There was a time in my life when I literally cringed if a man wanted to support me in any way. I associated the feeling of being supported by masculine energy as having “ulterior motives” because that’s what it had led to for me in the past. Men were seemingly nice to me because they wanted something from me. They mostly wanted sex, but sometimes they were just lonely and wanted companionship. I allowed myself to be used by these men, and when they couldn’t fill the hollowness they felt inside of themselves, I felt bad about myself when they discarded me. My reflex to this was to become a so-called feminist. The truth was, I really just wanted to weaponize my hatred towards men by surrounding it with historical truths about the patriarchy, and then I would make all men responsible for the pain I suffered as a woman. I saw all men as being evil, and out to get something for themselves. I was controlling, condescending, and manipulative with them. It was men vs women in my mind, and it was a war. This led me into toxic relationship after toxic relationship, endlessly cycling through patterns of being the victim vs perpetrator. It didn’t empower me at all, and made me another slave to this orchestrated “gender war”. - One thing that has changed my dynamic with men is learning to be in my own femininity (ie BODY) while also offering myself my own masculine form of protection. This form of protection around me I call my own “predator energy”, but its also basic Yang energy that helps get my life in order on a certain level. It helps me know what I want and gives me the energy to plan and act that desire out in the world. It is like the energy of a jaguar, in that now if someone comes and tries to steal energy from me, makes an unwanted sexual advance, I have the strength to say no, to state my preference/needs/and to move on and away from the situation. I am not the prey with a lack of boundaries and the inability to say no. I also don't dwell on the experience after, creating more generalizations about men from encounters like I used to. A jaguar doesn’t dwell on the battle it just fought, it just goes back to sleeping, playing, and being a cat. Because I have this container around me, I’ve noticed that I’ve started attracting a whole different kind of man, one being my husband who I am eternally devoted to and grateful to receive in my life. This masculine energy is in service to the feminine, it offers protection, support, and provides. It’s not trying to take from the feminine for itself like we take resources from the earth until it’s ravaged without any reciprocity or thought of restoration. This masculinity is also in connection and right relationship to its own feminine energy, and therefore a harmonious relationship between opposites is possible. If I were to meet this type of energy in men years ago, I would think they had an ulterior motive, but now that I’ve developed a healthy relationship to my own masculine energy, I can see how there is no healthy feminine embodiment without the higher masculine consciousness embedded into it. Now, I see a whole wave of feminism coming through that loves to hate men just like I did. It’s being promoted in the mainstream media, which is the first red flag there is an occult agenda to this as well via their typical divide and conquer tactics. I can see how this is actually making the women suffer, and they are suffering because they are in a toxic relationship with their own masculinity. They are channeling the oppressive, patriarchal, toxic masculine through the shaming, blaming, toxic feminine. It’s a shadow dance between opposites. In order to balance the toxic masculine, we need to balance the toxic feminine. The toxic feminine rules through blame, shame, and playing the victim. The toxic feminine makes everything someone else’s fault. The toxic masculine rules through fear and oppression. Do you see how these two are perfectly matched? - “It is not the absence of the feminine that should be lamented (both the masculine and feminine are always already present in some form); it is the distorted forms of their presence that exaggerates the tragic imbalance between them. That imbalance undermines an entire civilization, contributing to its collapse.”
~Marion Woodman
art by Yannick Bouchard