2011.06

Maybe it's really time

to reclaim the

archetypal feminine ...

False dualities

"masculine" & "feminine"

May 19 2011, by Stella

Am wondering what people make of the fact that we keep re-inforcing the idea that there is such a thing as a 'feminine' and 'masculine' way of being. Not to mention re-inforcing the idea of dualities.

Should we not be trying to encourage the exit of those kinds of ideas?

Having been called a 'masculine woman' on occasion (just for being more pro-active than a doormat) and noticing men being equally insulted by being called 'feminine men' (just for being more sensitive than a rock), am very wary of these adjectives existing as stuck to genders.

What I find a little bewildering is that people can blurt out these blatant contradictions without thinking them ridiculous in the slightest..

5 Jun 2013 - we were asked to ponder the question of masculine & feminine qualities in the Feminine Power course am taking now, class 1. This was my answer:

About the 'feminine' & 'masculine' thing ... basically, this stuff still makes my blood boil... :(

I remember it all confusing me as a very small child, as I noticed that in almost all of the fairy stories, the powerful (non-wimpy) women were the 'bad' ones, the witches, the evil queens ... but they seemed to be a lot more interesting to me & have more fun, so I decided to identify with them, most of the time.

Later (in my late teens, early twenties, when I was an avid Goddess student & young feminist) I noticed that the 'archetypal feminine' in non-western traditions was often a very well balanced 'Life & Death' (the complete cycle) image, like Isis (the original black madonna, but also the one that took souls to the underworld), Oya (protector of birth & children, but also patron of tornadoes & sweeping dramatic change), Kali ... with all those lovely skull necklaces & lots of arms brandishing weapons :) These were all obviously 100% female, archetypically so, yet nothing like the 'feminine' stereotypes my culture had taught me.

As an ecologist I know that Life requires that cycles complete, all of the dark and light parts, with things like death & putrefaction being essential stages that nourish new life. And a lot of what's wrong with our culture is that we've cut off cycles into linear shapes, denying Death which then frightens us more & more, as we push all of nature out of balance.

The male-female polarities are part of that (sick) way of thinking, I think. I wrote a blog about this here

<<<

a few years ago.

Now am pissed off about how we seem to have (collectively) slipped backwards & lost a few important decades of intellectual gains of radical feminism - which was always very clear about gender identities being mostly big cultural constructs that oppress women (& men, also, although they are set up to gain more, materially, from this game). But they are the air we breathe so of course they shape all of our characters, profoundly.

I just dream of a time when all children will really be able to BE whoever they want to be, without having to wade through or negotiate with so many caricatures & stereotypes of who or what they are allowed to be (to be 'normal') or have to rebel against. Such massive wastes of energy!!

So my feelings during the first session when we were asked to feel into the masculine & feminine 'qualities' were mostly of heaviness, that there even is such a question, still ... I like all of them, I just profoundly dislike that they are labelled as having anything to do with gender.

In my life I think am mostly 'androgynous' in the sense that I've usually been both very 'masculine' & very 'feminine' as the mood or occasion demanded, and I mostly see it as a charade to try to enjoy. What is no fun whatever are the judgements that come from the outside though, which are often very scathing (from both men & women, and women are often more vicious), and can do real damage.

Eg. when I don't act like Mother Theresa 24/7 around colleagues, students, or the people I live with, and I really get it in the neck for claiming my time or space in what would be considered totally acceptable & go quite unnoticed from a man, but is made into something incredibly rude or 'violent' if it comes from a woman.

Summarized in this quote (paraphrased) from Marianne Williamson:

"To be considered an evil man you have to be some kind of mass murderer, but to be thought an evil woman you just have to put someone on hold ..."

So for me the most relevant things about 'masculine' & 'feminine' are how central they are to the double standards that we still unconsciously apply to everything, and which are SO holding back all of us from evolving as conscious humans.

But I loved how in the call they pointed out that the traditional definition of 'power' is totally associated with what are considered 'masculine' qualities ... and the only more 'feminine' thing tha came close was the definition of 'magic' :)

That's so cool ...

I think we need to re-invent something here, but without falling into the other end of sillyness by pretending we're all the same, & there is no such thing as quite distinct male and female experience of the world.

Of course there are, and of course there is tons of sexism still about, which soaks us all from birth in a soup of confusion & oppressive stereotypes which are so much the air that we breathe that we can't even see it, or imagine it being any different.

Blue & Pink

So of course there are differences: male & female people are twisted into parodies of whatever is considered their 'proper' gender identity in whatever time & culture they are born into, but also, those ideas & so the male and female experience of the world is changing so rapidly now (including what we discover and choose to be our identities, given more freedom) that these terms* already confuse more than they clarify, I think.

