"Sometimes I need God to be male!" Hugo Schwyzer

By Hugo Schwyzer, from Good Men Project website, October 12, 2011

Hugo Schwyzer has taught history and gender studies at Pasadena City College since 1993, where he developed the college's first courses on Men and Masculinity and Beauty and Body Image. He serves as co-director of the Perfectly Unperfected Project, a campaign to transform young people's attitudes around body image and fashion. Hugo lives with his wife, daughter, and six chinchillas in Los Angeles. Hugo blogs at his eponymous website and at Healthy Is the New Skinny.

In one of the first religious studies courses I took in college, the professor made a point that the God of the Bible is neither male nor female. We learned that to call the Lord, “He” misrepresented the original intent of the Torah, and that we’d be better off not using pronouns at all. If anything, my professor said, citing Genesis 5:1-2, God was both male and female—and more as well. After all, how could both men and women be made in God’s image if God didn’t have a feminine aspect?

A few years later, when I was auditing courses at the Graduate Theological Union and exploring a possible vocation to the priesthood (an idea that didn’t last long), I encountered feminist theology. I learned about God’s feminine aspect. For example, Hosea 13:8 describes God as a mother bear robbed of her cubs, while Jesus compares himself to a mother hen in Luke 13:34. I remember one of my classmates, a woman studying for ordination as an Episcopal priest, remarking that the more she studied Scripture, the more she realized that God was more female than male. “God is a nurturer,” she noted, “more like a mother than a father.”
While considering that career as a Catholic priest, I saw how the refusal to acknowledge the feminine aspect of God led to an intense devotion to Mary. The Virgin, I was told, was the tender intercessor who could plead for humanity to a more judgmental (or at the very least, less gentle) masculine God. The implication was clear: not only was God male, God’s masculinity was a barrier to empathy—hence the need for a woman to intercede to remind Him to go easy, like a mother pleading with her husband to lighten up on the discipline.
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What I found frustrating was that the feminist theologians arguing for the primarily feminine aspect of God and the conservative Catholics wrapped in Marian devotion were essentially saying the same thing: maleness can’t be nurturing. My friend, the liberal Episcopalian, believed God was tender—and therefore female. My traditionalist Catholic buddies believed that a thoroughly masculine God had largely outsourced His compassion to Mary. Both ignored the obvious other possibility.
Of course, many people have excellent reasons to be put off by masculine language and imagery for God. For men and women who’ve had strained or abusive relationships with their own fathers, calling God, “Father,”doesn’t happen easily. For many straight Christian men, the romantic vocabulary of evangelical culture can also be off-putting. (One of the standard critiques of contemporary praise music is the ubiquitous “Jesus is my Boyfriend” theme in so many worship songs.) For people who have been wounded by father figures, or who struggle to imagine intimacy with a man, using exclusively male language for God can be a real barrier to spiritual connection.
But at the same time, we need to acknowledge the radical and simple truth that men can be as tender as women. A father can nurture his children with every bit as much love and devotion as their mother. A fully adult man doesn’t need women to intercede to remind him of his responsibility to be compassionate. But when our only vocabulary for gentleness is feminine, we don’t acknowledge men’s capacity to be gentle. And when we label every loving action of God as evidence of God’s femaleness, we miss the point that God’s male aspect is every bit as kind.
From both a spiritual and historical-grammatical standpoint, God is neither male nor female—and at the same time, both male and female. It’s vital that we listen to what feminist Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Wiccan theologians are saying about the feminine aspect of the divine. Yes, God is a mother figure. But that’s only half the story. The paradox is that God is also a father figure—just a very different kind of father than the one celebrated in Western culture.
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We need to see that from a biblical perspective, God isn’t “being male” when he gets angry and “being female” when he weeps over human suffering. God is both when he does both. In that light, perhaps the rigid gender roles we prescribe in our culture aren’t God’s plan, but instead a man-made consequence of our inability to discern God’s intent for our lives. By embodying what are stereotypically male and female characteristics simultaneously, God just may be reminding us that we too are called to break out of the gender straitjacket.
In a world where so many men do abandon their responsibilities and where violence (almost) always wears a male face, there’s something revolutionary about acknowledging that a father figure can be forgiving, empathetic, gentle, and reliable. There’s also something equally significant about acknowledging that a mother figure can be a passionate, bold, relentless—even angry—advocate for justice. Anything less not only robs God of God’s full divinity, but robs us of our full potential as human beings.
I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the gender of God. But I do know that following God means moving beyond the confines of traditional, limiting roles. As a dad, I appreciate the reminder that papas can and should be every bit as tender and loving as mamas. And so sometimes, this professor of gender studies calls God “father.” Not because that’s all God is, but because those of us who are also daddies need a reminder of just how loving, passionate, and tender we are called to be.


