The key to reclaiming biblical manhood lies first in teaching your mind to obey your heart, and developing a genuine masculine tenderness and empathy. Women have their own kind of empathy. You would expect some overlap in effects, but the fundamental resonance of the heart is different for women.
Our society has no problem with women having empathy. Indeed, our society only allows men to have it when they are effeminate, or at least tamed and boyish. This is consistent with the feminist mythology that men can never be anything more than boys, that their moral development stops at the threshold of puberty. Feminist orthodoxy asserts there are no adult men, only boys that become dangerous. Women are the only adults on the planet. Thus, men are acceptable only when they are sufficiently feminine.
Of course, this mythology fails when the individual female finds one irresistible because he’s just too manly. So the woman will do a lot of self-justification and personality contortions to absorb the thrill. Chances are, a part of what makes him manly in our culture is his lack any real concern for her in the first place, so at some point things will break. She’ll start pushing him to fit the myth and he’ll resist, sneer, or simply disappear. This serves only to justify her mythology until the next time.
We can only guess how the modern feminist will react to a spiritual man with a shepherd’s commitment and empathy. However, it’s all too likely his heart will warn him off and he won’t take seriously any overtures or criticisms. She’s just another very lost sheep.
It’s just as hard for a woman to travel the long distance to truth as for men, but the struggle is entirely different. Western Civilization has formally institutionalized the Curse:
I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children. You will want to control your husband, but he will dominate you. (Genesis 3:16 NET)
Keep in the mind the nature of this passage within the context of Hebrew language. There is an obvious meaning and this is a pretty good translation into English, but the symbolism is even more important, because it speaks on multiple simultaneous levels. The obvious point is that conflict is a default feature not easily overcome. The nature of the conflict will be her instinct to control elements of the relationship not delivered by God under her dominion.
Yes, godly women are meant to hold a measure of dominion. Characterizations popular in our culture, even among mainstream Christians, is woefully misleading. The whole point is not defining her dominion, but establishing the nature of teamwork as the basis for defining one that fits the team in question. That women are essential to the process of human government, from the nuclear family household all the way up to empire, is simply too obvious. Eve did not start out in the garden as mere arm-candy and pleasure unit.
Rather, the curse assures us that in our fallen state, every woman has an instinct to have a man, but will want to control elements of this union for which God did not equip her. She may well succeed in gaining that control, but it will be contrary to cosmic moral harmony.
But only in the broadest terms is her proper dominion defined in Scripture. We are given the image of nest-builder. While the Law of Moses is fairly precise in some ways, we need to remember that it’s contextual precision. We have to see through the particulars to understand the moral abstractions. What does her man, her clan, her tribe and nation need from her? What part of the vast labors are to be divided to her? She must have some say in this, but she will not always get her way.
Indeed, it is modern feminism that strives so hard to regulate and define a priori what men must allow globally — total control of anything she wants. She always gets her way, but only if her way is consistent with the orthodox mythology. For a bludgeon she uses the power of the secular state in the most intrusive details, and best from a state that is dominated by female presence. Let the men do the dirty work of enforcement, particularly against the impetuous boy-men to whom the women are linked by marriage or other forms of social control.
Yeah, there’s some serious female empathy there. It’s not hard to see that the entire range of materialistic, conformist, middle-class secular state evils arise largely from feminist dominance. In this, we can honestly blame women for the mess, but more accurately, it’s the feminine fallen nature.
Addenda: In a certain sense, Western men will always be little boys. That’s the nature of Western manhood, like Adam, to go along with Eve’s mistakes. That’s where we share the blame.
