I am honoured to post the following from my son Deus (Justin) Fortier. His words strike into the core of what many men are feeling but are unable or unwilling to express. Deus explores the issue of the deep wounding of men, with eloquence and passion.
I feel inspired to share these thoughts, which have recently called out for expression.
They have to do with feminism, and… um… man-ism…?
With the rise of feminism and women seeking to reclaim their power, there have been many comparisons made between matriarchal and patriarchal societies. Oftentimes the former is cited as an example of a more expansive and elevated society, and the latter being an expression of a lower, less-civilized, usually more violent one.
While I understand the comparison and recognize it as an increasingly popular view point, especially as the feminine energies fight to reclaim their power in a pseudo-masculine dominated society, I strongly believe that the propagation of this idea is not only misleading, but actually has far-reaching destructive repercussions on an
individual and societal level.
…I am a very strong advocate for equality, empowering women, and giving them loving respect.
Know first of all that I am a very strong advocate for equality, empowering women, and giving them loving respect.
Now, speaking from the perspective of a man, the wounds instilled on the feminine on a societal level are also reflections of the collective attack on the feminine aspects of man’s internal world.
Feelings felt and expressed, are not only considered “un-manly”, but are actively condemned as we grow up by peers, superiors, and society as a whole, in the form of bullying, condemnation, shaming, and being de-valued on virtually every level, including being desirable to women.
Therefore men are trained to embody “pseudo-masculinity” through the suppression of their feminine selves, and suffer in a deeply personal way.
I’ve met many men (in addition to myself) who have intense feelings and emotions that have been suppressed to such a degree that they are physically incapable of expressing them despite feeling them intensely, resulting in an almost unbearable rift between the internal and external.
This affects their capacity to express, which impacts their ability to connect authentically and to be understood by others, causing a further sense of isolation, frustration, and depression.
It’s like being locked in a sound proof, see-through cage.
This is then expressed through the suppression and assault of the external feminine, which we see in many, many ways in our current society.
What this does not mean however is that our current patriarch society is an accurate representation of what such a thing “is”.
As in more enlightened times, such as the time of Krishna and Arjuna, men ruled with wisdom and balance; a patriarchal society which was an incredibly love-inspired reflection of Divine wisdom and grace.
Following the same thread, a matriarchal society can be unstable and destructive in infinitely varying ways depending on the current universal, global, societal, and personal forces at play.
To associate the matriarchal and patriarchal archetypal expressions, as being fixed in any way is not only an incomplete view, but contributes to whatever imbalances might currently exist and reinforces misconceptions.
In this case that means it tells men that they are unfeeling brutes who govern themselves and the world with violence, selfishness, and cold calculation, and that women, who are the victims here, are actually more enlightened because they are guided by the higher faculty of feeling and love.
What may be a more accurate communication is that our current patriarchal society is simply a reflection of our collective wounds, men included.
If a matriarchal society was the current establishment, I believe that it too would be imbalanced based on the current planetary cycle, in conjunction with universal forces.
The circumstances would no doubt be different, but we would invariably be faced with a whole plethora of problems that would reflect our current levels of understanding (and lack thereof).
It is also my belief, and personal experience, that men need to be lovingly coaxed back into their feminine energies, not pounded back into them with shame and malice.
Those faculties have been shut down by the traumatic assault experienced through their developmental stages of youth. Believe it or not, men (and everyone really) become what they are in order to protect themselves from being hurt again and again and again.
Men have been deeply wounded, and these wounds are by the very nature of their respective coping mechanism, hidden away. It will be gentleness and understanding that triumphantly coaxes the gentle and understanding Patriarch back into being.
This is the gift of the feminine in our current age. To rise up and reclaim their power, that they may nurture the wounded feminine within men.
We desperately need your love and support.
A big part of this is recognizing that a “patriarchal society”, and a “wounded/unhealthy society, which happens to have men in a position of power” are not synonymous with one another.
If women, or men, or anyone, associate the current imbalanced and inharmonious societal approaches to masculine energies as a whole, they contribute to a crippling force that plagues masculinity, and the world.
By attacking men for being what they have been created to be, the vibrating strings of collective wounds reverberate down into the personal sphere, strengthening the dissonance, which keeps us apart.
Women, men need your loving understanding.
Thank you.
Deus (Justin) Fortier
Justin’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/JustinFortierActor/
This is really beautiful and I want to say thank you for all men expressing themselves and opening the dialogue on the healing of the feminine that needs to take place world wide.
I also think there is some history that needs to be acknowledged to understand why things are the way they are right now. The patriarchy we live in today exists because there was a mass slaughtering of somewhere around 8 million women from the 14th to the 18th century. Here is a very insightful article on that: http://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/09/how-local-wise-women-who-carried-on-ancient-traditions-were-exterminated-by-christianity/
What happened to women is similar to what happened to our indigenous population when the Europeans arrived in North America, only even less documented. When I’ve spent time with indigenous communities I’ve seen that they carry the pain their ancestors went through by my ancestors. In order to heal and move forward it is my responsibility to heal colonial patterns of my ancestors within myself. I need to feel the guilt and shame of my ancestors to release it. When I visit a reserve I do not expect natives to trust me, forgive me or shower me with their love. They need to feel anger and rage in order to release it. We all need to release the pains of our ancestors.
Many women on our planet today were strangled to death in their past life simply for being a healer or a powerful woman. We need to feel anger and rage to release that from our collective. If a man feels like he is being shamed for it, it is only his own ancestral shame he is feeling and he needs to continue to feel that to release it. We need love and understanding from both genders in this process.
