In Search of the Lost Feminine

I will have to try to find it at the library.
I don't know how to describe the loss of feminine- all I do know is that it carries right on into motherhood. I was reading an interesting blog today- I will quote from it here to try to make my point. Sorry it is so long-

http://thelittletravelers.typepad.com/the_little_travelers/2009/01/cultu...

So, now the point of my post. As I was watching back on our first day in Tehran with our first guide- a woman in her 20's who is not yet a mother I was stuck by the common parenting approach we shared. Not spoken, we did not talk about it- but yet when we watched the girls climbing around on this concrete fountain thing she did not tell them to be careful or micromanage them, but she watched them- as I do. When one almost fell but then caught herself we both looked at each other and smiled a smile of relief. But we did not interfere with the girls. This very small rather insignificant moment was startling to me because that hardly ever happens to me here in this country. Usually, the scenario would include another mother looking at me like I'm nuts with a "aren't you going to tell them to get down?" look on her face. Or she would be shouting at her own children to get down or not climb on it or my favorite- when a child does get hurt start shouting at them, "I told you to be careful!" Excellent advice.

My point here is that in our country we do not have a common mothering culture. We rarely tend to parent similar to other mothers around us and therefor don't seem to have a common connection to other mothers. It is a rare instance when I can share a smile and a gesture with a mother at a park that says, "I know how you feel." Sometimes I will look to a mother with a tantruming toddler wanting to just smile at her in a way that says, "I've been there." but rarely will that woman look at me for fear that she is being judged. I think it has much to do with our societies focus on competitiveness that drives much of this. If my children aren't in the middle of a tantrum and yours are that must mean that I'm winning at being a parent and you are losing. There really is not a sense of common ground in most cases. Within our own small groups sometimes that spirit of 'in it together' does emerge, but I'm talking about with strangers in the park or the grocery store.

This also struck me on our plane ride from Tehran to Amsterdam. There was a young mother with a baby traveling alone and she had so many offers to assist with the baby on that flight. Every woman over the age of 30 on that plane seemed to offer their assistance to her. Here's the clincher- especially when that baby was crying! This is in stark contrast to the flight we had from Minneapolis to Phoenix where there were quite a few babies on board and all I heard were derogatory remarks towards these babies and their bad luck in having to sit near one. That was this flight experience. I've also had the experience with the little sister spending an entire 5 hour flight away from us because she was a happy 9 month old and everyone wanted a turn to play with her. But would those same people have been around if she was a screamer?

Why are we so reluctant to help out another mom- or is the question, why are we so reluctant to receive help from another mother here in this country? Other western countries like Germany are even worse. I was once in line at a check-out when a baby began to cry and a few people in line started scolding the mother telling her she should leave the store with her crying baby and come back in to pay when her baby has stopped crying! yikes. What drives these cultural norms? And more importantly, what can each of us mothers do to make a more compassionate mothering culture in our own little neck of the woods?

Anyway all this to say Ya! I hear ya. When I see women like this talking about these things and parenting respectfully I think we may just be headed in the right direction.
But I am sad that we don't have a culture where the wise woman is respected-

I know what you're talking about

years ago, we traveled to Israel with dd who was then 6 mo old. a very difficult, high needs six month old. she screamed the entire 12 hour flight. we got all the expected comments, and by the time we were over Europe people were threatening to ask the pilot to land and ask us to deboard.

once in Israel, dd's misery continued, but the response was completely different. total strangers would literally take her out of my arms while I fiddled with my map or wallet, and dance/rock her as though she were theirs. Here, in NY, you do not ever dare touch another persons child for fear of arrest (or bodily harm) but there, a baby needs comforting or a mother needs assistance or encouragement and you step up to the plate and offer it. no, not offer it, give it. its a cultural thing.
mothers are not judged by misbehaving children. not to say that no one judges mothers, I got plenty of 'where's her sunhat?!' from complete strangers but it was obviously out of concern for my dd's safety. how many times have I seen a parent screaming at his/her child in public, and I turn a blind eye and pretend not to notice? not there. my experience in Israel was that there's a real sense of 'we're in this together'. support the parent, respect the parent, but childs wellbeing comes first.

