The “Divine” Feminine: Hyper-gendered Spirituality and Performance
*This writing is not intended to be fully comprehensive, academic, or analytical of the phenomena explored within it. The topics regarding the divine feminine and masculine, the terf- to divine feminine- to trad wife pipeline, the conservative new age to neo-fundamentalist pipeline, and the new age to hyper charismatic pipeline are just too big to fit into one little blog piece… Especially when looking at each of these manifestations in terms of how they intersect with human rights, education (don’t say gay bill energy), ableism, racism, capitalism/feudalism, and many other convergences. This is an introductory (and fairly superficial) look at how gender and divinity have become distorted in some new age and spiritual practices. This is not an attack on masculine or feminine identities or manhood and womanhood in general. This is a brief look at how these identities have been reduced to rigid definitions, with anything outside of those definitions being seen as “less spiritual” or less evolved in spiritual communities. It is also a commentary on how only the masculine and feminine get the divine labels when other expressions do not. Manhood and womanhood are valuable and valid expressions, but they must be allowed to expand beyond the gender roles and stereotypical aesthetics we have limited them to so that all people can be served by their power. <3 This author knows that trans women are women, trans men are men, supports Black Lives Matter, understands that the current exploration of gender (and sexuality) stands in direct opposition to the nuclear family (With the man on top, the woman beneath him, and children beneath both parents until any male (AMAB) children come of age….) and its role in perpetuating capitalism and encourages these explorations enthusiastically, is anti-capitalist, and takes an active approach to deconstruct any racism, internalized misogyny, and ex-evangeilical trauma they may still carry with them. *
Note: I use the terms AMAB and AFAB not to indicate anyone’s identities in and of themselves, but to refer to the fact that AMAB people are pushed into manhood and AFAB people are pushed into womanhood in fundie spaces. The sex or gender someone is assigned at birth does not indicate who they truly are. Only they can determine that. My purpose is not to reduce people to their body parts, but to avoid making assumptions about their true gender identities. Where identities are clear, I couple these terms with cis in order to highlight the fact that fundie spaces typically ensure that one’s identity aligns with their sex assignment at birth.
Hyper-femininity: I need to define the terms I am using here more clearly, which I realized long after writing this. Hyper-femininity does not refer to someone who naturally gravitates to feminine things or a feminine gender expression or identity as we culturally understand those concepts. Hyper-femininity as defined in my article here refers to an imbalance where someone must conform exactly to the patriarchal idea of femininity in such a way, that if one steps outside this box, the person is thought to have lost their femininity… even if they still feel feminine personally or identify that way. Hyper-femininity lingo pushes women to be submissive in romantic relationships and posits that all women are naturally that way or want to be submissive, pushes women to always conform to a feminine aesthetic or a look that is palatable to most cishet men, teaches them to dismiss their anger, and often goes so far as to say that anyone without female anatomy (anyone who is not AFAB/cis) cannot be feminine or identify as a woman. In radicalized, spiritual sects it is thought that the woman must be joined with a man sexually to be fully actualized as a human and spiritual entity. Her darkness must be met with his light (as in the darkness of her womb must be met with the power or “light” of his procreative element).
Hyper-masculinity: This, like hyper-femininity, does not refer to someone who naturally gravitates to masculine things or a masculine gender expression or identity as we culturally understand those concepts. If someone steps outside of the tiny box the patriarchy uses to define masculinity, the person is thought to have lost their masculinity… even if they still feel masculine personally or identify that way. Hyper-masculine lingo pushes men to be dominating and “protective” (ahem controlling… this is rarely true protection), pushes men to always conform to a masculine aesthetic or a look that is palatable to the patriarchal idea of manhood (no makeup/no painting fingernails, etc.), teaches them that they are rational while women are always more emotional, and often goes so far as to say that anyone without male anatomy (anyone who is not AMAB/cis) cannot be masculine or identify as a man. In radicalized, spiritual sects it is thought that the man must be joined with a woman sexually to be fully actualized as a human and spiritual entity. His light must join with her darkness (as in the power or “light” of his procreative element must join with the darkness of her womb).
There is absolutely nothing wrong with one’s gender intersecting with their spirituality. In fact, we see this occurring in many cultures prior to colonization. What I am speaking into here, as well as in my “Women Are Angry” blog posted at an earlier date, is how we (primarily white) spiritualists have reframed evangelical gender roles as the “One True” spirituality and how we have mobilized gender (and gender roles) to further motivate colonial practices.
