Sacred Masculine II

Moving the focus off toxic masculinity

When @youenn_7 issued a prompt to write about the Sacred Masculine, all I could think about was toxic masculinity. In my life, it’s been important to study men and their behaviors in order to avoid becoming their victim — a goal I didn’t always achieve. The story I wrote received a lot of attention, perhaps because in a violent world rampant with misogyny and homophobia, people are honestly interested in the central question. What is sacred about masculinity?

But after writing the piece above I attended a film class on Zoom with Movie of the Moon Club that discussed feminine principles in ways that surprised me. The experience got me thinking about the male/female dichotomy and inspired me to come back and try answering the question again: What is sacred about masculinity?

Start with the sacred feminine

Teacher Terry Ebinger provided this list of feminine principles before we watched and analyzed The Piano. These are not traits that every woman has. They’re traits that every one of us — male and female and non-binary alike— possess to some degree and can nurture or repress as we choose. As you’ll see, they’re quite different from the silly traits that popular media tends to associate with women, like being quick to cry, fascinated with men, and liking the color pink.

Silence, stillness, solitude Process orientation rather than goal orientation Holding paradox, rather than choosing one or the other Presence Receptivity and yielding The moon herself: reflected light, not direct light The quality of darkness, hidden treasures The quality of not knowing Mystery, gestation Questions, not answers The circuitous path, not the direct path Depth Slow unfolding Non-hierarchical traditions of sorority and equanimity

Extrapolate the sacred masculine

Ebinger didn’t provide a list of sacred masculine principles, but she did say they were the opposite of the feminine ones. So let’s take the same list and create its opposite to identify some traits of masculinity that go beyond the standard media tropes of strength, stoicism, and virility.

Sound, activity, comraderie Goal orientation rather than process orientation Choosing one or the other, making a decision Seeing beyond the present moment, planning Domination (this was the trait I focused on in the first story) The sun himself; direct light The quality of light; seeing clearly; exposure The quality of knowing; certainty Facts, fruition Answers, not questions The direct path, not the circuitous one Surface Quick culmination Hierarchical structures

Merge them together for a whole human being

The problem in our dangerous and fractured world is not that people have masculine traits, but that we value them much more highly than feminine ones; we overvalue the masculine traits and undervalue the feminine ones, throwing the world off balance. So domination is valued much more than cooperation; quick action much more than measured response.

This is not a new idea. The ancient Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang holds that each side of the circle of life supports and allows its opposite — that both are needed and of equal value.

It doesn’t take exceptional intelligence or particularly deep wisdom to see that this is true.

So what’s needed now, to pull us back from the brink of apparent apocalypse, is to increase the value of the feminine principles while scaling the masculine back.

A real-life example of blending principles

This morning I read a moving tribute from a daughter to her now-deceased father. She described how he supported and protected her throughout her life. But he didn’t do it by exercising only his masculine traits. He drew on both halves of his spirit.

On the day she was born, her father defied custom in their village to be part of what was considered a “feminine” activity — childbirth. Because he’d crossed that gender border, he was able to save her life when she emerged unexpectedly after her twin brother in a closed amniotic sac. It was his curiosity and concern that discovered the baby within.

Later, he defied custom again to send his daughter to the best school in the region, even when he didn’t have the fees; and later still, he defied it again to convince the dowry committee in their village that her prospective husband didn’t need to pay one for them to wed.

In each case, he used his masculine traits of decision and action to uphold feminine values of connection and compromise. He was present in the moment — a feminine trait — which made him able to see beyond established, hierarchical traditions and make room for a different vision in the world.

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