about the feminine part, I didn't read the book, so I can't say if this is what you were referring to Christine, but this is my experience. I was raised as an Orthodox Jew. for many orthodox jews, or people who know a bit about Judaism, it seems at the surface that women are second class citizens. but I was raised in a system and culture where women are valued and esteemed for what they are, which is NOT a man! there are laws which are different for men and women, but that is not to say that women are not equal or entitled to less. I think this was very important for me, and hope I can pass that on to my children, because I don't feel I have to be a superwoman or compete with the men, do what they do. I can enjoy my feminine side, my feminine strengths and know that G-d created men to fill in where I am weaker. Just as it is our job and responsibility as women to fill in where the men fall short. I am confident to allow the men in my life to lead in the areas that they excell, and confident to take control when its an area of my strength. I don't feel subservient, nor do I feel that I have to overcompensate or apologize for anything I do well. I see many women around me struggling with these issues, and I wish I could just say to them, YOU! YOU are wonderful just being you, the way G-d or nature or chance or whatever you believe in, intended! and that has intrinsic value and significance! I fight the urge to blurt that out whenever I hear women talking up the seasonale pill which allows you to menstruate only 4 times a year. there's value there! maybe I dont' know what it is, maybe science doesn't know, but don't throw away what's yours. even if you don't know what good will come of it. ok, that's probably a bit superficial, and I'm blabbering now, but that's how I feel.

I'm very interested to read that book, will try to do so when I have a chance, because this whole topic definitely resonates with me.

Hi All

Yes, I agree that we have lost so much as women. Of course first world economies would grind to a halt if we kept up all the old traditions and did not seek out better ways of doing things, and better 'stuff' in our lives. We perceive that there 'has to be a better way' with anything we do, and sure enough there is always somebody willing to give it to us and part with our pesos for the privilege of doing so. We never really know whether or not we are ultimately better off, and often do not see the shortcomings of the new until the old has well and truly and irretrievably been lost to us.

We can very easily lead lives that are barely human and lose touch with what it is to be human.

I also do not think women are alone in losing the feminine. I think men have lost the masculine as well. We are all cast loose in the world of the new, without the other to bring us back to the traditional.

I think the only way to redress this is to think globally, and act locally. Take yourself back to basics. Every time you come across a person whom your inner primitive prods you to respond to in 'the traditional way', just do it. The worst you will get is a rejection. If the person is a stranger there is no loss, no lost relationship. If the person is known to you there is opportunity for dialogue.

Of course we have to pay heed to some of the taboos of our modern life, like not touching somebody else's child in a way that the parent is likely to be offended (that is if the child is not in danger). This is where having your antennae up is very useful and you have the opportunity for doing random acts of kindness, and helping people to think differently.

If nobody goes back to community, then nobody can go back to community.

Cheers

Louise

1. loss of the feminine is related to women fighting to have jobs outside of the home.
personally I think my greatest work is raising my family in the home in what used to be considered a "traditional role". Women have had to fight to have jobs outside the home and by winning this fight we have swung the pendulum very far into the opposite direction- and now when a woman is asked what she does for a living and she answers I work at home- the response is less than enthusiastic. Personally I frequently get asked "is that all?" Our new society fails to see the value in a stay at home wife and mother.

2. loss of the feminine is related to women losing their power of fertility and sexuality.
women now believe that controlling fertility gives them power. We are inundated with information about our fertility and it's inconvenience and uncleanliness. Modern women are often very out of touch with their cycles and how this cycle falls in line with the monthly ebb and flow of our planet- days, weeks, months and the phases of the moon. Our hormones influence our moods. There is a great design here and it has just about been forgotten. We also fail to see the power we hold during ovulation. I have only ovulated 4 times in the last 6 years but I can tell you that there was a marked difference in how I saw the world and how others responded to me- especially men. We have women walking around without uterus's, women supressing ovulation for months and months, and women who hate their cycles. We have forgotten the power we hold sexually. We, in our quest to look more masculine, walk more masculine, move more masculine have forgotten just what it is to have the body of a woman. The roundness. The softness. The power.

3. As women have lost this power (or discarded it) we have also deprived men of their power.
A man is no longer considered the provider for his wife, family, and even nation. Women have stepped in to show that we can do it and do it better. Many men are deprived of their own sexuality. They have lost the powerful influence of the ovulatory hormones. They are encouraged to fill a more feminine role in our society and are told they need to learn more feminine ways of communication, more feminine emotions, and a more feminine sensitivities. In our society fathers are not allowed to be men.