Hyper-gendered Spirituality
In my studies of subcultures, gender, and spirituality, I have been in conversation with “the divine feminine” (as defined above) for years now… and honestly, it still makes me roll my eyes. I know that in many spiritual circles, especially the less progressive ones found in places like Sedona, this reaction practically makes me irrelevant to public discourse. For this reason, it is essential that I continue to introduce these concepts to my fellow (primarily white) spiritualists since most Indigenous people, Black people, Brown people, and people of the global majority have been doing this work for centuries.
Keep in mind throughout this writing, that my opinions are subject to change. By that, I do not mean that I will suddenly fall down the far/alt-right pipeline that has reared its head in new-age spirituality in recent years. Never shall I ever. I am referring to the idea that gender is nuanced, and we do not know everything about it or how our relationship with gender will evolve! I look forward to seeing how I too can expand and become more of who I am on a non-physical and spiritual plane.
In this human life, I am nonbinary, and for me, that translates as: Because of how I was raised, I sometimes feel like a woman (whatever that is), but most of the time I don’t feel that I have a gender. So, I identify as agender more often than not. Also, as I progress through this short writing, I am not in any way dismissing gender identities. Gender roles are how we are programmed to behave and think based on the genitalia we were born with. Gender identity is how we truly feel inside, and represents our perception of self. I believe that we can recognize the RPG game that is gender as (sometimes) ridiculous while respecting gender identities, which often but not always, fall outside of the typical expectations for gender-role-based thinking. Gender is culturally informed and is a social construct, but is still as real as anything else. Social construct does not mean unreal.
While I have said before that gender could be participatory, I think what I should have said is that gender ROLES (which is how gender is often perceived even though it shouldn’t be) are the social creatures that are truly performance-based. I cannot speak for everyone, but for me, gender is who I am, not what I do. Gender roles in the past were things I had to perform, and are therefore, distinct.
Being a man or a woman or a feminine or masculine person is not the issue on the table here. I am, instead, discussing how these concepts get warped in spiritual and religious spaces quite easily to the point where they become shackles rather than freeing, beautiful expressions. Also, if someone does like gender roles in their relationship, then that is okay as long as there is informed consent and clear communication involving all parties in the relationship. The issue I am taking on here is the idea that gender roles (the so-called traditional ones) are being expected for spiritual expansion, which does not serve everyone’s best interests.
When I start discussing how gender identity is about how someone truly feels on the inside, that needs to be taken with a grain of salt. As in, taken with a grain of salt inside of oneself… not projected outward where you are bothering or harassing other people about their identities. How we “feel” is often socially programmed and it can take years and years of shadow work, deconstructive work, and secluded self-examination to even get a glimpse of what your “true self” might actually be. This gets messy because it means that how we “feel” before doing our inner work seems authentic… It is only when we really look at it and start asking the whys and hows that we come to terms with the idea that we often think the way that we think about ourselves because it is what we were conditioned to believe. We were primed for socially engineered purposes, and it can be challenging to separate that “primed self” from the authentic self.
One of the biggest questions I have had to ask myself when it comes to gender is: Is gender performative? Or is it intrinsic? Is it something we are? Or something we act out? Maybe it is both? After years of deconstructing a toxic gender-role-women-are-submissive-to-the-masculine upbringing, it is my current opinion that gender ROLES are performative. I am not sure I will ever be certain that gender is “intrinsic.” I think like anything else it is socially programmed… and that rabbit hole runs very deep and is probably slightly different for everyone. There may be more than one answer. If we are assuming that past lives or parallel lives are real, which most of us on websites like mine do, it is fair to say that we adopt different genders and orientations from life to life based on the bodies we are born in and our relationship(s) to them and the world around us. It is my personal opinion, as of now, that gender is not intrinsic…. On planet earth, it is also so heavily connected to gender roles that we are always basing it on performativity and how we act!
