The Doctrine of Gender Creating Feminine and Masculine Balance
Ft. Allie Duzett
Meghan: Hi everyone, welcome to this episode of the Latter-day Disciples podcast. We are continuing our special podcast series going over my recently released book, Consider Yourself as Eve, a guide to spiritual development for women and the men who love them. We are starting into chapter two today. I am really grateful. I hope you guys enjoyed the discussion around chapter one with Corey and Jocelyn. Hopefully that was meaningful to you. And I am very excited to have my friend Allie Duzett with me for this conversation about chapter two, which is titled Male and Female. The subheadings in the chapter include talking about the image and likeness of the gods and how God is masculine and feminine, a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. We talk about expressions of spirit and what is the difference between feminine spirit and masculine spirit. We discuss embodying the feminine, what it looks like for us as women to align ourselves with our own femininity. And then we also discuss some of the challenges that exist in this world when it comes to us individually being imbalanced in ourselves, meaning I am not spending most of my time and feminine energy as a woman or as masculine energy as a man, and then also misalignment in our marriages. So when we are both individually out of balance, it messes up the polarity in our marriage and it can cause some problems. Most of this chapter I want to credit to my friend Allie because I got so much out of your book, Magnetic Femininity.
Can you tell us a little bit about how you came into understanding the doctrine of masculine and feminine and how that has become important to you in your life?
Allie: Yeah, this was something that I really never thought that hard about in my whole life before I really cared about it, I didn’t care about it at all. But I was really unhappy in my life and in some of the major relationships of my life, and I went to the temple and asked God for permission to call it quits on some major relationships.
And I felt like God told me, no. When I went into this prayer, I was saying, God, look at me. I read my scriptures every day. I go to church every week. I pray all the time. I’m a really good person. I’m paying my tithing. I’m checking off all the boxes. I’m a really good person. These other people in my life are not good people. I need to cut them free and move on.
And I felt like God said, you’re pretty self-righteous, Allie. Yeah, you’re clicking all the boxes, but you’re not very feminine, which is not an answer that I expected God to give me. I felt like God just said, Allie, you got to take off the pants and let your husband lead. You’ve got to change how you’re showing up in all of these different relationships.
And how it actually turned out in the temple was I was sitting in the waiting room and I had my scriptures there. And it would be like, open your scriptures. And I’d open my scriptures to 1 Corinthians 11:11, or 1 Peter 3:2 or Genesis; all of the big scriptures around masculine and feminine. And I did not like that. I will tell you that I just came home and cried.
And then I said, well, now what? The scriptures actually have almost nothing about this. And it’s not in the Ten Commandments, “Women be feminine.” That’s not in there. And it doesn’t tell you how to do it. And so I really had to embark on this big horrible journey of figuring out what that even means and digging into these definitions and looking into science and trying to make sense of what does this mean? Because in our modern culture – I’m sure everybody can relate to this- we’re just taught that women and men are basically the same. There’s really no serious difference besides like one kind of likes makeup and one doesn’t, you know what I mean? And if you do like makeup as a man, I guess you are a woman, that kind of situation.
We’ve really reduced masculinity and femininity to the most external characteristics, which is truly the surface level. That is the most bare minimum of what the differences are, but we really have reduced it to that. I remember sitting there in the temple and being like, “God, are you kidding me? You want me to be more feminine? I literally wear high heels to church. I am a high heels wearer. What more do you want from me? I wear mascara every day, God. What more can you ask for?”
That has nothing to do with it. That is not the embodiment of feminine energy. That’s the kind of bill that we’re sold, but it’s not the reality of it. It’s not the core of it. And so I went on that big journey. It’s been 10 years now. I wrote my book, Magnetic Femininity last year, kind of summing up all of my research and experiences and trying to make it as applicable as possible for women who are also feeling like “I have to heal my feminine energy?” “I don’t know how. It doesn’t even make sense.” “And what are we even talking about?”
That’s what my intention was with that book. Can we make it as simple as possible and as applicable as possible for people who’ve been raised in a world where men and women are exactly the same? But what if we’re not?
Meghan: Right, right. And it is. You make it so accessible in that book, I got a lot out of it.
I think my story is kind of similar to yours. And I would say probably for most women, this isn’t something that we think about until it’s thrown in our face.
In my case, it was about two years ago where I was saying, “God, I want to continue on this path of spiritual development. I want to be sanctified.” And God said, “Great, you need to know your Heavenly Mother.”
And I was like, what? Never thought about that. And that’s become one of the major underpinnings of this book is understanding that for us as women to move through a process of spiritual development, to live the gospel, it is a gendered experience.
And we get a little bit of that in the temple, very subtly, like the symbolism of women sitting on the left side and men sitting on the right. The left is historically feminine and the right is – and when I say historically, I mean like anciently – and the right is anciently masculine. And so there is sort of the symbolism that we can pull out and say, oh, the way that I move through the pattern of the temple and develop spiritually is going to be different as a woman than it will be for my husband.
But I mean – as you and I have talked about – I do think that the doctrine of male and female, of masculine and feminine is probably the most overlooked doctrine that we have in all of the world. It is the most universal truth.
And we never, ever, ever think about it. As you said, we do the exact opposite, right? We say that, well, everything is the same. Like if you’re a man or woman, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the same. Like the template is the same. And in my book, I go into saying that’s really not the truth. And you learned that through your experience too. It’s really important for us to learn how to live the gospel as women and learn how to live the gospel as men. And God understands that it’s important for our own individual progression. And it’s also really important in being able to align with our partner in marriage and create the kind of eternal relationship that our Heavenly Parents have.
So do you have any thoughts on why it is that we overlook this? I mean, aside from just the fact that this is kind of our paradigm that we just grew up in, do you have any thoughts on why it is that we don’t stop and look at men and women as different more often?