In a world where so many men do abandon their responsibilities and where violence (almost) always wears a male face, there’s something revolutionary about acknowledging that a father figure can be forgiving, empathetic, gentle, and reliable.
I lifted this quote from the Schwyzer piece, because it jumped out at me, and I recall my own classes in seminary where God was championed as female, by all the feminists in the class, and those of us of the "other gender" were quite happy to remain compliant. I even recall attempting to get the attention of a rural parish meeting when someone near the end of the meeting opined, "May God Bless our little church and the people in it"...to which I interjected, "I am confident She will!" to the amazement of those present.
Androgyny is not part of the normal discourse in contemporary society; not the androgyny of the female population, nor that of the male population, and certainly not the qualities attributed to God.
Needing God to be male is a completely normal and expected reaction to the tsunami of talk about the feminized God.
Another observation on the piece above is the "mother" does not constitute the total female character, nor father the whole male character, of either humans or God. And such a reduction, as is the case with almost all reductions, perpetuates the "parent" God, as opposed to the "male" or the "female" God.
One of the most heinous aspects of Christian ministry is the rendering of parishoners as children before a parent God...as if such a metaphor appropriated the normal, accepted and expected relationship between God and humans.
The church has, for far too long, abrogated the parent role, as its way of cozying up to power and control, premised on an out-of-control, savage, even undisciplined race called homo sapiens. Telling its parishoners what to do, when to do it, how to pray, and when to do that, how to "love" and when to do that, how to donate and when to do that, the meaning and purpose of sexuality including when and with whom to engage in that activity...these are all controlling interventions in order to demonstrate the utility of the church's role in one's life...as a regulator.
Whereas, there is considerable evidence that the regulator role is based on the fear of the church hierarchy that those in its "charge" will bring dishonour and disrepute upon the organization, if left free to make autonomous choices. There is also considerable evidence that the regulator role simply does not work, but certainly creates an virtually insurmountable wall between those "inside" and those "outside" who do have, have not, or will not fully comply with whatever rules the church sets out.
I always thought/believed/felt/intuited...that God wanted me to be "alive" in all aspects of my existence, not regulated by some permanent parent whose regulations were more important than my own rebellion. Perhaps if the church were to begin from the premise that humans are innately "good" and "seek to do good" although can also be deceived by self and others, then the premise of "sin" as a starting place for the definition of human beings would rightly atrophy, and perhaps then we could proceed to experience the awesome nature of God's gifts of life and grace in our lives, regardless of the specific "umbrella" or membership we chose, or not.
So long as we are still struggling with our definition of a deity, we will continue to struggle with our definition of our own gender, given the intimate link between our identity and our picture and relationship to God.

