Rewilding Sex and Gender: A Story of Humans

Freedom in biology + unweaving cultural cages.

We live in an unprecedented time... A time that will sit in the history books as a cautionary tale for a myriad of reasons.

The Western world has rapidly forgotten the meanings of “sex” and “gender”...and it shows. Loudly. Other parts of the world haven’t forgotten and are watching us with curiosity and disdain.

So why am I proposing that we “rewild” sex and gender?

Well, we’ve been talking about these concepts for, geez, thousands of years. Likely longer. And we’ve found it difficult to make much headway in solving gender-based issues through traditional means.

The struggle with being a human is that we live such short lives. We’re born into a particular era, and - as all humans do - we get very wrapped up in our experience of Now. Our culture (and all its trappings) is normal to us, our language orients us to how we perceive our world, who we’re surrounded by tells us who we need to impress and be intimidated by. We fall into perceptions of beauty, myths of creation, the gods of our time, gadgets and gizmos of our era, and we fall VERY hard for social trends of our time as well.

For the many thousands of years before 1700-ish or so, this was pretty acceptable overall (with some variations). In actuality, the daily lifestyles of humans from generation to generation didn’t really change a whole lot. There was no such thing as “Gen X” or “Millennials”. There were just people and the limited “things” that made up their societies. 

Traditions passed down and down and down, with tiny alterations here and there. Occasionally, someone would do something wild, but most people lived quiet, relatively mundane lives.

Only with the Industrial Revolution and then the Technological Revolution did we suddenly exist in warped time. Everything has been changing SO rapidly ever since, that hardly anyone can keep up. This has accelerated trends as well, as suddenly we can buy anything we want, dress “uniquely”, pay for cosmetic alterations + plastic surgeries, and form highly differentiated identities.

While past societies have certainly had fashion and trends, nothing has ever been as it is today. 

Truly, it’s overwhelming for our nervous systems and it causes us to feel even more chaotic and lost than we might have already felt. That inner chaos drives us to lean even harder into consumerism and self-identity.

We have a significantly stratified culture and society. And that worldview is being outsourced around the world, giving nearly every other culture a case of the gimmes. (Almost) everyone wants to be like Americans. 

It’s a heavy responsibility that most Americans mindlessly shopping at Walmart don’t even consider and have little capacity to be aware of.

What on earth does all of this have to do with sex and gender?

Everything.

Let’s do a proper definition of both, so we can further analyze each.

Historical Context

First of all, it’s important to clarify that the entirely separate concept of “sex” and “gender” is likely a newer innovation that arrived with academic theorizing (though we can never assume that we understand how past humans thought, and perhaps they also had similar ideas). 

Originally (in a western/European/American context), all things related to the differences in female and male - both biological and social - were just called “sex”. But as we started to use the word sex to mean sexual intercourse, “gender” became a less squeamish way to name differences.

In popular culture, these two words are generally interchangeable. Unless you’re specifically analyzing difference from an academic perspective.

It is extremely useful to use these two words in separate ways, however. And so, I align with the original anthropological use of these words (pre-gender ideology). 

Humans are made of two parts: the very wild, mammal, biological side and the very cultural side. These are, of course, intricately interwoven. But it’s useful to pull them apart to analyze them, as we learn a lot about ourselves this way. (As long as we then also consider the interwovenness of it all.)

A Somewhat Simple Definition

Here are the two general definitions of these parts:

Sex: either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures (Merriam Webster).

Gender: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex (Merriam Webster).

Now to put that into more anthropological terms…

Sex is purely biological. Mammals tend to be sexually dimorphic and it is how they reproduce (as compared with a few animals that can self-reproduce). Primates are all very sexually dimorphic, especially the Great Apes (the category we belong to).

Sex tells us whether a person has XX or XY chromosomes. During fetal development, those chromosomes act as a blueprint, telling the body building process how to construct that particular baby’s sexed body. 

For the first few weeks of fetal development, babies all have genitals that look the same. But roughly around 8 weeks, differentiated genitalia starts to develop, which is fully recognizable as either male or female at around 18 weeks. 

Yes, it is true that some babies end up with ambiguous genitalia and body parts that are missing or are extra. Yes, a tiny percentage of fetuses come with extra sex chromosomes. But these are very rare individual anomalies and not something to construct a population-wide philosophy around. Generally, these individuals still end up with differentiated sex characteristics that cause them to lean more biologically male or female.