Allie: This is a really excellent question. And I think there’s several different layers to it. I mean, of course, digging into the historical side of things, where historically women were illiterate. And it wasn’t just that women were illiterate, everyone was illiterate except for priests. For large swaths of history you just had men interpreting scripture for everybody else. And maybe it was as written and maybe it was not, and maybe they omitted some things, maybe they sprinkled their own little stuff in there. But I think over time, there has been a lot of a lack of clarity around these roles. And I think also a lot of it was very self-evident in the past in a way that it is not now.
I write in my book how our entire infrastructure in the modern world is built by men. And I mean that boys, like masculine people who were born with XY chromosomes, are the ones that are building the houses. They are inventing the cars, they are working at the car factory, they are putting the pieces together of our existence and creating the infrastructure of the world that we live in. And because of how the world is set up now with specialization and industrialization, it’s not always obvious in the way that it would have been 200 years ago when if you want a house built, are women going to be excessively helpful to that? No, you’re going to get all the men in the village and the women are going to make them food and clean their clothes and have the fire ready for them when they’re done. But in the past, it was abundantly evident; men and women are different.
There are a lot of things that a man can do that a woman cannot do. And there’s a lot of things a woman can do that a man can never do. There’s a lot of things. I mean, to harp on that for a small moment, yeah, there are female construction workers, there are female inventors, and women can do that. But there are a lot of things that men can never do that women can do. As far as actually birthing humans, the most important job of humankind, to multiply and replenish itself, the woman is the one that is doing that. A woman can help with a construction project, but a man cannot birth a child.
But in the past, I think it was much more obvious what the roles were out of necessity, because women literally could not do a lot of the things that were necessary for life. And now we’re a little bit more removed from that reality. I don’t need a man to build me a microwave from scratch. I can go to Home Depot and buy a microwave, and I can put it on my counter. That’s a bad example, but we can just go to the store and buy stuff. And we don’t have to see the sweat that went into its creation in a way that we used to.
Meghan: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I appreciate you bringing up the historicity of this. I think you’re right, I think that we live in a time where everything has become a lot more conflated. And I think that that’s purposeful, but not necessarily positive in a lot of ways, as you said.
And this is where things get really tricky, right? Where we could look at that example, as you talked about in the past, men are the ones that are going out and building, and the women are the ones that are supporting them. And we could say, oh, that’s sexist, that’s not fair. That’s not equality. And that’s kind of what we’ve inherited, a culture that is more interested in making men and women the same, as opposed to what I think is actually required for our spiritual development, which is that we respect the fact that we are eternally different. And we work individually to align ourselves with our respective spirits, which are gendered. I have a feminine spirit. You have a feminine spirit. Our husbands have masculine spirits. And in order to progress, we need to respect that instead of whitewashing it and saying, no, it’s all one and the same.
Allie: Yes, yes.
Meghan: So along those lines, one of the things that was an interesting experience for me, even before writing the book, even before feeling impressed to write the book, is that one day I had been having some conversations, and I really had my gears going, and the Lord told me to take out my notebook. And I made this chart of what is feminine spirit and what is masculine spirit. And it was just brainstorming, and everything is complementary and equal and opposite to each other. And I ended up feeling impressed to later take that and put it in the book.
And so I thought maybe it might be helpful for you and I to go through and talk about it. I can read some of the things that are in this chart, and then we can talk about how that manifests. The goal here is to see that there is a divine difference between men and women, and that we both will be served best in our goal to progress by aligning with what our spirit wants to do. So we could look at that example and say, oh, it’s so sexist that the men are the ones going out and doing all the building, and the women are the ones at home supporting. Or you could say those men were aligning with their masculinity, which is a great thing, and the women were supporting them and enabling them and doing the feminine stewardship, which I describe in the book as giving life, giving life in all the ways, not just giving life to babies, but giving life to our husbands, to the world at large, to our communities, to animals, to plants. For instance, women are the ones that are cultivating and bringing forth the spirit of life in all things.
So the first thing on this feminine masculine spirit is that the feminine is more dark as opposed to the masculine, which is light. And I don’t mean dark like evil. I think this is something we kind of get caught on is, oh, dark always means bad. When in this case, it can just mean that it’s hidden, it’s veiled, it’s a mystery as opposed to the masculine, which is visible and aware and obvious.
Do you have any thoughts on that? Or do you just want to go to the second one?
Allie: Yeah. Well, I saw that in this beginning chapter, you talk about how you’re going to talk about the yin yang symbol later on in the book. But I think that that’s like the perfect example where you have the yin yang symbol, which is like black and white, but it’s also a symbol of day and night. If it was day all the time, this world would have a lot of problems. And if it was night all the time, this world would have a lot of problems. You need the day and the night. The darkness is not a bad guy. It’s important. It’s what allows everything to rest and rejuvenate and to live on its own rhythm. I’m thinking of the animals that are nocturnal, that can only come out when the moon is in charge.
When I first discovered this, and I heard that feminine is dark and masculine is light, my immediate thought was [gasp] “Women are evil?” Which is like so pedestrian and like so small minded. No, we have to take this expansive look at it and realize, no, if we think about it in terms of day and night, the night is absolutely as important as the day. And those of us who have gone without a lot of sleep for many years in our child-rearing years know that night is really a great time. I think in many ways, night is more important than day. I love night way more than I do day currently.
Meghan: You start to value it more, that’s for sure.
Allie: Yes, exactly. Exactly. The feminine body and the feminine reproductive organs are hidden and veiled. They are in darkness and nobody gets to see them. Even your doctor doing their pap smear is not going to get a real good look. And the masculine body, it’s all out there. Everybody gets to see everything. And our bodies are just not like that. And our souls are not like that. Where men can be so straightforward and they just think what they think and feel what they feel. And as women, we know we’ve got some feelings over there, but we’ve got this other feeling over there. And how can we feel so split about one situation, but we do, we do have this hidden nature to ourselves.
