The Gospel of Feminine Qualities: What We Choose To Exalt
This week has been heavy, and it has left me thinking about the bigger picture, about what happens when we live life so out of balance, and when the qualities we honor and lift up as a culture become lopsided.
This is part of why I began writing The Gospel of the Feminine in the first place: to explore what we call the “Dark Feminine.” Not dark because she is bad or evil, but because she has been hidden away, shamed, repressed. The Dark Feminine holds all the qualities we’ve been told to silence such as compassion, nurture, and the insistence that everyone’s dignity be honored. She is the quiet force that fixes another woman’s crown without making a show of it, who wants everyone to rise together.
Yet, we live in a society that does not value those things. Instead, we glorify their opposite. We glorify the hyper-masculine: domination, aggression, conquest. We idolize the warmongers and the fighters. Even our entertainment reflects this obsession, the hero’s journey almost always ends in violence. The hero is almost always a man with a weapon, wiping out “the bad guys,” who are conveniently of whatever nationality or identity we are vilifying at that moment.
Once upon a time, the bad guys were Germans. Later, they were Russians, think of Red Dawn, where the imagined horror was Russian boots on American soil. For decades now, the “bad guys” have been Middle Eastern men, Muslims, people whose faces and faiths have been flattened into a single caricature of danger. We cheer as they are killed on-screen. Meanwhile, we laugh at films that center the feminine gaze. The movies that lead with love, tenderness, empathy, and relational healing. We call them “chick flicks,” dismiss them as trivial.
Then we wonder why our society is so fractured.
Look at the people we exalt in real life. Men who lie, who boast of harm, who abuse their power. Donald Trump is the clearest example, a man convicted on 34 felony counts, who bragged about sexually assaulting women, who has a long record of racist statements and behavior. This is a man who took out full-page newspaper ads condemning five Black boys in New York, the Central Park Five, despite there being no proof they had committed the crime they were accused of. Yet he is elevated to hero status, turned into an icon, hailed by some as a savior of the nation.
Why are those the qualities we choose to look up to?
Why do we glorify aggression but scoff at compassion? Why do we trust bullies but doubt peacemakers? Why do we dismiss feminine qualities as soft or weak when they are the very ones that have kept communities alive through the worst of times?
These are the questions I want to explore next week. Because until we examine why we keep exalting war over wisdom, violence over vulnerability, and hardness over humanity, we will continue to build a society that reflects those values. When we do, we shouldn’t be surprised when fear, anger, and division keep repeating themselves because they are the natural fruit of what we keep planting.
Who Are We Being Protected From?
Before we flow into the next blog, I need to pause here and name something that feels essential to this conversation. Our previous generations conditioned men to believe that so much of this behavior was acceptable and conditioned women to stand by them while they did it.
Charlie Kirk’s wife is a prime example. She stood by him, smiling brightly for the cameras, even as he said on a public podcast that if one of their daughters were raped and became pregnant, that child would still be brought into the world regardless of the harm done to his daughter’s body or mind. This is a man who actively worked to strip women, including his own daughters, of their rights to bodily autonomy, and she stood beside him and beamed. I have to ask: why?
I think I know why, at least in part. Because he afforded her a lifestyle.
I’ve seen this dynamic in my own life. Lately, I’ve struggled to recognize my own mother. The woman who once taught me kindness and compassion, who modeled those qualities for me as a child, seems to have reserved them only for her children and her family. Somewhere along the line, they stopped extending beyond the walls of our home. And when I look back at the men she chose, I see the pattern clearly. They reflect the damage done to her.
Even my maternal grandfather, who I loved deeply and have fond memories of, was a hardened man. A child of the Great Depression, WWII veteran,truck driver, and provider. The quintessential “manly man.” He was also one of the only men in my life who did not hurt me, and I think I always knew that on some level he loved me. But I never once heard him say the words “I love you.” His first wife died young, leaving him with two daughters, and within months he remarried not because he was ready to love again, but because he didn’t know how to raise children on his own. Affection was not part of the deal, provision was.
I see this same story repeating itself now in my mother’s marriage. Last Christmas, my husband asked my stepdad what he was getting my mom for a present. He just looked up at the ceiling and said, “This house, that’s her gift. I already got it for her.” As though a roof over her head was the pinnacle of affection. My mother is married to a racist, a bigot, a sexist, a man who looks down on anyone he deems beneath him and yet she stays, because he affords her the lifestyle she is living.