In the end, our biology still trends toward sexual dimorphism. This is a strong trait that is unlikely to change at any point in the near future, as natural selection has favored this trait for millions of years.

I can hear some arguments, attempting to push back on this. But this is on the rise! More people are intersexed than you think!

Perhaps. And perhaps our generation is also struggling to swim through the sea of toxic chemicals we’ve been pouring all over ourselves and our developing fetuses for the past 60+ years. (Watch the documentary The Disappearing Male if you don’t believe that these chemicals are having an impact on development.)

Generally, I tend to be pretty skeptical that some plastic has the capacity to completely overhaul evolution. Humans like to think they’re pretty powerful - and we are. But a little humility would do us a world of good. Mother Nature is a strong designer.

None of this has even tiptoed yet into the realm of culture. This is all speaking purely about biology.

Our culture has a very limited understanding of the impacts of biology. Yes, we have science. But the majority of our scientific and medical practices are purely cultural. We have brought our religiously-oriented minds and cultural perspectives and fears of the past, overlaying it onto science and biology with mixed results.

Let me give you my favorite example: physiological childbirth.

What if I told you that the vast majority of scientists, researchers, obstetricians, midwives, and other medical practitioners and researchers around the world actually have very little understanding of how birth truly biologically works?

No, I’m not suggesting that I have some secret intelligence that they’re all lacking. 

But what I do have is connection to a subset of researchers + practitioners who study birth from a purely physiological perspective, as well as personal + community experience with birth in its wild state.

The kinds of questions a researcher asks reflects bias and culture, which leads to results that also reflect that initial worldview, and not necessarily pure biology.

The majority of our medical research around birth was done during an era when women were heavily drugged, laid flat on their backs with their legs tied up in stirrups (and often their arms tied down too), and in the ultimate passive state. (And, if we’re being honest, this birthing protocol isn’t a whole lot different today…)

This is where we got all sorts of obstetrical nonsense such as the Friedman’s Curve (which you can toss right out the window in a wild mammalian human birth). Active, upright, physiological birth looks and behaves almost nothing like domesticated, practitioner-directed birth.

The hormones of physiological birth are the pieces that are crucial to its success and function. And hormones can be easily disturbed by all sorts of things (they’re meant to be that way for safety and survival). Even just a single phrase uttered by a practitioner during a moment when a woman’s hormones make her the most vulnerable to suggestion can completely alter the course of her birth.

You see, my point is that human biology is CRUCIAL to understanding how humans function best and without technological assistance. Human biology is at the core of our understanding of our wild selves and our fullest potential on this beautiful planet.

If we cannot appreciate this and lean into it… we have zero anchors to guide us, and we’re just flailing around in space making shit up and hoping it works. (Spoiler: it won’t).

Biology matters. It’s the key to understanding our cyclical hormones. It’s the key to understanding how to nourish the female body and the male body in their highly unique ways. It’s the key to comprehending our meticulous hormones, how they impact our bodies and minds, and how to support them in performing better - especially in an increasingly toxic and stressful world. 

(Most of these things are beyond the wheelhouse of most medical practitioners who are trained in domination and control via surgery and pharmaceuticals, than in actually understanding the far less profitable perspective of supporting the body to do what it is already trying to do.)

There is lots more I could say about biology. But this is a good place to start.

Let’s do the actual dirty work now and venture into culture…

Unpacking Gender

Oh, where to start with gender... Let’s begin with an anthropological view.

Gender is a purely cultural construct. In other words, gender is how we understand, interpret, and organize our thoughts about what meaning a person’s biological sex holds in our particular culture. 

While all human cultures think that their perspective on “gender” is the correct one, the truth is there is no material thing called Gender. It’s a concept that sits next to creation myths, societal organization, and self-perception. It’s subjective and cannot be truly objective.

Gender IS connected to biological sex. But just as creation myths emerge from the lands in which they are borne, yet take on powerful lives of their own… So too does gender. 

But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have real world impacts. Because one could argue it has almost even more impact on an individual’s life than biological sex does. (Almost.) It certainly shapes our perceptions of our biological experiences.

Most westerners don’t realize that our concepts of gender are wholly cultural. When we say “woman” and then imagine our stereotypical ideal for a woman, we are thinking through a cultural lens and not a biological one (though we may include biological events women experience, which causes much of our confusion about what’s what).

Humans are culture-makers. That’s what differentiates us from most other animals (that we can tell anyway - there are likely some animals that do what we do in some form). We are beautifully imaginative and we make meaning out of everything. It’s how we cope with having a large prefrontal cortex and other unique features in our brains that allow us to reflect on the past, present, and future. 