Meghan: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much.
I always refer to the dark side of the moon…you see the moon in phases, right? And there’s a moment where it’s brilliant and bright and beautiful. It’s a full moon and it’s glorious, but there’s a side of the moon that you’re never going to see. And it’s that creative potential that is endless. Like, what’s on the other side of the moon? Who knows? And I think that is something really beautiful about femininity.
I think that this quality can also help us understand why we’re so familiar with Heavenly Father and not as familiar with Heavenly Mother. And it’s because the masculine is that light, that visible, that thing that you’re aware of, the one that’s the face of a lot of things. You and I, our ministry, the fact that we put ourselves on YouTube on a public platform, that’s pretty masculine work that you and I both do, as opposed to the feminine being more behind the scenes. It is more of the one that is empowering the man in his ability to go out and be the face of whatever is going on. She is hidden. She is veiled. That doesn’t mean she’s always going to stay that way, but I think that it gives us some context for why it is that maybe we don’t see her quite as much or we haven’t.
Allie: So as we’ve been talking about this, I feel like I can just feel the triggers of those out there that are triggered by this concept of feminine energy being behind the scenes. I feel like I know some people in my life who feel extremely upset about this. The feminine nature or our understanding of femininity must be flawed because if they’re truly equal, then feminine energy should have exactly as much of that forefront energy. She should be building. She should be out there doing all of the same stuff and be just as visible and out there and noticeable as the masculine energy. I have my own thoughts about this, but I’m interested to hear your thoughts. What would you say to people who feel very triggered about this idea that maybe feminine energy is best expressed a little bit behind the scenes as opposed to out and forward facing and super visible?
Meghan: Yeah, great question. I have a couple of different thoughts. The first one that I want to talk about is that the feminine side of reality, feminine spirit, has more fluidity than the masculine. So when we’re saying that you need to be aligned to feminine spirit, that doesn’t mean that you are always exhibiting the feminine side of things 100% of the time. There’s going to be some nuance in how that works. As we said, you and I both, we have kind of a masculine stewardship. Now, we could let that override our lives and our relationships and we could just become really masculine. Or we could say, this is one aspect of my life that I’m going to compartmentalize where I am more masculine than I am feminine, but in my relationships, in my home, with my children, I’m going to work and embody that femininity.
So I don’t want this to come across like, oh, women have to be behind the scenes all the time.That’s not true. We all have both of these energies. And especially for women, we actually have a lot more wiggle room than I would think men do. I think men, really, they do need to be in their masculine spirit the vast majority of the time. I can put a hard and fast line on that because the masculine is hard and fast. That is aligning with masculine spirit to be like, no, you need to be there 80, 90% of the time. Whereas the feminine, we have a lot more fluidity and nuance where we’re juggling all these roles. I like in your book, Allie, one of the things you talk about is how women are kind of this center point where we’re relatively more feminine than our husbands, but we are more masculine than our children. Our children need the structure and the roles and the things that we put in place for them. So we’re kind of the middle of this teeter totter and our energy can look like that sometimes.
So I don’t want this to come out like, oh yeah, you have to be hidden behind the scenes all the time because obviously we’re not doing that. And so we would be really hypocritical if we were to suggest that.
The other thought that comes to mind, and this is really like, I share this very non-judgmentally and this is just my personal learning. But one of the things that I’ve seen for myself, if I am triggered by something, sometimes that could mean that that other thing is wrong. It could be a red flag of like, oh, the spirit’s telling me that’s not for me or that’s wrong or whatever. But more often than not, I’ve experienced that if I’m triggered by something, it means that there’s something in me that needs healing. There’s some way that I’ve inherited something that’s not true, or I have a trauma that I haven’t addressed. And so I might encourage you, this is so individual and I say this very non-judgmentally, but if you do feel triggered by this, it might be an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and say, okay, what have I grown up believing about myself that makes me uncomfortable with being behind the scenes? Like who told me that I have to be masculine in order to have value? As I’m saying that, I feel like that’s a big thing for us women.
I’ve experienced that too. This world that we grow up in is so very masculine. And in a lot of ways we can adopt this false belief that the masculine is the only side that has value. And that’s just not true. Just because a woman is more behind the scenes in feminine spirit, there’s a powerhouse there but it’s veiled for a reason. The things that are veiled are the things that are most powerful, the most precious, the most cosmically important things were the things that were veiled.
I hope that doesn’t come across bad? I hope it doesn’t come out that way.
Allie: No, thank you for all of those thoughts. I think that all of those things are definitely worth considering. Because I know for myself, when I have been triggered by these things, as I have been for years of my life, for me, I think one of the most helpful things to me was having to take that step back and say, okay, well, why is this so triggering to me? Who taught me that the only way I can have value is if I’m in the spotlight all the time. And I think that we’re definitely entering an interesting phase of existence where there is a more focus on women, on femininity, on Heavenly Mother, this kind of situation where there has not been so much of a spotlight before. But as you were talking about that, I was thinking about how the feminine cycle does align with the moon. And I think we’ve been in the new moon cycle like our divine mother, like the heavenly mother.
I was telling Meghan before we got on here that I’ve never really thought super hard about Heavenly Mother. It’s just not been a super important thing to me. But as I’ve been reading her book, it’s been blowing my mind. Everyone read it. If you’re just lurking around on here listening to a fabulous podcast and not reading her book, I’m going to tell you, you should just go get the book and just read it. Because it’s really good.
But Meghan talks about how previously there were references to our divine mother. And she’s talking about these different artifacts that have been found and their symbolic meanings. And it’s so beautiful. And I kind of feel like maybe there was a full moon moment for our divine mother. And then we had this waning moon situation. We got into the new moon, the dark ages that were truly dark in so many ways. And this kind of understanding of feminine energy from a loving space has been gone. And now we’re in this waxing moon phase and heading into another full moon phase. I don’t know.
