"The Liberation of Men"
"The Liberation of Men"
Our liberation as men is different from feminine liberation. What our sisters are fighting – patriarchal culture – has oppressed women in so many ways, but men didn’t realize it because we were on top. We must stand at our sisters’ side to begin to understand their struggle. Yet men have their own liberation agenda, too.
Western men need liberation from the whole set of expectations that culture puts upon us and we put upon ourselves: to be overachievers, competitive, focused and necessarily unfeeling, successful, hard-and-strong cannon fodder for wars. That pressure is instilled from boyhood, both by women and other men. Both men and women profit from it; both men and women suffer from it.
Our liberation is to recognize and counter these voices inside us that give us false definitions of success. That may be even a more difficult form of liberation than women’s. I think that is why men are behind in the process of liberation. One is more trapped at the top. At least that’s what the gospel says.
In family after family, the woman has moved in her masculine journey farther than most of us men have moved into our feminine journey. A lot of men intuitively recognize that their wife is stronger in many ways than they are. In many families she knows how to organize life or get things done better than her husband. That becomes the pattern of the family. She becomes an androgynous person, really in her own way much more liberated than the man. The man stands on the side, earning money to support the whole system and losing the respect of his children, his wife, and often himself.
It has been much harder, culturally, for men to journey into their feminine side than for women to integrate their masculine. We need our sisters to recognize our entrapment.
from A Man’s Approach to God
Our liberation as men is different from feminine liberation. What our sisters are fighting – patriarchal culture – has oppressed women in so many ways, but men didn’t realize it because we were on top. We must stand at our sisters’ side to begin to understand their struggle. Yet men have their own liberation agenda, too.
Western men need liberation from the whole set of expectations that culture puts upon us and we put upon ourselves: to be overachievers, competitive, focused and necessarily unfeeling, successful, hard-and-strong cannon fodder for wars. That pressure is instilled from boyhood, both by women and other men. Both men and women profit from it; both men and women suffer from it.
Our liberation is to recognize and counter these voices inside us that give us false definitions of success. That may be even a more difficult form of liberation than women’s. I think that is why men are behind in the process of liberation. One is more trapped at the top. At least that’s what the gospel says.
In family after family, the woman has moved in her masculine journey farther than most of us men have moved into our feminine journey. A lot of men intuitively recognize that their wife is stronger in many ways than they are. In many families she knows how to organize life or get things done better than her husband. That becomes the pattern of the family. She becomes an androgynous person, really in her own way much more liberated than the man. The man stands on the side, earning money to support the whole system and losing the respect of his children, his wife, and often himself.
It has been much harder, culturally, for men to journey into their feminine side than for women to integrate their masculine. We need our sisters to recognize our entrapment.
from A Man’s Approach to God
posted by LuisVelasco @ 12:52 PM
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