To clarify where these thoughts are coming from, I probably need to explain that I live in Sedona, Arizona, in neo-fundamentalist new-age “hippie” town. Although… I believe that almost all the true hippies (who fought for autonomy and freedom) are gone, and have been replaced by a new “enlightened” sort… The kind who consciously and unconsciously believe that the joining of the masculine and feminine is the most divine form of expression and that we all must use these forces to realize our most “high vibrational” selves. (And by the way, the terms high and low vibrational are things I am slowly eliminating from my vocabulary since they are just a rebranding of religious “sinful” and “pure” rhetoric.) Everything is “divine feminine” this and “divine masculine” that… But the most disturbing thing is that these archetypes are always rooted in performativity. There are “women’s womb” coaches (that feel very TERFy) that help women who haven’t found their desired partner in life “become more divine feminine” by changing up their aesthetics and aligning them with the heteronormative binary gaze. The problem is not in coaches helping certain people discover a “feminine” aesthetic that those people may like (which changes from decade to decade!), but on the assumption that a person who has not found their “mate” or who feels unfulfilled in their spiritual role needs to align more deeply with a visually-appropriate rendition of heteronormative iconography. Dating, relationship, and “womb” coaches in Sedona make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year persuading people that they can find their heaven if they conform to a Jordan Peterson-esque dystopia. Many women have spoken up after going through this kind of experience and said that it just made them feel defeated or tired rather than empowered.
The interesting thing about the hypothesis that the hyper-feminine and the hyper-masculine joined together is “divine” or powerful is that even as those two things are separated out between two binary heteronormative individuals, the narrative goes that we can all integrate these things within ourselves. However, this is never really practiced. If anything, the current flow of far/alt-right new age thought is rooted in hyper-gendering and “rediscovering” neo-traditional gender roles of feminine “surrender” and masculine “protection.” Even as the story presents itself as “integrate both within yourself,” it is practiced in relationships as “separate them out, then join together in flesh and spirit with another person.” This kind of split, as well as the refusal (or unawareness?) to look at genders outside the binary leads to powerful shadow selves, such that, if we are not performing gender with feminine aesthetics and spiritual “surrender” by gender, we are “estranged” from the concept of divine gender… and we are doing the opposite gender a disservice. (And remember, what we define as feminine and masculine are in-flux, culturally informed concepts… not empirical or universal truths.)
I personally feel that this is a last-ditch effort to continue to make the feminine and masculine (women and men in this case) dependent on each other in terms of utility. With the current discourse taking place over how the masculine will no longer be able to dictate what the feminine will be or how it will respond to its trauma, there is this rift where the masculine throws a tantrum when it is asked to take its boot off the proverbial “feminine’s” neck. The patriarchy arises in men and women with internalized misogyny, not just in men themselves, which is why much of the misogyny in spirituality is also coming from cis-AFAB speakers and creators-- not just cis-AMAB podcasters and Youtubers. The underlying logic of hyper-feminizing and hyper-masculinizing people is that it makes them less independent… meaning that these people will always be looking for their other half to feel fulfilled. This is in no way only endemic to the toxic spiritual circles, but it is incubated there sometimes more intentionally than it is in mainstream spaces. We see this in the ”women are angry” arguments and “women are trying to become men” narratives that have been swallowed down and regurgitated as, “Women deserve to relax, and sinking into the feminine is self-care as opposed to the angry masculine.” In a past article, I discussed why this is deeply problematic and why anger is not masculine or feminine. It is just human. It is also incredibly coercive… “Just surrender… women aren’t meant to be under this much stress. Just let go…” Thereby asking an oppressed group to handle their dealings with oppression via an oppressor-sourced prescription that makes them even more susceptible to abuse. Since patriarchy and internalized misogyny categorize emotions and human characteristics via gendering those things, we come to associate things such as submission, empathy, and receptivity with womanhood and independence, logic, and authority with manhood. With those toxicities unprocessed and uneliminated, of course, the shadow selves say, “How dare women be independent and walk away from the things that hurt them!” Or, “How dare men pay more attention to their beauty or skincare routines in ways that used to be 1950s feminine!”
I am so proud of women in our time. We are doing our shadow work, becoming more whole (or just recognizing our wholeness), and thriving on our independence. And for my naysayers who state that we all need each other, I agree on some survival-based level… But women are doing just fine without engaging with regressive men. Men are now being asked to rise up, take responsibility for the oppression they have either caused or benefited from, and nurture other men through the process. Women also have to do this work since the patriarchy is not gender-specific but is embodied and furthered by women too! We all have to process our internalized misogyny, ableism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and so on. The spiritual guidelines from spiritual leaders are becoming even more rigorous in tandem with political ones to keep women in their place. What will happen to men and the human species if women do their shadow work and become fully human? What will happen to the world when women claim their independence financially and otherwise and only choose to engage with men who interact with them in love-based energetic spaces rather than “need-based” or “provider-based” spaces? Really, that is up to men.
