If I had to name one thing that concerns me about modern paganism, it’s gender-roles…
This is a little bit of a difficult one for me, since it’s often at the root of certain types of pagan thinking. I recognise the existence of concepts like sacred feminine and masculine, but I think I dislike the words because of the inherent gender-expectations.
There is nothing wrong with a masculine woman or a feminine man, but we are all-too-often encouraged to accept that these are unusual. We encourage the exploration of femininity within groups of women and masculinity in groups of men, effectively denying that the sacred feminine has any direct bearing on the life of a man or that a woman can embody masculinity.
Beyond certain biology-related topics – gatherings to celebrate a girl’s menarche or a boy’s ability to grow a beard and deeper voice – I think much of our gender-related thinking is making the mistake of focusing too much on sexes and not enough on the balance.
Each one of us needs to explore the fact that both creative and destructive energies exist within us. We are a mixture of passivity and activity, what we once called masculine and feminine. I think these concepts are very important building blocks, but I think we need to abandon the gender-labels if we are to move beyond our overly-rigid thinking.
We no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society. There is no good reason why women need to look after children and men need to bring home food. In fact, in the West, we have managed to undermine just about the only biological reason for women to handle child-rearing by letting formula companies undermine breast-feeding rates. I happen to think that breast-feeding is a very pagan thing to do, but I’m illustrating the point that modern society has disregarded even the most basic of biological differentiators. It must be borne in mind that women can express milk for a man (or female partner) to give to their child and even men can lactate, apparently.
At the root of it all for me is my daughter and her trouble with modern society. We are, on the whole, on the counter-culture side. We do so well in disregarding toxic thinking in so many other aspects, though as often through alienation than conscious thought, and yet we are so good at falling back on outdated concepts like gender-roles.
We undervalue the warrior woman (in Britain, we have examples like Boudicca of the Iceni, Andraste, Medb and the Amazon of St Kilda) because we forget that they embody a masculine energy that doesn’t compromise their essential femininity; Boudicca was a mother and a wife, Medb was a mother and a wife, but both were happy to take a man’s place when called upon.
For men, it is worse; we almost deny the existence of the feminine energy in men. For all that we have learned regarding women, we are mostly in the dark ages when it comes to males who embrace sacred femininity. To borrow from the nordic faiths, we afraid to condone ‘ergi‘ or ‘unmanliness’ in our archetypes. No matter that Odin performed ‘female’ magic, nor that Miach was a devoted healer rather than a warrior, we men fear being too feminine.
And all of this is before we begin to touch on topics of transgender pagans or the broad spectrum of human sexuality and gender-expression…
I don’t think it’s that bad these days. I know that many groups are embracing the feminine in men and masculine in women. I know that so many are open to a more enlightened view of gender-based energies. I just think that we need to maintain the momentum and support the movement to a more integrated paganism, even if all we do is say ‘good job’ when we see things moving the right way.
Others may feel differently to me, but there’s my perspective and you’re free to disagree of course…
The Grumpy Druid 