Page:What Men Want - Initial Thoughts on the Male Goddess Movement.pdf/2

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Author affiliation

Dave Green is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Email: David2.Green@uwe.ac.uk

Introduction

Throughout my research into Paganisms I have become aware of, and increasingly interested in, a group of Pagan men who, following the dominant feminine spiritual idiom of many Neo-Pagan paths, rooted their magico-religious practices in veneration of goddesses, rather than in mythopoetic constructions of masculinity. Although they are by no means a unified community of practitioners I began to term them The Male Goddess Movement (MGM). The MGM appears to be a new and unresearched phenomenon within Contemporary Paganisms. Indeed, whereas innovative interdisciplinary research has been conducted in relation to constructions of masculinity within other world religions, particularly in Christianity and Judaism, the few existing studies of masculinity within Paganisms provide one with a unilateral mythopoetic vision of Pagan men as instrumental hunters and providers who honour male deities and prize traditional masculine qualities such as strength, courage, competitiveness and stoicism. 306