Because they suggest there is something ESSENTIALLY or statically typical of each gender (which is quite easy to observe is not true, and that is even despite the heavy conditioning: there are far more differences within the sexes in terms of those qualities than there are between them, and much more so nowadays).

* used in the sense they are usually understood, as somehow equating to the ying-yang polarities: active-passive, warm-cold, doing-receiving, etc.

Quotes

Some cool quotes on the subject (& you can substitute 'women' for 'men' in all of these)

Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We're not inherently anything but human.

~Robin Morgan

I have always done a woman's job.

Margaret Mead

I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body.

~Elaine Boosler

Women are all female impersonators to some degree.

~Susan Brownmiller

Just one of the things that I believe has got us on the completely wrong track from the start is to EQUATE DUALITY with 'masculine' and 'feminine'.

There is absolutely no logical reason to do so, just because there are two of something (like the sexes) it doesn't follow that they are "opposites" & indeed the sexes have never been opposites, no matter how 'different' men and women might have appeared, even in the past, and that has always had more to do with oppression and psychosis than the actual 'nature' of men or women.

Light and dark are opposites, up and down, left and right, life and death, maybe ...

All of those we might usefully consider as dualities, and I totally understand the thing about "The One" wanting to experience itself and so 'inventing' duality ... but

the only thing I see NO reason whatever to include in that list is male and female.

Who or what does it serve?

Because it serves no one, simply adds confusion because it is just an error, nothing less, a mis-understanding. It oppresses BOTH men and women.

It has only ever served opressive forces, especially in keeping us confused about our natures as men and women. The world is littered with suffering from women who weren't considered 'feminine' enough & men who weren't considered 'masculine' enough. People suicided (& still do!) over those agonies, which are only caused by us trying to force ourselves into categories that are simple inventions.

And that is the main good reason to stop the charade. To stop perpetuating that story, that male and female are somehow dualities, opposites, complementaries, or that we somehow 'cancel each other out'. Or that we even know what they ARE (beyond the biological self-evident & never contested sexual characteristics).

They're not clearly defined nor "natural" fixed identities, never have been, we just made all that up. & it's quite obvious that we made them up because they have changed throughout history and in different cultures. So we can un-make those stories, too.

Nurturing Men & Fierce Women

The bottom line is that men have ALWAYS also been nurturing and receptive, and women have ALWAYS also been fierce and active.. since the dawn of time. And we have many wonderful Mother Goddesses to prove it, if we only stop being blinded by these stereotypes.

It is through these myths we actually shape the future, so it's important we design consciously, with our eyes wide open!

Reclaiming the Mother Goddess

Women have long been getting angry about the castrating of the rightful and anciente Feminine, which is now potrayed in it's half-form, without awareness...

I feel it very important now that we reclaim the "dark side" of the Mother Goddess archetypes, and please note that they are very probably considered 'dark' just because they are somewhat 'masculine'.

A mother eagle defending her chicks ... is the symbol used by Deep Green Resistance, who point out that 'peaceful resistance' (in the face of murderous destruction) isn't all that natural really ..

And DGR, having fully embraced radical feminism, have very clear ideas about gender, eg.

Gender is socially constructed to the root, and those roots are soaked in women’s blood. We aim to dismantle it.

If gender was a product of our biology, that wouldn’t be possible. We reject the idea of a female brain as firmly as we reject the idea of a “Negro brain.”

And we will never accept that femininity is natural to women. It is the ritualized displays of submission created by trauma and demanded of all oppressed groups in a social hierarchy. We refuse to submit and we encourage women everywhere to resist.

There is la lot of talk these days about the 'reclaiming of the feminine' but how could we possibly do that if we are mis-understanding something crucially important when we think in terms of 'going back' to a healthy Mother archetype - which we mostly agree has been heavily suppressed in our patriarchal culture, to our detriment ..

The Archetypal Feminine

BUT, we 'forget' that the ancient mother-gods were Goddesses of Life AND Death, they represented the complete cycle, and they have been 'sanitized' (castrated) when they were admitted in our culture, together with the rights of women to be ALL facets of their personality: to this day we think 'being feminine' is being meek and gentle, passive and receptive ... but that was never originally even "the female archetype"!

Yet now we go about 'reclaiming' only these half-truths, or sanitized archetypes...

I am mad as hell about this, myself ... it is one of the reasons I strongly object with keeping on about 'masculine' and 'feminine' as if they were givens (as we often do): it's ridiculous now, when there are so many 'masculine women' and 'feminine men' (an absurd illogical thing)... but it is also blasphemous in terms of what the ancient Goddesses were about. Take Kali..

Ain't she a woman? Damn right she is.

Primordially & archetypically so!

If the modern (western) 'feminine' hadn't been so badly mutilated (by pervasive, debilitating sexism), we'd maybe have enough fierce women refusing to put up with the murderous culture we're part of:

The patriarchal system we are delaying so much in dismantling is destroying 200 species per day, raping & mutilating thousands of girls & women each day, murdering some 17,000 children per day (from preventable disease & starvation) ...

