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:
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
wasn't asking for it, think the disparity is interesting and i like these takes on it. i think you're right that the sort of corresponding masculine impulse expresses itself in other ways, no nut november is a legitimately good example
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
I get that. My point is, there’s a reason those things are rare and difficult to institutionalize and sustain. It’s because organized religion has actually done a much better job meeting men’s needs than you might think, in ways that don’t threaten essentialized masculinities.