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Nature / Goddess Spirituality

The Wounding and Healing of Men and Women in Society
by Sylvia Brallier

Night/day, Earth/sky, Black/white, female/male, are a few of the images that represent duality to us. Many people have a way of seeing reality in a polarized manner. People get in the habit of making judgments of right vs. wrong, and good vs. bad, as a way of defining reality instead of perceiving these divergences as shades of gray; different, yet equal. To understand the dynamic of duality from broader perspective, it is helpful to move beyond stereotypical thinking and examine the inner nature of the receptive and active principles.

The T'ai Chi Tu, or cosmic egg, is a symbol for the balance of the active and receptive principles. The T'aoist words that describe these principles are "Yin," for the receptive principle, and "Yang," for the active principle. When these two forces are in balance, the interplay of their fusion harmonizes the dynamic flow of creation. The balancing of active and receptive energies is central to the principles of divine alchemy as practiced by the mystical traditions of the world.

Here is a list of metaphors and qualities that describe these two principles:

All people, whether male or female, have both receptive and active qualities. Each person is a synthesis of active and receptive behaviors, energies, and attributes. We incarnate in either a male or female body to integrate the lessons available to us by being a man or a woman. Most people, having incarnated into human form many times, have been both male and female in the course of their many lifetimes. We are now at a point in our evolution where we have the potential to integrate both the male and female energies in one lifetime on a whole new evolutionary level.

The differences in men's and women's bodies reflect the active and receptive principles at work in the universe, though they do not necessarily dictate behavior patterns. It is my belief that concepts of "male behavior" and "female behavior" are primarily culturally dictated. On a spirit level we are all both masculine and feminine in nature.

Our cultural and personal definitions of "maleness" and "femaleness" are changing. In the past one hundred years, we have been witnessing a dramatic shift in traditional gender roles and identity. The conflicts caused by these changes are creating major upheavals in our society. This is one of the most charged and complicated issues facing us in this era.

In this era, balance between must be realized in order for humanity to survive. All people no matter what gender, race, or religion, must be honored as equal, each with something precious to offer. Honoring diversity is the key to our survival. The quality of life on Earth, and the well being of the Earth itself demands that these changes be made.

Balancing of the yin and yang polarities in society and within individuals is a major key to planetary transformation. For at least the last 5000 years of recorded history, people have been buying into the belief that there has to be winners and losers and a right and wrong in every situation. The concept of win/win, and the potential for mutual self determination is a foreign concept to many of us. This type of belief system is hierarchical in nature. It assumes that natural order dictates that some shall have power, and others must be controlled or eliminated. This type of social structure has generally been referred to as "patriarchal," since men have been primarily at the top of the pyramid of social stratification. In Riane Eisler's book, The Chalice and The Blade, she refers to societies that participate in this type of social structure as "dominator societies." I prefer this term instead of patriarchy, because men as well as women have been wounded by the divisiveness inherent in this type of system. To actualize equality among people, we need to move towards partnership model of society. In this type of society, power would be shared for mutual benefit.

Despite intensive cultural gender/role programming, people are breaking out of culturally defined limitations around what men and women can do, feel, say, think, and look like. Women are holding positions of power. Men are learning to be care givers by doing housework and taking care of children. Women are demanding equal rights. Men are joining men's groups in order to create intimacy based on trust and vulnerability. By women and men taking on roles that were heretofore reserved for members of the opposite sex, the lines between "male" and "female" in many ways besides biological become blurry. From these changes we learn that both men and women can be nuturing and self-actualizing. These role changes are helping to shift the cultural programming of what men and women are "supposed" to be. This is a move towards balance within the self, and within society. We obviously have a long way to go before true equality actually exists. Before this transformation can occur on the grand scale of societal transformation, we each must make a shift internally towards balance.

To begin to heal the traumas of gender, it is important to take a look at how we have been hurt by the dominator model of society. Both men and women have experienced wounding from the imbalance between the sexes. Though every person has their own particular version of traumas and their resultant patterns, there are some basic themes to be observed.

