The Majesty of the Feminine

Some friends responded to the last post in such a way as to point out something which could easily be inferred that I in no way intended.

The idea that being the muse means the feminine is passive, or weak, or just standing around expecting to be admired is most definitely not what I'm pursuing or even considered possible. Indeed, this is just the opposite of what I picture my goal to be.

I chose the Lioness as the energetic feel that I would aspire to because the Lioness is a great and powerful being. She does not sit around waiting for the lion to fawn over her, nor does she expect that the lion will sing sonnets to her simply because she's a female. She is in no way passive, or retiring, or a wilting flower waiting to be rescued. The Lioness is no damsel in distress, and any lion who tries to make her into one so that he can play the part of the hero will get his head taken off at the shoulders.

No. The Lioness is magnificent, in her own right.

She is powerful and strong.  

She is caring and nurturing.

She will not hesitate to put the lion in his place when he needs it.

But most of all, she is his Partner, and he is hers. It is only by working together that they have the possibility of reaching their potential as individuals. This is the part so often overlooked.

In fact, I believe that in order for the Feminine to truly BE inspirational, she MUST be powerful. She has to be all that she is capable of being. She has to know who she is, what she will and will not tolerate, and yet be willing to push herself even further. At the same time, she has to know that the lion is not a Lioness with more hair. He thinks differently, sees the world differently, has different priorities and goals, and that's ok. She knows this, and accepts him for who he is, without blaming him for being a lion. A lion genuinely worthy of her greatness will be inspired by it and become great himself, not seek to tear down or wimpify her. The Lioness will accept nothing less.

That combination is a tall order, but that's my goal. That's the entire point of this journey.

- Lioness (in training)

"Yes, I would die for ya baby; But you won’t do the same"

For this journey, I have 2 primary hero(ine)s and guides.

First up is my husband. Fortunately, we are both very cerebral. We love talking about everything, and anything. Not just surface, but digging around within the roots of the ideas to see what we can do to make those ideas personally applicable and therefore even more meaningful/useful. For this journey into enhancing the relationship between the genders, he's going to be an invaluable guide and guinea pig.

Second up is Alison Armstrong, the lady who founded Celebrating Men/Satisfying Women. Most everything I'll be talking about comes from her work, though it's all been through the discussion wringer with the hubby and it's also been modified by my own sociological and psychological studies over the years. I'll be quoted Alison extremely often and I've urged every single woman I've ever even come into contact with the study Alison's work. It's vital. There is soooo much needless suffering on the part of both genders over simple, easily avoidable communication differences that it just breaks my heart.

After I wrote that very long Background piece, something struck me. It was like a light bulb went off and I could see the original hurt which has been festering unrecognized in the hearts of western women for centuries. The truly shocking part? Men had no idea. I talked about it with the hubby and he did one of those unconscious body reeling back moves, blinked as he processed it, and was completely baffled. "I can see it, but ... it doesn't make sense." Not to the Male mind!

What the heck am I talking about?

Okay. Throw yourself back before the Industrial Revolution. If you've studied anything about that phenomenon, you'll realize it was largely a textile revolution. Documentation of the time illustrates that the women of the home, who could do weaving and spinning AT home, were valuable contributors to the success of the household. There are plenty of images of women pulling plows and doing all manner of work, as needed, around the farm. Suddenly, almost overnight, everything that a woman could take pride in as being a contributor, vanished. Cotton gin, automated looms, mechanical spinning wheels. These made her contribution ... pointless. She goes from being a valued member of the household to being a servant.

Shifting away from an agrarian culture to an industrial one not only rendered her at-home contributions moot, they also took the man away. In Germanic culture, of which English is a direct descendant, has a very, very long history of women following their men. Unlike other cultures in which the women stayed behind and the men assimilated into their new homelands by taking native wives (look at the Vikings, the French, the Spanish, etc), the Germanic cultures expected their women to follow. And woe unto any man who thought his woman would willingly stay behind! As the Germanics invaded the British Isles, they conquered so thoroughly and so brutally that the place name of London is about the only native one left. This is a classic sign of the natives being not only defeated, but wiped out - or at least completely dispossessed. There's no one left to ask "what's this river called?", leaving the new conquerors the task of naming everything. You don't get that level of conquering without having your women following in the wake of that destruction. Flash forward to the 1400/1500s and you see images of the feared German mercenaries, and right behind them were their women, massive baskets on their backs, trudging after their men folk all over Europe on campaign. We're not talking washerwomen here, we're talking wives as well. This mindset is seen again during the colonizing of the New World, in which the working women went right along with their men (Germania settled in 1714, for example). Given that, does it make sense that these Germanic women would suddenly abandon that tradition? Or does it make more sense that she would continue to follow in the footsteps of her man? He goes off to work, guess what? She wants to go off to work too. Insulting her with that Weaker Sex crap is just going to piss her off, and that's exactly what it did.

