We are bucking ideas like the picture above (as much as that has been the best my experience in a loving relationship). Modern me, for the most part, believe that women deserve equal respect in society. The problem that I see is that men are all too willing to reject ALL of the old definitions of what it means to be a man sometimes, because of how badly we've been let down by our male "role-models" throughout our lives.
For most young men, our role models came through music, calling women "bitches" and "hoes" in rap or screaming out emo confessions of a love so "strong" in can be suicidal. These are contradictory and confusing notions. Women have not had it any easier with their programming of becoming "complete" in a relationship, but simultaneously being "independent women". Our fake culture is definitely to blame, marketing that our parents had never experienced on such a sophisticated level; they were the "beta test".
HOW I LEARNED TO BE A "MAN"
I grew up believing that my mother and father had an "ideal" relationship. As I grew into puberty, into adulthood, I began to see the discrepancies, the differences between my imaginary perceptions of the "perfect" parents and what really was. My father left our family when I was a teenager, and I had to come to accept that although he did the best he could with the tools he was given, he'd learned how to abandon from his father. I was lucky enough to have a father all the way into my teens, but in the end, I realized that he'd stayed for so long to prove a point. He hadn't had his biological father grow up with him and as a result, did have an "identity" as a man. My grandfather was a pimp at one time (a real pimp), and from what my father knew of him molded his "Quasimodo" male identity and he'd limped on ever since.
I was raised by a "macho-man" who increased the strain in his own life by continuously trying to prove it. In the process, he smothered my mother, and didn't allow her to bloom like the flower she was. Long story short, I am a man now. I have my own family and my own partner. Nothing has been more infuriating that watching myself (genetically/psychologically) re-enact the scenes my father dealt with in his struggle for "manhood".
Then one day I said, "Fuck it." Not because I had given up, but because I had GIVEN IN. I collapsed into the love that I was witnessing unfolding before myself everyday, from my kids, from my woman. That ever unfolding love taught me that Being a man isn't about being in control, it is about riding the waves of uncertainty and learning to be reborn everyday, being better everyday.
EMBRACING BIOLOGY
The human biology, formed over millennia, is perhaps the most miraculous thing I've experienced. We see the importance of the X-Chromosone (female) to cognitive abilities and higher intelligence HERE. We also can see the impact that a relationship (especially one that involves intercourse) can have on the female biology HERE. However, the most amazing aspect of WOMAN (or how my hippy friends spell it Womb-man) is the ability to give birth, to grow something from nothing and create all that the life form needs to survive on FROM THE INSIDE-OUT!!
I watched my children be born, naturally, vaginally. Yeah, it can be gross sometimes, but that is the carry over from our ancestors. It is what makes us human, connected to the earth. The fluids that the baby travels through in the birth canal and out of the vagina, coat him/her in a plethora of healthy bacteria, protecting the baby from illness. The mother's milk is filled with nutrients that boost the immune system and increase the child's brain size many times over! The act of nursing, breast-feeding creates so many neuronal connections that will be beneficial for the child over the course of their lifetimes!!
WOMEN ARE GODDESSES TO BE WORSHIPED! DESIGNED AND BUILT BY NATURE TO GIVE LOVE INDISCRIMINATELY!
Now before you think I've gone off the deep end, let me be perfectly clear. The Japanese, in their religion of Shinto worship nature. The Taoists of China worship the changes of nature and the patterns that influence man. Many of the numerous Native American tribes of North and South America understood the rhythms of nature, their importance. Many African tribes, the Dogon are of note, studied the stars through astronomy to make sense of their place in the cosmos. THEY ALL WORSHIPPED NATURE, but I assure you, that did not mean that they fell to their knees and started kissing the ground when a wild bear or lion or whatever flew out of the bush trying to kill them.
I worship the IDEA of WOMAN, the feminine energy, just as I worship my own (masculine). When we give praise to the gifts given to us by...WHATEVER, we come closer to knowing the truth of ourselves. I'm not saying fall over and grovel every time some Basic Bitch walks by. What I am saying is we should all worship her potential.
To worship woman is to worship ourselves, our own divinity, because there is not one man on this planet that did not come from one. So in essence, the male-feminists are right (to an extent). A woman is something to be adored. However, in our plastic culture of capitalist marketing, men have the smallest slice of the pie. Women account for 85% of retail sales. This could be the reason why men (and their importance) has been so marginalized as of late, in the media. They aren't seen as important to the money hungry corporate marketeers.
We must get back to the balance of things. Men need to stand up and be "MEN" finding their own definitions that complete the biological circuit, finding bliss in the ever expanding journey of the human race. And Women need to stand up and be "WOMEN" instead of pawns in a marketing scheme, consistently triggered by the phrase "War on Women", barely recovered from the PTSD of the past century (I GET IT).
In the end, although I have my critiques of both genders, I am a true believer in the power of P***Y!
We will overcome the bulls*** together.
You guys are nothing but pure magic....