So when will enough women manage to tap into our (supposedly) innate Drive to preserve Life & get furious mad about this??

That anger & aggression aren't 'feminine' emotions is part of the debilitating stereotypes which are holding us all back, & they are simply lies. Ask any mother bear who sees her cubs threatened ...

The Black Virgin

This is a closer to home example of that for me: La Virgen de las Nieves is the patron of our Island, she is a Black Virgin, represented holding a black Jesus. There are lots of Black Virgins all over the world, no Catholics however seem to know where she comes from or why she's black (the original Mary was not probably black-skinned).

But this one has another big clue: she is represented with a mysterious crescent moon at her feet. And again (I have asked) no Catholic experts will be able to tell you why. Yet if you suppose that the Black Madonna is descended from Isis (one of the theories), the first western 'madonna' or Mother Goddess, often portrayed holding her son Horus, the moon makes sense.

Isis was the goddess of Life and also Death: she was said to accompany the Dead on her boat which was the crescent moon.

So I really LOVE this image ... there she is with her son and her death-boat at her feet: complete :) But hardly anyone understands that ... yet the time to tell the whole story is coming ...

If you have minimum ecological training, with some mythical sensitivity, you immediately 'get' why the Goddess of Life HAS to also be the Goddess of Death: all Life cycles include death, as a NECESSARY part of the cycle.

And the fact that we have denied, repressed, 'darkened' Death in our culture (we are pathologically afraid of death, of pain, of 'darkness' ... forgetting this is not a universal human experience, we just have made it so, in our huge arrogance..) has a lot with having to make processes linear... cycles are inherently 'upside-down' - at least half of the time!

The only way you can always have 'positive' or uni-direction is to go linear. So it's all connected to how we got to think in such crazy, anti-systemic ways (which are destroying eco-systems all over now): it is not only deadly for female psyche (we are not allowed to be angry, aggressive, assertive... all relegated as 'dark' sides for women, which are then appropriated to the 'masculine' .. which also then has to be linear, and 'not allowed' to be what is 'dark' for men: to be gentle, sensitive, nurturing ... men get killed for being those things, to this day! See gay oppression: which actually oppresses ALL men)

Oya!

And there are other Goddess stories like this... my favourite is actually the story of Oya, an african Goddess I was very attracted to in my twenties (she still is 'my' Goddess.. and now I live on the African continental shelf), who I started sculpting a lot ... and one day I had a strong revelation about her: she is Medusa... she is what the Greeks transformed her into through their fear of seeing such a powerful Mother Goddess (who was also the Goddess of storms and tornados, of dramatic change, which she provoked in you by holding up her Magic Mirror ... to shake you to your foundations... ), naked to the waist, with long dreadlocks which swirled around her with her skirts when she made storms flare up..

Love her :) Hate how they projected being petrified with fear by her, into making her into a devil and cutting off her head. And Africa has been disempowered (colonised: economically, physically.. mythically) ever since.

We have to resurrect all of these Goddesses, in their true and original full power. Thanks for telling the story of Inanna, for that reason.

<< missing pic!! >>

I love this tapestry .. it represents Oya, free again. I think it tells of the day when we have re-claimed all of Oya, then and only then will Africa be free: all things are connected, you can't enslaven a people without killing their Gods, and vice-versa.

And the rape of Nature, the oppression of women, and the colonisation (the ongoing colonisation) of all 2/3 World Peoples ... are deeply interwoven and interconnected... also with our love of comfort as Westeners, with our deeply felt 'right' to have so much of the world's resources, and this very much affects our ability to envision a just world: unless we do that inner shadow work, we can't ever really imagine or create a healthy or just world, where ALL of us are free, truly free.

And guess where the name Oya comes from... apparently it means 'she tears'! It refers directly to ther destructive side, yet she is also "the Mother of nine" (the tributaries of the Niger", a mother goddess, protector of children (where ferociousness is actually a life-preserving trait, also) and childbirth. Also goddess of the market (the justice of the trade).

Now, what's 'feminine' about this archetype of the feminine, really? (by our standards and how we normally use this 'feminine' word so freely)

"Both men and women have feminine and masculine energies within themselves and it is up to us to balance our inner feminine and masculine." .. because it allowes me to explain better ..

It makes me smile, because it's evident we actually agree, underneath it all, yet this is almost precisely what am NOT saying :)

I would like us to go beyond that. I would like that we agree to this new way of seeing it all - there are NO 'feminine' or 'masculine' energies, at all. If we stop repeating the old stereotypes we might actually manage to climb out of them, and so people will really be free to be who they want to be.

Good for a Laugh though ...

Meanwhile ... the healthiest thing we can do with gender differences maybe is just laughing at them :)