toxic masculinity? what about repressed femininity?

~ about a 4 minute read

when I refer to toxic masculinity I am referring to the inability to talk about how you feel,

coupled with perpetuating the idea that feeling is over emotional, which equals ‘weak’. it is unnecessarily aggressive behaviour, and is concerned with dominating and controlling, women especially, but men also. this is done via fear, intellectual superiority (how you feel, and what your body tells you bears no weight here), and political alliances.

toxic masculinity is not just a male thing; a lot of women reside here too. women demand men are men and expect them to hold the fort, never showing a chip of fear, sadness, or grief, save the wall crumbles. this comes from women’s trauma and the unsafe nature of their ancestors and in most cases, themselves.

our society celebrates toxic masculine traits. we see the bully as a strong leader, not for the coward he is. real men and women don’t need to bully others into submission; they earn respect from their innate wisdom and compassion. leaders like these will have lifetime alliances; bullies will be taken out as soon as there is an open window.

but what we don’t talk about as much, something that feeds toxic masculinity, is repressed femininity.

there is the societal accepted idea that women are ‘feminine’ if they shave their legs, have long hair, and wear dresses. while femininity as a principle is concerned with beauty, it is not concerned with projected ideals of beauty; the standard of feminine beauty that dictates the time you are living in.

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the feminine principle is the ability to enjoy pleasure, live in your sensuality, and indulge the senses and desires. it is the allowance to be soft, messy, playful, and complex. but most importantly, the feminine principle deals with two very distinct, very important, powers; the ability to cut out things that no longer serve us, and the ability to feel our way through life, trusting our own inner voice. these powers make us less susceptible to people who don’t have our best intentions at heart. without the feminine intuition honed and activated, you are a sheep surrounded by wolves. that is why most of us are so easily led astray and told what we like, what we want, and who we are.

when we talk about the feminine principle it’s important to note that it is in fact, nurturing. there is a backlash discourse to this but there is nothing wrong with nurture. in fact, it is the very backbone that holds our society together. we should be very distrustful of a society that tells us nurture is for the weak. men who are in touch with their feminine principle will indeed be nurturing. we all hold, when balanced, masculine and feminine principles within us.

when the feminine is repressed, which it is in both men and women,

it becomes a shadow side. you can represent this side as the Devil in tarot. the devil is a necessary component to the human experience; he demands pleasure, he provides the dank dark soil for creativity and human expression, and he allows it all to be. he exists outside the black and white morality imposed on us, and withholds his judgments - a healthier place to reside, and definitely a less taxing one.

but when we don’t engage with the spiritual and emotional world (feminine), we become too invested in the material world. we become obsessed with, and defined by, money and things; consumerism being the god we worship. we are chained to the unfulfilled and we find ourselves in prisons of our very own making. we become shallow and deeply unhappy. a back hole that can never be filled - a scratch that will never be itched.

when the feminine is repressed, instead of enjoying beauty and pleasure and the desires of the erotic body in intimate encounters in creativity, play, sex, sensuality, and nature, we open ourselves to addiction and obsession. we get trapped in the mind and ride our obsessions over and over again. we get addicted to things that give us quick, short term pleasure because we do not know how to nourish the soul with deep and real pleasure. we become the devil unchecked. we become hedonistic and undisciplined, demanding pleasure as our constant state. we become victims of our shame and guilt and we are locked in a never-ending cycle of self-hate.

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." Carl Jung

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so how do we come into balance?

how do we have healthy relationships with both the masculine and feminine principles and see them both as equals? as two parts of a whole?

well…..

we work on our trained preconceived ideas that feminine traits are inferior and weaker than masculine principles. we hold our emotions, deep feeling, connecting, nurture, pleasure, creativity, play, letting things go, endings, intuition, instinct, connection with nature, in the highest regard because without the other half, we cannot be whole. but if we want to change something in the world, we must check ourselves first. there is no way around this. if we are not willing to look at our own prejudices first, we won’t see the world clearly. the feminine calls it out; the masculine processes it.

all the world needs is a tipping point. the balancing of the individual will eventually tip the scales.

we must see that we are living half lives with half truths, half focused, half here. the rejection and the repression of the feminine serves no one. it makes us easy prey, it hides our truth, it turns grief into unchecked rage, and it keeps us locked in a shame spiral, hunting for quick pleasures instead of honouring real and devoted sources.

but it’s there, in all of us. waiting to be seen, waiting to be loved, waiting to be unleashed.

all my love xoxo

p.s You can book your own personal tarot read @ tarotwithhannah111@gmail.com