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