John Rowan - The Horned God: Feminism and Men as Wounding and Healing

Feminism and Men as Wounding and Healing

JOHN ROWAN

Volume 28

First published in 1987

This edition first published in 2013
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1987 John Rowan

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-53401-7 (Set)
elSBN: 978-0-203-08796-1 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-415-63519-6 (Volume 28)
elSBN: 978-0-203-09393-1 (Volume 28)

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The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

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Cernunnos
Contemporary carved figure by Bel Beau

FEMINISM AND MEN AS WOUNDING AND
HEALING

JOHN ROWAN

ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL
LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in 1987 by
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Published in the USA by
Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc.
in association with Methuen Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Set in 11/13 Sabon
and printed in Great Britain
by Butler & Tanner Ltd Fronte, Somerset

John Rowan 1987

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Rowan, John.

The horned God

Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Feminism. 2. Masculinity (Psychology)
3. MenPsychology. Sex role. 1. Title.
HQ1154.R766 1987 305.3 86-13887

British Library CIP Data also available

ISBN 0-7102-0674-7

In writing this book I felt great trepidation. For a man to write about feminism is problematic. It's like a white man's book on racism, or an Ulsterman's account of the Irish problem.

In trying to be aware of these issues, I resolved to do at least two things which would make the task possible. One was to write about men rather than about women. Men are my constituency, so to speak, in a way that women are not. I can speak to men about men more legitimately than I can talk to women about men or men about women. So this book is written by a man for other men. Women have much better books than this to read, written by women for women. I have read many of them, over the shoulders of women, as it were. In the same way, I suppose women can read this book if they want to, over the shoulder of a man. But it is not intended to enlighten or entertain women - it is intended to help in starting to fill various enormous gaps in the education of men.

The other thing I tried to do was to make it clear where I was coming from. One of the things we have all learned from feminist writing is that it is not OK to leave out the author. We are less interested now in whether a statement is true - in some totally abstract and pristine sense - and more interested in the place from which the statement is made, the ground on which the person is standing who makes the statement. So in this book I have tried to say what was going on for me in my life at the time when I made certain discoveries or faced certain problems, and the way in which the discovery or problem came to me.

So this book is the record of a journey. It starts in a dark and difficult place, goes through another dark and difficult place, and ends up in a third dark and difficult place. But the first place is full of pain, the second place is a mixture of pain and pleasure, and the third place is more joy than anything else - a hard and bitter sort of joy, it is true, but joy none the less.

What I discovered during the course of writing this book was that virtually all the things people say about men are true, but they don't have to mean what they are usually supposed to mean. For example, men don't often like to be called Male Chauvinist Pigs. But I had a dream in which my passport had a photograph of a boar in place of my own photo. When I went into this with the help of the understanding engendered by this book, I discovered that some of the ancient tribes in what is now Germany worshipped the mother of the gods, and wore as a religious symbol the device of a wild boar. The Germanic boar-god became the doomsday-averting Saviour and Lord of Death. Accordingly the boar was sacrificed at the turn of the year, at Yule, with an apple in his mouth as a resurrection charm. Myths of dying gods like Tammuz, Attis and Adonis featured the boar, or boarskin-clad priest' (Walker, 1983). Coming closer to home, the boar was the sacred animal, more than any other, of the Celts. Above all, pigs were believed to come from the Otherworld, and to be guides to the Otherworld. In Britain, Merlin had a pig as a familiar. So the boar, masculine with feminine moon-tusks, has many connections with the Horned God, the Lord of the Animals, we shall meet later in this book. It is therefore very meaningful that the photograph in my passport should be that of a boar. The message is that in some sense I am a boar. And since in this book I am saying that to be male is OK, and the whole book is addressed to men, and is for men, it could be said that I am in myself a true Male Chauvinist Pig. The only difference is that I am in the service of the Goddess. And that makes all the difference, as we shall see in the later chapters of this book.

I would like to thank the men who read earlier drafts of chapters from this work in progress and made detailed comments, though I have not adopted all of their suggestions and they should not be expected to support anything said here. They are Keith Mothersson, Daniel Cohen and Paul Morrison. I would also like to thank Batya Podos for a great deal of practical help and encouragement.

John Rowan
London
1986