In humanity’s original state, we likely lived a very wild sort of life. While we don’t have hard evidence of what our culture groups looked like or how they organized themselves (wild animals often don’t leave “things” behind), we can make some pretty educated guesses.

Most likely, we lived in small groups of humans organized around women and their vulnerable children. These women were most likely related and very closely bonded. They watched out for each other and for each other’s babies and children. They slept close together around a fire. They gathered, trapped, and prepared food together. They were very likely nomadic, following the seasons and food from abundant place to place. Men probably spent most of their time together, hunting and exploring ahead to find new places for the group to move to where there would be more food, warmth, and safety. 

Much of culture development likely happened separately. Men, while they were off in the wilds. Women, at camp with their babies and children. Women were probably the creators of pottery, weaving, art, music, and other aspects of culture that would have made their jobs as hearth tenders easier and more interesting. They were likely also the originators of language, as they began to speak to their babies and to keep their children safe (though I’m certain men had a hand in this as well, and it’s likely that when we adopted dogs as companions this also advanced our language development).

This doesn’t mean that some men didn’t stay at the camp and participate in caring for children. They very likely did (especially in old age). This doesn’t mean that some women didn’t go wandering and hunting with the men. They very likely did, as well. We are not carbon copies of each other and culture groups aren’t either. 

There were recent hunter-gatherer groups where women were fierce hunters and others where everyone, men included, were gentle nurturers. Cultural variation is the norm when it comes to humans. (I say “were” because, even though many of these groups still exist, they have likely been colonized at this point and so aren’t practicing their original cultural views anymore.)

Thankfully, we are all biologically similar and yet also beautifully unique individuals. 

But in our most wild forms, we didn’t have “stuff” in the way we have now. We survived together. We prioritized biological strengths so that we could survive together. And, at the end of the day, we thrived together as well.

I feel compelled to also add in here that humans were also not originally violent in the way that we perceive them today. There is a pernicious lie in our culture and in many cultures for the past few thousands of years that humans are evil, mean creatures.

We’re actually not.

But we, like any other mammal, are territorial and protective. We will defend ourselves and our children against strange creatures and strange humans we’ve never encountered before (or have encountered and didn’t get along with). Our hormones drive us to be protective (thank you testosterone, adrenaline, and other gifts of Mother Nature).

The roots of war are in this very human and mammalian urge to protect ourselves and our young. But war itself is culturally based (and likely originated from warrior cults several thousands of years ago). Violence against others for the purpose of gain is far more cultural than biological.

Humans are not inherently violent (and our hormones affirm that archaeologically-supported story).

Back to gender.

The development of the concept of gender began in our early human roots. But in those days, it was simple and biology based. Humans did what came natural to them and promoted the survival of the culture group (plus lots of fun during downtime, because we like to play). Nothing more, nothing less.

As language developed, as culture groups grew in number, and as humans figured out ways to accumulate goods… suddenly gender became a thing with great significance.

Why?

Because the holder of the goods is the one that holds power and control.

This, of course, doesn’t just affect gender. This development in human culture created class systems. It drove wedges between ethnic groups. It created our modern ideas of empires, governments, and countries. All of these things are intertwined and hard to pull apart.

But that’s for another essay. Let’s keep talking about gender.

Because of our biological differences and regional opportunities, in some areas of the world women had more power, which made certain cultures more egalitarian. In other areas of the world, men were the ones with all the goods and so they held the power. This was often directly correlated to food - whoever held the capacity for bringing home the most food was the sex that was respected the most.

You can see this in action today in hunter-gatherer societies. In the cultures where they rely mostly on the food brought home by men who hunt, women tend to have less power. In the cultures where they rely more on what women can gather, trap, or hunt nearby, the culture groups tend to be more equal in power. (All-in-all, however, hunter-gatherer societies are still far more equal than our civilized cultures are.)

The differences between those cultures and our current civilization mess is that they are often nomadic, meaning they don’t readily accumulate many goods.

Our modern societies are an orgy of consumerism. And it has entrenched deep chasms in the realm of gender, class, ethnicity, and citizenship. In fact, most of what is “wrong” with our world can be traced directly back to the accumulation of goods and the willingness to fight to protect our hoarding of those goods.