Women are not taking power away from or becoming men… They are becoming their whole selves, which are not usually the hyper-feminine caricatures they have been made out to be! The wholeness of humans is much harder to control than fragmented and distorted selves caged inside hyper-gendered archetypes. The deconstructive work on “masculine” and “feminine” caricatures seems like an attack on or an erasure of femininity, when in fact, we had the wrong definitions and criteria all along. The feminine and masculine and beyond are so much more than what we were taught, so when we start pointing out the silliness, it is reframed as an assault on the oppressive forces that keep us useable. If women aren’t connecting their femininity to fertility, attractiveness, and cultural palatability, how then shall they serve…?
The attack on women’s+ independence to make it seem like women are becoming men is just another control tactic to see if those women (who have done their inner work) will be shamed into reverting to a more neo-traditional feminine appeal… But it is not working, because we are comfortable with our feminine, masculine, and/or non-binary aspects! We know that the workings of the world and fertility and reproduction should not be dependent on “need” but on desire. Not on dependency, but on autonomy and informed consent. My loves in the far/alt-right new age realm who are perpetuating this narrative, what does it say about your internal beliefs if the only solution you can think of to promote the continuance of the human species is to reinforce us in a fear-based survival mode? To disallow the integration of ALL we are just in case we don’t “need” each other as much? Why is it so hard to ask all genders to do better and to become full, autonomous humans unlimited by gender roles and behaviors? This is the big work… this is the scary shadow work… and it is the work that will deepen our love for each other. Not because of what we can perform or DO for each other, but because of what we can allow each other to be. It means we have to be decent and thoughtful people instead of *just sexually charged or fertility-motivated people. It takes more to be attractive after the shadow work is done than to just be a submissive working womb or an authoritative set of testicles. Integrating these things and going from need-based or fertility-based interactions (which are often human body parts based?!) to holistically-based and love-based interactions is what spirituality is…. Humans are outgrowing the hyper-gendered narratives because they are not really who we are. We aren’t doing anyone any favors when we keep trying to reposition those shackles.
To go deeper down the creation of collective and individual shadows, the narrative that “feminine is chaos” and “masculine is order” takes these energies in a Handmaid’s Tale direction. I understand that feminine does not automatically equate with womanhood and that masculine does not automatically equate with manhood. I understand that we are getting the words right when we say, “We can integrate both within ourselves regardless of our genital configuration!” However, there is so much wrong with this story being told because it lacks an understanding of how language works and how speech is emblematic regardless of how it is intended. So, even though we may suggest that “feminine is chaos” and mean that we all have some chaotic feminine element inside ourselves whether we are man, woman, or nonbinary still associates chaos (aka lack of logic) with femininity. And honestly, chaos is usually seen as a bad thing, even if some spiritual adepts know that chaos is more than that. Not everyone identifies with femininity either. Or masculinity. Even if there are those of us who peer into deeper chaos definitions and understand the intention behind the words, we must acknowledge that the impact IS gendered simply because “the feminine” is most commonly associated with women and people with AFAB-presenting bodies. It is also deeply misogynistic even if we do take it as intended since chaos always needs an antidote (an AMAB presence or masculinity) to be made “useful” or less dangerous. In other words, it needs control. I cannot state how many times I have seen an far/alt-right new age Youtuber, or spiritual dating coach post the above phrase… For me, it is one of the scariest red flags there is when it comes to assessing how someone understands gender. Even if we go deeper into things and decide that chaos isn’t bad and that it isn’t being associated directly with “badness,” we cannot deny that chaos emblematically IS associated with undesirable traits while “order” (as in the Bible when god creates order out of nothing) is seen as desirable. We absolutely do need to decolonize our thinking and decouple masculinity from manhood and femininity from womanhood as the mandates they currently are in the West. This has not been done yet though, so we need to be aware of the impacts of this language.
Furthermore, I have yet to hear one upstanding argument as to why we decided that feminine is chaos and masculine is order. I read one argument that suggested that men form armies and (therefore) “order” to address outside threats. I do not feel in any way that this automatically indicates or embodies order, and the “order” is in response to wars and threats primarily created by men. Even if we did somehow misconstrue “war strategies” and military organizations as “order” (lol) they are responses to “chaos” caused by men.
