Many-headed Gender

Doing a lot of work with "ideal" womanhood in class....and by, association, the romanticizing of this "ideal" as something more complete than the masculine.

I just found this line in the book we're reading this week (James Carroll's An American Requiem): "In recalling the power of that first ideal in which virtue was not the opposite of masculinity but the essence of it, I recognize that the man I still long to be is the one I first thought my father was."

This statement is not only one of the most poignant things I've ever read, but also one of great insight. It leaves me with that feeling akin to "Ah ha". Though I have not quite gotten to the Ah Ha yet, something is about to occur to me, and it could be brilliant.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is personal and completely non-academic. I thought of my grandfathers. I can't explain the virtue/masculinity connection in them, just that the idea resonated with their presence. These men were of the same generation as Carroll's father, so I wonder if there was something about this "Greatest Generation" perception of masculinity that (while arguably detrimental in a great many ways) we should be paying more attention to in this moment.

My second associations are questions: In what way is virtue the essence of masculinity? In what way is it now the opposite? ...and did a vocal feminist movement have anything to do with this?
I will get to these questions later/sometime.

First, I'd like to try to get to the bottom what it is that's been bugging me in our late 20th century readings of feminist-theory inflected spirituality. As wonderful as these things have been, I have to question balance. There are a few things to consider here.
1) Feminine power was in serious need of reclaiming throughout the last...oh...lots of centuries. I'm not going to argue that.

2) The breaking point with the lack of feminine power definitely rose to the top on several occasions throughout world history, but none quite so dramatically as with focused "civil rights"/humanist/feminist movements of the 60s. A decade of great reaction all around.

3) Things did change. For example: When my mother went away to college, it was still rather expected that she would only go to meet a husband, and she may or may not work once she met this man. When I went away to school, I was going to enrich myself. I have heard similar stories from many friends with mothers who share a generation with mine.

4) Things did not change enough, and there came a crop of certain writers (probably beginning in the late 60s, early 70s) who began to use Goddess imagery to advance the cause of woman on earth. I find this tendency especially prevalent in writings of self-discovery and spiritual journey published in the late 80s and early 90s. (It could be that I began seeking such books for my own personal journey in the mid-90s as a confused adolescent who really wanted to find something positive in her femininity. 'cause the world still wasn't selling it to me.) aaanyway....
There is a commonality--a trope almost--among these writers to claim that we must all experience the divine feminine, for only She is complete. (This is massively over simplified again....)

Most recently, I read it in Jean Houston, as it relates to the Hero's Journey as embodied by Odysseus. Odysseus often finds himself in caves, and--as any good dabbler in ancient religions knows--caves are places of feminine initiation. You're crawling back into the earth-womb when you take on a cave, baby.
And Odysseus has got to do this in order find his completeness. The HERO in general, must always get in touch with his feminine side, it seems.

I found myself asking: As a woman, how do I find the same balance? (Balance is all-important. There was a reason androgyny finds such power in old stories...) Do I feel like a complete and creating being that someone else should emulate? In what way do I experience the masculine? Do I have to run with the deer? Experience the year-hunt? Come back with blood on my hands and be anointed? What is it?

This then...is where everything seems to tie together in my brain. If as recently as the 50s we could still make the connection between virtue and masculinity, maybe we haven't been out of balance for as long as this crop of writers in the late 20th century would have us think. After all, they're all writing after the period of overthrow that sheds a different light on the gender roles of the first half of the century and earlier.

Now, of course, is when I start to wonder if I'm advocating that I stop working, go home and have babies right now dammit. No. That's not what I'm after. And I know that. Heck, I'm grateful for that choice, but somewhere on the path to this choice...something changed in a way that I'm not entirely sure is good. Yes, we lost a very obvious power imbalance, but perhaps the subtle undercurrent of power imbalance that remains is even more damaging.

We give a lot of lip-service to gender equality, but I don't think it's there. A lot of women--myself included--still have trouble figuring out what's great about being a girl. Also, I think we have tried to move towards a masculine-identified equality. (My brain just exploded as the personal and the wider world collided...hold on....)
Women, in relationships have a tendency to be the ones doing a lot of the work on self within the relationship. I, currently, must keep raptor-eyeball on myself to monitor if I'm warping too much towards what DB wants, away from pieces of myself. And part of me wonders if, as a gender, we made the same mistake in working ourselves toward an equality that was defined by men.
Men...being less likely to work on themselves (not across the board, but in general), may have reacted in a regressive way, rather than an accepting way. ...widening the gap, and we have yet to mend it.

I found this in a review for E. Anthony Rotundo's book American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era: "...by the end of the 19th century, men (with Theodore Roosevelt as paradigm) were seen as overgrown boys, their boyish impulses being their best part." This is even earlier than I was thinking for my above statements, but still...we have one half of the world, working analyzing, growing and the other half operating on impulse.
That's not virtue. It's also the sort of thing that obviously sets the stage for a certain type of theorist to say: "You are incomplete. You must get in touch with your feminine side. You must have the initiation of the goddess." Perhaps, what is really meant is: "You must accept your mind and its growth. You must work at adulthood--be less reactive. Live with purpose--like your life depends on it because you don't want to be dependent."

This bring me back to: What is my initiation in the god then? Do I need to remember not to take things so seriously? Is that man's gift?

I once read a fantasy novel in which there is a quest for a crown--which turns out to be as much a state of mind as it is a physical object, neither here nor there--with which the only the True King can be crowned. On this quest, the seekers visit 7 lakes. Each lake has a lesson. At one, the seekers must learn to play. The character with whom I most identified had a hard time with this one. He felt himself very much above the splashing and otter-like stone sliding.

Maybe I need to stop pushing so hard for soul-searching in myself and let my child-self experience for a while.


I think I have raised more questions than I answered, but this may only be an introduction...
This topic is a hydra.

More to come.