I offer these thoughts, inappropriately from a man, out of the upmost respect for women, the injustices they have suffered for millennia, and the human potential that is their gift and birthright.
The rights of women and their status have seen substantial advancement over the course of the past century, since winning the right to vote. Yet despite that progress, there is really no light at the end of the tunnel. Women still do not have equal rights; they still can’t pursue anything they want on an equal basis with men; they are still subject to discrimination based on gender; they don’t receive equal pay; their testimony is often discounted by men; and they are still subject to the unwanted advances of predatory men.
Why? Because we live in a male-dominated society and the male ego continues to be mostly dismissive towards women. There will thus be little opportunity for further advancement towards the goals of the women’s movement without changing this basic nature of our underlying society.
Feminism to-date has been primarily concerned with leveling the playing field. I respectfully suggest that it is time now to change the playing field itself. This calls for a new wave of feminism.
There have been three waves of feminism in the U.S. that have sought to rectify the injustices faced by women. The first wave concentrated on getting the right to vote and other family-related rights. The second seeks to free women from gender discrimination and enable them to be able to do and be anything they wanted to be, equally with men. The third is more about increasing women’s respect, her relevance in society as a counter to man, having her testimony heard and believed, and is less rigid about what women “should” do. A housewife can be a feminist.
Central to the feminist movement has been the belief that women should be able to do and be whatever they want, equally with men. But this leaves the question begging … how does a woman decide what she wants to do? What does she want to be? The reader most likely will respond, “Duh! It’s whatever she wants.” But it’s not that simple or straightforward. Hardly.
As I have noted in many posts, we are creatures of our ego-mind … the mind that has developed from our learned experience and our reactions to that experience. Most everyone goes through life making day-to-day decisions, both large and small, based on the guidance of his or her ego-mind. The ego-mind is the source of all our emotions, judgments, cravings, and attachments. In short, the things that drive us. The ego-mind is who we identify with. Most readers will probably respond, “So, what’s wrong with that?”
Unfortunately, our ego-mind causes us to be agitated, fearful, guilt-ridden, submissive or aggressive, insecure … it is in fact the cause of our suffering. And these feelings cloud every decision we make, making it impossible to know or do what is really in our best interest. The resulting decisions we make under the influence of the ego-mind are thus highly questionable.
The first step in this new, fourth, wave of feminism would thus be to truly free women from their past, from her ego-mind, and so allow her to make decisions that are best for her. The good news is that the ego-mind is not our true self. We can thus turn instead to our true self for guidance. We do have a choice.
What is this true self? As the mystical traditions of all three Abrahamic faiths … Judaism, Christianity, and Islam … teach (as well as Buddhism and Hinduism and even the classic Greek philosophies that speak to how one should live life), the ego-mind is not our true self. Instead, our true self is our heart, the God/Buddha essence we were born with. And so our true self is peace and goodness. As much as our emotions control us, they are not who we truly are; they are just a product of the ego-mind.
And so for a woman, or a man, to truly know who they are and who they want to become, in the sense of how they want to express the person they are, they must first free themselves from the influence of the ego-mind. There are two ways of doing this. One is the classic spiritual teaching of the mystical traditions as well as Buddhism and Hinduism. The other is to heal the wounded inner child. Or better yet, the two work best in tandem. (See my post, “Human Interaction Is Governed by Wounded Children - And How Women Can Change That Dynamic”)
“OK,” you may say, “but what does this have to do with changing the playing field? How would this alter the injustice that women continue to suffer at the hands of men?”
First, it would be truly game changing. Women would be freed by being in touch with their innermost feelings and, rather than being paralyzed or controlled by them, heal the wounded inner child and emerge a stronger person.
As it stands now, a woman’s analysis of who they want to be is a function of her ego-mind and her life experience, and thus more a reflection of her emotions than her true self, her heart. Only by being free of those emotions and judgments, in touch with her unwounded heart, can she identify what she truly wants to do.
Controlled by those emotions and life experiences, women have become trapped, even as they experience increased freedom, in the same neuroses and obsessions that have driven men and made them suffer, because women have also made their choice based on the faulty analysis of the ego-mind. They have thus exchanged the suffering of being the trapped housewife they didn’t want to be with the suffering of either not being able to achieve what they want or achieving it and finding their lives empty of real meaning, never satisfied. By making their choice based on who they truly are, they would be free of that trap, free of their wounded inner child.
Second, healing the wounded inner child would not just change a woman’s relationship with herself; it would change her relationship with her family and everyone she comes into contact with. And this is what could result in women changing the playing field.
Women may still have little power in the world of men, but women carry the main burden of raising children … which gives them power to mold the future. If women were able to pursue that task free of their wounded inner child, it would have a beneficial impact on the interaction between mother and child, giving their children a real chance of getting the nourishment they need and developing into strong adults free of hobbling insecurities.
This would be huge. It would break the cycle I described in my book, Raising a Happy Child, of insecure parents raising insecure children who become insecure adults who …. The next generation of men and women would then be on a new playing field, because they would not be formed by insecurity and would know who they truly were. Human interaction would be on a different plane.
There is a reason why the Earth is referred to as “Mother Earth.” Earth is not just the source of life, it is the sustaining force; it nourishes mankind. This has traditionally been the female role, not the male role. And men have suffered because they have not been raised, not been conditioned, to that role. Unfortunately, over the past century, women have also not been raised to that role, except in a perfunctory and limiting way.
Reassuming the role of Mother Earth for themselves and their families would not mean retreating back to the role of housewife. It would mean instead that regardless what path a woman chooses to take, she will in her relationships always provide the nourishment that is a woman’s gift.
No comments:
Post a Comment