It is also facetious to equate masculine with order and feminine with chaos when women are socialized to absorb negativity, be silent, be good, keep our heads down, and smile sweetly… While at the same time, men comprise 81% of all arrests for violent crimes and 63% of arrests for property-related crimes. As stated in the article referenced at the bottom of this work, “When it comes to breaking the law, crime is a man’s world.” (1) It is fascinating how we are framing femininity for a chaotic nature when, in fact, a prominent form of “negative chaos” is primarily practiced by men. This is supported by empirical data.
This writing is not a deep analysis or academic work on this topic (gender, spirituality, etc.) but is intended to serve as a conversation starter for people ready to do some inner work! This website has grown leaps and bounds in terms of traffic, and I enjoy using it as a platform to start deeper discussions and analyses of why we do what we do and why we believe what we believe. I am also, frankly, a little bit terrified by the direction that new-age spiritual circles have taken in the past 5-6 years. The far/alt-right pipeline for new age philosophies into fundamentalist circles is nothing new… it is actually how the Pentecostal (hyper-charismatic) movement started! But it is still incredibly scary to see so-called spiritualists regressing and falling prey to their neo-traditional programming when it is 2022. Considering all the current political schemes to control fertility, lower marriageable ages (for girls), and encapsulate feminism as “girl boss” or “women stay at home” energy (both of which contribute to capitalism in different ways), I would think that the spiritual groups who like to distance themselves from mainstream structures would be making more personal progress. Right now, this isn’t the case.
It is my opinion that any coach, teacher, spiritual “guru” (which I don’t think we should have at all), or guide promoting “divine feminine” or “divine masculine” as a performative structure (associated with particular aesthetics, behaviors, or social expectations) is someone who has not progressed deeply into their gender-based shadow work. There are Instagram “womb coach” pages with women’s before and after pictures… The first picture is a woman in comfortable clothes with less makeup and the second picture is the same woman in more “feminine” colored and shaped clothing with makeup saying, “Look how beautiful this woman is as she steps into her feminine!” Literally, reducing the feminine to an aesthetic or visually engineered approach. Any coach peddling a deeper understanding of the “divine feminine” with an aesthetic linkage as its basis has done a great disservice to everyone and has misrepresented the feminine (energy) as something to be enacted and presented all on its own. The divine feminine is not simply a product or a “look.” Even if we view aesthetics as “permission slips” to step into spiritual roles (Which can be okay depending on how you use it. As a requirement it is not good. As gender-affirming care it is beautiful and life-saving.), it is very harmful to frame the divine feminine in terms of the male gaze.
The divine feminine is not just appearance-based and we are not highlighting anyone’s natural self when we “convert” them to the culturally understood aesthetic for femininity and assume that it works for everyone. Just as sexual orientation is not dependent on behavior, I firmly believe that gender is not dependent on aesthetics, behavior, belief (as in religious or political), appearance, genitalia, hobbies, or interests. To clarify, you may define any of those things as meaningful for your version of gender and gender expression, but for example, a single aesthetic or appearance type is not the foundation on which gender is truly based. The feminine and masculine, have been reduced to a male-gaze/ capitalist serving (aka child-producing, AFAB submitting, AMAB-ruling) agenda that reframes gendered servitude as spiritual expansion. Spirituality is about deeply contacting our truest selves… touching something with our emotions and mental faculties that is intangible as it transcends the human experience and continues into quasi-physical and non-physical realms. That will be a little different for everyone! How we reduce that potential to gendered performativity, collective beliefs about heteronormative sexuality, and gendered aesthetics, may be an innocent attempt at understanding the intangible, but at this point, it is unacceptable given our understanding of patriarchy, oppression, gender roles, and how they have been used to harm and suppress. Femininity is much more nuanced than one visual approach to dress, fashion, and makeup… It can look like whatever someone wants it to look like! Furthermore, the divine feminine implies a deeper spiritual experience, and having it explained as a stereotypically “girly” aesethetic with a quiet and peaceful demeanor just does not seem descriptive or nuanced enough at all.
I am not dismissing masculine-based and feminine-based identities, but I think if most of us are honest with ourselves, there is a big portion of us that expands far beyond the limited social binary that has been forced into our mouths since birth. I disagree with any rhetoric that says we must embody the masculine or the feminine or both (even though you can based on limited social understanding) to fully actualize our spiritual selves. The masculine and feminine are mostly earth-based concepts, which is not means for dismissal but is definitely an indicator that we need to look into these things more deeply. Who decided that the feminine received and the masculine gave? What justifications do we have for these things apart from “male” (AMAB) ejaculation and “female” (AFAB) reception of sperm? And how do trans and intersex people fit into that? Also, bodies with AFAB parts can ejaculate and bodies with AMAB parts can receive… just fyi. (In terms of exopolitics, what if we meet an e.t. species that has no feminine or masculine? Are they any less divine…?)
