On a chilly, foggy, typically summer morning in San Francisco, I entered one of Nob Hill's posh hotels and registered for a conference called "Tough Guys, Wounded Hearts". I was there because the conference was open to women and because I was curious. The event had been going on for two days prior, but I was only able to attend on this day.

The first workshop I signed up for, "Healing Our Masculine Selves", was for women only and focused on becoming conscious of one's internal masculine energy. The female facilitator led us in a visualization process which helped me connect with my feminine self, my inner male, and an image of the divine within me. About thirty women sat in a circle sharing intimately their reasons for attending the conference.

My experience with personal development events is that they are usually under-attended by men. One woman remarked how delightful it was for her to attend this conference and be outnumbered by men. Many of us expressed profound joy and relief in finding each other -- discovering other women who were drawn to a men's mythopoetic event, not to "save" their husbands, boyfriends, sons, fathers, brothers, or male friends, but to feel and experience the healing of their own inner male.

Reconnecting with Your Inner Male

A few months earlier I had been surfing through the channels on my TV remote control device. I happened to pause on a PBS channel where Bill Moyers was interviewing Robert Bly. I was mesmerized by the interview and by Bly's presence and words. By the end of the program I was in tears, and I didn't know why. I immediately bought Iron John and read it twice.-?

Later I caught an interview with Sam Keen and read and re-read Fire in the Belly. Through all of this, I felt as if I were the only woman in the world who felt a kinship with the men's movement. Suddenly, here in this room with these women, a dry, parched, lonely, aching place inside me felt watered and nourished.

Throughout the day as I traveled the hallways, elevators, and stairwells of the conference hotel, as I sat with men in workshops or at lunch, there was a unique quality of intimacy in my interactions with them. Sometimes we hugged; sometimes we looked courageously into each other's eyes and shared very personal stories of healing; sometimes we just smiled at one another without words.

At two different times, men approached me and said, "You are a very beautiful woman, and I'm glad you're here." They weren't hitting on me or fulfilling a "workshop/therapy assignment". Their conveyances were genuine, sincere -- innocent yet incisive.

The Inner Male Needing to Grieve the Inattention

That morning I shed, but for the most part held back, a reservoir of tears. The part of me I had come to identify as my "inner male" was delighted that I had taken him here, but he was also needing to grieve all the inattention he had gotten throughout my life. Yes, I had been and continued to be a strong and powerful woman, but something had been missing. I hadn't come to know my masculine self. Small wonder.

My father loved me very much, but was nowhere present emotionally for himself or for me. As the conference took me deeper into this new territory of the soul, the little girl inside me wanted to scream to the top of her lungs: "Where the hell was my daddy?!"

The grown woman was moved, softened, empowered, intrigued honored, validated, and very much in awe of the entire event.

At lunch I sat with men and women who had been complete strangers, but after leaving the table, I felt a huge lump in my throat and remembered a familiar Twelve Step saying: "There aren't any strangers -- just friends you haven't met yet."

The Drumbeat to My Heart

As I approached the huge ballroom where the afternoon's final closing exercises were to be held, I decided that things couldn't get any more intense than they already were. (Hadn't I learned by now in my healing journey that I never know what's going to happen next?)

I entered the ballroom amid the reverberation of drumbeats that began reaching into my internal organs while I was still a hundred feet down the hallway. In a daze, with tears streaming down my face, I wandered into a vacant seat.

One of the conference facilitators spoke softly and gently for awhile then asked another facilitator to join him up front. He asked one of the drummers to begin a slow, soft drum accompaniment. The two men began moving very slowly and sensuously back-to-back without words or any other sounds besides the tender, powerful drumbeat.

One of the men invited others in the audience to join in similar dyads. I was unable to move or speak and shuddered to hold back sobs that were welling up from my stomach. Through my tears I saw men dancing back-to-back with men, women with women, and men with women. I had never witnessed anything like this in my life.

After the dancing ceased, one of the facilitators asked all the women to come up front and sit on the stage. I could no longer contain my sobs. For over twenty years I had been attending conferences for women only where, if a man had entered the room, he would have been at least verbally, if not physically, assaulted. I could not believe that these men wanted us to come forward and speak. 

For about half an hour, several women, some of whom had been in the women's workshop I had attended earlier, shared their feelings and experiences regarding the conference. The open microphone never came my way, nor did I reach for it. It was just as well because I couldn't talk.

Praise to the Sacred Feminine & Sacred Masculine Within

Along with the other women, I returned to my seat. Several women and men came forth and recited poems and shared experiences of the conference. Finally, one of the drummers stepped to the microphone and asked that the women come to the front again. As we returned to the front, the drummer asked that all the men in the room form a circle around us so that he could lead them in an African male chant in praise of the Goddess. Some women might have felt intimidated being surrounded by men. I did not.

The thunderous roar of all the drums commenced, resonating through the floor, walls, and chandeliers of the ballroom. Twenty years of scenes of myself at feminist, separatist events flashed through my mind. Outside this ballroom in the hotel lobby, dozens of San Francisco Police Department SWAT Team members patrolled the hotel and adjacent streets in an effort to protect an Asian dignitary and his entourage. 

Outside this room, what Sam Keen calls "the war, work, and gender-role ethic" prevailed. Inside this room, some three to four hundred men and some fifty to seventy-five women danced and chanted in a tribute to each other's humanity. 

It was a roomful of recovering alcoholics and addicts, survivors of childhood abuse, single people, married people, divorced people. Some were parents, some had never had children. Some were heterosexual, some lesbian and gay. We were European-American, African-American, Asian-American, Native American. We were coming together not only in love but in fierceness -- as warriors for the sacredness of the feminine and masculine in all of us. 

Through my tears, with the drumbeat piercing my heart, I saw a vision of how it could be -- for one sweet moment we were united in heart, soul, mind, and body, women and men turning gender wars into gender peace.

Moving Away from the Patriarchy

In the years following this conference I have become deeply convinced that the crux of whether or not we will survive as a species, given our toxification of the planet, our bodies and minds, lies not in eliminating nuclear weapons, racism, hunger, poverty, cleaning up the environment, or finding the cure for cancer. 

As urgent as all these crises are, that which underlies, supports and feeds all of the life-threatening issues our species currently confronts is the patriarchy -- a way of life based on power, control, and the constant battle it perpetuates between women and men. The patriarchy, although primarily engineered and executed by men, dishonors men and the positive masculine as much as it dishonors women and the positive feminine.

Article Source:

Reclaiming the Dark Feminine: The Price of Desire
by Carolyn Baker.

Click here for more info and/or to order this book.

About The Author

CAROLYN BAKER, consultant, educator, and storyteller, lives in Northern California. She is an acclaimed workshop facilitator and has written and taught for many years from an archetypal, transpersonal perspective on the Dark Feminine. She holds a Ph.D. in Health and Human Services. This article is excerpted, with permission, from her book: Reclaiming the Dark Feminine -- The Price of Desire, published by New Falcon Publications, Tempe, AZ.