4. We have lost our feminine because we have lost touch with a greater power.
We have lost our traditions. Many religions emphasize the differences between men and women. The teachings encourage us to respect our differences and the uniqueness of our design.

5. We have lost our feminine because we no longer have a society that supports it's own natural design.
We do not support one another in the most important job we have- raising up the next generation. In fact we hand our children over to mass care shortly after birth. We no longer "allow" children to have responsibility in our communities and we have stripped them of their own wisdom- treating them like they have no instincts or innate intelligence. We send the message to our daughters that they must be nice and respectful- especially of authority. Funny that we have held onto that-in ancient societies wisdom was gained with age and that was to be respected. Now wisdom is few and far between yet children are forced to look up to and respect adults simply because they are older. Many times this leads to injury of the child- we teach them to squash their instincts from the time they are small- bending their will to ours- it is no wonder so many children are sexually abused and don't talk about it.

how is that? any other theories? Disagree with mine?

Alemama, I don't disagree with your theories but why have all these things happened over the generations?
When men for what ever reason cannot fulfill their duties as husbands or fathers women have had to step up and do their best to keep the family together. Some take employment outside the home or whatever comes to hand or mind. Sometimes this is successful, sometimes it becomes a disaster.
During two world wars women have had to step up and fill jobs to keep the "home fires burning." When the wars were over some successfully went back to being what they had been before the conflicts, others had to keep on working as the husband was injured or different, or was killed. Some found the freedom of being independent and in charge too hard to give up.
Sometimes circumstances lead us on a different path than we had intended. Results some good, some not so great, but we as a society are stuck with the results.
I have been trying to research my ancestors and have found that two of my great grandmothers worked in factories at least before marriage. All four of those gg parents
went over to Scotland from Ireland and married after they were there. What the rest of the story is I haven't been able to find out. They probably went over to Scotland to find work as employment at that time in parts of Ireland was hard to come by.
When my first marriage broke down I worked three jobs to "keep our home fires burning."
Not a choice I was happy about but we all liked to eat. I was lucky I could do most of my work at home so was there when my children needed me. I found it very hard to give up the sense of power and independence that I had had to gain, My late husband was a very understanding and supportive man so we got through my hang ups fairly well.
Why do women want to work outside the home I guess the reasons are different for everyone.
Do I think I have lost my femine? At one time I would have said yes and blamed it on the men in my life, but now looking back over the years and seeing the results of what I have accomplished I say NO!!! I finished raising 3 wonderful children who are the light of my life and contributing members of the human race. The many mistakes I'm sure I made have not crippled them in any visible way.
As a society we need to decide where we are going to go and do our best to do our part to make it happen.
So as you can see I don't disagree with your theories but question how as a society we have arrived at where we are.

Wow! Interesting discussion going on here! In my opinion, which is not a very popular one, feminine suffered GREATLY with the feminine movement. Some of our sisters, who benefited greatly from this movement, made being a stay-at-home mom seem like a worthless thing to do. They felt they had to go out in the world and be at least as good, if not better, than men.

Before long, many women who bought this theory were out in the working world, becoming doctors, lawyers, basically working at "becoming men." Ahh..loss of feminine!

It wasn't long before the women who were "lowly" stay at home moms became a burden to men because they now had to compete with two income families. As years went on (and feminine dwindled), family, as we knew it, changed tremendously. Children suffered the greatest loss, followed by the moms, who didn't want to, but now had to work to keep up with the two income families.

I am certainly not against women who want to "make something" of themselves in the working world if that is their choice, but I do pity the women who are deprived of being stay at home moms in order to make ends meet, or because they feel the pressure to be something more. In my opinion, as is the opinion of many of us here, they are missing out on the most important and rewarding "job" in the world.

And I totally agree with Alemama about men's role today. Men take a back seat to women in today's society. Just look at the commercials on T.V. Most of them depict men as dumb and not able to do anything right while the woman is is always depicted as smarter and more capable. What message does that send to our children? Certainly not that girls are as good as boys..it's that they are much better!

As to women not feeling the good about their bodies, not treasuring their womanhood, well that makes perfect sense. Today's modern women feel more like men and don't want to deal with such girly things! Such a shame...they just don't know what they are missing!

Unfortunately, in today's society, men seem to have found The Lost Feminine.

~Mae

I haven't read the book but I did read a synopsis of it and an interview with the author. I have some problems with some of his premises. The author is speaking from contemporary paradigms widely believed and preached but not entirely based on proven reality.