I truly believe that based on the current understanding of performative femininity and performative masculinity, this narrative proffered as spirituality is just another means of controlling people and forcing them into teeny boxes that keep the current systems on earth moving at a productive (literally) pace. It keeps us “understandable” and categorically submissive by keeping our understanding and embodiment of non-physical things subjected to means and labor to suit culturally held definitions… especially in the workforce. If someone does want to play out the feminine and masculine (consensually) in a traditional sense, that is okay, but it is not “divine” in and of itself. What our fathers taught us about femininity was wrong. What our mothers taught us about masculinity was wrong. It was mostly inaccurate but especially incomplete because only one teeny narrative was presented. Half-truths, if the truth was present at all. It is time for us to spit out the baby food and stand on two feet… not just half a body meant to be joined with some supposed opposite. The truth is that we can be whatever we want and we do not have to join with anyone if we do not want to, let alone some supposed “opposite.” This is freedom, this is spirituality, and this is what it means to love without fear and to progress with fully-realized love for each other. The feminine and the masculine are not only about embodiment, but about the realization and understanding of oneself, and the binary is just the beginning. I am not invalidating anyone’s anatomy or their transition to a form that best reflects how they feel on the inside. When I reference “embodiment”, what I mean is that identity is not always based on someone’s genitalia or physical form. Some people cannot transition to a "look” or a body they want for any number of reasons, and some people identify as something that, culturally, would not seem to align (based on our limited and rigid definitions) with the genitalia they were born with. Gender is who we are on the inside, and if someone doesn’t have the money, health, or ability to reflect what they want externally, their identity still exists and is still valid. Some trans people state that they did not fully feel like the gender they felt resonance with until they transitioned in some physical way, which is a valid journey. Gender-affirming care is life-saving for many people (And gender-affirming care may not always be about physicality. It may just be using the proper pronouns for someone). However, many other people (trans and cis) say they do not need any physical change to feel the way they feel. Those perspectives need to be heard too.
When we look at spiritual energies, we are almost always projecting gender onto them rather than receiving them as a vibration. We create definitions to understand things because that is how our brains function, but sometimes we outgrow those definitions, especially when those definitions are not serving the highest good for the majority. What is feminine if not aesthetics, obedience, behaviors, receptivity, chaos, and interests? What is masculine if not aesthetics, leadership, behaviors, projection, order, and interests? What if someone feels feminine or identifies as a feminine person, but does not act submissive, is not “chaotic”, is not emotionally expressive, and does not enjoy traditional “feminine” interests? I don’t have an answer because I did not invent these lenses… I rarely use them to understand the world anymore, even if I examine the systems that utilize them. Does anyone know what these things are beyond their social utility? Beyond obedience and dominance? Reception and projection (which as we have stated are not intrinsically gendered)? To be clear, there is nothing wrong with a personal definition for your gender or expression as long as you are accepting of others who do not share that exact same definition. After speaking with hundreds of people over the years and asking for their definitions for manhood and womanhood, for masculinity and femininity, I have come to realize that personal understandings are varied and unique! There is also nothing wrong with self-exploration that starts with what we think we know, but it doesn’t take much to run past the edge of the socially obedient map. What happens when your world takes on a new shape, size, or finds deeper context?
You are more than your pink or your blue. Those things do not equate with femininity or masculinity intrinsically. You are more than your breasts or your testicles (or neither or both at once). You are more than how appealing you are to the opposite gender or anyone on this silly and fascinating planet. You are more than what you can provide and what you can receive. Throughout our spiritual journeys, we become gods as we touch and taste and experience everything. I see your identity (often fluid and mutable from life to life), but more importantly, I see what some may call “divinity,” which is really just worthiness for all you are and what you can be. We are not going to become more dependent on each other, but more appreciative of our respective expansions. (I mean this in a spiritual sense, not a physical one. We can’t all just be hyper-independent within late-stage capitalism. Being free does not mean discarding community or connection.) When life after life, love for your fellow humans, and the understanding that life forms in the universe are not uniform all blend together, the methodology is no longer about hyper gendering roles or selling a singular definition for embodiment, but about exploring wholeness and its limitless forms.
