Male/Female
spirituality vs a Human spirituality
Recently, in conversations with a new friend, an old
irritation has arisen. Not the irritation that relates to anger, but the
irritation of a discomfort, that is telling you something doesn’t quite sit right,
but that you can’t quite pinpoint in order to rectify. This time, however,
something went ping! Light-bulb moment, cosmic giggle and all that jazz. And it
has prompted me to write this.
First let me say, “Female Spirituality” (and by Female
Spirituality, I mean the spirituality that can be experienced through
inhabiting a female form, rather than Goddess reverence), as a concept, has
been very important to me in my own development. My very first God
experience/epiphany/spiritual experience/moment of awen came, in the middle of
an insomniatic spree, in the midst of a depression, whilst musing on the bane
of periods. I had a very profound moment of understanding the power I held in
my body: to be a crucible for creation, to nourish, support, keep warm, cushioned
and protected, to bring forth and to nurture, new life. And what a privilege,
an honour, and a responsibility (I was depressed, so had to find some stick in
there to beat myself with) it was to inhabit this body, this life. I don’t
believe that this is a universal female experience – not all women can bear children – but to honour the
possibilities of the body you were born in, can be part of it. To me, and for
me, working with other humans that hold the possibility of having had similar
experience to me has become valuable and important. And this is my basic
starting point for any discussion about gender separate, men’s and women’s
work.
[Let me say here, in talking about the binary division of
male/female it is not my intention to exclude people who do not feel they fit
that binary division. I am using it simply for ease of communication. This is,
after all, a blog post and not a thesis. Let me also say I am writing from the
point of view of a cis-gender, largely relationship heterosexual, as far as I
know fertile woman in her mid thirties. Many of my examples used to illustrate
points come from this perspective, because it is the one that I know.]
So, I think working in gender separate groups for the
purposes of self examination and discovery – spiritual work – is a good thing. Over
the last few years I have come up against a counter-argument. In my experience:
mainly from men, and men who identify as feminist or feminist-allies – I don’t
know if this is significant, or even universal, and it is my observation. The
argument is this: aren’t we a fractured enough world already? By using the
definitions of male/female to categorise, you are adding to the separation, not
removing it. Traits traditionally assigned to “masculine” can be found in
women, and traits traditionally assigned to “feminine” can be found in men,
therefore we can all be masculine and feminine, therefore separating men and
women’s work is redundant because we’re all doing “human” work.
I agree with everything in that argument, if you remove
“separating men and women’s work is redundant because” from the last sentence.
Yes, we are a fractured world. Yes, by using the definitions of male and
female, I am defining part of our separation. Yes, “masculine” and “feminine”
traits can be seen in all, in different measure. Yes, we are all doing “human”
work. And yes, it would be wonderful to be in a world where everything was so
equal, amongst all, that “human” work was the order of the day.
Here’s the discomfort:
Every path concerned with the raising of human consciousness
I have come across has within it the concept of “be here, now” as a starting
point. A few examples of recent exponents are Timothy Freke, Eckhart Tolle,
Marianne Williamson, and Deepak Chopra. Ram Dass wrote an entire
book about it. The clue being in the title: Be Here Now. Meditation practices
involve allowing all the monkey mind chatter to still, and to return to being
in your body, where you are – the stillness of the moment, the point of
stillness at the centre of the turning wheel. Druidry marks, with ceremony, the
changing seasons, and starts it ceremonies with calling in the directions–
orientating one in time and space: now, and here. Even Mr Hierarchy-of-Needs Maslow
had something to say about it:
“The ability to be in the present
moment is a major component of mental wellness.” (Abraham Maslow 1908-1970)
Part of being here, now, in place and time, is being orientated
within oneself: Body Mind and Soul; Physically, Intellectually, Emotionally,
and Spiritually.
Being present physically includes whether my body came along
XX, XY, or some other combination. This will affect, and to a certain extent
dictate, the balance of hormones that I receive throughout my life. And hormones are pretty powerful things – as
anyone who has gone through puberty will be able to confirm. They affect
whether I bleed on a regular cycle, or not. They affect whether my experience
of sex is, at a most basic level, yielding, or penetrating. They affect whether
or not I am always aware of my physical safety, because of the way that they
have affected my developing musculature. Have you ever felt the need to go to
the loo in pairs? Why? Or why not? (And yes, sometimes it’s to talk about you
men. Sometimes.)
My intellectual and
emotional worlds are affected by how I was socialised – which will have been
affected by my presenting gender. Research, which I read during my nursing
training, and now can’t find, had observed that boy babies tended to be carried
facing outwards, whereas girl babies tended to be carried facing inwards.