As children, little boys are taught to shut down their ability to feel. They are told "Big boys don't cry," "Stand up and take it like a man," and other damaging messages that lead them to believe that they are somehow deficient or weak if they have feelings or show vulnerability. Independence is praised, and dependence on others is discouraged. Many boys do not receive the intimacy that they crave. The boys' fathers go off to work, often never having enough time to devote to the needs of their children. This lack of intimacy is perpetuated into adulthood, as intimacy between men is particularly disallowed and homophobia divides men still further apart.

From adolescence on, boys are expected and encouraged to compete to be "the best." In this achievement oriented society, competing and winning are predominant ways in which men get acknowledged and appreciated. Through sports and academic pursuits, boys are pitted against one another to vie for superiority. In group settings, men are consciously or unconsciously put in a position of watching out for, or try to become the "Alpha male." The Alpha male is either physically, psychologically, or socially in a position of power within a group. This dynamic reinforces the dominator system's tendency towards hierarchical social structuring. Men are forced to be wary of one another, debilitating much of their potential for deep trust. As a result, many men feel the need to cultivate the appearance of being self-assured, when in fact they might feel insecure.

This pressure to achieve often leaves men to wonder if they are "real men." The focus on competition in our society drives men to push themselves unceasingly in order to prove their self worth. This pressure to compete and excel extends into all aspects of a man's life, including work and the sexual conquest. When success is measured outwardly by comparing and competing with others, feelings of impotence and insecurity are unavoidable. A person can always find others who can excel beyond what has been personally achieved. Feelings of impotence and powerlessness can lead men to acts of violence in order to feel powerful.

As a result of the competition and estrangement between men, women often become the only acceptable outlet for men's need for intimacy. This need is usually expressed in sexual desire, since the realm of emotions is made culturally taboo for men at an early age. Often, men have sex in order to get close. All people need the freedom to feel, so some men turn to women to provide the intimacy and caring denied them in their lives. Deep down, many men feel a deep anger about the lack of intimacy that they have experienced. They experience their aloneness so deeply, feeling as though they are at the mercy of a woman's choice to accept or reject them. With some men, this anger gets transferred to adult women upon reaching maturity. Much of the sexual violence towards women that exists in western culture is an expression of man's anger about his inability to control his accessibility to intimacy and his feelings of powerlessness in a power oriented society.

Upon reaching manhood, men are sent off to war. Men are required to offer themselves up as sacrificial scapegoats in order to uphold the power structures of their nation's leaders: financial, religious, and political. All men in our society grow up with the knowledge that they may one day be asked to kill, or to be killed in order to preserve the power structure, and to protect their families from the violence of other men. War is idealized as the proof of a "real man." Men end up sacrificing themselves to society's view of masculine ideal.

Men are shouldered with the responsibility to defend and defeat, and are left with the guilt for what they have done. Viet Nam veterans in particular were confronted with the consequences of our nation's call to violence. They were sent out by their fathers to experience the glory of battle, only to return to an America that had been radically transformed by a peace movement that did not support them or their deeds. This left many vets heavily conflicted between "duty" and right relationship to humanity, and taunted by haunting nightmares of death and bloodshed in a steamy jungle. These days, with the advent of the war with Iraq, men are once again being sent off to war, with the notion that they are fighting for the security of our people, while in fact, the war is creating ecological, emotional, and financial instability for the whole planet.

Women, on the other hand, are taught from infancy to be passive and pliant. Little girls are often told to "Smile", and " Be a good girl." Girls are especially praised for doing as they are told. The desire for approval becomes fixated on the desire to please other people. This encourages them to aspire to servitude in order to be loved. Even in today's society in which women have begun to hold high paying jobs and positions of authority, they are often expected to clean the house, do the shopping, and take care of the children as well. The glass ceiling of gender and racial privilege allows for the illusion of equality, yet true equality is still not within reach.

