Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 SMI; site sun.uucp
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!sun!sunny
From: sunny@sun.uucp (Sunny Kirsten)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles
Subject: Re: recent (beastly) articles
Message-ID: <1894@sun.uucp>
Date: Mon, 24-Dec-84 03:14:31 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.1894
Posted: Mon Dec 24 03:14:31 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Dec-84 02:12:51 EST
References: <282@sftri.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 54

Where the Wildmen Are (What Men Really Want) - by Robert Bly

	The step of the male bringing forth his own feminine consciousness
is an important one-and yet I have the sense there is something wrong.  The
male in the last twenty years has become more thoughtful, more gentle.  But
by this process, he has not become more free.  He's a nice boy who not only
pleases his mother but also the young woman he is living with.
	What I'm proposing is that every modern male has, lying at the bottom
of his psyche, a large, primitive man covered with hair down to his feet.
Making contact with this wildman is the step the '70s male has not yet taken;
this is the process that still hasn't taken place in contemporary culture.
	The kind of energy I'm talking about is not the same as macho, brute
strength, which men already know enough about; it's forceful action undertaken,
not without compassion, but with resolve.
	The fault of the nuclear family isn't so much that it's crazy and full
of double binds...the issue is that the son has a difficult time breaking away
from the parents' field of energy, especially the mother's field, and our
culture simply has made no provision for this.
	Fathers no longer share their work with their sons.  The strange thing
about this is not only the physical separation, but the fact that the father
is not able to explain to the son what he's doing...in the world of offices,
with the father only home in the evenings, and women's values so strong in the
house, the father loses the son five minutes after birth.  It's as if he had
amnesia and can't remember who his children are.  The father is remote:  He's
not in the house where we are, he's somewhere else.  He might as well be in
Australia.
	If the son accepts his mother's view of his father, he will look at
his own masculinity from a feminine point of view.  But eventually the male
must throw off this view and begin to discover for himself what the father is,
what masculinity is...
	The idea that male energy, when in authority, could be good has come
to be considered impossible.  Yet the Greeks understood and praised that
energy.  They called it Zeus energy, which encompasses intelligent, robust
health, compassionate authority, intelligent, physically healthy authority,
good will, leadership.  In sum, positive power accepted by the male in the
service of the community.  The Native Americans understood this too, that this
power only becomes positive when exercised for the sake of the community, not
for personal aggrandizement.  All the great cultures have lived with images
of this energy, except ours.
	The male in touch with the wildman has true strength:  He's able to
shout and say what he wants in a way that the '60s and '70s male is not able
to.  The approach to his own feminine space that the '60s and '70s male has
made is infinitely valuable, and not to be given up...The ability of a male to
shout and be fierce is not the same as treating people like objects, demanding
land or empire, expressing aggression-the whole model of the '50s male.  Getting
in touch with the wildman means religious life for a man in the broadest sense
of the phrase.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somehow it seemed better to quote the above in tact, rather than to continue
the mud slinging resulting from my previous article on the hairy beast.

				Sunny
-- 
{ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sun!sunny