In an excerpt from her book, Reading Your Male: An Invitation to Understand and Influence Your Man’s Sexuality, Mary Farrar explains who the feminized male is and how he got this way. In my opinion, her analysis is a perfect example of what happens when one starts from a pre-determined, arbitrary, vastly limited view and then tries to understand and explain the evidence in light of it: most of the real reasons are completely missed. Though there is recognition that something is amiss, the real problem is misunderstood and misdiagnosed. History, as well as life phenomena, are drastically and egregiously oversimplified.
Even the title of her book, “Reading Your Male,” suggests that our husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, bosses, coaches, co-workers, etc. are little more than male members of the human species. Yes of course they’re male, but they’re so much more than that.
There is so much misdiagnosis and inconsistency in the excerpt that I hardly know where to begin. So I won’t try…I’ll leave it to you, the reader. But before I do, I can’t resist drawing attention to Farrar’s comment on Jonathan, son of Saul: Jonathan was “every bit the man his father was not.” But…how did he become this way if his father was feminized, as she claims? Who/what was his template? And this: “What is a woman to do when a man has feminized tendencies?…there is one thing she must never do, and that is to accuse him of being feminized. If it were possible, I would underscore and put this in red.” But…what has she done but accuse men of being feminized?
That article scores high on my wacky-meter.
I’m glad to read you say that…I was left going…”HUH?” over the article as a whole.
some sick stuff.
Medically, one of the worst things you can tell a person (male or female) is that they are not supposed to feel, or consider how others feel. Godly love is to be concerned for the welfare of others. There is balance of course but being imbalanced is not a sign of femininity.
This stuff sounds made up. It’s just propaganda against women IMO.
Sounds like the biblical Jacob, Isaac’s son.
Sounds like a lot of the tripe Mark Driscoll says about “girly-men.”
All men are NOT alike, thank the good Lord! I am blessed to have a husband who is sensitive and gentle and considerate of the feelings and needs of others. Yes, there are ways that sin distorts that particular set of gifts, but they are his gifts. They perfectly balance my very “unwomanly” set of gifts and talents (leading, teaching, decision making, not as sensitive to the feelings of others).
If my choice were to live my life with a man who was more like me or no one, I’d get a cat.
Yeah, Jacob was a “softie”, a mama’s boy and a trickster. Yet, God chose him, so I can feel confident when he chooses me. Nurturing is a CHRISTIAN trait, so by running away from being too nurturing, some non-egals are running away from what Christ wants them to do.
Don:
You left out “henpecked.” “D
What IS the legal definition of ‘henpecked’. Is it anything akin to ‘roosterpecked’? Imagine a husband who would send out the bugle for a wake up call every morning. aaaaggghhh!
TL:
Not a legal definition, but a court case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Henpecked_Duck
Very cute. If only all misunderstandings could be settled so easily. Iff only all our mistakes could be simply stage fright on the stage of life, and fixable without the pressure.
You guys crack me up. “Henpecked duck” — LOL!
About sums it up.
Tami, your comment echoes the thought I had that, were the article’s “reverse” applied to me, I might qualify as a “masculinized” woman. The people with whom I’ve identified the most at a deep level and who have influenced me the most have been men, except for my mother. I’ve always related to guys more than women, in general, because I’m not a girly girl, and tend share more interests with men than with women. But I’m also a mostly-SAH homeschooling mom of 3. (By grateful opportunity and choice, I might add.) So go figure
I’ve read somewhere that the differences between individuals is more that the differences between males and females. IOW we are all more alike in gender than we are as individuals. So that comes out that among fellow women or fellow men we are more different than the actual provable differences in gender.
Hope I said that correctly. Yeeesh!
We are also more alike as human beings than we are different in gender.
Remember Adam rejoiced not the woman’s differences but in that she was like him.
Does the Scripture say that the woman made the man “complete”? Or does it say that her formation/creation fixed his loneliness and his need for assistance?
As for “corresponding to” him, it seems to me that the way a woman “complements/completes” a man has to do with the reproductive act – i.e., without an ishshah, an ish cannot have y’ladim, and vice-versa.
