The Wounded Masculine

                                                  The Wounded Masculine

                             “Dudes," He said, "Do not follow other dudes to the bathroom."

                                     Isabelle sighed. "Latent homosexual panic will do you in every time”

                                                                  Cassandra Clair, City of Fallen Angels

 

                               

 

So, we have to give equal time, as we did to the Feminine, and honor the Masculine. Again, Masculine energy has little to do with gender, but we have to dip into gender to launch the boat. It is easy to see how wounded and pathological men can get, because there's always been (with possibly a few stark exceptions), a patriarchy in charge and running the show in human culture. History is basically about men killing each other, and exploiting everything and everyone in their path. That doesn't bode well for a group hug at the end of the rainbow! Of course there were other things going on throughout human history, but in large part, it's a chronology of men killing and exploiting. Today we have dentists paying big money to get a lion trophy, and we have Trumps, contending for the most powerful position of leadership in the world, all the while demeaning women, being racist, without any compassion or humanity.

What much of Feminism failed to recognize, is how hurt, and oppressed men are even though we've been “in charge.” But again, the Masculine wound includes women, and the issues women face to integrate a healthy masculinity within themselves. A poster woman for the wounded masculine would be someone like Ann Coulter or Sarah Palin. Women that raise boys to be dominant, aggressive, exploitative, and not feel, are contributing as much to patriarchy as any man.

The Puer archetype of the eternal child (like Peter Pan), is a quintessential wounded male. A lot of women raise momma's boys to stay in an infantile state of dependency, and continual compensation for their insecurity, even if they have accrued enormous wealth and power. Bush was a Puer, but compared to Trump, he looks like Gandhi!

Masculine energy has to do with agency, power, consciousness, justice, rationality, vision, and the manifestation of vision into physical reality. This is Yang energy, it is hard and direct, cuts through the bullshit, makes things happen, doesn't get caught up in drama or emotion. There is also a very strong protective and territorial aspect to masculine energy, a momma bear with her cubs is a kind of masculine protection.

Balanced and integrated masculinity incorporates four main masculine archetypes which are; The King- who provides vision, blessings, and stewards the realm, The Warrior- who is loyal to The King and follows the leadership of the King's vision and guidance, and is focused and extremely disciplined, The Magician (Merlin In King Arthur's court), who has secret knowledge and is intuitive, and savvy in his advice to the King (Dick Cheney was a shadow Merlin to Bush), and The Lover – who is very much in touch with the Feminine, appreciates and expresses beauty, is sensual, connected, feeling, and embodied.

There are shadow aspects to each of these archetypes, and therein lay the Wounded Masculine. Hitler was a shadow King, Oliver North a shadow Warrior, Hannibal Lector a shadow Magician, and Casanova a shadow Lover. We could just as easily use women as examples with shadow masculine aspects, for example Marilyn Monroe had a very strong and wounded Lover in which she carried the projections of the world, which eventually led to her suicide. It's always a recipe for disaster when someone becomes an archetype, vs just accessing that energy. Consider Elvis, who was known as The King.

We live in a world that is pathologically out of balance in healthy Masculine energy, the collective world values worship at the alter of rationality, extroversion, doing, frenetic, driven, distracted, exploitative, competitive, aggressive, violent, and angry. Not someone you'd like to have lunch with!

We stand at a precipice, fork in the road, and a bridge that could cross over into a no man's land from which we could not recover. Or we could bring more conscious balance of being, feeling, compassion, introversion/introspection, gentle strength, humor that sees the folly of ego, and softer focus that allows for time, space, and cooperative understanding, that leads to collaborative work, play and sustainability. It's no coincidence that we've had a Black president, and now we will have the potential and opportunity to elect a woman for the first time, makes you wonder?!