This is what I mean when I say “kept woman.” This has been the arrangement for generations: women remain silent, we tolerate the harm, and in exchange we are given security. But this is largely a white woman’s privilege. Black women did not have this option, they had to work, they had to fight, they had to earn their keep twice over.
That is how we’ve arrived here. The masculine has taken over every facet of our public and private lives, and the bar for men has been set astonishingly low. As long as a man keeps a roof over his family’s head and food on the table, he is celebrated as a “good man.” God forbid he changes a diaper, then we treat him like a saint. We use words like “babysitting” when he watches his own children for an hour so his wife can take a shower, as though parenting were not also his responsibility.
Women do these things every single day, without applause, without recognition, without being called heroes for it. And that is the heart of what I am saying: we have lowered the bar for men so far that simply meeting the most basic requirements of partnership and parenthood is treated as exceptional. Meanwhile, women are expected to give everything, hold everything together, and carry the emotional labor of entire households, quietly and without complaint.
This is not accidental. It is generational conditioning and it is the system we have inherited. Here’s where I think we need to go deeper.
Because when men think about who they idolize, they often pick the man who looks the strongest, the man who could do the most damage if he had to. They gravitate toward the action hero, the soldier, the man with the gun. Often, they assume that this is what women want too: the muscled-up version of Hugh Jackman, flexing in his Wolverine glory. But if you look at where women are actually looking, you’ll see something else entirely. Women are buying the magazines where Hugh Jackman is in a soft knit sweater, smiling gently, baking something in a cozy kitchen. That is what feels safe. That is what feels approachable. So why do we as a culture keep lifting up the man who can do the most harm as our idea of security? Because it doesn’t actually make us feel safe.
There was a survey that asked women, “What would you do if there were no men on earth?” The answers were heartbreakingly simple: go for a walk at night, wear the outfit I love without fear, jog with headphones on, sit on a park bench and read in peace. Just ordinary things that many men take for granted. Which raises the question: if men claim they are here to protect us, who exactly are they protecting us from? The answer, almost every time, is other men. Men who rape, harass, stalk, murder, and abuse. Men who commit the overwhelming majority of mass shootings. Men who make public space dangerous for women.
This is something we need to sit with. Because if protection from other men is the foundation of masculinity, maybe the problem is not that women need to be protected, maybe the problem is that men are the ones we need protection from. That is where I want to take my readers next week. Because there is a story behind how we got here, and it is a story about the feminine, a story that has been buried for generations, a story I am beginning to untangle as I reflect on my own mother, my own lineage, and the generations of women who came before me.
Feminine Qualities Are Not A Weakness…They Are Our Superpower
What I really want to do at the end of this post is call us to something higher. I want us to start questioning why we keep equating softness with weakness, and why we’ve allowed ourselves to believe that the qualities we call “feminine” (compassion, patience, gentleness, nurture) are somehow lesser. These qualities are not luxuries or nice-to-haves in society. They are not naïve. They are not weak. If anything, they are the very qualities that demand the most courage from us.
Anger is easy. Bigotry is easy. Sexism, anti-intellectualism, and narrow-mindedness are easy. They are knee-jerk reactions that require no self-awareness, no reflection, no accountability. They give people permission to lash out rather than sit with their discomfort. But compassion asks something harder of us. Love asks something harder. Patience asks us to stay present when we want to run away. Understanding forces us to sit in the tension between our own pain and someone else’s and search for connection instead of reaching for a weapon. These things take time. They take energy. They take strength.
Women know this strength in our bones, even though we’ve been told for generations that we are weak. We have been told we are fragile, that we need protection, that we are too soft for the world, when in reality, we are some of the strongest creatures walking this earth. God forbid we hand a period cramp simulator to a man, one of those devices that sends electric pulses to mimic the pain many women live with monthly, because you will see him double over while most women stand still, calm and collected, saying, “Yes, I’ve felt worse.” Because we have felt worse. We have bled through the night with pain so sharp it took our breath away or made us vomit, and still we would get up to take care of children, go to work, and keep the house running. We have endured childbirth, ruptured cysts, fibroids, endometriosis, hemorrhages… pain that has split us open and left scars and we have gone back to work before we were even fully healed. I went back to work two weeks after giving birth and was considered lucky that I had that much time.