As children, girls receive a majority of their praise and scorn based on their physical appearance. They grow to believe that their looks are the basis of their self worth. All of this focus on physical appearance and ability to nurture gives girls the message that their worth is based on their ability to attract a mate and their ability to adapt to men's needs. Within the dominator model, a woman's world revolves around the man, and her personal goals and needs are secondary. Worth is assessed in relation to partnership. Women wish to see their role of service as being an expression of their ability to be loving and nurturing rather than as a role of servitude and lack of decision making power in the destiny of their lives. This applies in women's careers as well as in relationships. Women in service related jobs often focus more on their ability to serve others than on the fact that they are poorly paid, or that their ideas are often co-opted by their superiors.

Early on, issues of weight become critical to many young women. Women of all ages go to such extremes as starvation diets and bingeing and purging to reach some idealized physical appearance. The mechanisms involved are very complex and can not be easily discussed in a paragraph or two, though it can be said that often women deal with repressed sexuality, fear, guilt, self-sabotage, and a damaged self image through their relationship with food. For many women, food becomes a substitute for love. Women sometimes go to extremes with their physical body to keep in line with a stylized notion of what women "should" look like according to projected stereotypes of desirability. They are highly sensitive to the images of women portrayed in the media and the film industry.

Women are conditioned to be sex objects through social interaction and the media. Images of sex are everywhere, selling all kinds of products. Women themselves appear to be products that can be bought or sold. Sexuality is at once glorified and reviled. Women are encouraged to be sexually attractive in a sexually repressed society. Women are allowed and encouraged to have the outward trappings of being sexual, such as seductive clothing, but find that it is socially unacceptable to manifest their sexual nature except within the narrow constructs of the societal norm. This creates a double standard in which a woman is considered desirable if she appears sexy, but is stigmatized as a "bad girl" if she engages in sexual conduct outside the institution of marriage or long term relationship. She is acting as a "free agent," not legally bound by her husband or her father. This behavior is a threat to the dominator system, because within this system, a virtuous woman is either a virgin, wife, or mother. Since the sexual revolution of the 60's this attitude has changed a good bit, though the increased number or frequency with which a women changes partners is still viewed with disdain.

Violence against women is endemic in our society. Women are often subject to brutality. The traumas of incest, rape, and other forms of physical and emotional abuse make women feel powerless in a man's world. Many women live with a constant fear of being abused. A woman can not even walk down the street at night in the United States without fear. Statistics state that 1 in 4 women have been sexually abused by their eighteenth birthday, and 64% of adult women in America live in battering situations within the home. This violence serves to immobilize women, effectively maintaining the status quo of the current power structure. The structure of power-over prevents women from acting because of fear for their well being, and a deeply ingrained sense of unworthiness due to societal views of women. Most women, on some level or another, perceive themselves to be victims, and do not know how to reclaim their power. Women are afraid to speak their minds, or act powerfully within the world for fear of physical or emotional abuse. Often women resort to passive aggressive behaviors because they do not feel safe or justified in directly stating their needs or feelings.

Since women's value within this society is based primarily on youthful sexual attractiveness, elderly women are not honored. Our modern society has an infatuation with youthfulness. People go to great lengths to look young. The media advertising wants us to believe that if we look old we are undesirable or invisible. With women, this is particularly so. Older men are considered to be "distinguished looking," or "wise with years." Women on the other hand, lose their usefulness when they loose their youthful looks because it is a women's body, not her wisdom that is considered to be her main attribute of desirability. As the grayness and wrinkles increase, many women find themselves faced with a growing feeling of invisibility. People begin to ignore and overlook them in all aspects of life in society.

Over the centuries, women's ability to access wisdom has been ridiculed, trivialized or ignored. "Old wives' tales," and "The chatter of women" are some phases which typify the trivialization and ridicule of women's views. Women grow up believing that what they have to say is not important, and/or that they will not be heard even if they do speak.

