In my previous blog posting in June, I said I was convinced that gender identification and the disengagement from same as a spirit-being is essential to any real and lasting liberation and expansion. Since that time, from many places materials have been emerging into my life for me to write the forthcoming essay.
There are multiple perspectives and analyses about the causes of our current-day financial/economic crisis, ranging from what human nature is—sometimes said to be composed of both greed and altruism, bad/evil and good, or tainted from the start—to debates about the wisdom of free markets versus government regulations on specific activities. Adding my voice to all the viewpoints I've heard or read, I see culturally designed gender roles at the heart of some of the reality we are currently experiencing today, in all societies. And going deeper than that, I see some of our human species‘ core designs, “the troublemakers” as I‘ve called them, bringing forth many of the cultural patterns used globally by both males and females—and how they relate with one another.
Going back to some of the materials I wrote in 2000 that are in the three snapshots— “Problem-Causing Patterns,” “Females and Males,” and “Sexuality”—from the book Jim and I published in 2003, God's River of Love, the following synthesis still makes sense to me:
* Underneath cultural patterns for gender are more fundamental designs of oppositional dualism, ranking of superiority/inferiority, either/or thinking, the use of fear, and a belief there is only One Truth.
* When Jim and I studied our pasts, starting with our births in 1933 and 1932, we discovered that our early cultural sexual orientations included a lot of dualistic programming, where what one gender was the other one wasn't. Females were said to be emotional, while males were said to be logical; and females were said to be receptive, while males were said to be action-oriented.
* Then within the cultural schema of the United States during our J & J growing-up years, in the division of physical qualities between males and females, males were supposed to be the gender with the predominant sex drive, while only bad girls had sexual interests that could match those of males.
Hence, as the above illustrates, there were multiple potentials for power imbalances between males and females, and females and males throughout their culturally-lived lives.
Some of my personal experiences within the patterns used in the United States for females and males include: When I began my first teaching job in the fall of 1952 in southern California, we teachers didn't make enough money to support ourselves independently, and low wages for teachers were the norm for years. Because I lived at home, I was able to buy a car. In practical terms, we females had to get married. And social customs were such that men too had to get married because companies saw more stability with married men, and their jobs required such a concentrated focus the men needed a partner to take care of “all the little things.” (As a sidenote, about 1974 when Jim and I were both working, we laughingly concluded that in addition to the cleaning help we had, we needed a wife to take care of at-home matters! Our solution then was to decide he and I were the wife, sharing joint living responsibilities.)
In the 1960s, when I returned to teaching in 1963 after our daughter had been in kindergarden for about six months, my mother was concerned, telling me people would think my husband wasn't doing well financially—which could hurt his business. That is, it was the man's role to provide for his family, (and to bring about community respect). Many women I knew in the 1950s and 1960s loved being housewives, taking pride in their cake and pie accomplishments, while others were restless. The cultural message I got was that white females were second class citizens, while white males were the first class citizens. Why? Who knew … that was just the way it was.
Here in the United States, individual females certainly developed strategies to combat the imbalances of power, such as talking about their husbands as if they were little boys in conversations with other females, like their husbands were one more of their children. And to balance out the imbalances of power women have had in their primary male/female relationship, many females have had friendships with other females where they have given each other lots of emotional support.
Adding to my personal U.S. gender herstory. After my divorce, about 1968 while living in southern California, when I went to buy a new washing machine, even though I was a tenured teacher with a teaching contract, I couldn't buy it on credit. (I wasn't married and presumably not a good business risk.)
Coming to the present. From my point of view it has taken Jim and I decades to achieve what I think is an even playing field now, where we share the balance of power in our relationship with one another, which I believe needs to be freshly crafted by both of us daily. That is, it isn't some accomplishment we can say is done and fixed. Over the years we've both had to make many adjustments and changes, which we each continue to do!
