Wouldn't it Be Nice?

Lately I've seen a growing number of men claiming "Divine/Sacred" masculinity while simultaneously making comments on what women today need to do to "get and keep" a balanced man. One such post prompted me to write about it. A friend asked me a genuine question: If the same sentiments were said by a man who was in a long term relationship with a family and had done a bunch of his own work, would i accept those same words better or differently. Valid question. I wrote a response (on facebook) but it was too long. Clint felt it was a valuable insight for men, so here it is.

“Let me start by saying that the longer I sat with all of this, the less happy I am. I’m madder, and it shows. I’m sure this post will show it too. I’m not perfect and I’m sure some of this might be a mirror for my own things, or at least I’m going to look into it simply BECAUSE I’m so mad. Lol. So, don’t take this personally. It’s not really personal to ANYONE. It’s wide sweeping. I appreciate the question as well as the discretion used towards the original poster who’s post was the last straw causing my post. {we both apparently saw it}

To answer your question though, NO, I do not think it would matter. The post that stemmed this has been since edited by the original poster to reflect better language, changing things like ‘sisters…..it’s your job to to…” into “My suggestion is to…” and similar changes. The intention remains the same though.

I think it’s hard for any man to truly comprehend the sheer depth of constantly engrained encoding that has gone into keeping women dependent and submissive for generations, for the pleasure and control of MEN. When you take into account that the entire reason that there IS a women’s movement/revolution, whatever you want to call it, is because men have been in control of women’s lives in every form for so long….you begin to understand how anyone telling women HOW they should be in order to get/keep a good man is bound to be both disgusting and triggering.

I didn’t take it personally. I took it at my CORE…for ALL women. There’s a reason women didn’t want to give up their jobs after the men came back after WWII. They FINALLY had a little control over their own lives. Men had created a world where women’s entire safety and ability to survive {including the lives of our children} was based upon a man’s wishes and whims. If you didn’t look good enough, he got another woman.

YOU, as a woman, couldn’t do that…but a man could. You couldn’t leave them because you wouldn’t be able to survive…but they could cheat, beat and mistreat and your only option as a woman was to stick it out. You couldn’t earn money and become independent. You couldn’t inherit it. You couldn’t vote or have a say. You couldn’t get a real job, earning real pay. You couldn’t own property for a long time. EVERYTHING that provided safety and security was tied to a man.

The same men told you how to act, how to dress, what was expected of you at home and took whatever they wanted from your body, as it was a woman’s DUTY to submit to her man. If she didn’t, she didn’t survive well. There is NO WAY for any man to REALLY understand this struggle that all of us women have experienced the fallout of, in many forms, even if it’s not been our exact experience.

Women today have fought, and fought HARD, for the independence that we now have that ALLOWS us to set the boundaries we have in place.

WE WANT balanced relationships. WE WANT reciprocal relationships. We want to be cared for and appreciated for who we are. Of COURSE, we have baggage…both from living as a woman as a woman in the shifting dynamic, but also encoded deeply into our genes. We’ve been told endlessly that if we don’t look good enough, we will be traded in for a better-looking woman. If we don’t act nice enough, we’ll be traded in for a nicer (ie. more submissive and controllable) woman. We don’t actually HAVE to listen to any man now when they tell us how to BE.

We are not stupid. We know…better than men, EXACTLY what damage and toll this has taken on us. WE KNOW what we need to work on. We know we, as women, have an engrained competitive gene in us as women, from centuries of being forced to compete against other women to maintain our security…so much so that we’ve almost lost our ability as women, to support other women…truly support them.

We don’t WANT to use sexual manipulation to GET or KEEP or navigate our relationships. We know we want to feel safe emotionally in a relationship…but honestly, the men haven’t been emotionally safe as a whole for SO long, they don’t know how either. They haven’t had good models and it isn’t in their genes the same way that the centuries have encoded “control” into those same genes.

So now, we have a world where women want to be seen and appreciated for who they are, as they are…and they are holding men accountable for unbalanced actions…or at the very least, pleading for more men to step into balance.

Of COURSE the women complain! They know what they want, even if they don’t know how to get it. They know what they want to feel…and the men haven’t had time to catch up to the driving force of change that has swept over them, forcibly altering everything the culture, their fathers, the media and their genes have told them that a man is “supposed to be”.

I DO NOT blame the men for all of that. I DO hope they can begin to understand the gravity of the legacy that their forefather’s left them with. Today’s man has a tough road. He almost MUST change if he wants to evolve from the controlling chauvinism that this culture created. Both sexes are tasked with breaking these old out-of-balance and out-of-integrity molds that held one gender as better than another…a mold that held females as captives in the world for the safety, security and pleasure of men...disguised as safety for WOMEN.

The LAST THING I WANT TO HEAR is yet another man telling women what to DO. That’s why my own original post repetitively says “You’re right, we have work to do”. We DO! But as shitty as it may sound, I really would rather hear a man talk to other men about how to be more in balance than telling women how they need to work on the patterns that a male dominated and controlled society created in women in the FIRST place.

I don’t care if you’re young or old, in a stable relationship or full of ego and self-grandiose…it’s STILL telling women HOW TO BE.

Feel free as a man, or women, to tell someone what you want…what you will and will not tolerate. Tell people what your boundaries are. With any of that I have no issue. But if you start telling women that it is essentially their fault, and if they just did THEIR work on their patterns, they’d see all these magically perfect men.

Bullshit.

Not only bullshit…but inappropriate in my eyes.

Want women to feel safer? Be a safe man. Don’t tell women to work on their trust issues, as if it’s all their own doing and the world is literally stockpiled with magical safe partners. It isn’t.

We are ALL working to get there, for sure… but I spend all day long in conversation with both men and women who have been doing their inner work for YEARS, literally YEARS…and they’ve stripped themselves to the bone and rebuilt themselves over and over again….and the world still isn’t throwing safe relationships in their front door. The odds are NOT in the favor of balanced people yet.

We’re all making HUGE changes to this cultural co-dependent and out of balance legacy we’ve been handed. WE ARE CRUSHING IT! But that doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to return to telling women what to do, how to do it, or any other bullshit rules for how to get or keep a man.

The longer I thought about that post, the sicker I felt. I felt sad for the poster, for the delusion that this was appropriate…so appropriate that it was even started with “PSA”. The level of assumed “rightness” that this person felt in order to consider this a PSA…unbelievable. And then to start a paragraph with “women it’s your job to stop seeking emotionally unavailable men…” (slightly paraphrased)…can you begin to understand the audacity of it all??

So, NO…it wouldn’t matter who posted this newly minted list of what women are responsible for if they want a “divine” or “Sacred” man in their life…nope. It was actually the EXACT opposite of what women want. We do not WANT to be told what to do. We want to have a safe space to do our work…and yes, sometimes the best place to do relationship work is IN a relationship, so yes, we want men to help us help ourselves.

We’ve done tons of work, ALL BY OURSELVES without the general male populace helping…and much of it with the general male populace actually AGAINST us…but it would be nice if we had support.

We probably won’t trust it…heck most of us probably don’t even REALLY know what it looks like, feels like, or functions like…but wouldn’t it be nice.

It would be nice if we women could support the changes men are trying to make too. Neither party should be making new role definitions and to-do lists for the other. Let’s just say what we want, not settle, even if we have to chin-up until it shows up…and keep doing our own work. (whatever each person feels that is for THEMSELVES). Wouldn’t that be nice?

Maybe that’s my own version of telling people what to do….but I can own that I guess, LOL