An ecological approach to masculinity
Finding new narratives about masculinity in a patriarchal world.
The topic of masculinity spills onto many others: power, emotions, vulnerability, and systemic violence. It should be in the interest of everyone to unpack and understand how we look at masculinity and explore a more ecological approach to the topic. Right now an older, traditional, patriarchal model is meeting with a newer, relational ecological model that seeks to rewild the way we approach it. In this transition, we must centre care and foster dialogue whilst holding multitudes.
Relying on the expertise of luminaries like Terry Real and Esther Perel, swimming in the words of Bayo Akomolafe and Sophie Strand, dancing with bell hooks’ thoughts, and digging deep into my interior landscapes, I discuss masculinity and its healing as a form of resistance.
꩜ If you wish to talk deeper about this topic, I would like to organize a small dialogue session with an intimate group that will be facilitated by an expert and where we will strive to hold the multitudes of this dialogue. Please email me at virginia.vigliar@gmail.com with your interest.
This essay is deeply intimate and I hope it fosters a curiosity to dig deeper into the topic. At the end, I leave you with a list of resources, a curated playlist, and a beautiful oil mix recipe to meditate on the topic with.
There is a lot to unpack, so let’s begin!
“true resistance begins with people confronting pain” bell hooks
A few years ago I was in the midst of a big life change. Fuelled by curiosity and a very necessary need to find some comfort, I tried a lot of different healing practices. One of them was a psychic named Nicole.
“The masculine in you is stuck,” she told me 20 minutes into our session. I opened my eyes in confusion and an urge to know more; understanding my cue she continued explaining: “It’s as if it was running nice and free and BOOM, its whole world froze. It’s been stuck in the same position for a while”, she gestured with her hand what seemed like a person that hits a transparent wall. Don’t ask me why but the image of a frozen Patrick Swayze came to my head (I guess he is my inner masculine), and I remained confused about the news I had just received, until a few months ago.
But, what is masculinity? When I ask others what words remind them of masculinity, I am met with answers such as: power, macho, and strong. I dream of a masculinity that is quiet and vulnerable too, one that doesn’t belong to a particular body but is connected, grounded, and mutable. The way masculinity is understood in the patriarchy paints a completely different picture; one that is stagnant, static, and stuck (like my Patrick Swayze!). Echoing Sophie Strand, “Men are limited, not only narratively but visually, given shirts and pants and expected to progress, step by step, into increasingly calcified stories”. A hero’s journey, a man saving a damsel in distress, proving one’s strength by enduring violence, you’ve heard it all before.
The image of Patrick Swayze's frozen body inside my being makes me wonder: Could it be, that the masculine in me has been thwarted by patriarchy for lack of better stories for itself? What was it that got him stuck? And what can I do today to get him unstuck?
In the last few months, deconstructing and dismantling the patriarchies within me has brought me to question masculinity in society, but also within myself.
Before I begin sharing my personal and collective journey, I want to make a premise. This is a deeply complex topic, one that holds a multiplicity of factors. Speaking of masculinity often pushes us into binaries, which can be extremely triggering for a lot of people. I ask that for this essay, you think of relational ontologies as requiring separations, and take into consideration that, as Hannah Close so wisely said “Contrast is the mutually engendering logic of life. Duality creates non-duality which creates duality which creates non-duality... One does not preside over the other. In that sense, the universe is ultimately non-hierarchical, but only because it's relatively hierarchical.” I also want us to take into consideration that re-storying masculinity in a non-patriarchal way, means holding the trauma that patriarchal masculinity has left on a lot of people. Systemic violence is a reality we must grapple with. I also want us to hold that this topic ping-pongs from individual to collective experiences, for these are always interconnected. I hope that the ground in which we reroot stories around masculinity is fertilised with the multitudes of this complex topic.
On a personal level, as I began to dig deeper, I realised there was an inherent anger in me towards men, a complete mistrust. Surely, society’s examples had not been great, but this was deeper. I think part of it is connected to a trauma that I became aware of recently: part of my childhood was affected by the toxicity of unhealthy masculinity and physical and verbal abuse entered my life very early on. Despite my childhood being privileged and loving, it was also chaotic, violent, and unpredictable. As all children do, I developed my coping mechanisms; I learned that being a girl was unsafe, so I became very “masculine” and decided to hide my vulnerability for fear of appearing weak. At the same time, I also became an emotional caregiver - which resulted in both satisfaction and resentment- of emotionally and erotically illiterate men.
On a collective level, the situation doesn’t look good. Systemic violence by cis-men is staggering. According to WHO, one in three women has experienced intimate partner violence, or non-partner sexual violence, that’s 736 million women around the world. Mexico is one of the most violent countries when it comes to femicide, 11 women are killed every single day. Machismo in Latin America is responsible for increased gruesome violence against women, and the accumulated anger paired with impunity is today one of the biggest voices in the feminist movement.