In the U.S., along with men primarily controlling money in the past, which was part of the male domain's position of power and control, another male power and control area has been emotional anger, irritation, withdrawal—and sometimes violence. Certainly things have changed, where many women have been working for decades now too, but I also continue to see many men underwriting much of their family‘s standard of living. I also continue to hear a lot of aggression and edges to male voices in the present. What I'm saying here is that even though there have been various changes in the decades after the cultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, I still see gender designs from the past continuing to operate, even though new ones have been additionally energized … hence they all mix together in a dance of ever-changing dynamics.
Where have I been going with all of this? Here in the United States I think many men have automatically thought of themselves in ways where their value as a male human being was and is tied to their money-making abilities and providing activities. And the more money and possessions they had and have, the more value they had and have in their own and other‘s eyes. (He who has the most toys is the winner.) So of course many males have sought to make as much money as they can, and in an increasingly competitive financial environment, the means to accomplish their goals have been dicey. In today‘s world, some men see their jobs even more strongly in terms of survival of the fittest, or at least the survival of their lifestyle.
Where do females fit within all of this as the other part of the gender divide? Well, a woman's attractiveness—beauty, sex appeal, and personality—were oftentimes her ticket to making a connection with a man who could provide for her and the children they might have. And females too have been in competition with other females. So of course more and more women have focused on clothes, makeup, hair styles, jewelry, and face lifts—all of which cost money. Some women who have been very successful in terms of their appearance in recent times have been called “trophy wives” and “arm candy” as the partners of powerful men, while also oftentimes being successful achievers themselves in business, finance, the law, and other areas.
One male writer I heard recently on NPR is suggesting that the loss of jobs for males in the United States is the beginning of the decline of macho here. (My online dictionary defines “macho” as aggressive pride in one's masculinity; vigorous; virile; red-blooded.) He was proposing that women could come out on top, like it's their turn at the tiller. But my question is, since here in the United States when a man's very identity, self-worth, masculinity and strength is extensively tied up with his job and abilities to make money, what else can he do and how else can he think and feel? And, I definitely think continuing to use patterns of superiority/inferiority and dualistic opposition is very unwise!
Then intermixed with gender patterns here in the U.S., this nation of immigrants, are also patterns from the past that are associated with race, class, religion, age, family, and regional customs. But again, underneath them I think “the troublemakers” weave throughout all these cultural belief constructions.
So far in this essay I've focused on the United States culture because it‘s what I am personally familiar with. But I have also studied gender relations for decades in other societies, past and present. On July 6th, when I heard Diane Rehm interview a female Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about her new book, The Thing Around Your Neck, I ordered it. For years, along with listening to first-person accounts from many places around the world, most of my reading has been non-fiction, but I felt I would gain even more insight into the interplay of gender with what Chimamanda had written as fiction from an African and American viewpoint. One of her major themes, as I heard the Diane Rehm interview, was the power dynamics in male/female relationships, where in general we live in a world that favors men as a group.
Now Adichie‘s combined Nigerian and American perspectives will be in addition to what I read last May in Barack Obama‘s book about his early life, Dreams from My Father, especially the section describing when he went to Kenya, his father‘s homeland, before attending Harvard Law School. I thought he very graphically portrayed many of the underlying tribal patterns there for males, females, and their relationships.
Certainly there have been upsides and downsides for each gender in each society, but I do think that along with their gender entitlements and cultural positions of power, the patterns for males in general, globally, have also been enormously confining and limiting. Jim says the pressures from other males to “be a man” can be formidable!
Overall, as I understand it, there's been ample co-creativity by both spirit-being males and females, and spirit-being females and males—in the past and up to the present.
Then along with the results from various cultural gender designs, there are also the results from the thought patterns we humans use to relate with other species and the Earth system itself, which is the life-support system for all species members. Do I have an answer to this interwoven creativity and co-creativity? Yes I do! Get to know oneself as the essence of oneself, and construct a self and one‘s relationships afresh. Individually and together Jim and I have been in this process for decades.
Thus far Jim and I have been individually exploring and experiencing different matrixes, and at times have experienced other realities, but up to the present neither one of us has enough information about the steps to take to move effectively from the mass reality I think we are all currently co-creating and experiencing, to another reality. Nonetheless, we both expect to be successful in our individual ways—and I‘ll let you know what happens.
With Expanding Love,
