Toxic Masculinity and the Divine Feminine
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Photo by Irina Iriser
What does a healthy masculinity even look like anymore?
This is a question that has kept me up at night the last couple of months. The cause of this lack of sleep could have been induced by an increasing number of possibilities: #metoo and #whyididntreport are strong candidates. Another might be that I have a 20 month old little girl I want to protect from a rape culture our current President normalizes and participates in. Perhaps its because I’ve got a newborn boy I don’t want to grow up being taught (either explicitly or implicitly) that he has inherited rights simply because he has white skin and a penis. It also might be because I’m becoming increasingly more aware of the ways I perpetuate toxic masculinity while at the same time suppressing a more tender, vulnerable and fierce side of me that’s been wanting to break out for a really long time now.
Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what brought on this unsettling. After contemplation over the matter, what I have concluded is that what does matter, even if just a little bit, is that I talk about it…out loud…in public. I don’t believe men are talking about toxic masculinity and alternatives to it nearly enough. I know that I haven’t. The more I try and pin down a reason for this, the more I come up against one massive truth:
ITS EVERYWHERE AND I BENEFIT FROM IT.
Let me parse that out just a little bit without going into great detail. What I mean by “its everywhere” is simply a reference to the patriarchy. By “the patriarchy”, what I am referring to is the fact that the society and social structures in which you and I wake up to each day were created almost exclusively for and by white men.
And when I say “I benefit from it” I’m not saying that I literally benefit every time a little boy is made fun of for liking the color pink or a girl is sexually assaulted by a man and somehow convinced it’s her fault. No, what I mean when I say “I benefit from it” is simply an acknowledgement of the white privilege that comes with being a white heterosexual man in this world. I have never had to question whether my government considers me a “full” human. Being enslaved or imprisoned because of the color of my skin is not a part of my history or present existence. I have never had to worry about being “cat called” or worse when walking down a street alone. I have never had to wonder whether an establishment would take my $ or let me use their restroom. I have always been given the right to vote. I have never had to hide my identity from my friends and family for fear of losing it all. I have never worried about someone “grabbing me by the p***y”. I could go on, but I wont. But you know what I can count on as a white man in America? That even at the notion of a man being held accountable by society for exercising his toxic masculinity over others, that the POTUS will announce to the world how “scary of a time it is for young men in America”? That is what I mean by “I benefit from it”.
They say that the first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem. I think that too often men (especially white men) are silent about toxic masculinity because we either cannot admit we have a problem or we cannot identify what our problem is. Our problem is not that we are men. Our problem is that we are men in a world created by men.
I don’t want to live in that world anymore. I recognize how risky a statement that is. I don’t say it lightly. I know I benefit from my whiteness and maleness and enjoy aspects of my privilege. I still struggle not throwing it around every single day. Just this past week I assumed in a conversation I was having with a man and woman that the man was the owner of the business and therefore addressed him instead of her. I was gracefully corrected and went home and wondered how many times a week or even a day that happens to her. It was so assumed on my part that I didn’t even think twice before speaking. It was a low moment. A reminder of just how programmed I have been since BIRTH to recognize power and influence and success as masculine traits.
Yet I know I mean what I say because I was lucky enough to taste and see female led work and culture up close from March 2016 through Sept. 2018, when I worked for a non profit organization called The Nashville Food Project. It was stronger, healthier, more flexible, more resilient, and more beautiful than any organization I’ve ever been apart of. I had worked in places before that had admirable values they supported and pursued. What I hadn’t experienced was an organization so committed to their values they were willing to challenge themselves daily and seek accountability on a regular basis in order to achieve them. After about 5 months of time to reflect in solitude and in nature about that experience, I believe the freedom I witnessed and experienced there emanated from a deep commitment to equity and inclusion. Or as Franciscan Monk Richard Rohr might call it, a commitment to “circles of sharing and conversation as opposed to pyramids, hierarchies, and construction”. This is to say, as I see it, that I experienced an approach void of toxic masculinity and rich with the strength’s and sacredness of the Divine Feminine.
The Divine Feminine cannot be defined in one way, and certainly cannot be defined by me. I’m just now wading into the waters of truly learning about it in hopes of achieving understanding (and hopefully, one day, embodiment). Sufi teacher and author Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee once called it the “matrix of creation”. I liked that. She expounds on the concept, writing:
“Out of the substance of a woman’s very being, life comes forth….she gives her blood, her own body, to what will be born. The same sacred source that gave birth to each of us is needed to give meaning to our life, to nourish it with what is real, and to reveal to us the mystery, the divine purpose to being alive.”
