There can be enough space for men to be masculine and women to be feminine, without rejecting and ostracizing people who don’t vibe with either category. Embrace who you are. If someone rejects that, they can fuck off.
This is true for men in the context of (whichever type of) feminism that rejects masculinity. This is true for women in the face of being pressured to work (or being pressured into motherhood). It’s true for trans people in a world that denies their lived experience.
Indigenous cultures often acknowledge (and respect) an alternative way of identifying oneself, and neurobiological studies show significantly different brain activity and hormones in people who feel different inside vs out.
I have never experienced this feeling, and it would be arrogant to claim that I know much about it.
But I know what it feels like to be a man. It means confidence and standing tall, but that’s very different from abusing your power.
It means respecting (and protecting) the lives and experiences of people around me. It means respecting women’s power, and weakness. It means acknowledging my own strengths and flaws, ones that I share with many of my brothers. Being grounded in masculinity means holding space for the differences between us.
The culture war bullshit is, indeed, bullshit. And pendulums will always swing. But my hope is that, as we move closer to equilibrium, more of us will learn to abide in compassion, and become able to listen without immediately believing OR rejecting the views of those around us, and bring more Light into the lives of those around us. We’re all conditioned by our environment, and it can take immense effort to unravel that conditioning and experience the world for what it is.
I believe in human goodness - it’s why I Bitcoin. It’s why I’m here on Nostr.
But we have a long way to go.