[ Additional clarification: Some people use descriptors such as divine masculine to stand in opposition to things like toxic masculinity. In such contexts, the term isn’t meant to communicate anything other than “healthy human”— certainly not gender role mandates. In each person’s case, I always give plenty of room to let someone explain why they use the terminology they do… Sometimes there really is no harm being done. (Not that anyone has to explain anything if they don’t want to. This is in reference to environments where we have these intentional discussions and provide definitions so we are all on the same page.) What one person means by “divine masculine” may be completely different from what another intends with the word choice. For my part, I address those labels because of the issue in certain smaller, isolated areas where they are really just repackaged, harmful (evangelical-adjacent) gender roles. I speak mostly through the Sedona lens in this case. However, in bigger places like Oregon, where I have interacted with larger more progressive “fields”, not that many people are even using the terminology… Or when they do, it is just meant to mean “healthy” masculine or feminine, no matter how it expresses or who is using those words as identifiers. In those cases, I say rock on. =) When I spent time with a Portland group, I was in the most welcoming, inclusive, and permissive crowd of spiritualists I could have ever asked for! There is a lot of nuance to spiritual terminology we use, so I have done my best to be targeted with my intention and to be clear about what I was addressing in blog posts relevant to this subject matter. The labels are not inherently bad, but they’re ambiguous and really distorted in certain spiritual areas, so I speak into the spaces that get a little warped, while understanding that not everyone is going to weaponize the label(s). I don’t like the “divine masculine/feminine” descriptors personally, but others utilize them with completely different definitional underpinnings than the fundie groups, and that is 100% okay. Femininity can be beautiful. Masculinity can be beautiful. I just want to allow those things to be as expansive and healthy as possible. <3]
* I targeted femininity as my main locus for this conversation, but the fact is that in our current consciousness, femininity does not include everyone. Black women (historically and presently) have been excluded from the “protections” that are given to the white women enacting hyper-femininity (being submissive/obedient/quiet/serene/conventionally beautiful/homemakers), since Black women are hypermasculinized by society. Even though these protections hold us back and hurt us overall, I cannot gloss over the glaring truth that these protections are actually real in some ways at certain times for white people like me, where they are not real for Black women. I will be protected and rewarded for looking or being feminine, simply by not having my life threatened, because I am given the benefit of the doubt in ways Black women are not. So, even if Jordan Peterson is correct and being obedient to the ideas of “what is feminine” in the current consciousness supposedly benefits women at certain times, it must be noted that it only benefits some women. In other words, it generally only helps women who also benefit from being white. When I speak about protection here, this can apply to mental and emotional protections, but I also speak literally into the protection of white womens’ bodies, which Black womens’ bodies are excluded from. Deifying hyper-femininity and making it a mandate for womanhood puts queer women, but especially queer Black women, at greater risk for experiencing hate crimes and violence.
Furthermore, if masculinization in general benefited every cis/man to whom it was ascribed, Black people would be rocketed to the top of society in terms of being given social power and creating order. This is because Black men are also hypermasculinized, but instead of granting them a powerful social position overall, it usually sends them to prison (at disproportionate rates to white people). Black men are (historically and presently) seen as a danger to white bodies- particularly the bodies of white women. Since white men stage themselves as protectors (owners) of white women, they stand in opposition to the safety of Black men. (White women are also complicit in this and can mobilize this white aggression toward Black people.) Masculinity does not save them- it puts them at greater risk. This is an example of how we are conflating masculinity with whiteness, since masculinity is seen as chaotic- and in need of control- when it intersects with race. The benefits of hyper-masculinity, in general, are only afforded to white men when we are talking about large groups. This means that the “order” we are talking about is centered around whiteness, rather than gender. When women (white women) are hurt by something (like hypergendering) in society, you can bet that Black people are hurt far worse. So, I made it clear in my article above that I do not think that hyper-gendering helps anyone overall, and I went into detail regarding how the average woman does not benefit from hyper-femininity. The fact is that I would be remiss if I did not mention that if the woman is white, she will benefit from femininity in ways that Black people and people of the global majority never will. (Just in terms of being seen as feminine and therefore socially obedient and much less likely to be attacked for not being feminine. It doesn’t mean there isn’t harm being done as I discussed above. Black women are seen as aggressive and threatening when they are literally just existing.) Patriarchal protection is generally trash, but the fact is that it can mean a white woman gets to live while a Black woman is killed, injured, or imprisoned. This is one of the reasons why hyper-gendering and over-gendering things is anti-human and upholds white supremacy. Many Black women have told me that they feel they have to perform hyper-femininity just to be worthy of protection and to ensure that they will not be seen as threats to white people.
