do it justice, but let me leave this musing with two thoughts.  <\/span>On balance a woman knows her most
\ncommon and very valuable role in the world is deeply connected to its
\nbiological rhythms, especially to giving birth.  <\/span>In traditional societies a girl becomes a woman,  <\/span>and is honored for it, with her first
\nmenses.<\/p>\n

Little boys become men by
\nundergoing long and often complex and painful initiations.  <\/span>Even here, many men will say their time
\nin the military “made a man out of me.” 
\n<\/span>I doubt if any woman in the Service ever said it made a woman out of
\nher.  <\/span>I am reminded of Medea’s
\nwords in Euripides: “I had rather stand my ground three times among<\/p>\n

\nthe shields than face a childbirth once.”      <\/p>\n

I will return to this Euripides’
\npoint, but the point of this musing is that men’s identity must be more earned
\nin their own and society’s eyes than a woman’s must in hers and in
\nsociety’s.  <\/span>This means it is more
\ninsecure, and much flows from that. 
\n<\/span>I think this is one issue that fantasies of politically correct unisexuality 
\n<\/a>so popular on the left will never be able to address.<\/p>\n

That’s the first thought.<\/p>\n

The second is to quote from Harvey
\nMansfield, a modern pathological male writing on “Manliness” and then recount a
\nconversation I had with a Crow Indian, whom I first met when he returned home
\nfrom an elk hunt and laid his rifle down on the table in front of where I was
\nsitting.  <\/span>I think he would be
\nqualified to be called “manly.” <\/p>\n

Mansfied’s book Manliness <\/i><\/a> <\/span> <\/span>is rife with put downs on women as inferior to manly
\nmen.  <\/span>As he put it, a manly man
\nmust be able to “look a woman in the eye and tell her that she is inferior in
\nimportant respects.”  <\/span>His chivalry
\nobserves the mask of equality and respect, but as he puts it, this is ” the
\nsort of equality that might result from being superior at home if inferior at
\nwork.”  <\/span>Having rea the entire
\nbook, it is even worse than this, but not worth the pixels to explain farther
\nhere<\/span>.<\/p>\n

My young Crow acquaintance had
\ndanced, and continues to dance, the Sun Dance.<\/a> He does it in the traditional way, with skewers pushed through the skin of his
\nchest, attached to ropes that are tied to a pole at the lodge’s center.  <\/span>Other – I do not know whether he has
\ndone so – drag a buffalo skull behind them as the dance.  <\/span>The skull is attached to the dancer’s
\nback, again by a rope and skewer. 
\n<\/span>This would qualify as a “muscular” form of spirituality if anything
\ncan.  <\/span>He told me “We do this to give of our bodies and
\npain to serve our community the way women do in child birth.” He did not look
\ndown on women’s work, although he distinguished it from his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

The pathological masculinity of those praising ‘manliness’ today
\nis as far from the real thing as the gelded masculinity so often praised in
\npolitically correct circles.  <\/span>And
\nbecause so many men are turned off by the gelded image, they are left with the
\ninfantile ramblings and incoherent puffings of right wingers to give them a
\nsense of their value as men.  <\/span>It is
\ntragic.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of  good stuff written about the Goddess, Goddesses, and the Divine Feminine,.  The Wiccan Goddess is first among equals in traditional Wiccan circles., and in my view, should be.  Certainly She has been the most important influence in my own life.  I have even recently completed a book manuscript dealing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106,105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pagan-culture","category-pagan-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\nMen, Masculinity, and Spirit - A Pagan's Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Men, Masculinity, and Spirit - A Pagan's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There has been a lot of  good stuff written about the Goddess, Goddesses, and the Divine Feminine,.  The Wiccan Goddess is first among equals in traditional Wiccan circles., and in my view, should be.  Certainly She has been the most important influence in my own life.  I have even recently completed a book manuscript dealing…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"A Pagan's Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-10-10T22:32:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gus diZerega\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Men, Masculinity, and Spirit - A Pagan's Blog","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Men, Masculinity, and Spirit - A Pagan's Blog","og_description":"There has been a lot of  good stuff written about the Goddess, Goddesses, and the Divine Feminine,.  The Wiccan Goddess is first among equals in traditional Wiccan circles., and in my view, should be.  Certainly She has been the most important influence in my own life.  I have even recently completed a book manuscript dealing…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html","og_site_name":"A Pagan's Blog","article_published_time":"2009-10-10T22:32:26+00:00","author":"Gus diZerega","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html","name":"Men, Masculinity, and Spirit - A Pagan's Blog","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-10-10T22:32:26+00:00","dateModified":"2009-10-10T22:32:26+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2009\/10\/men-masculinity-and-spirit.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Men, Masculinity, and Spirit"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/","name":"A Pagan's Blog","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Gus diZerega","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/d94ab0155d2780a0526af373b5c543f2","name":"Gus diZerega","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/4f6\/4f6b5a87d91376eaf8d126df301ab8cdx96.jpg","caption":"Gus diZerega"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/author\/gdizerega"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}