Austin Butler rides a bike

The feminine versus the masculine

Jul 09, 2024

Transcript

This is The Nooner, a short daily (Monday - Saturday) newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.

To see the first post, which doubles as an explainer, click here.

Also a quick reminder that you can listen to the podcast version of each post wherever you listen to podcasts.

Beautiful Dualities

I recently saw The Bikeriders, by Jeff Nichols, who is one of my top three favorite filmmakers, and I can’t stop thinking about feminine versus masculine influences.

I really think this is such a better paradigm than the fraught conversation about gender. No matter what DNA you’ve got, or what equipment you’re born with, or what types of bodies or personalities or pheromonal bouquets turn you on, certain human characteristics are masculine, and others are feminine.

It’s the productive tension between two complementary and sometimes opposing forces. It’s the ying and the yang. I think gender is often influenced by this elemental duality, but it’s also real busy with lots of other stuff that might not have anything to do with it at all.

That said, there’s always going to be some fundamental, statistically relevant pressure to one side or the other depending on DNA. This is a good thing! It means we can’t completely forget about the duality, which itself is a very deep, very important part of being human.

To be fully actualized as a human being is, I believe, to have gained a full appreciation and respect for both the feminine and masculine sides of this duality.

For instance, it is predominantly the feminine that civilizes people, but it is the masculine that drives to the frontier. It is the feminine that perfects communication, but it is the masculine that must learn the push and pull of the physical world. The feminine is communal, the masculine is individualistic.

The worst review I read about The Bikeriders was that it didn’t go deeper than to be a nostalgic trip to a bygone era of motorcycle gangs. But come on! It was a metaphor! Kathy (played by Jodie Comer) was the feminine force, opposed and complemented by Johnnie (Tom Hardy) in ultimately determining the fate of Bennie (Austin Butler).

So Bennie is the everyman. The blank slate onto which we project ourselves. We see him resist both influences, sort of the way we resist the cultural influences that constantly seem to proscribe rigid definitions of male and female.

I won’t give away the end, but suffice it to say that if you think one influence wins and the other loses, you weren’t paying close enough attention.

The feminine does not represent the ultimate moral good, anymore than the masculine represents the ultimate moral evil. When we say it like that, it’s obvious, or should be. And yet our behavior often betrays our biases and confusions.

I won’t try to tie any of this up with a bow, but I will defend the duality of the masculine and the feminine to my dying breath. To me, it is not only true, not only necessary, it is beautiful.