I wonder if the “biblical” idea that a woman is the complement of a man, or somehow completes him, and vice-versa – i.e., the theological basis for complementarianism – is a bit of eisegesis?
TL says that maleness and femaleness have more in common than two individuals have in common. If so, then these books about reading males and reading females may be based more on a cultural thing than a biological or Scriptural understanding of personality types.
I suggest the book called “The Centerfold Syndrome.” In it psychologist Gary Brooks says that men need to be allowed to be weak and needy, and emotional just like women are. He says that we socialize boys to not need intimacy and to not express their feelings. We teach boys they always have to be strong and brave or they aren’t real men. Men aren’t allowed to express hurt, pain, or fear, and this damages their relationships with both men and women.
I think this book speaks more about men in our society than Mary Farrar’s book does.
Eric, I tend to agree with you. On all your points in your last comment.
Man and woman become one flesh in marriage; one without the other is not necessarily incomplete, but rather not one flesh. It takes both to make the one flesh of marriage, and produce children.
Genesis does not read that man needed woman to be complete, or even to help him, but to end his aloneness. It seems that her help is more in terms of companionship and relationship than in completion. Although I will grant that companionship/relationship in marriage represents a kind of completion.
I think Farrar’s type of reading males & females is definitely based on cultural precepts, as well as fleshly rather than godly means of proving identity. A strong charge, I know, and none of us are exempt from the former. But these things must be seriously considered.
The way I look at it, seeking to be (live as) ‘one flesh’ has nothing to do with sex. Lots of people have sex and it doesn’t unite them.
Men and women have complementing physiologies that together work more efficiently than apart. Where one is weak the other is strong. One is more flexible and the other stronger. Even our minds work differently enough that they complement one another in a similar way. Men and women often solve problems differently thus both minds are better than one.
I’m not sure that I would say that they complete each other because I believe we are complete in ourselves. Marriage is not required to make us whole or fulfilled. Rather a proper relationship with God is. Saying men and women complement each other is more accurate than saying we complete each other. Although some people are so well matched that they do feel more complete with each other than without.
To my knowledge, the Scriptures only say that a woman, a mate, fixed his loneliness. IMO a man doesn’t need ‘assistance’ more than a woman.
Well, the man apparently needed an ezer k’negdo to solve his badness (Hebrew bad = being alone => l’vaddo) = And said YHWH Elohim, Not good to be the Adam to his aloneness, I will make for him an ezer k’negdo.
So YHWH Elohim got out His play-doh and made some animals and said to the Adam: Lookie what I brought you! Let’s see what names you’ll give them! Pick one for your ezer, one that’s according to your neged.
YHWH Elohim seemingly felt that what the Adam needed could be met by an animal of some sort. But Adam wasn’t happy with any of his new companions. None was an ezer k’negdo.
(Interestingly, the Hebrew vowel pointing in the middle of this verse switches from “the Adam” to “Adam” – i.e., And called the Adam names to every one of the cattle and to flying thing of the skies and to every one of the living creatures of the field, but to Adam was not found an ezer k’negdo. But it then goes back to the Adam for the rest of the chapter.)
So YHWH Elohim puts the big sleep on the Adam and does some surgical cloning and brings the result to the Adam, to see what he would call it, just like He had done with the animals. And the Adam says, Aha! Now this is more like it – bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh! This will be called – Ishshah – because this was taken from Ish.
Now it seems that before YHWH Elohim decided that the Adam’s badness wasn’t goodness, He had just placed the Adam in the Garden, to work it and guard it. So YHWH Elohim’s perception that the Adam needed an ezer k’negdo might have been prompted by His realizing that working and guarding the Garden might be more than the Adam alone could handle. So the argument could be made that the Adam simply needed an assistant (or even a “beast of burden”? Apologies to Richards and Jagger.)
But the Adam apparently couldn’t find an his ezer k’negdo among the animals. So he must have been looking for something more than assistance.