I know that's terribly broad strokes, but I'm trying to find a generalized mindset. I'm of Germanic heritage, and so that Cultural Shadow is buried deep, influencing me as long as I do not fully recognize it.

So - back to the industrial/textile revolution. From her perspective, all her jobs other than raising the kids and cleaning/cooking have now been devalued. It also means she is now wholly dependant on what he decides to bring home, because she can no longer support herself, and the law is not on her side. If he dies? *shudder* It's easy then to not recognize the value in what remains, to feel overall devalued, childishly dependant, to lose a great deal of self-respect. This combination can easily lead to resentment. From HER perspective.

Reading Alison's book "Keys to the Kingdom", she made a statement about the post WWII refusal to go back to being dependant. The hubby paused and said "That's not right." We launched into a discussion about the man's idea that life is a series of jobs. Whoever can do that job best is the one who should do it. Then the men went off to war, and since he served in combat arms he knows full well how much the men needed to go home to their women and try to resume some semblance of 'normal'. And when they get home, guess what? Those women refused. As he spoke, I could catch a glimpse of the gender shadow sense of betrayal in what he was saying. From HIS perspective, she had never been devalued. Her role as inspiration, motivation, the very reason for doing anything at all, for striving to be a better man, is what she contributes most. And by focusing instead on working, from his (generalized) perspective, she (generalized) walked off the job.

Wow. All of that coalesced for me and I could hear the woman's gender shadow grumbling irately. I want self-respect, dignity, to feel valued.

Oddly enough, I've never asked him what he wants. I thought I knew. So asked him, "What do YOU value that I can provide?" I was stunned by the answer. It took me quite a while to wrap my head around it. REALLY? THAT?!? It never once crossed my mind, and even hearing it, it still didn't make sense.

What am I talking about? I've already mentioned it:

"Her role as inspiration, motivation, the very reason for doing anything at all, for striving to be a better man, is what she contributes most."

As one fellow said, "look at who has been dying for who all these millennia, and tell me you honestly think men don't value women." Bruno Mars says largely the same thing in his song Grenade:

To give me all your love
is all I ever asked,
'Cause what you don’t understand is
I’d catch a grenade for ya
Throw my hand on a blade for ya
I’d jump in front of a train for ya
You know I’d do anything for ya
I would go through all this pain,
Take a bullet straight through my brain,
Yes, I would die for ya baby;
But you won’t do the same

I have to wonder why. What is it about women in general, as an abstract concept, that has men willing to do that? Is this the true power of the Feminine?

"All I want to do is to make you happy. Genuinely, gushingly, overflowingly happy. Whatever it takes, that's what I'd do."

Am I (Woman) really that powerful a muse? If so, why have I devalued it? Why can't I see that within myself? Most importantly, how can I reclaim, nay, embody that aspect of the Feminine consciously?

This is my journey. And now you know where I'm starting from. Walk with me.

- Lioness (in training)

Insecurity -- The Great Destroyer

I'm going to interrupt the flow I had planned to bring you this. It's a situation I'm dealing with now, and I figured I'd seize the opportunity while the emotions and thoughts are still so surface.

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I was in my early 20s when I ran into my first very intense emotional relationship. Boy was I ill-equipped to handle that level of emotion. While I knew even entering it that it wouldn't last for a host of reasons, the emotions quickly overwhelmed any sense of reason or perspective. I ran smack into the wall of Insecurity. It was the very first time for me, and it completely knocked me off balance. Considering how off-balance I was from the extremity of the feelings already, this additional knock sent me careening off the edge and into a personal abyss.

