Redefining Masculinity, Redefining Courage

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“It’s time to redefine masculinity,” Prince Harry stated during an official Commonwealth tour made with his wife and young son to South Africa in 2019. Given the strict German and British duty-bound heritage of his Windsor family — that calls for its menfolk to be aloof, manly, and in control — Harry, the former military man and now self-proclaimed feminist, is an inspiring representative of the courage it takes to build a new archetype of being male. Brushing off the tired old sexist tropes tossed his way (especially the one that he’d been “emasculated” married to a strong, out-spoken woman), Harry seems stronger, devotedly focused, delighted with hands-on fatherhood, and thriving inside a powerful, deeply loving partnership.

Perhaps a man’s relationship with women is a key component in redefining masculinity. In their celebrated podcast series, Renegades: Born in the USA — which inspired a bestselling book in 2021 — the conversations of two old friends and brothers-of-the-heart, President Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, acknowledged the rewards of being married to a spirited, forthright woman, praising the guidance received from their wise and powerful wives. “We were lucky enough,” Obama said, speaking of both men’s lives, “to find remarkable, strong, independent women to push us and challenge us and ground us — and to call us out on our BS.” I could see Prince Harry’s experience in Obama’s words. “Women who helped us,” Obama continued, “become better versions of ourselves and forced us to continually reexamine our priorities.”

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The Space Between

 

"Beyond the Human Species" by Patricia Albere

There is a “betweenness” to these consciousness-shifting times we’re living in, to borrow a phrase psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist used in his unique study of our divided brain and how each “hemisphere” shapes our perception. The author of The Master and the Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (2009) sees that the left and right hemispheres of the brain have competing visions of reality: the left hemisphere focuses on the details (good at organizing categories, not so good at seeing the whole, considered the male side of the brain); the right hemisphere focuses on the big picture (good at making connections between things, creating ideas, being empathetic, considered the female side.) Both hemispheres of the brain are essential, of course, and to be our most productive and compassionate selves we need a balance of both—the rational and the creative.

An example is McGilchrist’s scientific approach to explain music in which, simply put, the left hemisphere recognizes the notes, the right hemisphere recognizes the gaps, and it’s the gaps between the notes that make the music—the “betweenness.” It takes both sides, both hemispheres of the brain, working together to have harmony...in music and in life.

McGilchrist suggests we’re living in a world dominated by the left hemisphere—the part of us less likely to take the “humanistic view.” We see that occurring in our current angry, incendiary world. “Broadly speaking,” McGilchrist shared in an interview on Hidden Brain on National Public Radio (NPR), “the right hemisphere is more emotionally literate. It reads emotional expression, feels suffering…understanding another person’s point of view, what it feels like to be that person. However, there are some emotions that are more particularly associated with the left hemisphere. Perhaps the most striking one is anger, which happens to be the most lateralized of all emotions.” McGilchrist acknowledges this may be an over-simplification, but given the left hemisphere is always about accomplishing the immediate task in front of it, so “if it encounters any opposition, it’s dismissive, and it becomes enraged.”

We are a world out of harmony. And with no harmony, we have a compassion disconnect, empathy is lost. What will it take to bring our brains back into balance so the right hemisphere—the part more likely to take the “humanistic view”—can be a dynamic part of our world again? What will it take to create a world where we all live as though we truly believe, as Irish novelist Colum McCann once observed, that “an ounce of empathy is worth a boatload of judgment”; a world where we can live in the delicate, harmonic balance of “betweenness”—where being empathetic is as natural for human beings as breathing. How do we bring the feminine and masculine, the right brain and left brain, the entire human community back into balance? We’re all yearning for the inner peace that comes with a world in balance. Where do we find the opening? 