(We can see that in our society, the requirement to make lots of money to pay for basic necessities of living sets women and men up for inequality at the foundation. It pits mothers against a culture that doesn’t recognize their value. It doesn’t center mothers or their babies. It centers a hierarchy of men and the women who decide to join the hierarchical game. 

Despite our feminist movements and advances, the very foundation of how our society is constructed will always set us up for struggling against each other, instead of harmonious collaboration together.)

Clearly, this is a messy story that includes many elements that are hard to untangle or explain concisely.

Humans are just messy like that.

But let’s make this concept of gender more relevant to our lives today.

Gender in the Modern World

The arrival of patriarchy (“the rule of the father”) is a newer development in human societies.

For most of our evolutionary history, culture groups centered the mother and the grandmother - simply because they were the stable forces tending the fires and children back at camp/home (and also likely because the process of creating and birthing babies was enchanting and mystical, which made female worship more appealing than it is today).

We could call these societies matriarchal (some of them still exist today - many more existed until colonization eradicated them…). But mostly, they were just differently structured and egalitarian, with massive safety nets created for women and their children. 

Biology was honored, but humans had to work together in kindness and cooperation in order to survive. They didn’t have paternity tests and didn’t care too much about the idea of a “father”. The woman who gave birth was the only biological parent that really mattered as far as family trees were concerned. Everyone else was the “other” parent to that child, and protected, fed, and taught that child with the love of a parent.

Once civilization appeared on the scene, we also suddenly created this idea of “patriarchy.” (FYI: civilization is a specific type of society — there are many ways that societies can be structured.)

As we are a sexually dimorphic species, men tend to be larger and stronger than women. This is largely due to their naturally higher levels of testosterone, which probably developed during the hundreds-of-thousands-of-years wherein they were the group primarily responsible for chasing large game animals, developing systems of strategy for overcoming them, and then killing them and dragging them back to camp.

We could also suggest other reasons why they might be larger and stronger: perhaps to defend their groups from predators and intruders; perhaps as a relic from more ancient pre-humans that were more sexually dominant. There are many theories we could suggest, and probably bits and pieces of each of them are true.

But whatever the cause, men are indeed more physically powerful than women are - with some variations, of course. (And women have built-in brain superpowers to protect themselves: such as our highly tuned ability to detect a person’s sex, even when they present with an ambiguous gender expression.)

And so, with the advent of civilization and patriarchy, women became more powerless and more passive. Cultural ideas of beauty were developed to render them “helpless” looking, they spent time hiding away from society, and generally fell captive to male-dominated public spheres. The badass, capable woman of the forest became a clinging, vulnerable shadow of her wild self.

When a society is stratified, this creates a steep hierarchy. Those who are robust enough to fight for the top rungs (or just happen to be at the right place at the right time), get to rule. Everyone else falls somewhere on the hierarchy below them. 

There’s one thing about human nature: when you put humans on a hierarchy we tend to wither (this is true for other mammals, as well).

When we feel enslaved, oppressed, and trapped, we behave like caged animals. We attack each other, we try to climb on top of other humans in order to gain a sense of power and taste of freedom.

In a patriarchal world, this often looks like men who are oppressed by other men, going home to step on their wives and children. This then looks like women who abuse their children or retaliate against their husbands who they perceive as “weak” or not accumulating enough power to “gain their respect.”

Or it might look like terrified men and terrified women who people please themselves to death. Always hiding in the shadows, never being their full, authentic, self-actualized selves.

Generally speaking, civilized, patriarchal, stratified societies produce humans with highly dysregulated nervous systems, who are often malnourished (for various reasons), who develop diseases of domestication/civilization, and who forget their biological superpowers and create myths of fear around their biology.

In this deeply toxic cultural structure, beliefs about gender emerge that are not rooted in our inherent wildness or that hold a deep respect for our biology. 

And this brings me to our present day dilemma: gender ideology. (Phew, that was a journey!)

Untangling Gender Ideology Through a Rewilding Lens

Within the gender ideology realm, there is a belief that gender isn’t binary. And that is absolutely true.

Why?

Because gender isn’t material reality. It’s a cultural construct. Gender ideology correctly critiques our acceptance of sex stereotypes as “real”. 

But this isn’t a new critique. Women and feminists have been shouting this from the rooftops for a very long time. In fact, this is the most central tenet of feminism. Gender isn’t real and is inherently malleable, therefore let’s stop holding women to its rules (and men too).

The problem we are facing currently is that somehow along the way, Queer Theory and gender ideology in general has decided that biological sex isn’t real either and doesn’t exist on a binary.