Most of us know that we need to love ourselves before another can love us. Equally true, a man needs to love his own femininity before he can perceive others around him to honor it as well.
It is our individual responsibilities to heal ourselves. Men are not dependent on women for this process. It is not the responsibility of women to heal men. I think that when men feel they need women to help them feel their emotions it creates a whole array of other problems on our planet – cravings for and dependencies on women. What if men were calling on each other to help heal their collective emotional and feminine sides?
It is my prayer that we can acknowledge and heal the history of our ancestors so we may live in a collective of unconditional love.
Blessings and love on this journey, may the Divine Feminine express her love, power and strength through all of us.
A response from Deus.
Thank you for your thoughts and insight. You raise some good points that should be addressed. Here are some follow up thoughts.
Understanding where societal patterns come from is important, and everyone has deep ancestral trauma that we are healing through our immediate experience, but when we get into ancestral history then is becomes a complicated affair indeed.
Depending on how far back you go, and if you subscribe to reincarnation, you could follow that trail endlessly, pointing out that men (who have also live countless lives as women) are also carrying the wounds of the persecuted matriarchy, and vice versa. If we continue along these lines, the paradox understanding inevitably becomes that we all carry, on a soul level, the same collective wounds, personified in an an individualized way.
This brings the responsibility to heal ourselves individually in a unified purpose regarding our connection with others.
It is much more productive in my opinion to focus on the patterns and behaviors as they are existing in this time and place, as they are where we have power to influence change.
Only we ourselves can take responsibility for our individual healing. No one is responsible for another in this regard, but once patterns are recognized and acknowledged, we can help each other speed up the process, both by acknowledging and feeling pain where it exists, and by offering compassion and understanding where we can.
This article was largely to shed light on a traumatic aspect of living as a man in this current society that is not frequently addressed, or even known, which is the denial of feeling.
This is a fundamental aspect of healing, because as you have said, being able to feel what exists is an essential component.
The crux of the matter in this specific case, is that when one shuts down feeling, as men are often trained to do, the way to re-open those channels is through patient permission and compassionate understanding. Dealing with any type of trauma requires support, because trauma itself is something that overwhelms a person’s capacity to process. It overloads the system and causes it to shut down.
So in the case of this example of men in our society, not being allowed to have and express feelings causes dissociation, and then on top of that original wound, the traumatic experience of having to dissociate shuts down the system even further because they aren’t allowed to feel the pain of not being able to feel their original feelings.
That might require a second read-through.
The wound, and the response to the wound compound and become a big ol’ mess of suppression and repression that is extremely difficult to move through without support.
The trauma, and the effects of the trauma, both revolve around the inability to feel which magnifies the negative implications.
It is here that I suggest in the article that women have the power to help men heal as an archetypal model, because women are generally more feeling-oriented.
If a child doesn’t know how to speak, they need someone to teach them. If the child is afraid to speak, then the teacher also needs to be patient and understanding.
Now the unraveling of this particular trauma in men is not literally the responsibility of women, and vice versa. Like you said, we must all take individual responsibility for our own healing, and in doing so we help heal the wounds of the past, present, and future.
What we do need though, in our own determined efforts, is help and support from others. No one can do this alone, and we are our brother’s and sister’s keepers.
As we courageously seek to change, heal, and grow, our own personal efforts lead the charge into the fray, but the love and support of others is the army behind us that paves the way to victory.
Men healing women, women healing men, we are all just trying to get back to wholeness together.
Thank you for this exploration of this issue. I think however that the labeling of energies as masculine or feminine is part of the problem. The labeling of emotional loving expression as feminine and not masculine seems to me to be an historical artifact. We need different terminology that does not lead a man to think he is being emasculated (what ever that means) when he cries or shares his feelings. I agree that “By attacking men for being what they have been created to be ..” is a non productive approach, but what have they been created to be? The idea that a man needs to be in touch with his feminine energies to my mind just continues the false dichotomy. Men and women need to be in touch with all aspects of their being as much as possible – I agree with that.
Thank you so much for your comment Stephen.
You share a very insightful perspective which I agree with whole-heartedly. As a deeper understanding of compartmentalized concepts takes shape, one can see the unified whole as the underlying truth.
Unfortunately, individualized concepts are the only way to discuss the infinitely varied expressions of the unified whole through the limited instrument of words.
There are of course many deeper concepts and clarifications that come along with an in-depth discussion of masculine and feminine energies, for as you say, they are inherently present in everyone, regardless of gender.
While I agree it would be helpful to some people to change the terminology so as to transcend current identifications and limited, established perspectives, this is merely semantics that inevitably leads to different ways of speaking about the same present, unfolding issues.
The most we can hope for is to describe pathways to understanding in various ways, trusting that people have the capacity to distill the underlying essential truth, which is always one of paradoxical unity which exists at the heart of seemingly contrasting, or dual, energies.
Sometimes it is important to communicate using current established vocabulary to resonate with the dominant collective level of understanding, affecting those who are on that level. Sometimes it is important to alter the language and approach to challenge the established perspective.
Both approaches are valid, and necessary, in order to connect with, and transform, people of varying levels of understanding and receptivity.
If you resonate with a unified perspective that transcends the limiting description of dualistic energies currently being used, it speaks highly of your own personal level of understanding, and I would encourage you to use whatever vocabulary and approach that you feel properly communicates that. It will certainly be beneficial to others who have the ears to hear.
If you follow up on any of your ideas in writing, I would be very happy to read what you share.
Collaboration and communication with the intention of uplifting and transformative consciousness on a personal and collective level is my personal and professional passion, and I am always eager to connect with and support others who share that desire.
Thanks again for your reply,
Deus