Meghan: I love that. That’s beautiful. That resonates with me. I have chills. That’s so good.
Allie: I think it is very, very exciting. But I think that’s also one other thing about this is that the behind the scenes energy that feminine energy provides, I think, for much of history, has been looked down on. And I think that maybe that’s where some of our wounding comes from. It’s not that that stuff is wrong or bad, obviously. Somebody has to wash the dishes. It is a sad fact of life that no one gets to escape it. Men don’t escape it and women don’t escape it. But I think over time, there’s been a lot of just judgment and looking down on the person who is the one doing the dishes and who is the one doing the laundry and who is the one cleaning up and making a house a hygienic and safe place to live. It is not safe to live in a house where the bathroom has not been cleaned for four years, that is a hygiene hazard. And to be the one that’s the steward of that, it’s not a glorious role. And it’s not one that we’re out in the spotlight and where everybody can say, oh, wow, Suzy cleaned her bathroom every week for four years.
Meghan: I don’t want to be known for that. Thank goodness that it’s not like that. But I’m picturing myself cleaning a toilet on YouTube or something. Probably best that we just keep that behind the scenes.
Allie: Right? It’s not romanticized work. It’s not the same as the men that go out there and are making these other contributions. And because some of the masculine contributions to our world get so much more attention than the feminine contributions, it can feel very hurtful to feel like, oh, what I contribute is a clean bathroom. I don’t want to imply that that’s all we contribute, of course. But just this concept of behind the scenes work as being offensive, for it being offensive for women to say, it’s okay for me to relax behind the scenes and to engage in the cycles of life that enable everything else to survive.
Meghan: Well, and I think as we come to know more and understand what feminine spirit versus masculine spirit actually is, that can help us to feel more okay with that. I like what you said about the things that are seemingly mundane in our life are the things that we take for granted. And so they never get the attention that they fully deserve. And being a wife, and especially being a mother, is full of the mundane. It’s so much cleaning and cooking and changing diapers and dealing with other people’s emotions, you can’t even manage your own emotions half the time. And it’s so mundane. In some ways, that should be almost a flag to us to be like, this is important.
The things that seem so mundane are the things that are so important, especially for women, when it is ultimately the cooking, the cleaning, all those things, that is about giving life. It’s about giving a high standard of life. And yes, it’s not glamorous a lot of the time, but having a healthy kid who can adjust to life and learn and grow in a safe environment and become a functioning adult later in life who only needs minimal therapy, that’s a big win – we’re all going to need therapy, we’re all damaged at some point in our childhood – that’s so incredibly important. And it starts with those things that seem most mundane.
Allie: Yeah. Thank you. And I just want to be clear for all of our audiences out there. I do not think that only women should clean the bathroom, just to be clear. Men can and should help with the dishes or take responsibility for getting these chores done. But I’m just saying that the behind the scenes work is just as important as the front and center work. And really, I think it’s actually more important because the person doing the behind the scenes work is what makes everything else possible. And if you don’t have food, if you don’t have clothes, if you didn’t have a loving mother in your early childhood…I have so many clients with connections to orphans that they’ve adopted from these horrific third world orphanage situations and these kids are so traumatized, even if they were adopted very young, I mean, one year old, they are still so scarred from not having that feminine presence there, devoted to them in that way. Our feminine roles are just absolutely critical and they may not get the same kind of glory and recognition, but they are absolutely as important. And I would argue that they are even far more important, even though they don’t get the attention.
Meghan: Yeah, 100% agree. I want to pivot just a little bit for a moment because I think that we could kind of get lost in the weeds if we look at one particular symbol for too long. So there’s like a whole chart… It’s important to know that not everything falls under this one bucket of women having to be dark or like we have to be valid. There are other aspects of femininity. So the feminine is more mystical as opposed to the tangible, practical masculine.
I also really want to highlight too, that the power of femininity is in its presence. It’s exactly what you were just saying. Having a mother in the home who is there and who gives love is more powerful than a mother who is always caught in the action of doing, which is more of the masculine side. We have to have both, but learning to find that value in ourselves and knowing that my power as a woman, my power as a wife, my power as a mother is in the fact that I’m here and I’m loving you, I don’t have to be doing all the time. Even the bathrooms and the cooking, the cleaning, those are things that we do because it falls in some of these other categories; it’s relational, it’s focused on people, it’s creating that safe environment. At the same time, we can get overly focused on those things. And then that can draw us into a more masculine energy of now we do all the things, like we do all the things in the house. Where in reality, that’s masculine spirit, they’re the ones who thrive by doing. And so, this is just another example of how it takes so much conscious effort to balance between these two spirits and to have a fluidity.
Do you have any thoughts on that? It’s so hard, you can start in the feminine and then if you just get overly fixated, it can draw you into the masculine. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Allie: No. I mean, I think that that’s totally true. It’s like the yin-yang symbol, femininity and masculinity create each other and grow each other. Again, we could write whole books about it. But I love your talk about how the feminine energy has this power in presence and just sitting there and holding space for people. I used to feel so much pressure to do, do, do. You got to read all the stories to your kid and you got to take them to this and take them to that. And there’s a lot of value in that as a mother, but there’s also so much value in just sitting together and like watching their show together and just having your kid on your lap and you’re not even saying anything and you’re just being together. And I think sometimes those are the most beautiful experiences that we have with each other, not just in a mother-child relationship, but in a romantic relationship and a friendship, those moments when you can just be with each other and feel so safe to just exist. And that is the feminine superpower.
Meghan: Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. And so resting for us as women. If we can lean into that motion of just being and find the joy in that, that’s like breathing after you’ve held your breath underwater for an hour, it feels so good. And part of that is because that is aligning our female bodies with our feminine spirit, when we learn to sit in that rest and know that my value is in the fact that I’m here, I’m present with the people around me.