I suspect what he was not finding was the neged part, as it seems to me that an animal could be an ezer. k’negdo can literally mean “according to the front of him” or “opposite him.” Is this referring to a sexual complement? A mirror image?
The excited utterance and/or recognition – This is now…! – (the Adam uses the feminine form of “this” – which could be translated as “she” – three times in this verse) of what YHWH Elohim brought before him after he woke up suggests that the Ishshah being and coming from his very own bones and flesh was a significant factor in why he chose her and not the animals.
Sorry if I’ve digressed a bit.
from the link:
I would not call it “marred” nor a “problem..compounded” if this female influence is changing future generations of men like this (from the link):
If “female domination” is responsible for this change (see bolded), then I judge such “female domination”as GOOD. Apparently there’s some very good fruit from it, so it must have been God’s will and plan. I suggest- stop fighting progress and embrace it
“YHWH Elohim seemingly felt that what the Adam needed could be met by an animal of some sort.”
MMM. I wouldn’t say that. Eloheim had already had already decided that they would make humanity in their image, and male and female. Likely it was an exercise for the man to understand both his need and what aloneness meant.
Human was his name as well as his race designation, and the woman the same. Only after she was built they both had the name Human and the designation as human and then a new understanding of gender as man and woman.
“Now it seems that before YHWH Elohim decided that the Adam’s badness wasn’t goodness, He had just placed the Adam in the Garden, to work it and guard it. So YHWH Elohim’s perception that the Adam needed an ezer k’negdo might have been prompted by His realizing that working and guarding the Garden might be more than the Adam alone could handle. So the argument could be made that the Adam simply needed an assistant (or even a “beast of burden”? Apologies to Richards and Jagger.)”
Really baaaaaad summation.
She was to be his equal carrying the responsibilities of overseeing all the creatures of the world equally with the man.
“k’negdo can literally mean “according to the front of him” or “opposite him.” Is this referring to a sexual complement? A mirror image?”
My understanding is that it connotates equality (nothing to do with sexuality). A mirror image is a good picture – one who stands facing, in front of, equal to.
Good story telling.
TL:
For what it’s worth, and as difficult (likely impossible) as it might be to distinguish or separate the two accounts of man’s creation, I am not sure that the Adam/Ish/Ishshah creation and formation in Genesis 2 is (as is commonly taught or assumed) a “more detailed” account of the Genesis 1 creation of the male and female adam, or that what was said to the adam in Genesis 1 can be imposed on Genesis 2. (Though Genesis 5:1-3 seems to collapse/mix the two accounts into the creation of a single Adam.)
What caused me to think, “Huh?” was that it appears to me that singular nouns are used in Genesis 1 to refer to plurals – e.g., “tree,” “bird,” “beast,” “cattle,” refer to the creation of “trees,” “birds,” “beasts,” “cattle,” etc.
Thus a natural reading of Genesis 1:26-30 apart from Genesis 2 and 3 could be that God here created the human race/species/kind – i.e., several or many male and female humans – to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and not just a single adam (and/or a single male-female pair of adams). In terms of the command/blessing that was at that time given to them, the creation of multiple adams makes more sense than just a single male-human pair being told to take over and fill the earth and rule all its creatures, esp. since a similar command had just been given to all the water creatures and flying creatures (not just to a single pair).
(It also helps solve the problem of where Cain got his wife, if she was not a sibling.)
How to make Genesis 1 fully congruent with Genesis 2 has baffled and stumped people for millennia, and I guess I am now numbered among them.
- Eric the Heretic
(And it also eliminates the problem of whether or not the first Adam was a hermaphrodite – i.e., was he originally created as a “both male and female” creature before YHWH Elohim pulled the female out of his side?)
from the link:Men were no longer emboldened to rise up and counter the evil around them. In reality, postmodernism neutered manliness and turned it to putty.
(I love how postmodernism is blamed for everything!) I hear this idea so often, but I have to ask:
1. What is the logical connection (how does one lead to the other)?
2. In the modernist era, were men really bold at countering the evil around them?
One problem I have with books of this genre is that they tend to choose an evil or two (in this case feminism and postmodernism) and tell us they have caused all our problems, as if these problems never existed before. What about plain ol’ sin?