As biological sex IS material reality, this assertion is false. No matter how you spin this story, mammals have been sexually dimorphic since forever and will continue to be so until Mother Nature decides otherwise.

Intersexed individuals do not change this biological fact, but are instead an example of variation and mutations within nature (and possibly genes encountering modifiers in the environment AKA microplastics and other insidious relics of modern times we will have to seriously contend with in the future…).

Gender ideology asserts that gender and sex are a product of colonization, and so therefore we are “decolonizing” modern culture by outright denying the existence of gender and sex.

It is absolutely true that indigenous and non-western cultures have had (and in some cases still have) third-gender categories. 

It is also absolutely true that equating our modern perception of “trans” with indigenous worldviews is a highly ethnocentric way of viewing other cultures (not to mention incredibly egotistical). 

Individuals in our modern world who engage with the cult-like obsessions of identity culture, take synthetic hormones that increase or decrease their natural hormone levels (increasing their likelihood for all kinds of physical ailments and diseases), and pay plastic surgeons to remove or modify their healthy body tissues are NOT the same as indigenous individuals who simply had an affinity for activities and/or clothing typically associated with the opposite sex in their culture.

Indigenous cultures did not have access to the Medical Industrial Complex or Big Pharma. They sometimes had religiously constructed worldviews that allowed them more fluidity within their own culture’s perception of “gender.” They still very much acknowledged biological sex.

(And let’s be cautious about looking at indigenous cultures with rose colored glasses in the first place - many of them treated women horribly, and weren’t the epitome of egalitarianism or women-honoring that we want to pretend they were. Cultures that raped and sold or stole women for slavery are not necessarily ones to look to for help on figuring out “gender”.)

Yes, I’m very aware that some cultures participated in genital mutilation in combination with fluid gender roles. But we have to take into context the overall concept of gender in these societies.

These societies were not matriarchal societies. They were/are societies in which men dominated and social roles were stratified along class lines. In other words, these societies participate/d in a form of civilization and/or patriarchy.

Generally speaking, in these societies, it is men who were accepted into a spiritual role who often participated in castration, became a type of eunuch, and (at one point in time) were honored for their spiritual role. Not entirely unlike the eunuchs of medieval Europe or ancient Rome. (Yes, I am very aware of modern societies that do this still - most of them were in the past, however.)

When we break down these social scenarios, we see societies in which men still claim to honor goddesses, but also heavily harm and discriminate against women. We see societies in which a few men have power and many men have very little. We see a society in which men will do some pretty crazy things in order to gain a sense of autonomy and power.

Yes, even castrate themselves in order to fit a particular identity that gives them access to parts of society they wouldn’t have had access to previously. Yes, even co-opting “womanhood” in order to gain a sense of power in their stratified experience of life.

Yep, this analysis will piss people off. I’m fine with that.

But here’s the everlasting truth:

In matriarchal/women-centered societies, women and men are honored as biological beings endowed with self-determination. Gender exists (because we are cultural animals), but it is not the heavy-handed lording over that exists in civilized and patriarchal societies.

In matriarchal societies, women and men can express themselves in fluid forms without punishment. They are not held in violence. They are not asked to castrate themselves or perform dangerous surgeries. They are asked to nourish and protect, create and collaborate. 

In matrifocal societies, both men and women are safe. Men who have a disposition that leads them toward domination are raised in a way to temper the fires of their tendency toward violence (in other words, they are treated lovingly as little boys). 

In matriarchal societies, men can be whoever it is they want to be, as long as it is safe and nourishing for the collective. Men are asked to mother the children, along with all of the women. Old men can be wise sages, playing games with babies and children to make them laugh, telling stories to entertain and inform all. Passing along their unique wisdom in the ways that feel healthiest for them. 

In matriarchal societies, women don’t have to live in hyper-vigilance. They have far lower levels of stress hormones, which helps them to feel abundant and safe (which also creates a safe environment for their hormones to function correctly). They can hunt if that is more their thing. They don’t have to bear children if they don’t want to. They are not subjected to gender roles, as the domination of heavy-handed patriarchal rule is absent.

In other words, women-centered cultures don’t place a heavy emphasis on gender in the ways that male-dominated cultures do. There’s really no need.

While feminists have been saying “please see our biological sex and respect it, and please let’s just put an end to gender and its shackles”... they have struggled to communicate this message in an effective manner that all humans can hear and understand.

