Spiritual Work Shouldn’t Harm: On Gender, Power, and Sacred Practice
originally published January 16, 2023; revised April 18th, 2025
Let’s talk about the divine feminine and masculine—terms we see so often in coaching containers, spiritual communities, and wellness spaces.
These archetypes are frequently introduced with good intentions: to offer a framework for understanding different ways of being, feeling, relating. The divine feminine is typically described as soft, intuitive, receptive; the divine masculine as structured, directive, assertive.
But let’s pause here: how are these ideas being taught? Who are they centering? And what assumptions do they carry?
Because too often, teachings about the divine feminine and masculine rely on or replicate a binary view of gender—and in doing so, they reinforce cisheteronormativity. That is, they assume or normalize the idea that people are either men or women, and that their identities and experiences must align with their assigned sex at birth. They often equate femininity with “women” and masculinity with “men,” collapsing expression and energy into identity in ways that erase trans, nonbinary, genderfluid, and agender people entirely.
And let’s be clear: cisheteronormativity is not neutral.
It is a product of colonial systems designed to restrict, control, and harm. It's woven into the structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. And it's not just harmful to trans and queer folks—it distorts what’s possible for all of us.
In the wellness and spiritual worlds—spaces that often claim to be radical, liberatory, and inclusive—it’s especially important to notice when teachings quietly (or overtly) replicate dominant norms. When we invoke “divine feminine energy” as something to be embraced by women, or something that’s been lost and needs to be reclaimed from masculine overdrive, we must ask: Which women? Whose bodies? What kinds of femininity? And who gets left out or harmed in the process?
If you're a teacher, facilitator, coach, or healer working with these frameworks, I invite you to go deeper:
Are you examining how these archetypes intersect with systems of power and oppression?
Are you explicitly welcoming gender-expansive people into the space?
Are you assuming your audience is cisgender unless told otherwise?
Are you using language that reinforces binary ideas of embodiment or worth?
Because let’s be honest—if we’re not doing this work, we’re not actually practicing healing. We’re just rebranding dominant culture with a spiritual aesthetic.
As I’ve written elsewhere: healing work is only as liberatory as our willingness to confront how power moves. If your teachings don’t make space for trans, nonbinary, and all marginalized people to exist fully—not just quietly included on a slide or buried in your FAQ—then there’s more work to do.
As Michelle Cassandra Johnson writes in Skill in Action:
“We live in a toxic culture that affects us all. We are not encouraged to see it, so we must learn to see our culture and how it teaches us to transform the absurd into normal.”