Aggression is as bad as passivity
I feel
that these days it is not so much women who need to be liberated but rather the
more traditional aspects of femininity. The work of housewives, mothers and
caregivers, the emotional, gentle, vulnerable side of human beings in general,
the love of peace, nature and the arts, the joy of looking and feeling
delicate, soft and beautiful. The fact that these ideals are looked upon as
being soppy; dated and over-refined show how much prejudice there is towards
people with a strong feminine side.
I feel
that when a soft, caring and gentle person is criticised for being weak,
dependent and passive, it reflects a general lack of understanding, acceptance
and appreciation of deeply feminine qualities. I think it is a masculine
dominated society that upholds the virtue of being strong, independent and
active while pouring scorn on those it sees as weak, dependent and passive. I
think that society would benefit from understanding and accepting the existence
of the more extreme feminine personality traits of fear, weakness, passivity
and dependency as it understands and accepts the more extreme masculine
personality traits of anger, strength, aggression and independence. Then people
could work towards becoming more balanced, whole and assertive, having
understood and accepted both ends of the feminine to masculine spectrum.
Sometimes
I think it is more acceptable for a transsexual or transvestite to have a
strong feminine side than a woman. Sometimes I feel like a transvestite if I go
out of the house looking a bit more flowery and frilly than usual. I feel more
vulnerable in a skirt than a pair of jeans; I also get more unwanted attention.
Women’s clothes shops are full of dull, dark, sharply cut clothes while men’s
clothes have grown increasingly more colourful and patterned. Is role reversal
the ultimate goal of women’s liberation? If so I think it is narrow minded,
unrealistic and unachievable without the fully informed consent of men, not to
mention undesirable to some women.
According
to recent surveys women still do most of the housework and taking care of the
children, as well as going out to work. How do relationships between new men
and new women fair in real life? My husband and I are only slightly new and we
get less equal with the passing years. My husband earns more money than me, has
a more demanding job, is busy advancing his career and spends a lot of his
spare time sorting out technical problems on our home computer network. I have
a part time job, do most of the housework, have most of the responsibility for
looking after our young daughter and I pursue my artistic interests when I have
time.
The
government would rather women go out to work and pay someone else to look after
their children rather than the woman stay home and look after her children
herself. This highlights how society devalues traditional female work of
looking after the home and children, while placing a higher value on the
traditionally male business arena. To me both areas of work are important.
Girls
might do better at school where such qualities as good behaviour, self
discipline, having a quiet, studious nature, persistence, tenacity and being
purely creative for its own sake are desired. But men do much better at work,
where taking risks, being bold and aggressive, having a high amount of
demonstrable energy and using applied creativity are what is sought. To me the
problem is that masculine qualities are not properly appreciated and encouraged
at school and feminine qualities are not properly appreciated and encouraged in
the workplace.
In the
past I have heard men complain about women being complicated creatures who are
difficult to understand. I don’t hear this complaint much these days, although
in my experience men and women still have trouble understanding each other.
Thanks to
feminism women have a lot of freedom these days, we are on an equal footing
with men in many areas, but we have our equality on male terms. Women’s
liberation has been replaced by sexual equality, the message that women are as
good as men has become women are the same as men. I think people are similar
and different in subtle, complicated ways as well as the blatantly obvious ways
and trying to simplify matters doesn’t help and can cause more frustration and
misunderstandings.
I was
having problems in my marriage which I managed to sort out with the help of
“Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” by John Gray. The problem was not
that I did too much housework, I honestly don’t mind doing the ironing, or that
I spend too much time doing things for other people, I enjoy doing things for
other people, it is much more rewarding than doing things just for me. I didn’t
want my husband to change in some fundamental way. What I needed was to be able
to share my feelings with him and for him to listen and understand. My husband
would rather not talk when he’s feeling bad, but I would and I need people’s
support, not someone to say I shouldn’t feel the way I do or I shouldn’t be the
way I am.
The above
scenario is just another illustration of how feminine, emotional, sensitive
people are misunderstood, made to feel bad about themselves and denied the
support they need in order to feel truly happy.
I have
often been told that I’m too sensitive and need to toughen up. I didn’t want to
go to assertiveness classes, I needed to. Most of the other women on the course
felt like me, that people took advantage of their gentle natures and they
needed to toughen up to get on better in society. There was one woman who had
been sent on the course by her employer as she was too aggressive. No
aggressive people were there out of choice and the passive natured participants
didn’t think being aggressive was a social handicap, in the same way that being
passive was. If femininity and masculinity had an equal footing in society,
being aggressive would be seen as being just as undesirable as being passive.
It is
important to accept yourself for what you are. A person easily taken advantage
of is seen as a doormat, despised and with little self-respect. It is a case of
blaming the victim rather than the perpetrator. Everyone has strengths and
weaknesses and sometimes a person’s good qualities can be used against them. A
caring, kind, trusting person is more easily taken advantage of than a selfish,
mean, suspicious person. Being open to things leaves you vulnerable, but I
think it is still preferable to hardening your heart and shutting yourself
away. Joy and sorrow, being loved or despised are all part of life. I think you
have to accept the positive and the negative, the anger and the fear, to get
the most out of life. Assertiveness teaches you to assert your thoughts and
feelings without undermining other people’s thoughts and feelings. Standing up
for yourself does not have to involve trampling other people under your feet.