Most feminist messaging is missing its ancient narrative and roots.

Most masculine messaging is also missing its ancient narrative and roots.

I read stories from both sides and feel frustrated by all of the either/or-ing going on.

Folks, this is more complex and deserves a “both/and” conversation.

Both women and men are impacted by our civilized society. See my hierarchy discussion above. 

And our modern era is the worst state humanity has ever faced. Not because we are more violent (we’re actually not). Not because we have less than ever before (clearly we live with over-abundance).

So why is it the worst?

Because this is the most groundless and disconnected we have ever been in the history of humans. This is especially true in the western world where we have eradicated our roots.

We don’t know where we’re from. We have almost zero relationship with the land around us. We are desperately disconnected from our Great Mother. We’ve even all but lost religion, which at least gave us a village and a cosmology of sorts. We have no idea how our bodies work and we rush to the Priests of Medicine for every little panic-inducing sniffle. We’ve even lost our wisdom around childbirth that was developed over hundreds of thousands of years (which is the moment that we know things have gone very wrong). 

Animals who have a perceived sense of self, but who are completely disconnected from life and death are dangerous animals. They are lost and hopeless animals. They are depressed, anxious, and feel deep in their cells that all is wrong. They pace back and forth in their cages, unsure of the solution for the deep despair that they feel but also sure that all is not right.

And we, my friends, are animals in cages, believing that there is something wrong with us instead of understanding context and placing blame where it belongs: with this destructive culture we’ve been born into that teaches us to inherently distrust, harm, and hate ourselves.

You, beautiful human, are perfect just as you are. Your internal anguish isn’t because you are wrong. This is not a you-problem. You are born whole, wise, intact.

However, as humans living in this modern mess, we have a great responsibility to change the course of society before it gets even worse (spoiler alert: it likely will and we need to be prepared). 

We have a great responsibility to do our own healing work. To reclaim our own wholeness. To deeply nourish our beautiful, biologically intelligent bodies. To peel back the layers of culture in our minds, to reveal our inherent wholeness and intelligence. To stop believing cultural lies that tell us we have to participate in Beauty culture, Patriarchal culture, Medicalization culture, Image Management culture, Diet and Fitness culture, and other cultural expectations that hold at their core the belief that we will never be enough (and must pay further dues with our bodies and minds until the end of our days).

We have to collectively begin to grieve for the messes our ancestors have given us. We have to learn to forgive past humans…and even the present humans who know not what they do. 

We have to do our own healing work and then create spaces where other humans can come to grieve and mourn. Where they can re-learn what it means to be a human being, honoring our biological blueprints and wisdom. Spaces where we can begin to release ourselves from the trance of our modern culture’s narratives that have at their core The Story of Separation.

We need to create spaces where our children can learn useful skills and wisdom that our ancestors held and modern humans have forgotten. These skills will be necessary in the decades and centuries ahead, as civilization runs out of function and fuel. Yes, as all civilizations do, this one will eventually collapse.

We are intentional future ancestors when we revitalize this knowledge and wisdom, and pass it down so it is not entirely lost. Future humans will be grateful for this gift, even as they are resentful for the destruction we created for them. We owe them something as a token of our remembering and humility.

We also owe it to ourselves to start a revolution of a Great Remembering. Why? Because we belong here and we need to feel it in order to feel fully whole again. We won’t ever get to experience the sense of belonging to our Great Mother from birth that our ancient ancestors did. But we can still fill our gaping god hole with that which it craves: deep connection and belonging to this planet and universe.

We can rewild in our own homes. We can rewild our practices of nourishment. We can regulate and rewild our nervous systems. We can rewild our healing practices. We can change the gendered dynamics in our families, with humility and grace for all. We can rewild our children and their relationships with society and culture… and in their relationships with their bodies.

Gender ideology is simply a symptom of a culture that has forgotten. It’s a symptom of a culture with a gaping god hole, loss of religion/spirituality, and loss of connection to land. We’re all grasping for ways to feel whole, to re-create a spiritual structure that fits with our frame of reference. And, deep down, we are all deeply craving our first primal attachment: that deep and nourishing connection to our Mother (of which many of us were deprived due to our own mother’s lack of ability to give us what we needed).

Yes, much of our cultural brokenness can be traced back to the Mother Wound… to the Martyr Mother narrative… and to a society that treats gender as a classification system with which to beat us into submission.

We can do better than this. I believe in us.

Let’s rewild mothers. And then let’s rewild the whole world.