Okay, let’s see what else from this table? Anything from this table that stood out to you that you thought was interesting that helps in understanding feminine versus masculine spirit?
Allie: Well, I love all of this chart. I love that nuance, fluidity, intuition, feeling, relational, and spirit of the law, they are on the feminine side. Where the masculine side has structure and order, logic and reasoning, functionality, and the letter of the law. We need both things, and one is not better than the other one. If you only have one, you’ve got a huge problem. Hopefully we can see how if you are only on one side of the spectrum, or you only have access to one side of the spectrum, this can be a disaster. We need our logic to be tempered by our connection with our creator. And we need our intuition to be tempered by our logic. I think so many of us have a lot of trauma from both sides of the spectrum, trying to logic out our promptings and then having promptings that we have not honored and then worked with in a logical way.
When I was first introduced to this whole concept – this was one of the biggest struggles for me – I was obsessed with logic. I got my degree in the hard sciences. My grandpa was a scientist for NASA and science and logic and reasoning was just the important thing. And how could intuition and feelings and spending time with other people? How could that possibly be as important as doing math that could impact the world? How could it be of equal importance? But it is. And if you only have math that empowers the world, you’re going to have a whole lot of very sad people. You need the relationship side. We need the letter of the law, but we also need the spirit of the law. We need the justice and we need the mercy. I loved your passage on that. I’m seeing that in your chart, you do not have the justice and mercy listed specifically on here, but you write about it in the text. And I thought your passages on that were so beautiful and so eye opening. I loved it a hundred percent.
Meghan: Thank you. I don’t remember what I wrote, but thank you.
Allie: It’s really good.
Meghan: I’m going to have to go back and read this book, you guys, because I feel like it wrote me. It just came through me. I don’t remember what’s in it, so these are good conversations to have.
Okay. Well, thank you so much. I hope that this chart is helpful for people. I know that it was really great for me to sit down and actually write it out. And I love what you were saying there at the end too, that I want people to understand that the ultimate goal in becoming like God is not feminine over masculine or masculine over feminine, it’s about the integration of the two. And the way that our heavenly parents have integrated the two is that they are individually balanced in themselves; heavenly mother, female body, feminine spirit, heavenly father, male body, masculine spirit and then they come together and they complete each other. Between the two of them, they have all the masculine energy and all the feminine energy that they need. And in themselves, they’re incomplete, because they are appropriately balanced, that’s the pattern. That’s the yin yang that we can aspire to if we go through this process of spiritual development.
Another thing that I thought was really interesting, and I don’t spend a ton of time talking about this in the book, but I think I mentioned it in passing, was the realization that we as women with feminine spirits are attracted to masculinity. And that men with male bodies, masculine spirits, the more aligned they are, they’re attracted to femininity. That sounds kind of obvious on the surface, but to illustrate this, some of you may have heard of some apocryphal books that have been going around called the Nemenha Records or the Mentina Archives, they’re kind of the same thing. And I actually think that they are beautiful repositories of truth. I think that there’s a lot there. I don’t think everything is perfect. And I think that there are things that maybe are more helpful than others in this collective. But I think that it’s great. And I think that if you want to know whether or not something is good fruit, then you need to try it. Don’t get caught up on the tree that’s telling you about it, whether that be me or somebody else. Just go try it for yourself.
I’ve enjoyed reading them in the past and one thing that I really valued from these archives was the temple endowment that they have recorded there. And I was reading through it, and I was thinking about how it came to me and how divine is this? And in reading about Adam and Eve, there was just this one line that I was like, this is too divine. This is too divine to have been made up. This is too true to just be a coincidence. And it was talking about Adam and Eve in the garden interacting with the animals. And it said something to the effect that Eve loved the animals for what they did, for the actions that they were taking. And Adam loved the animals for what they were, and the fact that they were present, that they existed. And what’s so beautiful about that and what struck me so hard is that it was basically saying Eve was attracted to the masculine of these animals, the things that they do, that active side, that active spirit that is masculine. And by contrast, Adam loved the animals because they were, because they existed, because they were present, which is effeminate. And so I just love this idea that we really are attracted to our opposite energy. There’s a polarity there for a reason, and it’s so powerful.
Now, that being said, it can also be turned on its head. And what I found too is that men are often tempted by things that are more feminine, and women are often tempted by the things that are masculine because there’s a natural desire there.
Do you have any thoughts, Allie, about that or any examples that come to mind? Maybe we can talk about imbalance too, like when you let what you are attracted to take precedence over who you are.
Allie: Yeah. Wow. Well, my first thoughts about this were really more internal than external. One thing that I think a lot about is how I think as women, we really admire accomplishments. We really admire a man’s ability to make money and be a good provider, and we admire these different masculine aspects. And then we think, well, what could I do to be more attractive to men like that? Or what could I do? And then we’re like, oh, well, I should have more accomplishments. I should be a better provider. I could make more money. I could do this. And then we step into the masculine zone because that’s what we admire.
And I think on the other end of it, of the spectrum – you had this great paragraph in here somewhere, I have her book pulled up on my screen, guys, but let’s see – I think when men don’t have feminine, external feminine energy in their lives, then they can sink into an unhealthy form of femininity themselves and start getting kind of lazy. They’re just playing at hunter-gatherer games by messing around on video games instead of doing concrete useful things for the world around them. But those are unhealthy forms of feminine energy where feminine energy is supposed to be resting and relaxing, they’re sinking into the rest and relax and not stepping into their masculine energy.
And then for women, we attack the masculine doing energy. And we’re like, yeah, I’m going to be my best self by doing, doing, doing. And men are sitting there like, I’m not even sure if they’re thinking about being their best self. They’re just so intrigued by this idea of “I could just sit in a chair for 20 hours a day and play Halo for 20 hours a day. What’s not to love about that?”
