Battle Of The Sexes
These reflections have been prompted by a long discussion on social media over ‘toxic masculinity’ versus ‘toxic femininity’.
As a Shamanic Healer with 25 years of experience, I have come to understand that the traits which are deemed ‘toxic’ by the opposite sex, are very often the result and consequence of deep wounding.
So now, when I hear the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’, I re-contextualise that as ‘the wounded masculine’, and likewise, the reference to ‘toxic femininity’ is equally contextualised as ‘the wounded feminine’.
When we understand that all dysfunctional behaviour is the result of wounding, we allow space for compassion to creep in, where before we may have felt victimised or attacked by the opposite sex.
It is also very worthy of note that in my deep investigations into the wounding of both men and women, what I have discovered is that we are all carrying the trauma patterns of our Ancestors, which have a direct impact upon our own behaviours as well as life-circumstances.
Indigenous and traditional cultures have long understood and acknowledged the continuation of trauma through the Ancestral lines, and now through the study of Epigenetics, science has also confirmed the existence and process of inter-generational trauma passed down through the generations within genetic coding.
Just as science can track through genetic lines specific patterns and sometimes the origin of those patterns, within shamanic practise, we can also track through the ancestral lineages to understand both the nature and presentation of trauma patterns, as well as the origin stories of those patterns.
And my biggest discovery in doing this work for many years is that almost all of these trauma patterns, for men and for women, route back to the experiences of Warfare.
In working with women for many years, I learned that their trauma patterns are often based in sex-based oppression, in physical and sexual violence, at the hands of men.
In working with men, and particularly for my male ancestors, I learned that male trauma patterns are founded through having to witness and participate in the brutality and horror of war, by being on both the receiving end of the violence, but also having to participate in dishing it out.
This causes a wounding to the soul like nothing else. And the resulting pain of experiencing the horror of war often results in the weaponisation of the masculine towards himself and others around him.
I will give you an example to demonstrate this…
In my work to dig into the pattern of male suicide, the following origin story revealed itself…
I witnessed a man in desperation to protect his family from vicious and violent ‘raiders’ who were coming very soon.
He knew he was outnumbered and would be easily overpowered.
Due to his isolation, there was nobody else to come and help him protect his family.
His over-riding role of Protector was forced to concede that the best and only protection he could provide in this horrific imminent scenario was to swiftly kill his own family members - his wife and children, and then himself, to protect them from what was surely a more horrific end of rape and torture before the inevitable death of all of them anyway. The rumours had already spread across the land that these raiders were blood-thirsty murderers that spared none and enjoyed to torment their victims before they killed them.
The deep pain this man felt in doing what he knew was the most loving thing he could do for his family was compounded by the guilt and shame of taking the lives of those he loved most.
This most compassionate and yet brutal act set up a trauma pattern that would run down the Ancestral line carried by the surviving descendants of this original Ancestor.
The further the pattern travelled through the lineage, the more it twisted and warped, until it showed up as deep rage, violent outbursts towards family members, alcohol and drug addiction as coping mechanisms of self-medication, in an attempt to numb the deep pain carried for this Ancestor. The ultimate act of suicide committed in an attempt to stop the pain and end the harm being done to his nearest and dearest.
This is one example of how Ancestral Trauma Patterning plays out for the ‘wounded masculine’.
And example for the ‘wounded feminine’, also routing back to the experiences of war, but this time from the female experience…
Rather than being killed by the raiders, she was kidnapped, taken as a slave to be used and abused for sex as much as the invading warriors wanted. She was a spoil of war, a prize to be owned, raped, bought and sold by whoever had claimed her on the raiding party. Violated over and over again, taken back to the raider’s land and forced to serve him, become his wife perhaps, give birth to children conceived through rape, or eventually sold or killed due to being so damaged from excessive abuse.
As this pattern shows up further down the line, women experience the repeating patterns of partnering with abusive and violent men, extreme promiscuity, or a deep fear and rejection of men, as well as never feeling empowered enough to take ownership of themselves or their lives. Always being owned, controlled and dependent on men, however abusive they are.
These are just two examples of many of how the experiences of warfare create long-standing and devastating patterns for many, many generations of men and women. And the distortions created by these trauma patterns make it absolutely impossible for any of us to have truly functional relationships while we are operating from these places of deep wounding. The way we heal these patterns is to understand and acknowledge that we carry much pain that was never ours to carry, and then to be willing to confront, address and release it.
Coping mechanisms such as addiction or self-harm only push the pattern onto the next generation.
What I think is crucial to understand is that the creation of these trauma experiences is very often an intentional strategy by those in power to break and control populations, because wounded people are much easier to manipulate and control. These strategies come under much larger patterns of Oppression of Men, Women and Children, of which there are many sub trauma patterns.
The intentional wounding of the masculine is the first step of this strategy, because the Wounded Warrior acts from a place of unchecked rage and bloodlust. He can be fired up and pointed in whatever direction the controllers want.
A healed and empowered man in his warrior aspect will always serve his family and his community with his ultimate gift - his life - to protect them in whatever way he can.
Not so for the the Wounded Warrior.
Another common pattern to weaponise the masculine is to take away everything he loves and cherishes - to orchestrate the killing of his family by ‘others’, to take away his home, his land, his prosperity. To reduce him to nothing but rage and a burning compulsion to avenge his loved ones.
This is the primary weaponisation of the masculine. After that he can be deployed against men, women and children in violence because he has nothing left to live for. His deep rage and shame at not being able to protect those he loved is used against him for the power strategies of those who seek to use his male power for their own ends.
We all have male Ancestors dating back hundreds and thousands of years, who experienced these horrors, and we all carry some degree of that pain within ourselves.
And we all have female Ancestors who also went through these horrors, across many, many generations. We carry their pain too.
We also may have experienced any of these patterns ourselves, in other life-times, and the trauma we carry is that of our own Soul's experiences down our Karmic Lineage.
When the Wounded Warrior is healed in all of us, we will have peace on the earth once more.
When the patterns of Oppression are fully cleared, we will all be free.
It is a work in progress ! But this is the ultimate goal.
For as long as these patterns of Oppression persist, we can never be truly free.
As we witness the latest round of powerful interests seeking to oppress and murder the people of the planet in this most recent and biggest genocide attempt, we would be well advised to heal our own wounds so that we can stand up in our most powerful warrior aspects to defend ourselves and our loved ones.
If we continue to operate from the place of the Wounded Warrior, always throwing our pain at our friends and foes alike, we cannot stand up in our true power, as our power is always bleeding out of our unhealed wounds.
While much of this wounding may not be 'our fault', it is our individual responsibility to heal these wounds, to try to prevent to repetition of these pain patterns further, especially towards those we love.
I hope these reflections and learnings from my own path of experience can help to contextualise and bring compassion to those aspects in others that we deem as ‘toxic’.
Big love to all,
Jo xx
