The Men's Movement Is Actually An Attempt At The Feminine

Men's retreats and men's groups have sprung up across the west to "reclaim" masculinity - interestingly, they are brimming with feminine mythos. We've all probably seen the videos of grown and burly men hugging/crying/holding/ supporting each other, often half naked. The masculine mythos of the emotionally hardened individual is set aside for emotionally tender communalism. It's wonderful. But why the trend?

Here's my fave (if very western) answer:

The "men's movement" is actually an attempt at the feminine. I don’t mean that men’s groups are a derivative of “womb-envy” (though I do fully endorse that womb envy is a legitimate operator in the acquisition compulsions of men, that’s not what I’m pointing to here!) I mean something which is a male response to our changing cultural predicaments rather than our (less changing) biological ones:

Men are are unconsciously replenishing the depleted mythos of the feminine caused by women's move into the mythos of the masculine.

Mythos moves to balance itself, and doesn't seem to care who's doing the balancing of what. Yin men, yang women or yang men yin women, so long as the balance is there.

Yin and yang do not seem to discriminate their constituencies.

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There are reasons to hate everything I just wrote. For instance, there are the sort to Rousseauan, hippy responses which would say “but TRUE masculinity is multifaceted and IS soft, only it’s been PERVERTED by western machismo!”

I have no problem with that because, again, yin and yang do not discriminate their constituencies. I’m only noting the switcheroo in service of cultural equilibrium.

Or there is the idea that it is perfectly natural for women to be hard, competitive, breadwinners, and exhibit physical and economic strength—that a TRUE femininity contains all such multitudes.

Again, I have no problem with this—yin and yang do not discriminate their constituencies—and again the point I am making simply comes down to cultural equilibrium corrections.

Or there is the rejection of masculine/feminine altogether as some metaphysically weak claim. My response is that even if masculine/feminine were a metaphysically weak claim, it nevertheless prevails ontologically. As the trans movement has shown,—perhaps more than any more conservative propositional binary could—even when humans bridge divides, they bridge the divide precisely by embodying equal parts masculine/feminine, further exhibiting masculine/feminine’s fundamental participation in identity.

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I posted some of the above in note form and got some worthwhile responses. Here’s one from

Timothée Brès

:

I like the idea of collective lack left by women moving to warrior archetype. But the mens movement you are describing is the blue pill one - from mythopoetic movement to patriarchy deconstructing circles. The red pill groups are not really doing what you are describing (Tate & co). Even Maniphesto, the group Bard initiated before Paul took over, is now focusing on DOING & accountability rather than BEING and sharing circles. I believe the future lies at the intersection of both. And men exploring the yin side of their masculine (grounded receptivity - healthy father archetype) instead of filling in the void left by women…

Is sacred sons, for instance, blue pilled? Not so sure. They're certainly not about deconstructing the patriarchy. Perhaps re-constructing it… But my point really in all of this is that masculinity may be better intensified by explicitly and directly incorporating the feminine symbolically and ritualistically, rather than dress it up in “masculine” pastiche.

Here’s another from

stale lettuce

:

This phenomena would need to touch a majority of men for your thesis to be tenable. But I don’t see a majority of men reaching for the mythos of the feminine. I see them adopting reactionary politics or retreating altogether from the world. With the caveat that men captured in progressive social circles are, like women, doing their part to unify opposites into a more perfect whole, I would have totally agreed with you.

Imo it's not always so obvious. The machismo of the Bromance and the men's groups and the "hey king” tropes mask as masculine, but carry the mythos of the feminine as I'm defining it here, along hard-individualist/sensual-communalist lines. The move of men into sensual communalism (feminine mythos) implies an initial state condition of its lack. This lack I then attribute to the rather obvious move of women into the masculine.

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All in all I LIKE this for men. I like men trying. I like seeing the network. I like seeing the love. It’s a good shift. But I also see the performativity of it as askew and, sure, a little lame. Cutting directly to the incorporation of the feminine in more unabashedly explicit and ritualistic ways is a more honest and, rather immediately more effective path to masculine “completeness”. That’s my experience, anyhow.

Perhaps I’ll share more directly about the method I’ve been using for this in a following post.

Cheers