But these are both unhealthy expressions of the opposite form that we are attracted to. And then we’re thinking, oh, well, I could experience more of that energy if I just did it myself instead of, if I stepped into my own energy in a more healthy way, then I could attract someone else to complete me that I would be attracted to.
Meghan: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I sat down with our mutual friend Jocelyn one time and we were talking about what does a healthy feminine look like? What does a healthy masculine look like? And there is this element of, well, they’re integrating with each other. And then on the opposite side of that, what does an unhealthy masculine look like? It looks like a man who is feminine and an unhealthy feminine looks like a woman who is masculine, right?
And we can look at that and be like, oh, well, that’s not a big deal until we understand that it wasn’t just our purpose to come into this world and just gain this body and live in it for a while and then die. The point is to combine this body with our spirits, to integrate individually so that we can exalt the matter of our flesh, that our spirit can pull this flesh up to its level, which is much higher than where we are right now, right? And so we can’t do that if we’re constantly chasing the opposite of who we actually are.
The reality is that you and I are women. We are feminine spirits. But if we keep chasing masculinity in all facets of our life and if it’s unbalanced and it’s uninformed by revelation and by God, then that gets to be really detrimental to our health. And that’s something that I learned so much from you too is like, why is it that we have women who are burned out and who are physically, emotionally, mentally unwell? And a lot of the time I think it’s because we’re spending so much time chasing an energy that is not authentic to who we actually are as eternal beings.
And the same for men, exactly as you were saying, I write here that men can experience imbalance when they exhibit a surplus of feminine energy by living in the spirit of being rather than the masculine spirit of doing. When women are in their feminine energy – and we talked about this a little bit – they are fulfilled, they’re rested, we can attune body and spirit to receive revelation and meet the physical and spiritual needs of our family. When men spend too much time in the energy of being, that feminine energy, that’s when they fall into addiction, laziness, apathy, and it creates this tension within our marriages.
And so why is it that we have members of the church, couples who are wonderful, that are great people, that were married in the temple, that are checking all the boxes, and yet their marriage is toxic? And neither one of them is really spiritually excelling to the degree possible. And I think that as you learned through revelation, it could be that we have women that are living in masculinity and men who are living in femininity.
Allie: Well, and it’s really interesting, like in my own situation, I really was checking all the boxes. By all accounts, I was being a really righteous person. And I think that a lot of LDS women are the same…We are rocking the gospel game in terms of, I read a whole chapter of my scriptures today, and I went to the temple this week, and I brought a casserole to my Relief Society sister, and we’re doing the gospel in the masculine way. And a lot of times our husbands are not. I mean, I think a significant proportion of your listeners are having this experience where they feel like they’re doing everything right. They might be married to someone who is probably not checking off all the boxes, might not be checking any of the boxes, and they’re sitting there like, okay, well, what about that? And I don’t know, what about that? And for me, I feel like for my personal answer, my personal answer has been that I had to be more feminine.
And as I have done that, my own husband has really taken a lot more control. He’s in charge of Family Home Evening now, and I don’t have to be the boss of that anymore, as just one example. But me letting go of a masculine energy in my entire life has led to him being able to step up in ways that he was not doing when I was just so sure that I was so righteous. I was getting the job done. Why won’t he do anything? When I got rid of that attitude and started stepping into more feminine energy, things really did start to align a lot better.
Meghan: Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. I think that I can hear some women saying like, okay, Megan and Allie, what the heck are you trying to tell me? What is the practical application of this? You’re saying all this stuff and I’m feeling really crappy. What am I supposed to do about it?
Well, first off, I hope you don’t feel crappy. I hope that this just comes across as an additional part of your learning experience. And if it feels true to you, then that’s great. New truth is never a bad thing, especially if we go to the Lord and ask, okay, how do I start to apply this? But one of the things that we talked about before that I really love that you brought up is how as women, we have the capacity to carry both feminine and masculine spirit. And we see that in our physiology, right? We carry in our wombs both little girls and baby boys. We can do that. And so we have some capacity to step into the masculine. And that’s necessary for that teeter-totter game that we’re kind of the hinge point of that.
But our men don’t. They don’t have womb space in that way. They don’t have the hold feminine spirit and masculine spirit. It’s all or nothing for the men. And so what do we do about this?
Well, my invitation and something that I talk about in the chapter on marriage in my book is that women who feel that there is a necessity to balance more in their own femininity for their own development and for their partnership with their husband, we can choose to not do all the things. It’s not about doing more in this case. It’s really about pulling back and letting our husbands take over things. And that’s really risky and terrifying. Do you want to talk about that?
Allie: Oh my gosh. Just that it is so risky and terrifying. I can think of like 10,000 terrifying examples in my own life, but I’ll tell one that I shouldn’t offend anyone in my real life if they hear it. This is about my son. Our feminine journeys as women do not just affect our marriages. It impacts our children. It impacts everyone who knows us. But the other day, my kids all got into the car from school. A wasp flew into the car and landed on my daughter’s backpack while all of the doors were open. Everyone starts to lose their mind. They’re screaming bloody murder. And so I’m like, okay, what’s going on? Well, there’s a wasp in the car. And it all just happened so quickly. This is the thing that you have to understand.
I grew up in like – my older brother was severely disabled and he had a lot of problems and it was always a life or death situation. And so anyways, if it’s loud, I’m on it and I’m taking care of business and it is my default setting. So all in the same moment, I opened up the door. I start running around the car. I’m opening up their door and grabbing this backpack. And my 13-year-old son, my oldest son, at the same time that I was getting out of the car, said, “Mom, don’t move. I’m going to handle this.” That’s what he said. I love him. The man in my life. My little son, who is as big as me, so I can’t really say that anymore, but he wanted to assert control over the situation. He wanted to be the hero for his family and get this wasp out of the car. And I was so quick on my feet that I did not give him the opportunity to do it. And I’m crying right now because I do regret that. And also because it was such a beautiful moment to have my 13-year-old help me sit down, “Mom. I’m going to handle this like a man.” “Wow, yes, you should handle this.” But it was too late. I already got the wasp out of the car. Next time. Next time. Exactly. Next wasp.