Besides that, there is no evidence (scriptural or otherwise) to support the claims of cause and effect.
I was going to quote from the article, but I could quote the entire thing to make my point! There is a lot “woman act like this” and “men act like this” which has been much discussed on this blog. The silliness of these gender assumptions is so obvious in my everyday life, such as when I’m helping my little 3 year old brutish daughter learn
to be sweet and gentle, or telling my bookworm son to get off the couch and climb some trees.
In such an environment of female domination, a boy’s natural masculine instincts (the drive to be physical and aggressive, to overcome fears, play rough, take risks, and step into confrontation) are either squelched or left to languish. More feminine traits like kindness, sensitivity, gentleness, concern with what others are thinking and feeling (all good traits, in and of themselves) are elevated and become his primary template. As a result, a boy learns to value womanly traits over manly ones and to see and react to the world as a woman tends to see and react to it”.
These “more feminine traits” remind you of Jesus, no? Who was His “primary template”?
I was listening to a radio program on fathers today which had the opposite take on the feminization of men, although they didn’t call it that, obviously.
As in the article, this program mentioned the salient turning points in recent history: industrial revolution, the wars, etc. Men were absent in the industrial revolution because they worked long hours. In the “golden era of the 50s” when family life was at its high point, when men were strong and manly, men were still absent – they were not available to their children and wives because they were so “manly”.
The “feminization” of men can be seen in a positive light in that men’s view of what fatherhood should look like has changed. The “ideal” father now is one who is sensitive, available, concerned with others’ feelings, and interested in others’ lives. Secular opinion has come a long way, huh?
I think that three of the article’s greatest errors are these:
(1a) Assumptions as to which gender traits are “hardwired” and which are “absorbed” (the old nature vs. nurture question) and (1b) contradiction in declaring that men and women are hardwired in certain ways yet can be so easily “diverted” from this that they adopt traits of the opposite sex. You’d think the hardwiring would overcome this, wouldn’t you? Or, if these “diversions” occur so easily, then maybe certain traits aren’t as hardwired as they say.
2) The seeming assumption that absolutely every aspect of human existence occurs in one of either binary gender forms.
3) The assumption that if, for example, a man lacks ability to independently decide right and wrong (before God), then he is feminized. But wisdom, strength, and courage, or lack thereof, are not gendered traits. Both sexes need those traits. It’s incorrect, and insulting to both sexes, to claim that the wimpy man is feminized, or the domineering woman is masculinized. Good grief. Neither sex should be either wimpy or domineering.
Calling a man feminized is like calling the non-athletic, thin, bookish schoolboy gay. It’s sophomoric.
There are SOME men who fear being characterized with what are thought to be womanly attributes and I suppose the opposite is true also.
“(And it also eliminates the problem of whether or not the first Adam was a hermaphrodite – i.e., was he originally created as a “both male and female” creature before YHWH Elohim pulled the female out of his side?)”
IMO it is not necessary to believe that male and female both resided in the first human in order for God to have built the woman from bone and tissue of the man. God as Creator had been very busy creating and building all of creation as we know it from basically nothing, as far as we know. I don’t think it was a big thing for God to have created the first human with nominal male characteristics to which God increased and/or modified when He took tissue and bone and built the woman from the man.
“Calling a man feminized is like calling the non-athletic, thin, bookish schoolboy gay. It’s sophomoric.”
I agree Bonnie. It’s like calling people rascist names.
Hurts both.
Eric,
Thus a natural reading of Genesis 1:26-30 apart from Genesis 2 and 3 could be that God here created the human race/species/kind – i.e., several or many male and female humans – to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and not just a single adam (and/or a single male-female pair of adams).
Wow! That is really interesting. I never knew that. It does make sense!
