Umm. That’s every traditional religious book and the entirety of most organized religious institutions and theology schools/seminaries. It’s hardly underrepresented.
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I think you’re talking past each other here
Goddess/feminine spirituality is a sort of self-starter SMB spirituality thing, which is in defiance of orthodoxy
I think QC is trying to talk about the “missing market” of the male equivalent heterodoxy
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In practice, dudes do have their small/localised forms of communion, ritual, meaning - podcasts, video games, sports, alcohol, suits, beards, etc. List goes on. Sometimes dudes will do this sort of thing in a half-ironic way:
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What QC is asking for is a very improbable niche-within-niche thing where the “unit economics” don’t work. Like 1% of straight guys might be interested in “Masculine Spirituality”, and the framing is so contaminated that barely anybody worth talking to is going to touch it
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The thing is, the original (feminine spirituality/goddess stuff) exists largely as an essentialized reaction to very essentialized masculine traditions, so it is a little odd to look for X in a reaction to X.
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Even religions with more foundational accommodation of masculine/feminine aspects of being in practice run as patriarchies. Like Hinduism has the purusa/prakriti dichotomy and China has yin/yang. Yet the priests of goddess cults like Kali tend to be men.
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So women have tended to form heterodox practices that get branded as more “spiritual” precisely *because* they are denied direct participation in the institutions of religion. Men tended not to because they could just participate in the real thing.
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The question of what psychological needs were accommodated in each (can male temple priests cry? Can women in “spiritual” heterodoxies enjoy the pageantry of parades?) is distinct and much messier than modern new age lit might imply.
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I think a more direct way of talking about what QC is getting at is to note that actual men and women sometimes need to do things that are prototypically the preserve of the opposite sex in essentialized roles. Ie where can men go to cry, and where can women go to punch?
maybe it would be helpful to clarify that for me a (mostly hypothetical) "god / masculine spirituality" doesn't look much like patriarchal organized religion. i'm imagining something closer to the mythopoetic men's movement:
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i continue to really like visa's observation that the corresponding masculine desire expresses itself in other ways. we might see e.g. as an expression of a kind of masculine spirituality, that naturally wouldn't call itself that
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It is revealing to look at women who break into “male” behaviors. Like Mulan had to dress as a man to get to fight and save her dad. A more complex story: Andal (only woman among the 12 Alwar mystic poets) had to “marry” a god to get to monastic practice.
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men punching isn’t quite it. where can women go to burn ants with magnifying glasses is closer to the male ideal