There are
various aspects of being a caring, well-behaved, sensitive person that are
decidedly uncool these days. Who wants to be thought of as a Christian
do-gooder, a trendy lefty, an old hippy, an eco-bore or an old-fashioned person
with Victorian values. Caring, well-behaved, sensitive people may be all of
these or none of these things. So who would want to be a good girl, when they
can be a bad girl? I know I would. I think it is more important to be true to
who you really are, whatever anyone else thinks.
It
has been said that people with stronger masculine sides feel more anger, while
people with stronger feminine sides feel more fear. I have a lot of fears. I
don’t set out to overcome or control them, it takes too much time and doesn’t
work, I live with them the best way I can. I don’t like walking down lonely
streets on my own, but I do. I feel frightened and vulnerable to insults and
attacks. The way I deal with my fears is to acknowledge and accept them and to
acknowledge and accept the consequences and worse case scenarios before they
happen. I feel pleased with myself for having the courage to do things I’m
frightened of, most of the time my fears come to nothing, but I think it’s
counter productive to deny their existence.
I’m not
happy with the current preoccupation with fighting for things rather than
working towards them. There seems to be an unhealthy preoccupation with wars,
battles, angry outbursts, shows of strength and becoming more aggressive. This
approach does not help me better my situation in life, I am a non-aggressive
person, I rarely get angry, I don’t like arguing, let alone fighting.
Who can
win the battle of the sexes? No one. Men and women are as good and as bad as
each other. I think it would be better for men and women to work together
towards better understanding and a better life for everyone, rather than argue
over which sex is stronger, more intelligent, more useful, and generally better
all round.
Who wins
wars anyway? Is it the army with the strongest, most aggressive fighters or is
it the army with the best battle plans and strategies. In my experience, when
you’re under attack, the more you can stay calm, think clearly and speak and
act positively to diffuse the situation, the better off you’ll be.
A great
fuss is made over independent women. I don’t believe any human beings or
anything else can be really independent. We all depend on other things and
other people for our survival. People like to feel needed. In this case a
dependent person is special, they make you feel needed. Human beings need the
world, the world doesn’t need human beings. I wish we would show more respect
for the things we are dependent on and be more responsible for the things that
depend on us. What good is having your own house, your own car and a successful
career if you are lonely, in a shallow, material world with nature dying around
you. It is an uphill struggle for green politics, animal rights, looking after
the most vulnerable in our world and caring for our environment locally and
globally. Hopefully remembering how interdependent we are, we will be better
able to live more caringly, generously and responsibly and not be fooled by the
vacuous, consumerist, culture of selfishness, materialism and greed.
Who is a
weak person and who is a strong person? Princess Diana and Marilyn Monroe are
often accused of having weak characters, that is why they didn’t survive,
people reason. Madonna is a strong person, she made it past forty. Madonna said
that she would never be like
I think
people think Marilyn and Diana were weak because they were extremely feminine.
It’s their strong female personality traits, their dependence on male
attention, their soft voices, their emotional behaviour, their vulnerability,
gentle manner and affinity with children that people confuse as weakness.
Mrs
Thatcher turned to media gurus to improve her image; she lowered her voice and
started wearing sharply tailored suits with a moulded hairstyle. She became the
iron lady who didn’t make U turns. Why was it such a bad thing for Mrs T to
make U turns? In case she came across as a fickle woman? But what’s wrong with
changing your mind. Perhaps the country would be better off if politicians
admitted their mistakes more often and were prepared to take the consequences
and change track accordingly.
If
femininity is seen as a sickness by society, it is little wonder MM and
Princess Di had problems accepting themselves and turned to drug addiction,
madness and eating disorders as they were continually misunderstood and denied
the support they needed.
I feel
the truth is that Marilyn, Madonna, Mrs T and Princess Di are/were human beings
with both good and bad sides, strengths and weaknesses. It is not often that
women with great feminine qualities, of such beauty, compassion and
vulnerability, rise so high in the public arena, but when they do they attract
much love and attention. I hope the next Marilyn or Diana will have a longer,
happier life than her predecessors.
I feel a
lot of problems in society today like obsessive compulsive disorder, eating
disorders, shopaholics, agoraphobia, mind and behaviour altering drugs and a
culture of violence and aggression are caused by people not being in tune with
themselves, with both their masculine and feminine sides. I don’t think the
world would necessarily be better if we all had well balanced masculine and
feminine sides. I know myself well enough to know that I am a feminine woman
with a weak masculine side. It has taken a lot of work and attendance at
assertiveness classes to make the most of the little masculinity I have. I am
aware that there are many people with strong masculine or aggressive sides who
would benefit from an acceptance and an appreciation of femininity. I think
that some men still have a problem with having a strong, masculine, dominating
personality and yet there still is a part of them that is vulnerable and needs
support. We should all learn that vulnerability and needing support is not a
weakness to be taken advantage of, but a part of being human that needs to be
understood, appreciated and respected.