Conclusion
Enjoy the following poem I wrote in response to the toxic, “Feminine is chaos; masculine is order. Feminine is movement. Masculine is Stillness.” Still, a deeply problematic phrase used by the far/alt-right new age, even though many oppressed communities (LGBTQ, Black, Indigenous, and women in general) have expressed their anti-human impact(s). My argument is not intended to erase the masculine and feminine, but to stop limiting those essences to narrow definitions, outside of which, they are no longer valid or “divine.” All gender identities are on equal playing ground in terms of worthiness and validity as are the wide spectrum of experiences and expressions within them. =)
Seventh Day
The words are not really the women
The labels are not really the men
(So it has been said)
Just collared energies
And stratified lexicons
Synthesizing the imperial
Into traumatic birth
And rows of muscle mass.
And doesn’t it make cents?
The Master cannot
Amass self-wealth
Without phonetic outposts
Of this and that…
Exorcising byzantine bodies
Until they are no longer human
Just possibilities-
Palatable precincts-
For one’s vitality
To provide a service…
For society.
“Can you be of service?”
Said the master
To the cotton and the corn.
“Let us name the animals
And fashion an ark
With monochromatic taxonomy
And buttressed by benevolent oppression
And hyper-polar plantations
To which we assign orders- Order!-
By virtue of purpose.
For how else should
The creatures know
How to hunt or nurse?”
Or dominate the circuit
With the hierarchy
Of codification and its children:
Capital and climate chaos…
But, now, I address you, Great Stillness…
Sweetness.
You gave birth to those yourself
With violence
The placentas pooling
Well beyond the borders
And sentinels
Of your understanding…
Cauled afterthoughts
Cascading over the cradle
Of the definite.
No Mother could caretake
The paralysis of your brow
Into a moveable stream,
Soothe your anger into compassion
When your self-definitions
(Would you like to buy a vowel?
… To build a name with three letters?)
Made your role irrelevant-
As the Tigers flew
And Tiktaalik ended up walking.
(She always could)
You mistook the wounds
For stripes,
The growls
As something sub-human.
You said it could move
And it moved
In its complexity
Beyond the lip
Of your horizon
And untethered itself
From your
Neonate vernacular
And elementary ordinances.
The smallest soul
Has already out crawled
The pace of your dictum,
And though your edicts
Against its convolution
Demand that it
Submit to retrograde…
The universe has already fluctuated.
And dearest…
Every circle
Has a beginning.
Of all the shapes,
Ouroboros
Is the least infinite
And the most transgressive
When it begets
Generational tyranny
In one autoimmune legacy
Because it forgets
It can always be expanded
Amended… Renamed.
Your coat of arms
Is a heritage of crumbling cities
And talking snakes.
(How dare they!)
How much will it take
To bless your Mother with change?
It is simple enough
To sculpt new caverns
Into your speech
Big enough for blossomed teeth
And evolving psyches
To emerge alongside.
You have been at the breast
For far too long
And your tongue
Is numb with the weight
Of erased conjunctions:
“Also. Since. In addition to. In spite of. Because. Rather than.”
Your Copernican mind
Has dimmed the light
Within this discourse…
Swelling up to become
The Son of itself
To suit the universe
Surrounding it…
A small sphere to begin with.
It’s no wonder you bought
Into it all…
With so small a shoe
To stretch into.
Cerebral stems
Succumbing to heliotropism
Strangled and bent
In the fever pitch of insistence.
It was a solid investment
At first.
You saddled the verbiage
Expecting all tongues
To wag as yours did…
All backs to bend
Under the boot of cultural encouragement.
All appearances to taste sweet
To your palate…
But then the fruit fell from the tree
And rotted
While the fields
Were Scourged.
And the child outgrew
Her trousers
And knew the script
Needed revision-
Updated constitutions and terms,
Without the Pens
And deterministic Proverbs.
The wheel turned,
The sun eventually set,
And the Spindles rested
Because the Lorde Spoke and said,
“The master’s tools
Will Never Dismantle
The Master’s House.”
Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 110- 114. 2007. Print.
In-Text Sources:
https://open.lib.umn.edu/socialproblems/chapter/8-3-who-commits-crime/ (1)