Because of my own wake-up call with this aspect of myself, I started to look around and became very aware of how it manifested in me and those I've known. I have to say that, in my experience, Insecurity is perhaps the single most destructive force that people wrestle with - men and women, but mostly women seem to express it in this way. The horrible irony is that most often those who are feeling insecure turn to someone else for reassurance, and nothing our partners can say or do will ever fix this problem.

Why?

Insecurity means that one feels ... without foundations. In-Secure. Cast adrift. Without an anchor. Having nothing or little upon which to find stability. Like they are standing up in a canoe.

Given this, no matter what anyone in our lives may tell us -- from parents and siblings to friends and partners -- that lack of feeling secure is untouched, unaltered. It took me a long time and a lot of pain to figure this one out: No one can GIVE another person security. Personal security is born from the realization of our own strength and capacity to handle ... life. To go back to the canoe -- no else can stabilize the canoe, we have to sit down on our own and take control of the craft.

No matter how times we ask "does this make my butt look big?", we're not going to like or accept the answer if insecurity run riot. No amount of reassurances will touch this insecurity, because it's an internal state which has nothing to do with someone else. Not really.

I have a friend who, right now, is paddling around within so much insecurity she's nearly drowning herself. I've thrown her lifelines, I've talked until I'm blue in the face, I've consoled, I've hugged. Nothing really helps. She has to find her own strength, and I can't help her find that. I can only encourage. It's like I'm standing on the shore shouting "you have to sit down and pick up the oar! stop flailing like that! you'll knock yourself in!" but she's too far away. She can't hear me.


What does this have to do with being the Lioness? With being an Empowered Feminine?

Empowerment is incompatible with Insecure. I cannot be full of my power when I refuse (or fail) to recognize that I have that power. I cannot be empowered when I'm blaming someone else for my problem, or berating them for not knowing how to fix something they cannot fix.

A great many strongly negative emotions are rooted in Insecurity. Everything from jealousy to the need to control everything around us, all of that stems from Insecurity. The men in our lives will move mountains for us if we have the faith in them, but they can't do a damn thing to help with Insecurity. All the platitudes, assurances, promises and actions will fall on deaf ears because the Insecure cannot accept them. Cannot. Flat CAN NOT.

And when he moves on, trying to find someone who will actually believe how sincere he is, guess who gets the blame? Guess who's Insecurity seizes on this, entrenching itself even further now that it's found the validation sought?

I wish I could shake some sense in people sometimes. But I can't. I have only my words.

- the Lioness (in training)

Some Background

Before I can start really exploring this concept, I have to lay the groundwork of where my thinking is coming from. Then I'll have to outline what language I'll be using. This post will be the background of my thinking, why I am where I am in terms of thought. Warning: I'll be painting with a very broad brush, and will be speaking in terms of concepts rather than individual instances. I'm looking at the Story Arc for western civilization, not attempting to give a history lesson.

I am a student of History. My BA is in history, and many of my hobbies revolve around history. The aspect of the study of history that I thoroughly enjoyed the most is what one teacher termed Historiography. It's studying how history was recorded through time, but from this you can see larger trends. I can literally see the unfolding of the modern concept of What Is. It's like watching the waves at the beach. You can guess how far up the beach the wave will go based on the subtle cues seen in the swell. What is recorded in history are those subtle swells, and I can follow those swells through literally centuries to see it unfolding. It's quite fascinating, all things considered. Despite the fact that we only live 70-90 years, we are carrying the emotional weight of our ancestors, expressing what they felt and passed on to us. Jung would term this the Cultural Shadow.

Bear in mind, I'm mostly looking at the BULK of humanity - the working class. The upper class women had their own challenges, but they were in the minority.

I view today's position between the Masculine and Feminine as a direct result of the last couple of hundred years. The Industrial Revolution, started in the 1700s, saw a fundamental and irrevocable shift in the way that wage earning was accomplished. Before this, women could work from the home while earning income. Now that was no longer the case. If a woman wanted to earn money, she had to leave the home to go to the factory. Her spinning wheel and loom were no longer sufficient. For those who opted to remain in the home, it was the men who earned money, leaving her more dependant on her mate than ever before. The legal system backed this up, making her a virtual slave (from her point of view). As the Victorian Era unfolded, the view of women shifted from simply the Fairer Sex to the more angering and patronizing Weaker Sex perspective. Throughout this time, everyday life was shifting dramatically. Women became more active (see all the images of engaging in bicycle riding or ice skating, not to mention the growing presence of women in the factory), and started to gain more a sense that they were being treated unfairly.

