Fight against women has left RPCNA full of spiritual abuse and toxic masculinity

A Vox article I read today talked about how boys are being given conflicting messages regarding masculinity - the public message is about caring and leading, but the private one is, essentially, toxic. I've wondered the same thing about the RPCNA - being more rational/cerebral, I picked up more of the public message, but I see how those promoted to leadership are more reminiscent of the private message.

Hope Reese - Feminism has opened up possibilities for what it means to be a woman. What’s new about what it means to be a man? 

Peggy Orenstein - There is a lot that has changed for young men. Obviously, they’re engaging in the conversation about consent. Obviously, they see women and girls as deserving of their place in the classroom, or in leadership, or on the playing field of professional and educational opportunities. Nobody is going to say, “Girls don’t belong in college,” or something like that, anymore. 

At the same time, when I asked them about the ideal guy, it was like they were channeling 1955. The conventional values like dominance, aggression, wealth, athleticism, sexual conquest — and, particularly, emotional suppression — came roaring back to the fore. 

In some ways, those have actually grown more entrenched. I actually saw a similar dynamic when I was first writing about girls: We were telling them, on one hand, to stand up, speak out, claim your power, all these things. This was in the early ’90s, yet we hadn’t really stopped telling them in a kind of deeper cultural way, in a more entrenched way, that they should see themselves as about their appearance and that they should be more deferential. The contradictions between the new and the old were creating such tension and conflict within them.

So, when the church laments the "feminization" of boys and men, they are reinforcing a cultural stereotype of men as domineering, aggressive, athletic and emotionless. They are reinforcing the stereotype that the only valid male emotions are happiness and anger. When these men take charge in the church, they create a toxically masculine church culture where "negative" emotions are dismissed, whether by men or women.

Hope Reese - When boys are vulnerable, it’s often with women — their girlfriends, mothers, sisters — but you argue that it’s a problem that they aren’t being vulnerable with other guys or with their fathers. 

Peggy Orenstein - For mothers, it can feel really sweet and really good seeing your boy express vulnerability. But if we’re not careful about helping boys process their own emotions, rather than processing their feeling for them, and feeling for them, we reinforce the idea that women are there to do male emotional labor. That can feel really good when you’re talking to your son, your little boy, or your teenage boy. But I think most women can attest that it feels a lot less good when you’re in an adult relationship. Why aren’t they being vulnerable with guys? Because men learn not to be vulnerable with one another. 

Basically, as boys grow up, the only emotion that is validated for them is happiness or anger. The whole bucket of emotions that involves sadness or betrayal or despair gets funneled into anger. One of the things that we can do with little boys is to actually label their feelings and say, “It seems like you’re really sad,” or “That must be very frustrating,” to give them a broader emotional range. 

Hope Reese - Boys learn early on to dismiss girls’ feelings. How does that happen? And do they dismiss their own feelings, too? 

Peggy Orenstein - Part of how American boys learn to define masculinity is as adversarial toward femininity. They learn from the kind of incessant bombardment of images from the media and from their own friends about male sexual entitlement and female sexual availability.

It's not hard to see what effect this is having on the RPCNA.

When "dominance" is praised and praiseworthy men are selected for office, it should be no surprise that churches are quickly becoming more domineering.

When "rationalism" is praised and leaders who can only be happy or angry are selected for office, it's obvious that anyone who is hurt by the church will see rejection. "Hurt" is not a valid emotion. Even "anger" isn't a valid emotion if it comes from a place of hurt. We see the church ignore spiritual and emotional abuse - if people are supposed to be rational and emotionless, then calling someone "worthless" is not a problem. Emotional manipulation to create a culture of fear and fear-based control is not a problem.

It is also intriguing that the church then has to deny God's female personifications. Jesus likened himself to a mother hen who sought to hold Jerusalem under his wing. He said, "Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds" (Matt 11:9) - a reference to Proverbs where God portrays himself as wisdom, a woman calling out in the streets for people to engage and learn. "El shaddai" - a name for God introduced in Genesis 17:1 when Abraham is being blessed with fruitfulness and abundance, is considered by many to mean "God of breasts". Seems a closer match than "God of violence/destruction" in my opinion.

So, it seems that fighting off the "emasculated male" concept has left the church mired in toxic masculinity, mired in domineering leadership, and ripe for spiritual and emotional abuse for which members and leaders are completely unequipped to deal with.

[P.S. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that bringing my own history of emotional and spiritual abuse to the attention of RPCNA leaders resulted in, essentially, a call to suck it up and be a man.]
Also worth noting the character of more and more pastors - how many are primarily thoughtful academics and how many are primarily, for lack of a better word, jocks?