It is also important to note that the vast majority of history that has been recorded is exactly that, his-story. Women are virtually invisible within the historical context we learn in school. Upon reading these historical texts, it appears that only men have accomplished anything of importance within recorded history. This dramatic oversight of women's accomplishments leaves women without role models of empowered women, and reinforces the invisibility of women's impact on society.

The level of dysfunctionality that men and women experience within our society is staggering, but it is not hopeless. Being aware of the problems is the first step to recovery. In order to change from a dominator system to a partnership system, some basic shifts in perspective must be made.

Changing from dominator society to partnership model

It is much easier to see how women and men have been wounded than it is to imagine what people would be like if issues around gender were healed. We do not have very many, if any, archetypes of healed male and female energy to draw from. To heal men and women, it will require not only healing male energy in men, and female energy in women, but women will have to integrate healed masculine energy, and men will have to integrate healed feminine energy as well. A balance must be created within each individual in order to be healed. "As women in transition are discovering their sense of self and vocation, men are discovering the rewards of sensitive relationship. During these equalizing shifts, the basis of male/female interaction is being redefined. Men are becoming more feeling and intuitive; women, more autonomous and purposeful ...according to very old wisdom, self-discovery inevitably involves the awakening of traits usually associated with the opposite sex. All the gifts of the human mind are available to the conscious self: nurturance and independence, sensitivity and strength. If we complete such qualities within ourselves, we are not as dependent on others for them. Much of what has been labeled love in our culture is infatuation with, and the need for our missing halves." 4 By getting in touch with the full range of who we can be, we become more complete within ourselves.

Karl Jung, one of the great pioneers in the field of human psychology put great emphasis on the anima and animus. The anima represents the female aspect within a man, and the animus represents the masculine aspect within a woman. They represent the qualities we associate with being men and women. Making a conscious connection with these aspects of ourselves is one way to come into a balanced place with our active and receptive aspects and to acknowledge our true nature as androgynous beings. The power of androgyny lies in rediscovering the opposites within one's self and reintegrating the parts of ourselves that have been lost to us through sex-role training and patriarchal attitudes.

A paradigm that I find particularly useful is to conceptualize the inner male and female as divided by pairs into three aspects: the self as God and Goddess, the wounded male and female, and the anima and animus as inner consorts. The God and Goddess within represent an internal concept of healed masculine and feminine energy. For those of us who have been raised in a Judeo/Christian or Muslim back round, conceiving of both a God and a Goddess requires a hefty belief system shift. We have predominantly viewed divinity as being only in a male form. Many of us have lost touch with a female representation of divinity. There are others who have found the Goddess, and turned away from organized religion's view of God as male, because that male image was modeled after a dominator system's view of maleness: a God who dictates, judges, and punishes.

We can rewrite the script of how we perceive divinity in order to create healing archetypes. The Goddess can be a powerful maiden, a nurturing mother, and the fierce one who brings death that leads to transformation as the Crone. The God can be strong and compassionate, playful and gentle, firm and kind, who protects as well as nurtures. He is the Sun of our conscious knowing. She is the Moon of our inner knowing. Together, they can help us to heal and transform negative self concepts and limiting belief systems of our wounded selves. When we are able to visualize archetypes of divinity as both male and female, our ability to see divinity within all is expanded. Both women and men need archetypes of divinity to model ourselves after. If we are to actualize power sharing in society and in relationship between the sexes, there must also be power sharing within the archetypes of our spiritual reality.

In order to transform societal conditioning around sex role stereotyping, we need to create new archetypes of maleness and femaleness. The stories and myths we are raised on sink deeply into our psyches, patterning our concepts of reality. The power of these stories and myths should not be underestimated. They give us examples of male and female behaviors and roles within society. The stories, myths, and archetypes we are raised on are the anchors upon which societal concepts of reality are based. By reviving positive myths and archetypes of the past, and creating new stories that engender images of strength and tenderness, fierceness and compassion, wisdom and innocence, wildness and stability, we can change the way our children, and our children's children perceive themselves and others within the panorama of human experience.

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