But that’s the thing, one of my fears right now is that I will train my son to sit back and relax because I am so competent. And because when those situations happen, I’m just on it. And I feel like I’ve trained perhaps other men in my life to sit back and relax while I handle things because I am on it. And that experience was just very eye opening for me because having a wasp in the car with five little kids, it’s not the end of the world, but we do have allergies in the family. I don’t know if they’re allergic but it could have been a life or death situation.
Some of these things, though, we as women, we have this opportunity to say, you know what, I am just going to sit back here and let a man handle this. They are not gonna tell you to sit down, especially in our culture right now where masculinity, in general, is so vilified. It’s funny because we value masculine traits, but mostly in women. And we’re always like, sit down! Stop taking control! Let a woman lead. It’s our turn to shine, men!
Well, we’ve been sure doing a lot of shining, haven’t we, ladies? We’ve sure had our big chance to take control of a lot of things. And I think a lot of us are really burned out by it. I know I am. I am burned out from being the shining star in a lot of the situations of my life and I’m over it. But we have to let the men lead. And for men that are not used to that, it’s gonna be a wake-up call and it is kind of scary.
I can think of several times in my life where I had to say, okay, husband, you have to be in charge of this now. And he was not used to it, didn’t know what to do, perhaps messed things up in ways that impacted me in ways that I did not like, but they have to learn somehow. We have to be willing to release that control so that they can step up. And it’s not about them exercising control over us. It’s about allowing them to be the hero, allowing them to do stuff so we don’t have to, so that we can sit down and relax and read a book.
I don’t know how many of us have had that situation, but I was talking to a good friend recently who had just read a book for the first time in years. She’s had four kids in five years and now her youngest is two. And she spent an afternoon reading her book and her husband came home and he was like, oh my gosh, you’re reading a book. I haven’t seen you read a book in so long, you should do this more. You should do this more. Then did he do the dishes? Did he help put the kids to bed? Did he sweep the floor? No, he did not. Did he think about dinner? No. He wants her to relax and he did absolutely nothing to support that.
But we’ve got to create a space for the men in our lives to step up and help us in ways that are not naggy and ways that are not controlling of us and blaming and accusatory so that we can rest and relax. Because I think the men in our lives like to see us reading a book. They want to see us reading a novel with our feet up on the couch sometimes. It makes them feel happy when we are in a restful space.
A lot of us have been co-contributors to our own massive stress loads. And the more that we can take responsibility for letting go of some of that, yeah, some things are going to fall apart and it can be ugly while our men figure out how to support us when they never have supported us before. I can verify, not always a fun transition, but it is a necessary transition in my opinion.
Meghan: Yeah. Well, I feel very convicted. So thank you for that. But this is so important. This is not easy, you guys. First off, no one’s ever told us, no one ever told me why this was important. All you hear is the worldly girl boss narrative or whatever. No one ever said, hey, it’s really important for you to be womanly. My mom didn’t know that. Her mom didn’t know that. We’ve inherited generations of iniquity when it comes to these things. And so yeah, coming out from that is going to have growing pains for all of us, but is it going to be worth it? I think so. It’s a key to developing to be like our heavenly parents. So yeah, I think that that’s worth it.
I love how you brought up that this is really important for us to understand this dynamic with our children too and helping our children do what we didn’t know we needed to do. And I see that particularly with my daughter. My daughter is so feminine and it makes me insane. She’s the slowest human and she takes her sweet time and she just wants to do the artistic thing and she just wants to play imagination. And in my head, I’m like, no, you need to do chores. You need to do it like this. And I see myself hoisting my masculine upbringing on her. And it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, mama. Pull that in. We need to learn how to help cultivate the femininity of our daughters and the masculinity of our sons. And I love that at least we’re learning it.
We’re both failing, right? We’re all failing right now, but we’re learning. So that’s cool.
Allie: We do a little bit better most of the time and a little worse some of the time.
Meghan: Very well said. Very well said. Okay.
The last thing I want to talk about before we wrap up is the idea of permission. Because I think that women are waiting for men to give us permission to be feminine and men are looking at other men to give them permission to be masculine. And I think that that’s the opposite of how it actually is. So can you share your experience with how do men actually get permission and how do women actually get permission to embrace our own spirits?
Allie: Wow.
Meghan: You can share your story that you’ve told me if that’s helpful.
Allie: Oh, about the conference that I spoke at?
Meghan: Yeah.
Allie: Oh, okay. So I wrote this book, Magnetic Femininity, and it’s by a woman for women about women. Anyway, so Meghan and I were talking about women writing books about men and masculinity because now people ask me about writing a book about masculinity as well. And I’m like, oh, man, but I’m a woman.
I told Meghan this story, which happened a few years ago. I was supposed to speak about economy but instead at the last minute, I was like, surprise, we’re talking about marriage. Surprise, everyone. And I talked about masculinity and femininity. And then at the end, I was so petrified because it was an event put on by a man with a high proportion of men there, which my own audience is like 90% female. So I don’t usually lecture to lots of men, especially not about manhood.
And so I sat down in my vulnerability hangover and just said, my gosh, well, I hope that was okay. But I just had to do it because I felt spiritually like I had to speak about these things, but I felt so awkward because I’m a woman talking about masculinity. And a man there said, no, thank you so much because I needed to hear from a woman that it was okay for me to lead my family. I needed permission from a woman to step into my masculine energy when that is so vilified now for men to take control, for a man to tell a woman, “Sit down, I’m going to handle that.” A lot of us, even if we want that, we feel offended by it.