It gets worse, in the last 10 days (when I am writing this piece), there have been fifteen mass shootings in the United States. Since 1966, 98% of these crimes have been committed by cis-men, according to The Violence Project, a research group that tracks U.S. mass shooting data, 93% of the attackers were dealing with personal issues ranging from divorce to mental health, to economic instability. NPR reported also reported that researchers say that men, more than women, tend to externalize their problems and look for others to blame, which can translate into anger and violence. Last year, I witnessed four men decide on the future of women in America when Roe vs Wade was overturned. We now have reports of the struggles that many women, especially immigrants and marginalised people, are going through because of this decision. This is called systematic violence, and it is fuelled by unhealthy masculinity within the patriarchy. The man who survives and thrives in the patriarchy exists emotionally and erotically illiterate.
These are the stories we are told, repetitively, in the intimacy of our homes, in the news, and in myths and legends, but it is time to rewild these stories. The healing and deconstruction of masculinity in the patriarchy is something that involves us all, we have the responsibility to step outside of the boundaries of these patriarchal stories and find new fields.
In her book The Will To Change, bell hooks describes that when she became a feminist, she stopped speaking to her father or seeking his love. “I had no need for the patriarchal dad, and feminism had taught me that I could forget about him, turn away from him,” she explains. She then describes her change of heart as the years went by: “While feminist thinking enabled me to reach beyond the boundaries set by patriarchy, it was the search for wholeness, for self-recovery, that led me back to my dad. My reconciliation with my father began with my recognition that I wanted and needed his love, and that if I couldn’t have that love, then at least I needed to heal the wound in my heart that his violence had created” she says. I deeply resonate with this feeling, and I’m on the path to healing this wound.
“In the patriarchy, you can be either powerful or connected, but you cannot be both at the same time” Terry Real
So, when it comes to the collective experience of feminism, we cannot turn away from the masculine. When I found feminism I was incredibly relieved to have found a place where I felt safe, and my first years were dedicated to connecting completely with my feminine self, and with other women. In this journey, I found the most incredible supportive women, many of who had gone through similar experiences with the masculine. Creating that safe space was something that had to be done, but movement requires evolution.
Despite the many reasons to mistrust the patriarchal man, we must know that this is not the only one there is, it’s just the one that has survived best. The single story about measuring power through violence and domination is a story that we have the responsibility to rewild.
Lately, I have been observing flowers grow where stagnant water used to lay. I’ve seen men questioning themselves, wanting to heal, connect to the body, and love. I find the movies of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami incredibly poetic in the way they depict the masculine. Men with flowers who speak about art, men who are on the verge of suicide but find their life back by reconnecting to awe, men who ask for help, who cry.
Throughout my life, I have met so many men that I have trusted deeply, who were vulnerable in front of me. My current partner is one of them, and I am often finding myself deeply conditioned by patriarchy when relating to him. His creative self is alive, and so is his sensitivity. In these conflicting moments, I see that a transition is happening, that I am an estuary and that chaotic waters are part of the process.
But when it comes to cis-men, where is their responsibility when it comes to rewilding their own stories? Men must be willing to break their hearts, to step into the discomfort of learning the language of their emotions. I want to recall a conversation I had with Onyango Otieno, a mental health coach, poet, and rape survivor who is working towards healing masculinity in Kenya. When he came out with his story, he was criticised a lot, especially by other men, who ridiculed him for having been sexually abused. “a man doesn’t get raped, how can he?”. When we talked Rix told me, “Mental health is a social justice issue. Our minds are only as healthy as the systems of our environment. Emotionally, a majority of men are still in the ‘jungle’. This is the simplest metaphoric way I could put it. We haven’t evolved.”
For this, we need a new type of knowledge and approach, one that is sensuous, emotional, and ecological. In her book Sensuous Knowledge, Minna Salami coined the term because she saw that Euro-patriarchal knowledge needed a turn on its head. “And the gods declared that to only have one type of ogbon [knowledge], would be to only be partly wise,” Salami echoes a Yoruba myth. Currently, masculinity seems at war with itself, -in an estuary two waters meet: one with an older, traditional, patriarchal model clashes with a newer, relational ecological model, “Power over versus power with". This moment of transition is an opportunity to centre care and foster dialogue. Healing and rewilding stories of masculinity is fundamental to changing the narratives and culture around this topic. This is a job that involves all of us.
When men ask me what they can do, I have come to a very simple yet complex answer: go to therapy. Heal yourself, know your traumas and work on them, and own your s**t. I’ve seen men overturn laws because it is easier than taking responsibility for their actions. Make friends with loss, vulnerability, with sadness. Own your anger, and channel it in a way that doesn’t harm anyone else, or yourself. Healing masculinity is revolutionary, learning to love yourself is an act of rebellion.
Imagine in front of us, a field of flowers if you will, each one is a story about the masculine waiting to be retold. What stories will you retell?
Sensorial Part
For the sensorial part of the essay I have prepared this playlist, which you can move to, an essential oil mix recipe and I will leave some resources for you to dig deeper.
If you are interested in more about the topic, please email me.