This sense bears witness to the growth and proliferation of the various Women's Movements of the mid to late 1800s, culminating in the infamous corset burnings (echoed some decades later with the bra burnings) and the Suffragette movement (suffrage means the right to vote, not suffering!) marching en masse down the streets. These movements culminated in women being granted the right to vote in the US in 1920. One women's historian even said the vote was granted as a "reward" for supporting the war effort. A very pat-on-the-head view there, as patronizing and degrading as anything said by the Victorian man.

Of course, I am agog that one of the first things women did with their new political power was institute ... Prohibition. That boggles my mind. I have no rational explaination for how on earth this abomination came about, and can only think that men were browbeaten into it. Eventually men stood back up and demanded their beer back, and it was granted.

The Depression and the resourcefulness it demanded of women as well as the vulnerability it exposed in terms of the one-wage income household is something that is often overlooked when it comes to setting the stage for the next step in women's attempt to regain their dignity and self-respect. Then we get into WWII. Anyone recall Rosie the Riveter? 

This image is a direct challenge to the lingering Victorian concept that women are the Weaker Sex. When the men come home from war, women began to refuse the concept of subjugation/dependance and remained in the work force. The 1950s proliferation of shows like Leave It To Beaver were a direct attempt to glorify the homemaker/breadwinner concept of Family, something we today mistakenly think is the Way Things Were rather than an attempt to sell a way of life. The birth of modern Wiccan is around here, in which the Goddess is glorified and magnified at the expense of her subservient and largely superfluous God.

By now, the Masculine is swallowing his sense of betrayal and his confusion. He still wants only to Make Her Happy, and if this is what she wants, he'll do his best to give it to her.

The 60's saw the Free Love movement, and this was pretty much continued in the 70's. "I am Woman. Hear me roar." This is a refrain from the 1970s, an era I would point to as the height of the Furious and Wounded Feminine. In her fury and pain, she lashed out in attack of the Masculine. An attack that was, for the most part, accepted. Books published in that time are rife with statements about how oppressive and unjust and (insert negative comment here) the Masculine had been treating the Feminine for thousands of years. The Wounded Feminine, as wounded often do, sought to reclaim her power by attacking and devaluing the source of her pain. As if only a crippled lion would be unthreatening to the lioness.

In the 80s, there was the birth of the Unisex movement, attempting to deny completely that there was any sort of fundamental difference in the genders, a further insult but this time to both genders. The retail store Guess is perhaps the ultimate expression of this -- "Guess if the wearer of our clothing is male or female. Go ahead! Guess." Here is where I'd point to the birth of the metrosexual man -- the feminized masculine. In the 90s, this absurdity of 'no difference between the genders' was starting to be reversed. Now, that's not so much questioned anymore that they are indeed fundamentally different in their wiring.

A lot of the anger of the last century or two, at least on the part of women, is starting to wane. The Wounded Feminine is not quite so inflamed anymore. She's starting to look around and see the damage that's been done. But only starting. She has yet to ask the Masculine "how do YOU see the last few centuries??" There's a lot of anger now simmering in the Masculine. If we don't want the pendulum to just be swinging back and forth between who is more loudly abusing the other, we have to stop.

We've had over 300 years to find the equilibrium that the Industrial Revolution shattered, and we've made a bit of a mess in the process. The rapidly developing nations, which don't have the luxury of centuries to work out these fundamental isues, will understandably have some severe problems if no real guidance or at least support/validation is available.

Please do not think for even one moment that I believe everything which has been done is 'bad'. HARDLY!!!! A TREMENDOUS amount of extremely positive things have been done in the last few centurues, and they should be guarded and treasured. But it's time to stop attacking men.

Only the weak seek power by attacking those around them. Only the weak need to break another in order to feel in control. It is my position that I CANNOT be empowered if that position rests on the back of a broken other. The Lioness is not a real lioness if the lion of the pride lies bleeding and broken on the ground. Half of the strength of the whole of what it means to BE a lion is invalidated by such a stupid move. That's not what it means to be strong, and it definitely doesn't mean that I am empowered only when my partner cowers before me.