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Those 'Something Old' Wedding Vows

 

Scene of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's wedding, c1840

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Those 'Something Old' Wedding Vows

{Part Two of “Marriage and the ‘Prospect of Happiness’”}

A bride is a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. -Ambrose Bierce, 19th century journalist

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After years of badly-behaved Hanoverian kings, their niece, nineteen-year-old Princess Victoria, became the queen of England in 1838. “The emphasis upon Victoria’s sheltered upbringing, her maidenly modesty and her dependence on her first prime minister,” historical novelist Philippa Gregory explained, “emphasized the subservience of all women — even a queen.” Although Victoria was a feisty, strong-willed, smart, determined young woman, she believed her own second-class status because of her gender.

This inequality had been deeply embedded in the patriarchal-controlled culture for centuries, reinforced at every traditional “Westernized” wedding ceremony. Women promised “to obey” their husbands when saying their marriage vows — vows written in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer from 1549. And vows repeated into the twentieth century.

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“On her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840,” Gregory continued, “Victoria signaled her obedience to her husband as master of the household, her deference to him as an advisor and her role as domestic woman: a wife and mother, supporting the idea that a happy marriage was created and nourished by female submission, however important the wife might be.” So even with a woman on the throne, a married woman’s “prospect of happiness” remained in question.

However, Victoria became queen at a time of robust social activism that put attention on women’s rights in both England and the United States, including a move to change marriage laws. As the most powerful woman in the world, Queen Victoria’s example in marriage was influential and far-reaching. This may have hindered, but it did not stop the growing movement for women’s autonomy. Plus, there was another feisty woman on the other side of the Atlantic. Susan B. Anthony, who chose not to marry so she’d be free to dedicate her life campaigning for a woman’s right to vote in the U.S., declared: “No man is good enough to govern a woman without her consent.”

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...the future is love...

 

A Divine Destiny

 

Orchid named for Diana, Princess of Wales

“The people asserted their deep longing to feel at one, if only for today,” Warren Colman wrote about the days following Princess Diana’s death as crowds gathered in London parks and along city streets. “Tomorrow we will assert our differences, tomorrow we will return to the struggle to live together…. For today, just for today, we will take the opportunity to feel what it might be like to be together, to feel at one, to share an experience with everyone else.” It was the final days of summer in 1997, and the world was evolving, moving into a new millennium full of remarkable revelations. A future was emerging that would demand our attention.

For the woman who once declared that she “leads from the heart,” Diana’s death pierced our own. Perhaps this was Diana’s biggest gift to us: To give humanity a taste of feeling related and connected through the heart, to experience something tenderly shared, to have an opportunity “to feel at one” in a divided, divisive world. And to long for more.

Colman told of listening to many interviews during those days between Diana’s death and her funeral service, as people came together in public spaces simply to be together. “I think that the people who have come to be a part of it are part of it,” shared a local, fifties-something man who had congregated with thousands of others outside Westminster Abbey during Diana’s funeral. “Whereas before it always felt as though you were pure spectators to something else — it was what belonged to someone else.” The idea of being a part of something, a sense of belonging, intimately connected, was deeply present here — just as it was for me watching on television from over 4000 miles away. “Royal occasions were royal occasions,” the man in the park continued while balancing a baby on his shoulders, “and we were just subjects to stand by. But this, I think, has been different insofar as people haven’t just been spectators, they’ve been there taking part in it….”

“Diana’s death seemed to offer possibilities for reflection and perhaps even transformation,” Josephine Evetts-Secker wrote, also in When a Princess Dies, with people not feeling a need to be “exceptional or individual” but simply to be together. “‘I just had to be here, to take my place in the crowd,’” Evetts-Secker shared about one young woman interviewed amongst the peaceful, orderly masses of people assembled around central London that week. (“The mobilization of police, in anticipation of serious disturbances, proved unnecessary.”) “Some mystery had taken hold of the nation and beyond, with a palpable but inchoate sense of spiritual need,” Evetts-Secker added.

Something unfamiliar was indeed developing here. What appeared to have “taken hold” of people was the desire to go inwards, perhaps soothe an old ache stuck there and breathe in new life, then move back out into the world more open and available to connect with others. Diana’s death had shaken loose centuries of bottled-up emotions, new awarenesses were emerging.

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