Assumption 2: Manhood Does Not Mean Masculine
And no, this isn’t a reference to an Aerosmith song.
It is important to note here that while manhood and womanhood exist on a spectrum, masculine and feminine are different. When we don’t honor this reality, I think we get ourselves into all kinds of trouble.
Masculine and Feminine Energy
When we think of manhood and womanhood, we’re talking about two kinds of humans. It’s like men are apple pies and women are cherry (although the objectification by Warrant makes me wonder if I should reverse those). For those who live somewhere else on the spectrum, they might blend apples and cherries or bring a whole other set of ingredients to the kitchen.
Contrast this with masculine and feminine energy which are like two glasses, one to hold masculine energy and the other to hold feminine. Next to those glasses is a water pitcher with enough water in it to fill both glasses. The question is, how much water will you put in each glass?
Nurturing Your Energy
Using the glasses and pitcher analogy, filling the glass means you nurture the corresponding energy. To empty the glass means to suppress that energy. The point is, you can choose to nurture or suppress one, the other, both, or neither.
This test offers a good visual on how this works. Here are my results:
The first thing that you will notice is that the two numbers total more than 100%, that’s because, unlike manhood and womanhood, both masculine and feminine exist on their own scale independent of one another.
This means, if a man cultivates his feminine, it in no way makes him less masculine, nor does it affect his manhood. Rather, when any human cultivates both their masculine and feminine energies, and heals the wounded aspects of each, they become healthier humans.
Moreover, because we can cultivate these energies, they can change over time. Go back five years and I’m sure both my masculine and feminine numbers would be significantly lower as they were both deeply wounded, with psychedelic breathwork and holistic life coaching being two modalities that have helped me heal each.
Why Masculine and Feminine?
I’ll be the first to say that this is confusing. After all, how can you hear masculine and not think about men? Same with feminine and women.
For this reason, part of me wants to dump that language and instead use something like Yin and Yang. But I’m hesitant to do so because I think there might be a reason language formed that way.
At a broad level, I see both masculine and feminine energy as necessary for a functional society. I regularly will talk about the need for masculine strength guided by feminine wisdom, as the masculine on its own engages in all kinds of action with little sense of direction, while feminine on its own has a beautiful vision of the way things could be but lacks the means to make it happen (note, this is very different than saying women can’t make things happen). In other words, the power is found in the compliment of the two.
Moreover, while reading books like “T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us” (affiliate link) there seems to be a correlation between a natural development of masculine traits in males. Similarly, all kinds of serotonin is released as a baby moves through the vaginal canal heightening the nurturing sense of the mother, something that is very feminine.
This doesn’t mean that men are exclusively masculine and women are exclusively feminine, but that biology itself does some of the nurturing and then we depend on each other to learn how to nurture what nature doesn’t give us.
Note that last bit. Rather than being something that divides us, masculine and feminine energy can bring us together. I cannot begin how to express how thankful I am to the women in my life who have modeled healthy feminine energy for me, and helped me tap into my own feminine wisdom to guide the masculine strength that comes naturally to me.
I‘m curious how masculine and feminine interplay in your life. How have you developed each?