Men Talk Articles - February/March 2001
The Yen for Yin
– © 2001 by Dick Wilson
As I dealt with life as a male being, I became aware of something missing. This missing ingredient was the courage to be feminine. It's a delicate thing to discuss because most people immediately make it a “male vs. female” thing or “straight vs. homosexual,” and sides are drawn. Listening lessens and old fears abound. Men are men and women are women; right. It’s quickly dismissed.
I believe the most important ingredient our world needs today for both men and women is the courage to live with our true feminine qualities, the qualities of Yin. These qualities include humility, mystery, belief in intuition, knowledge of the interdependence of all things, the practice of listening, the ability to nurture from the heart, and the ability to support each other emotionally. There are others.
I have realized a great need for support and feel the pains of its scarcity, especially between the sexes. I have noticed and felt the courage it takes to bring the true feminine out in people of both sexes. I have seen the destruction in the psyche that has taken place because of how long and how much we have discounted the feminine. How needy we are of nurturing, support, and the love of nature and our bodies. We are in denial of what we need to accept the most. Call it the Divine Feminine, Mother Earth or Yin. It is the part of our identity that has been most denied and devalued.
I find an amazing beauty and power expressed from women who are able to be truthful and vulnerable with me. This usually only happens if I first am able to share my vulnerabilities with them. The truth and creativity that comes forth from them is like freedom found. A softness comes over their faces. A gate has been opened.- An acceptance. Intimacy can be experienced suddenly. Belonging happens. A learning. True beings emerge. And all because we dared to risk our vulnerabilities and share our truth.
This same emergence of self can happen when some feminine traits are allowed to be expressed by men to other men. We all have these traits. Though mostly buried by the "supposed-tos" of our win-lose society, when we find the courage to be open about our vulnerabilities, new parts of our identity become free to emerge. As I learn to listen without having to have the answer or when I express myself without the need to impress, more connection with other happens. I discover more of who I am. The Yin side of me and my identity becomes fuller, and I become more balanced and complete.
I have experienced this for many years in my 12-step group. What I have learned over the years is the beautiful and natural way men can be open, accepting, sharing, honest, creative, and real. Of what I know about the qualities of the feminine, one place I experience it greatly is in that group of males.
The German poet Ranier Maria Rilke wrote about the importance of the true feminine expression in the seventh of his “Letters to a Young Poet.” He wrote, “The girl and the women in their new, individual unfolding will only in passing be imitators of male behavior and misbehavior and repeaters of male professions. After the uncertainty of such transitions it will become obvious that women were going through the abundance and variation of those (often ridiculous) disguises just so they could purify their own essential nature and wash out the deforming influences of the other sex.”
It was in 1903 when he wrote this. He was imploring women to be all that they could be. He wrote, “Someday, there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any compliment or limit, but only of life and reality, the female human being.”
For much of our human history, the feminine nature has been kept down. What will it take to create societies and individuals that welcome its resurgence? How do we allow the unfolding of the strengths and weaknesses of each sex? How does this struggle become a growing interdependence of bodies and souls toward openness, acceptance, and connection?
In the past few years, I have experienced this interdependence with a number of married women friends of mine. They are seekers of something more in their lives and something less. The more they want is of themselves, not of achievement but of their own acceptance, expression and creativity. To be satisfied with the process of being part of the beauty of a garden, to be held warmly, to be mother with all of themselves, to let go of the competition that seems demanded of them and simply let go and glow as being. They want to learn and be more of who they are. The less they are after is less of what they have been told too often what they should be.
This need for the acceptance of the feminine is in both sexes. Because it is called the feminine, many males hold their hands up in defense and say, "No way!" There is the concern that if we men take on more Yin qualities, we will be less masculine. I see it as more of a marriage, a meshing of those attributes ascribed to the female but so needed within us all.
To have this happen, we need to know and experience the benefits of some new openness. To begin, we must allow the opportunities for sharing our vulnerabilities to take place. This takes sharing with people who are able to listen without the need to defend or fix, to simply take in with an effort to understand. We need to let go of our old predeterminations and judgments. We simply need to trust each other.