This is not weakness. This is resilience. This is strength.
I think this is where we have to push back against the narrative that compassion, love, and care are lesser qualities, or that they make us vulnerable in the wrong ways. These are not qualities to hide or be ashamed of. They are not weaknesses to “balance out” with toughness. They are the strongest forces we have, and they are exactly what our society needs right now if we are going to move forward in any meaningful way.
That is where I want to leave you today, not with an answer, not with a neat conclusion, but with an invitation to sit with this and to question the story you have been told about strength. Next week, I want to continue this conversation by telling The Feminine Story, about what happens when these qualities are buried, about the cost of living in a world where the masculine has taken over everything, and about what it looks like to bring these hidden qualities back into the light where they belong.
Reframing the “Feminine” Qualities
Before we close, I want to offer you an exercise, not as homework, but as an invitation. This is an exercise in reframing how we see the feminine, and by “feminine,” I don’t just mean women, but the qualities we have labeled as feminine for generations. Too often, these qualities are dismissed as soft, submissive, or weak. What I want you to do as you read this list is to notice those thoughts when they come up, the little voice that says, “Yes, but isn’t compassion just enabling?” or “Patience is fine, but isn’t it just passivity?” Then I want you to gently push back. I want you to consider what it might mean to see these qualities as strengths, as vital skills that our culture desperately needs. Because if we want to move toward a society that heals rather than fractures, that nurtures rather than destroys, these are the qualities we must learn to exalt, honor, and embrace. If we keep glorifying aggression, domination, and violence as the highest forms of strength, we will continue walking a path that leads only to more division and eventually, to destruction.
Compassion
• Why it’s seen as weak: Considered overly emotional, naïve, or enabling “bleeding heart” behavior that lets people take advantage.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Compassion takes courage. It forces us to see the pain of others without turning away and inspires change more effectively than fear or punishment.
Patience
• Why it’s seen as weak: Interpreted as passivity or a lack of ambition, “just waiting around.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Patience is active endurance, the ability to hold steady through discomfort and make wise decisions instead of rash ones.
Empathy
• Why it’s seen as weak: Said to cloud judgment or make people “too sensitive.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Empathy builds trust, helps resolve conflict, and allows us to understand what motivates others, essential for leadership and community.
Gentleness
• Why it’s seen as weak: Mistaken for fragility or submissiveness, “too soft to handle the real world.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Gentleness is controlled strength. It diffuses volatile situations and turns conflict into collaboration.
Nurturing
• Why it’s seen as weak: Dismissed as invisible “women’s work” that doesn’t matter outside the home.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Nurturing sustains life, it grows people, ideas, and communities. It’s the foundation for long-term success and stability.
Cooperation
• Why it’s seen as weak: Labeled as “people-pleasing” or lacking individuality.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Cooperation creates networks of support and allows for collective strength, producing solutions no single person could achieve alone.
Forgiveness
• Why it’s seen as weak: Viewed as letting people off the hook or avoiding accountability.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Forgiveness frees the forgiver from bitterness, making space for healing and growth.
Vulnerability
• Why it’s seen as weak: Treated as dangerous, a sign you can be hurt or taken advantage of.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Vulnerability is courage in action. It opens the door to intimacy, trust, and authenticity.
Intuition
• Why it’s seen as weak: Dismissed as irrational or “just feelings.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Intuition is subconscious pattern recognition, a survival skill honed over generations that gives insight beyond data.
Emotional Expression
• Why it’s seen as weak: Framed as dramatic, unstable, or “hysterical.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Expressing emotions in healthy ways prevents them from festering and leads to better decisions and deeper self-awareness.
As you sit with this exercise, I want you to ask yourself: how much longer can we keep living this way? How much more will we have to endure, as a society, as a species, before we finally say, enough is enough?
At what point do we lay down our arms, literally and figuratively, and choose a different way? At what point do we stop glorifying anger, domination, and cruelty, and start exalting compassion, patience, and understanding?
Because if we are serious about building a world that is safer, kinder, and more just, it will not come through more violence. It will not come through louder shouting or deeper division. It will come only when we have the courage to see these so-called “feminine” qualities for what they truly are: powerful, resilient forces that have the strength to transform not only our communities, but our future.
