Was Jesus a Girlie-man?

One of the things that has bothered me for many, many years is the strict father "lone wolf" myth perpetrated via what I call "The John Wayne Syndrome". Tough, rugged, hard driving, hard drinking, bare knuckle tough guy. You know, The Duke. Whoa. I think Hollywood drempt up this fictionized version of history, especially "The Old West", and then got caught up in it's own tale spinning. I think they actually believe this fictional nonsense. That's the problem I had with Ronnie Reagan, an actor who was given a carefully crafted script, stuck to it and died not even knowing the world around him, lost in his own fictionalized version of reality.

Too many men (and their Sarah Palin admirers) in this nation believe to be a "man" is to be; tough, rigid emotionally, suspect of anyone who is not a "good American" (whatever that is), hard fighting and hard drinking, and homophobic. I suspect that many so called macho men are homophobic because deep down inside they do not know how to handle normal sexual desires and wind up covering their confusion by projecting it on others.

For 10 years I worked with many men in The ManKind Project, and their New Warrior Weekends. One of our philosophic gurus was Robert Bly, author of Iron John. I worked with dozens of men who, like me, were attempting to conquer the greatest, scariest and most dangerous frontiers left to us; our own inner world. We worked hard over many weeks and years at understanding who we were and are, what conditioning lead us to shut down, become emotionally dysfunctional. What we, to a man, learned is that the cultural models we have been conditioned by are largely self destructive.

We learn as boys that "big boys don't cry", learn early on shut down our feelings, leaving us with anger as our only acceptable emotional outlet. We learn to work thru pain, (not always a bad thing, if just temporary) and thus over time destroy our bodies as well as our minds and hearts and by extension, our souls.

On the New Warrior Weekends we found that for most men getting in touch with the rage we often feel within opens us to the many other emotions, especially the love we have been told to shut down, to deny ourselves. We learned that to cry is not being a "girlie-man". Real men cry, laugh, love, take tough stands when needed, help others and that being gentle (as in "gentle-man") is healthy ... and sexy. Women really open to a man who is touch with who he is; they feel safe in his presence.

Once we open to who we are, adopt healthier behavior, learn to speak from the heart as well as we do from our heads, we gradually heal many of our wounds, learn to love ourselves and then by extension, others. A week or so after the weekend we have a celebration, a graduation ceremony to which we invite the loved ones in each new brothers life. I don't know how many times I heard a wife stand and say in a tearful voice, "Thank you for giving me back my husband."

The ManKind Project now has 30 or more centers in the US and many more in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, Australia and most recently New Zealand. I've lost count how many thousands of men (perhaps by now over 100 thousand) have graduated for our weekends and now help literally thousands, in many countries, to conquer their inner frontier.

This training shows here on this site in the ways I am open to expressing my feelings, making I suspect, some folks uncomfortable. If I do, please do not hestitate to share your discomfort with me and why. I learn much from honest feedback. I'll offer you mine.

What my brothers and I have most learned is the John Wayne image is 1. a sterotype, one we can not live up to, and 2. that doing so is self destructive. If we in this progressive Christian community can in anyway counter or even destroy this self detructive male sterotype, we will do our nation and, by extension, the world a huge service.

Yes, by all means, let us define for ourselves and then share via a white paper the many images of who we think Jesus was, and is for us today. A good healthy Jesus definition and the expression His working living teachings, is just what I think this world needs now.

Yeah, "what the world needs now is love, sweet love. That's only the thing that there's just too little of."

I brought up Schwarzenegger's "girlie-man" line during our Theology Panel discussion because I had recently seen a film clip, probably on The Daily Show, of his speech at the 2004 RNC when he opposed pessimism about the economy by saying "don't be economic girlie men". The phrase had always annoyed me and I had long thought that it could be turned against the conservative "strict father" proponents if we indignantly pointed out that "girlie man" is an implicit attack on Jesus, his teachings, and especially his compassion.