By the same token, no lion is truly powerful if the lioness cowers before him, is afraid of him, avoids him, has no claws or teeth left with which to even defend herself. Such a one is a weak lion. Not a ruler, but a coward terrified of the power of his mate. We've spent the last few centuries informing the lion that we will no longer cower, and he in turn recoiled and accepted our anger. But enough is enough. To continue the beratement is to invite the retaliation.

It's time for the Lion to be a Lion, and the Lioness to be a Lioness. Partners, Equal but Different.

-- the Lioness (in training)

Welcome to the Playground

Hello folks. I could ramble on about who I am - background and whatnot - but I don't think it really matters. If it does, I'll include that in the relevant post and move on.

What does matter is what I'm planning to do with this blog. My goal is to rediscover the art of making a home. Nay, the very art of what it means to be a fully realized Woman. For some reason which utterly eludes me, most modern western women have decided that being a woman means ... acting like a man.

"Did she just say that??"

*chuckles* I did. We've had a few centuries of some rather major shifting and western culture has been trying to muddle through, figuring out how to function as we move from Agricultural to Industrial to Post-Industrial life. This is painting with an awfully broad brush, but the entire process of Industrialization has been very hard from a cultural point of view. One has only to look at poor India and China as they try to rush through 200 years of social evolution in a single generation. No wonder fundamentalist religions are taking off! That's too much change, too fast. Even in our society, the result of this transformation is that the relations between the genders has become a War of the Sexes.

That's ... horrifying! I recall a story in which an anthropologist was living with the Bushmen of Africa. She asked them who was more important to the well-being of the tribe: men or women. The Bushmen laughed at the absurdity of the question and replied "neither." They spoke of the lion pride, asking which was more important: the lion, or the lioness. Their jobs were different, but both were required and vital in order to actually BE lions.

With that story in mind, I look at my own culture and see way too many lionesses wearing false manes. I've had to wear one for too long and am now fortunate enough to have a lion who supports my desire to be a lioness. I know there are a great many other women who are uncomfortable in their fake mane. I'm not alone on that one. But I don't think that trashing the choices others have made is an acceptable way to change things. Instead, I'll just share my journey with you.

I'm still a working woman, my current job is as a software analyst. The goal is to leave work at the end of this year, and that time frame is approaching very quickly. The preparation time has been used to establish the post-leave budget as well as sussing out what it MEANS to be a home maker. We don't have kids, and have no plans for kids. That means my entire focus will be on the welfare of this home, my husband and myself.

In this post Feminism era, there are an increasing number of women staying home to raise the kids. Almost all of my peers that I went to high school with have done this and it has now become largely acceptable. But the keyphrase here is "to raise the kids". Like my own mother, once that job is done they are expecting to have to put back on their false mane and get out there to earn some money. I hear conversations like "before the kids, I did this" and "after the kids, I plan to do this." As if life has to stop to raise the kids, as if while doing that quintessentially feminine role, they don't really count. That time, though well spent, is not socially acceptable in terms of how we define ourselves. I can only imagine the blank stares I'll get as I say "I don't work outside the home, and I don't have kids". In middle class America, this will make me a non-entity to other women. They'll have pictures of me sitting at home watching day time soaps and whiling away the hours uselessly. Afterall, they manage to work and maintain the home just fine (ignore the hairballs, or the haggard expressions, or the fast food dinners, or the ever expanding girth from eating so much crap).

That is also a perception I will have to deprogram within myself. I keep hitting the insecurity that by leaving the working world, I'm making myself dependent on him. What if something happens? There'll be a break in my resume! Am I willingly crippling myself?? It'll be hard to spin "homemaker", won't it? But knowing this is a possibility, and having all the wonderful legal rights we now have thanks to the fighting of our forebears, I can include independence in my work. True the lion serves to protect the pride, but even without him the lionesses are hardly wimpy! But the lionesses have their sisters to help them. Our insular family structure isolates us. Considering this, my plans have to include how to protect my capacity to earn a living in this modern world.

In essence, I won't be throwing away my false mane. It'll be there, in my closet, should I need it again. Hopefully, it won't. Journey with me as I learn the pitfalls and joys as well as face the fury that I've somehow 'betrayed' womankind, all in the effort to reclaim what it truly means to be a Woman.

-- the Lioness (in training)