Manlands at IKEA, perpetuating the baby-man meme

By Katrina Onstad, Globe and Mail, Occtober 8, 2011

Last month, in a ham-fisted effort to minimize spousal unit tension, an IKEA in Sydney, Australia temporarily installed Manland. Much like Smaland, IKEA’s bubble room and crafts centre for children, Manland is filled with stimulating diversions (foosball, hot dogs) for men unable to shop without a meltdown. “Some men may pretend to enjoy the shopping experience,” a reporter enthused in a news clip on Australian TV. “We all know they’d prefer to be playing an Xbox or watching the footy than pushing a trolley!” Word! High five!
The set of assumptions behind Manland doesn’t flatter either sex. Once again, here comes the baby-man meme, wherein men are unable and unwilling to participate in the rote side of domestic life. These are the same guys who steal breakfast cereal from their kids in ads or are played by Jim Belushi on sitcoms.
Upholding the clichés of masculinity – real men hate shopping and love Space Invaders – doesn’t make men manlier; it makes them seem a little pathetic. To be a man – or any kind of adult – is to participate fully in your relationship and muster up a civil opinion on a bath mat from time to time. Manland is a country populated by the lowest form of manhood: the whiner who can’t even put aside his own (adolescent) proclivities for an hour to help his wife carry a Shrömpfken – one that he’s probably going to enjoy sleeping on himself.
I’m not sure what’s less appealing: a man who wants to go to Manland or a woman who wants to “drop off” her husband there. Every baby-man in pop culture has his counterpart in the eye-rolling/arms-across-the- chest bemused female killjoy. Manland perpetuates the myth that ladies love shopping only slightly more than they love demoralizing their husbands.
The baby-man meme...where the undeveloped, immature, withdrawn and self-indulgent narcissistic male of the species is 'dropped-off' by his more mature, gregarious, interdependent and integrated female partner in order to reduce the potential for a "melt-down" usually associated with two-year-old temper tantrums...hmmmmmm!
This is not a good picture for any "Y" chromosome-bearing "homo sapiens". In fact, it is so regressive, so insulting and so pathetic as to be another sign of the tragedy that is 21st century masculinity, or at least its portrayal and even its widely held stereotype in the minds, eyes and hearts of many women.And apparently, in the boardroom of IKEA.
There is a pattern to much of what is perceived as "reality" in current vernacular, and thereby current perceptions. Just as the definition of depression in the DSM IV is derived from the descriptions of female patients/clients from practicing psychiatrists, so too is the definition of healthy masculinity derived, we suspect, from the cynical, victimized and too-frequent female conversation in all workplaces, coffee shops, docctors' offices, and soccer practices. Women talk about their men to other women. Men, on the other hand, are sworn to silence, as if it were a code of honour, both to other men and to women.
Fifteen years after I left a marriage of twenty-three years, a marriage that included three daughters, I met a former colleague with whom I had worked and commuted for well nigh twenty years. His first comment, not having spoken with me in the interim, was, "I never heard you say anything negative about your former spouse!"
To which I responded, "Well, no one else did either! Those are private matters left better in that private file."
On the other hand, at this very moment, in hospitals, police stations, ambulance stations, banks, professional offices of every genre, schools, universities and even corporations, women are, among other things, "drubbing out their men" for irresponsibility, for negligence, for passive aggressive attitudes and behaviour, for missing an important date on the calendar, for "going out to play" when the family, or the leaky faucet needed serious attention. Women seem to be fed by such conversations, perhaps because it reinforces the victim archetype in which many have been stuck for many decades.
It was Carol Pearson (The Hero Within) who pointed out barely a decade or two ago that North American society was/is (?) dominated by two archetypes, the victim (women) and the warrior (men). In the public media, in advertising, in film and television, such archetypes (morphed into stereotypes) set the "norm" and billions of dollars of television programming in both revenues and expenditures circulate around the depiction of these two archetypes, sometimes in exclusively male conversation (Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory) or in exclusively female conversation (Desperate Housewives)...Of course, the women's liberation movement was originally designed to point out the legitimate stengths, capabilities and leadership qualities of all women, in the hope that most, if not all, would rise to the top of the corporate, professional and even political ladder in their field, thereby levelling the playing field in status, in pay and in role modelling with men.