Couple this with Prof Jared Diamond’s assertion, based on 50 years work in New
Guinea, that “Carrying your baby upright and facing forward may result in a
more self-assured child” and we have one example of a potential difference
between men and women’s basic starting tool kit, and thus their unfolding experience
of life.
I have used this example many times, and I will use it once
more. As a small child, I was shown by my Grandma, how to iron men’s shirts. My
brother – he who might one day be wearing men’s shirts – was not. What was
being engendered here? “It is your responsibility, as a girl, to look after
everyone else around you. Your brother, as a boy, gets to play football.” This
is what my brother was doing whilst I was being given a lesson in homemaking. No matter how hard my ball-breaking feminist mother
and my anarchist hippy feminist father tried to not treat my brother and I any
differently based on our genders, it snuck in there anyway via other people,
and via the gender issues that my parents had in shadow. Add playground
politics to the mix, and gender is fairly firmly grounded as a distinction by
the time we start to think about sex. Because people make distinctions: us vs
not-us. Me vs not-me. Gender is a simple (haha) distinction and one of the
first we experience. Hands up anyone who’s ever had the phrase “you can’t
do/have that. You’re a [insert relevant term here]...” used against them.
And then spiritually. I assert that no man born has had an
epiphany about the way their body can hold growing life inside, birth that life
and then nourish said life from their boobs. And I assert that no woman born
has had an epiphany about their seed springing forth from their body to fall on
fertile pastures, or whatever the male equivalent is. (I, not being male,
cannot truly know what its equivalent is, but I’m sure there must be one.)
All of this together, creates broad sets of experiences that
may be shared by people of similar gender. Two widely known examples of these
experience sets are the twitter hashtags #NotAllMen, and #YesAllWomen . #NotAllMen
was started to highlight the use of this term (shortened from “but not all men
are like that,”) by men, to avoid awkward topics such as sexual assault.
#YesAllWomen was started in response, and highlights that fact that all women have a story, or five, of
sexism, misogyny or assault against them, often from people they know.
Here, I often hear the interjection “but, no, really Not all men are like that. And, women do it too!” Yes we do, and it is as
unacceptable from us as it is from you. And if you’re emphasising Not all men
because you were an awkward teenager who didn’t fit the patriarchally prescribed
boundaries for maleness, I refer you here: http://www.newstatesman.com/laurie-penny/on-nerd-entitlement-rebel-alliance-empire.
Laurie Penny eloquently speaks to that. The patriarchy hurts us all. And,
interestingly enough, I suspect if you were able to talk freely about it in a
group of men committed to hearing with an open heart, I think you would find
shared experience.
Which leads me onto the power of working in gender separate
groups. Sitting in circle with people who have a similar starting position to
you is powerful. Both women and men that I have spoken to, who sit in gender
distinct circles, say that being with their same gender means that when
tackling deep issues, they have to spend less time on being understood.
Communication is easier. Less explaining needs to be done, because the others
in their circle just get it – get the nuances of their communication style.
Which allows them to go deeper, quicker.
If I am to become a whole and integral human being (and
anywhere close to enlightenment), I must start where I am. With all that has
brought me to where I am and all that has shaped me. I must own my experience,
because I can’t change it. I can only change how I allow it to play out in my
future. In working separately, as a woman amongst women, I can become clearer
in what influence my experience has had/is having, and more fully own it. From
learning how my menstrual cycle affects my moods and the way I am likely to
interact at different times in the month (leave me alone for two days about a
week before I’m due: I’ll either dissolve into a snotty weepy mess or rip you a
new one), to uncovering my own gender prejudices within relationships. As it
says in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: “Know Thyself.”
By first acknowledging our different experiences as men and
women, male and female, and then taking ownership of them: so as not to put
them into shadow, we have a place from which we can build compassion.
Compassion for ourselves, and for our fellow genderees. We can then meet our
co-species differently gendered humans from compassion, and with the ability to
hear and share openly our different experiences. From there we have a point of
understanding. And in owning our strengths, and knowing our challenges, we are more
able to come together to form strong working alliances, to consciously avoid
causing unnecessary pain, and to help lift each other up and over the wounds of
being human. From positions of ownership and strength we can come together in
productive, creative, uplifting partnership.
Then: we can start to work on a universal human
spirituality.
“I know there is strength, in the differences between us; And
I know there is comfort, where we overlap ....”
Ani
DiFranco