Since we’re discussing books, a resource some may find helpful on this topic is “Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind” by the Dutch organizational anthropologist/researcher, Geert Hofstede and his son, Gert Jan Hofstede. It is not a Christian book but, as one involved in my church’s missions ministry, I finally picked it up because it was repeatedly recommended by missiologists I was reading as a solid, reliable source of information on understanding cultures based on statistically sound global research. While he has more technical publications, this one is a popularized version of his research and is very readable.
He has chapters on such cultural issues as power distance (helpful for understanding hierarchy), individualist vs. collectivist (group) cultures, and long-term vs. short-term orientation. His chapter on masculinity vs. femininity is what really struck me, however. I thought I’d share a bit as it does pertain to this discussion.
A helpful introductory statement he makes is that, while biological differences (related to procreation) between men and women are absolute, his research indicates that all other differences are statistical. This would seem to provide a basis for recognizing differences between men and women without having to reduce them to stereotypes – or the sharp distinction between masculine & feminine roles favored by more masculine cultures.
That being said, he does find some correlation between certain values and masculinity and femininity – where males and females in his global research tended to answer in consistent ways. For example, challenge/risk vs. security, respect/ego vs. relationship, competition vs. cooperation, adversarial in politics vs. coalitions with mutual respect, etc.
Some correlations have specific application for the discussion on the issues raised by this post (these are my application of his points). For example, Jesus’ story of the sheep & the goats (Mt. 25 – “I was hungry & you fed me”) favors the feminine value of solidarity for the weak vs. the masculine value of reward for the strong (i.e., we will be judged on how well we have expressed a feminine value!). The way in which Jesus handled the woman caught in adultery (Jn
challenged the double moral standard that Hofstede has found characteristic of more masculine cultures (which 1st century Palestine certainly was). Jesus’ teaching & example on authority (Mark 10:42-45, John 13, etc.) is an explicit challenge to the masculine connection between leadership and ego.
On the other hand, feminine cultures tend to more susceptible to secularization than masculine cultures, indicating that the church (and individuals) really do need redeemed elements of both.
Hofstede found that, in masculine cultures, gender roles were distinct while in feminine cultures they overlap. In one of my favorite quotes in the book he describes football as a metaphor for masculine cultures: “Men fight while playing football and girls stand adoringly and adorably by the sidelines as cheerleaders” (pg. 133). Needless to say, given Jesus’ affirmation of women throughout his ministry, he did not give his life to create such a (church) culture!
“In one of my favorite quotes in the book he describes football as a metaphor for masculine cultures: “Men fight while playing football and girls stand adoringly and adorably by the sidelines as cheerleaders” (pg. 133). Needless to say, given Jesus’ affirmation of women throughout his ministry, he did not give his life to create such a (church) culture!”
Very insightful observation.
One of America’s best presidents, and in my opinion one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century worldwide was a Mama’s boy. He was also very dependent on his female relatives and friends for emotional support. He brought in many social reforms to help poor Americans because he cared about them. For this he was considered a traitor to his class. His name is Franklin D. Roosevelt.
When I was a kid I lived abroad for a time, during the height of the cold war when my Dad worked for the government.
I remember a reunion of the axis survivors of Stalingrad and their subsequent Russian captivity and how the Italian men would openly weep right along with former Wehrmacht prisoners.
It affected me greatly, and I realized right then and there that the machismo bravado of American culture is only a thin veneer. It has no substance other than blind allegiance and a wistful longing for the days of manifest destiny and two ocean protection.
Kudos to jlp’s tribute to FDR. Maybe if we have a few more mama’s boys taking the reins of power in future, we won’t decline as greatly as the Dutch and the British before us.
How important it is for men to be allowed to weep, and show their fear, and to be allowed to show their true emotions (like the axis survivors of Stalingrad). I am hoping that the Christian community does not try to oppose this. I don’t call it letting men become feminized, I call it letting men become “humanized.”
I read books written by mental health counselors, and over and over I read stories of counselors encouraging men to express their feelings. Good for them! Hopefully they will prevail over the Christians who feel its not masculine to for men to express their feelings.
jlp said: I don’t call it letting men become feminized, I call it letting men become “humanized.”
Ah, well said! And it can go both ways.