Without trust, sharing our vulnerabilities is very difficult. When judgment is the first thing that happens after being open, my tendency is to go back into my shell. Trust isn't automatic. Trust is earned. Its main ingredient is honesty. Without trust, we shy away from being vulnerable. Yet, I can't do anything about making another person trustworthy. I can only search for people to share with whom I believe I can trust and, of course, I can become trustworthy myself.
Circumcision: Doctors Liable for Assault
J. Steven Svoboda
Berkeley, CA—Doctors who circumcise infants, even with parental assent, are potentially liable for criminal assault. That’s the conclusion of an article just published in a legal journal by an international team of lawyers. No medical indications justify neonatal circumcision, according to the article, and therefore it must now be considered an assault causing grievous bodily harm and a form of genital mutilation.
The article, “Circumcision of Healthy Boys - Criminal Assault?” is written by an Australian psychology professor, Gregory Boyle; a Harvard-educated American attorney and Executive Director of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC), J. Steven Svoboda; an Oxford-educated British attorney, Christopher P. Price, and an Australian attorney and Executive Director of Children Australia, Inc., Professor J. Neville Turner. It appears in the February 2000 issue of the Journal of Law and Medicine.
Although fewer than one in five Australian baby boys is circumcised today, the article has created interest and controversy there by challenging the medical profession to cease the practice. Since more than three out of five babies are circumcised in the US—and nearly all in some areas —the controversy is likely to be even greater here.
ARC Executive Director J. Steven Svoboda congratulated the Journal of Law and Medicine for publishing the article and for daring to question received wisdom about the procedure. He pointed out that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) conceded in its policy statement in March 1999 the absence of any medical reason sufficient to support routine infant circumcision. ‘Since the AAP confirmed that circumcision is not a medical issue, it is clear that compelling legal and human rights concerns now demand that it be eradicated, Svoboda said. This article helps set forth some of the reasons why circumcision must stop."
The article says the rights to bodily integrity, to liberty and security of the person, and to freedom from discrimination because of sex, religion or race are guaranteed by a number of internationally recognized human rights documents, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. ‘Infant circumcision seriously breaches the child’s rights and is utterly incompatible with the doctors legal and ethical duties toward the child patient,’ Svoboda said "A parent’s consent cannot justify removal of healthy tissue - whether it be a finger, a breast, a clitoris, or a foreskin—without a valid medical reason."
A $10 million lawsuit by an Ohio boy who lost the tip of his penis in a circumcision was settled last year. Cases are underway where parental consent was considered inadequately informed, but the article opens the way for legal challenges to "successful circumcisions even where "informed consent’ was given by parents.
Boys To Men : A New Mentoring Program For Youth
In 1999 in St. Paul, three youths took a joyride and decided to shoot another young man on a bicycle just for "fun". In 1999, two teenagers in Littleton, Colorado went on a spree, killing themselves, twelve classmates, and a teacher. There is a crisis facing boyhood in America.
A group of concerned men in the Twin Cities is doing something about it. They believe that better mentoring may be part of the answer. They call themselves the Boys-To-Men Mentoring Network (BTMMN; www.mkpsd.org/btm) and are implementing a program that was started in San Diego three years ago by two licensed social workers. The process involves a unique and safe way for boys from12 to 16 to interact with conscientious, committed adult men.
"Combining an ongoing mentor program with some of the traditional ideas of men's initiation gives a boy a chance to find out who he is as a young man and then be welcomed into a larger community," says Patrick Lundy, one of the local leaders. "Boys are supported while they express themselves in positive ways, sharing with their peers and families."
Local men assisted by two BTMMN/San Diego facilitators will staff the first Minnesota BTMMN training weekend on September 14-16. After the weekend, each boy will have a trained mentor who will work with him over the next twelve months. Boys and mentors meet biweekly to do group activities and continue their work, guided by principles of truth, love, spirit, and mission. Lundy adds, "We want to see young men growing up with integrity, passion, and awareness of themselves and others around them. Boys can learn to be both strong and caring adults."
BTMMN is asking for tax-deductible contributions to help cover the initial $7500 costs of the training. Contributions can be mailed to BTMMN, c/o Patrick Lundy, Associated Bank MN, 740 Marquette Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55402 For information on enrolling boys, contact Charlie Borden at 651-222-2551.