We’ve been given an almost exclusively masculine perspective and understanding of God in the West, which means we’ve been told only half the story. It’s like we ignored everything Jesus actually said and did and decided the only thing that mattered was that he was God and that he was a man. Here’s the problem with that. When we ignore the feminine and only teach a masculine perspective of the life and death of Jesus the man, Jesus immidiatley ceases to be God. Without a Christ that is both feminine and masculine, we cannot know how to follow the way of Jesus. Without the feminine, masculinity becomes toxic. Without the Divine Feminine, the gospel becomes toxic.
Toxic Masculinity FEARS the power of the Divine Feminine. And so it oppresses it. It oppresses it by oppressing women. It oppresses it by exploiting mother nature. It oppresses it by robbing it of it ‘s strength and beauty and potency. But this fear driven oppression of feminism is just as costly to men and masculinity as it is to its other victims. Our inability and refusal as men to embrace the feminine both within and around us is, I believe, the root cause of masculinity turned toxic.
Identifying the ways in which I perpetuate toxic masculinity is a constant work for me. Living in a state of awareness of how I suppress the feminine both within and around me might be a lifelong journey. At the very least, its clearly not something I am going to be able to accomplish overnight. Seeing how toxic masculinity negatively effects literally everyone involved, however, means the work cannot be ignored or put on the back burner. Here are a couple of simple things I have found helpful in my own work of fighting toxic masculinity:
finding voices and resources that speak to these issues, and simply reading and listening to them.
challenging myself to re-define what masculinity means and looks like in my own life.
The Descent of the Spirit by Jacques Lipchitz in the cloisters of Iona Abbey
“In the form of a dove the Spirit descends onto an abstract divine feminine form that opens to give birth. At one level Lipchitz is pointing to the Jesus story, conceived by the Spirit in the womb of Mary. At another level he is pointing to the universe story. Everything is conceived by the Spirit in the womb of the cosmos. Everything is sacred.”
-John Philip Newell
“But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
2 Corinthians 12:9
Its been a LONG time since I posted or quoted a scripture verse publicly to anyone. This is one I remember making an imprint on me even in my early childhood. It has come to my mind often over the years. But the sad reality is that it has barely penetrated my life in real tangible ways up to this point. The masculinity I’ve been taught just doesn’t allow space for it.
The masculinity I’ve been taught doesn’t have space for Christ’s power….
Let that sink in.
I love flowers. Always have. My favorites are Sunflowers and Daisies. I’m going to grow a lot of them out on the farm this year. I’m going to pick them and smell them and share them with my friends.
I love deer hunting. I’ve not done it long and I’ve yet to kill anything. I love being in the deer stand before sunlight and sinking in to the forest around me. Sitting quietly. Listening to the woods slowly wake up. Blending in. if I do kill a deer one day, I’m going to cry. I know this because I was with a friend a couple years ago when he killed one, and I helped him field dress it. I loved the experience. The whole thing was sacred to me and I was overcome with emotions. Unfortunately, I was afraid to show them. I forced them down until I was alone and could finally let the tears roll down my cheeks. If I kill a deer, I hope I dont feel pressure to hide my emotions. I hope I can let the tears flow. I hope I can take the time to feel the loss, celebrate the life and thank it for feeding my family. Perhaps I can share the experience with my son and daughter one day.
I love the sculpture by Lipchitz pictured above. There were actually 3 of them made, one of which can be seen at the ‘Roofless Church’ in New Harmony, Indiana. I would recommend a visit. Lipchitz original name for the sculpture was “Our Lady of Delight” and one of them was intended to live in the National Cathedral in Washington DC. Once the leaders of the cathedral saw it, however, they refused to accept it. According to John Philip Newell in his description of the piece in his book ‘The Rebirthing of God’, “It was too explicit in its representation of the Divine Feminine opening to give birth. So instead, as Jane Owen explained to me when I met her many years later, they commissioned another artist to create a statue of George Washington riding a horse!” It was later taken to Iona and renamed “The Descent of the Spirit”.
There is a world where masculinity and femininity flow in and out of each other in complete harmony rather than being at odds or threatened by each other. There’s a healthy masculinity at work right now, where power is being made perfect in weakness and vulnerability and openness. There’s a divine feminism at work right now, leading us and revealing to us the goodness and sacredness of life. There IS equity and inclusion and interconnectedness. Its all right here. Among us. Every day. Flowing like a stream. I want more than anything to see it. Drink from it.
Make space for it.