Interestingly, the UK has its own version of "girlie men" -- "the wets". Margaret Thatcher, taking up schoolboy slang for those who are weak, sentimental, and "soppy" (presumably meaning prone to cry or to tear up), used "wet" and "wets" to express contempt for her opponents. And now they're general terms of derision for liberals and 'left-wing' ideas. By way of contrast, the hard-line conservatives became known as "dries", with a program of reducing public spending, cutting taxes (for the rich), deregulation, and the like. Sounds familiar, eh?

I mention the UK because it illustrates for me the centrality of the fear of compassion as an expression of femininity.

The common element seems to be the association of compassion with weakness. And to appear weak is the great fear of those who value a rather ruthless form of strength and who seek to validate themselves through displays of strength, while perhaps - in some, many, or even most cases - having doubts and fears about their actual strength. And what could be weaker in the eyes of a dominating man -- or of a woman, like Thatcher, performing in a culturally defined dominating male role -- than a woman?

What I conclude about Jesus is that he was, perhaps above everything else and in spite of passages like the three references to casting people into 'outer darkness', a man of compassion. Thus, if one accepts the narrowest form of the strict/nurturant-father framing, Jesus is in fact the very model of the girlie man. He's the opposite of a dominator.

I think that illustrates the defect of the frame. I think we should undermine, rather than work with, the oppositional categories of 'strict' and 'nurturant' fathers. What underlies Lakoff's and our usage is simply a crude male/female opposition. "Strict father" isn't really opposed to "nurturant father". The opposition is with "nurturant mother". Indeed, "wet" probably carries some of the emotional weight of "lactating" and other female phenomena. Horrors! There goes our manhood, guys.

So, to break this culturally arbitrary but culturally meaningful strict/nurturant father frame that Lakoff describes, perhaps we should promote a different frame. Offhand, it occurs to me that the gospels provide one that's appropriate in this context: the Good Shepherd. Good shepherding involves protecting, directing, teaching, leading, caring, rescuing -- and empathizing, even with sheep and especially with children. Good fathers are good shepherds. Dominating fathers are not; they're bad shepherds who frighten their little flocks and lead them into valleys of the shadow of dysfunction. The same goes for mothers.

Thus, if we take Lakoff's frames literally, then Jesus is androgynous -- quite the girlie man. But that's contemptuous. Not just to him but especially to women, as well as to gay men. Jesus is a strong man. Confident, so that he doesn't try to dominate. Compassionate and empathic, because he's so strong that he has no fear of being labeled a weak girlie man. Bold and venturesome; meditative and contemplative. And, circling back to the starting point, androgynous -- but in a unifying sense, as he's a universal model for men and women, for all gender categories. Androgynous, because it makes gender irrelevant.

I'm not sure what language best goes with a Good Shepherd/Bad Shepherd frame. Or maybe there's a better frame that uses some of these elements. A bad shepherd, like a bad president, is confused, doesn't know the territory, has forgotten the way from the pasture back to the sheepfold, cries wolf randomly and frightens the sheep by running around screaming, etc. A down side to a shepherd frame is in the extension of the metaphor to those who are cast in the role of sheep. However appropriate that may be at times, it's not a frame that promotes democratic ideas.

Needs work.

Bill

This subject was covered in Stephen Prothero's book, "American Jesus" He showed the historical development of the image of Jesus that during the Victorian era was rather effeminate, but along the way in America the image got "toughened up." One of the greatest parts of the book are the accompanying illustrations documenting the various views. I'll have to pull it off my shelf to get some more details for this discussion.

The image that first comes to mind for me when I think of Jesus is the one Marcus Borg presents, that of the radical who so threatened the status quo that the powers that be that they killed him. That's no girlie-man. Of course there is the irony that Gandhi's imitation of Christ sure looked "girlie-mannish" albeit he was obviously the most powerful player in the struggle of his time.

both devine and human. I believe his humanity allowed him all traits of man. I've never cared for the SNL musclebuilder skit & don't really care for the term. Sorry. Was Christ effeminate? Was he an example of an ultra masculine male? Or was he all things human?
I understand the purpose of your gest, to foster discussion, but I have to take issue with use of a negative sterotype.