The men of my acquaintance, who have done the work of acknowledging our single-minded pursuit of power/money/status to the neglect of our families and our emotional development for the first half century of our lives and have followed that 'confession' with a new, less stressful and less ambitious path to a greater degree of both inner peace and relationship accord, without having in any way abandoned our masculinity, are clearly not the majority. In fact, we threaten other mostly younger men who, so far, have not hit their wall, or seen the light, depending on the "fish-in-the-face" that has struck them in a painful epiphany.
So there is not only a macro division between women and men, but a slightly less macro, but still not micro separation among different groups of men. And this division, including how "macho" men react to gay men in such a frightened and alienating manner, is at least as problematic to the evolution of masculinity, as is the continuing sandpaper roughness that comprises many male-female partnerships.
There is a significant need for straight men to embrace (not in the physical, but in the political sense) gay men. Men like Brian Burke, hardly a male insecure about his masculinity, attending and putting a public face on the Gay Pride Parade in Toronto, in honour of his deceased gay son make a significant contribution to the integration of gay and straight men. Of course, the current Mayor of Toronto's refusal to attend that same parade, preferring the "cottage" for the weekend, tip the scales back into the predictable, proverbial separation between the two groups.
Similarly, the issue of fighting in pro hockey is an example of the divide between the "macho" defenders and the "evolved" agents of change. Don Cherry fills his bank account selling video of hockey violence, some of it acceptable, much of it potential career and/or life threatening, all of dedicated to preserving a "rough" and "natural" form of masculinity, to the denigration of a more sophisticated, intellectual and creative pursuit of the same rubber disc. While public opinion polls demonstrate that 74% of those asked would prefer to see fighting removed from the game, leaving only 24% supporting its being retained, fights are replayed on the television screens inside and outside the arenas, as a last gasp of air for the museum pieces they ought to have become decades ago.
Fighting about fighting is really analogous to the debates that have occurred for the last twenty years about the dnagers of cigarette smoke, both primary and secondary. Everyone knows about the dangers and the risks, and yet the ardevaarks prevail, because change will hurt the game, or (upspoken) change will reduce the opportunity for men to be real men.
In many ways, this is a clinging to a fossil of the past, for the sake of denying the present and the future. Men can be diligent, competive, resourceful and disciplined, and uphold their (and our) masculinity while playing any game, including professional hockey, without once raising their fist, or taking a deliberate shot at the head of an opponent. Fast-paced skills, anticipation, creativity, imagination, intuition including open-ice body checks do not, and will not downgrade the game. In fact, they will always enhance the game, and the spectators' appreciation for it.
It is a desperate clinging to a long-worn-out stereotype that infuses too much of North American life that must be put to rest. A story from a pulp and paper mill, relayed through a safety officer may illustrate my point. A new recruit was using a metal pole to roll a large roll of paper (several tons in weight) along the floor, when a veteran of the plant noticed. "That's not how we do it here!" he shouted, putting his shoulder into the roll to accomplish the procedure in his "manly" manner. When the young recruit attempted to regain his masculinity in front of the critic, he dislocated his shoulder, requiring medical attention, incurring significant costs for the health care system and failing to help the older generation evolve to a more safe, less "physical" in the body sense way of doing things in that plant.
It is the division between the "effete" males (words chosen by the stereotype of masculinity) and the "real men" (again words chosen by the same group) that is at issue here. And to paint this as a male-female conflict is to miss the essential ingredient of the conflcit. It is, essentially, an internal conflict within each man that has no, or very little. public expression in a conciliatory and collegial manner to guide men into full acceptance of their own complex reality.
Only if and when men, all men, both straight and gay, become comfortable in our own reality, and with each other will this chasm be bridged. When we come to acknowledge that 10% of all men are gay, including those in the NHL, the NFL, the NBA, the IFFA, and the World Cup of Football, and openly agree that they too are legitimate members of the "Y" chromosome fraternity, without fear, without rancour, without bigotry and without sepregation will there be some opening of the door and window of opportunity to bringing about healing of this age-old separation between and among men.