I don’t know if you are ever on book talk, like on TikTok, where they talk about books. I am not really, but sometimes it ends up in my algorithm. And I see these reels of people that are like, oh, a masculine man in fiction. Ooh, a masculine man in my real life. They want a man to exert control in their fantasy story. But the idea of a man telling them like, “Sit down, I’m going to handle this,” is very terrifying or abrasive to them in real life.
Anyway, I think that men do need to hear from women that it’s okay to be masculine. It’s okay to exert masculine energy in their lives. And I think one of the ways that we as women permit that is truly just by allowing it and not making fun of it, not demonizing it, not trivializing it. When the men in our lives want to go do traditionally masculine things, I don’t think it’s appropriate to make fun of them for it or to tease them about it or to roll our eyes at it. I think we need to be celebrating it, even if we don’t really love it. Because it is so rare for men to feel comfortable doing masculine things these days. I am firmly in the camp of encouraging men to do masculine things. Or at least if we’re not going to encourage it, be cool with it if they’re going to do those things.
Meghan: And by masculine things, we don’t mean what the world has made masculinity into, which is video games all day long, like we talked about, right? You’re talking about going hunting…
Allie: We’re talking about hunting, fishing. If they’re going to go out and go off-roading for a day, when else in the modern age are they going to burn off that adrenaline? Let them have at it and don’t be a jerk about it in my opinion. There could be an excess, but-
Meghan: I love that you said that. And is this scary for us as women? Yeah, it’s freaking scary because it means we have to let go of control. But guess what? Us letting go of control is stepping into femininity. So not only do we have to give our men the space and the permission to say, yes, I want you to be the man. I want you to take care of this family so that I don’t have to, so that I can focus on giving life, to myself, and then to everyone else. That’s what I want. I want to give you permission to do that. I want to support you in doing that. However, the way that they’re going to do that is probably not the way that we would have done it. Now if the job still gets done and if it doesn’t compromise your ability to give life, then we need to learn to be okay with the men doing it maybe differently than we would, right? And that’s part of relinquishing that control.
Allie: Yes. I have one last story and then I have to go pick up all my kids from school. But as you were saying that I was thinking of how I spent most of my life trying to not need any men. I didn’t want them.
And I think we are encouraged in school to not need men. I think that when women do need men in school, it’s really looked down on. That was my experience anyway.
And as I was on my journey with this feminine energy, I remember one day I was like, you know what? I need men. And I just breathed it in and I was just like, God, I need men. I’m okay with it. I am okay with needing men. And I fully believe that men are going to show up for me. I believe it. And I just stepped into that energy all the way. And this was the miracle that happened.
I had to go on a business trip with just me and a baby. And I went to the airport and it’s me and my baby. And it was my baby and my toddler. That was it. The three of us. And my hands were full and I got up to the TSA security place. And from behind me, I hear a man saying, “Excuse me, ma’am. I see you have your hands full. I have four kids myself. I am going to fold up your stroller now and put it on the conveyor belt.” And I feel like I want to cry about that, but he did. I don’t even know what he looks like, I was dealing with my children and I said, “Thank you so much.”
He was behind me and he handled this stroller. And then, because I was ahead of him in line. I went through the line and from behind me, as I was dealing with my kids, he was like, “Ma’am, it’s me again. And I’m going to set up your stroller.” And he did again. And I don’t even know who he is. And I needed a man and he saved my day. I’m capable of folding up my own stroller, but he did it for me. So as I’m walking through this airport, my little crazy daughter ran ahead, ran really far ahead. And I’m like, stop, stop, you know, slow down, wait for me. And a man saw her and caught her and knelt down and talked to her and found me and waited with her until I caught up to her. And honestly, at first, like the first instinct – I think in the modern age – is to be like, “Oh my gosh, a grown man is with my child.”
But immediately I was like, Oh my gosh, God sent a man to save my child in this massive airport. And he waited for me and he helped her understand it is not safe to run away from your mommy at the airport.
So we get to our gate and onto the airplane when my baby loses her ever-loving mind and she is screaming bloody murder. I was in the aisle seat and the man across the aisle looked over and said, “Hi, I have, I have a bunch of kids and I know what this is like, and I will help you. And he did.” And he talked to her and caught her attention and played with her for this four hour flight.
And all the way through, as soon as I was open to needing men, they showed up for me. Oh, also a man put my luggage up high and took it back down for me. And I didn’t even have to ask. And guess what? As soon as we’re open to being supported by men and releasing the control and the fixation on, ‘I have to do it myself’. I do believe men actually do step up for us. They’re happy to serve us. It is in their DNA. Their biology wants to serve women. And all it takes is us choosing to be okay with that. It’s terrifying. But I have seen it for myself in an incredible series of miracles, that men show up. They really do. I’m sure those men are not perfect men. They probably have yelled at their kids before. They probably said mean stuff to their wives before, but they can still show up in very helpful ways that we did not predict, expect or ask for.
Meghan: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like this is like the opposite of mansplaining, right? It’s like when a man explains to women, like you need to let us help you. It’s like, no dude, like you can’t do that. But we can say to men, we give you permission to help us.
And we can also say as women, we also have the ability to empower ourselves and say, I give myself permission to be feminine and to accept healthy masculinity into my life. Ooh, that sounds like an important affirmation that we should all be writing.
Allie: Yes. Oh, I love it so much.
Meghan: Okay. Well, this was awesome, Allie. Thank you so much. I will let you go pick up your children. Thank you for all that you do.
Allie: Thank you, Meghan. Your book is a masterpiece. I am so delighted to have access to it. Everyone go buy it immediately.
Meghan: Yes. Yes, absolutely. It is available on Amazon. So if anyone wants to pick that up, go get Consider Yourself as Eve and share this episode. If anything was interesting to you, if you feel inspired to share it with a friend or family member, please do. Thank you.
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