One is the assumption that our technology is ruining the planet, and bad for mankind. Another is the assumption that we have more war now than did primitive people, and that war is prosecuted by males, leading to the outrageous presumption that if women were in charge there would be no war. Another is the belief that men oppress women, that this did not occur in pre-patriarchal history, and that the rise of civilization was all about males making sure they were one up on females. The truth is far more complicated than this, but these feed into popular politics. That is what bothers me about him; I would like to see an objective work NOT based on popular but unproven beliefs that are the cornerstones of contemporary feminist, environmentalist, and anti-war ideology. It has all become too anti-masculinity, and hence... I have no choice but to suspect he is biased.

It seems he's rested his theory on these ideologies, and while I am sure he's awash in facts to back his thesis, the problem is that these ideologies, like all ideologies, are not entirely false - things are not black and white - there are shades of gray, therefore, one can always produce facts to support one's assertions. The trouble is, like all propaganda, people pick and choose - not consciously - they only SEE what supports their beliefs. But the opposing viewpoint can also be supported as readily - if someone in the other camp researched it. That's why it's so important if you're going to talk about history, and the destiny of mankind, and the future of the planet, that you rise above ideologies and be as coldly impartial as possible. I read a book once that proved, through research and the presentation of factual data, that men are in fact enslaved and oppressed by women, and always have been. I believe that neither extreme is true, but that the truth is a swirling mixture, ever changing for individuals, and that men and women are more often a team rather than rivals for power, when it comes down to daily reality - under any social structure, even a patriarchal one, except OVERT oppression, such as we had with the Taliban. One must be wary of claiming a female in the U.S. in 2009 is under ANY sort of oppression at all. We almost had a female President. We almost had a female Vice-President. Sexism did not keep those two out of office. What kept them out of office, both of them, was Obama's charisma. If people voted based on racial or gender prejudice, Obama would not be in office, and you will never convince me people are more sexist than they are racist.

So the ideology of feminists is not proven true by the playing out of reality today. It was true for Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, but the American war machine put a stop to that. More about that in a minute. First let me address Mr. Barnes' statement that war is the foundation of progress in the modern era, and that the patriarchy established a culture of war. What he is talking about - what he accurately detects in history - is the point at which war became a STATE PROSECUTED endeavor. But he misinterprets this finding. Prehistoric war was face-to-face combat (or distant spear throwing, or village raids, or ritualistic slaughter); the warriors WERE the tribe; they fought for religious symbols, for revenge, and for women and resources. Post "patriarchal" history saw the rise of the soldier and armies. No longer are warriors one and the same with the people (an exception: American revolutionary militiamen) but for the most part state funded and state controlled armies, with a state sponsored political agenda. (Well, John Keegan argues that that's a cover; that we still fight for cultural reasons, not politics, but that point is irrelevant for now.) The point is we always had war. How and by whom it is prosecuted has changed, but it has always been woven into our cultures. It has been waged to more or lesser degrees, and at times, if a people had abundant resources and no competition for those, it has faded into near nothing, but that speaks more about their physical environment than about their culture or the nature of humankind. Barnes admits as much when he points out the effects of volcanic catastrophe.

The thing that bothers me most about a biased presentation, is that he probably has very legitimate points. He may be entirely correct about much or most of what he says. But bias decimates credibility - takes away from, not adds to, the strength of argument. I'm not necessarily on board with the premise of global warming for example. If he speaks from that assumption (haven't read the book... just seems like he does from the interview) then I cannot follow anything else he says after that, without a big chunk of salt - even if he may be entirely correct! I am certainly 100% on board with the loss of femininity from a reproductive standpoint. Technology has increased our lifespan from about 30 years to about 70 - who would argue that is not a great thing? But technology has also resulted in 1/3 of births being by means of physically CUTTING the baby from the woman's abdomen, a completely unnecessary and atrocious state of affairs. See what I mean about gray?

Back to the war in Afghanistan, something like 80 or 90 percent of the American people were behind it on September 12, 2001. To this day even most anti-war liberals I talk to say we should still keep after Bin Laden. Most people, no matter which side of the political spectrum you are on, agree that deposing the Taliban was a good thing. Nevermind the ways it is working its way back into power, nevermind the ways tribal warlords have continued persecution of women, just based on the moment of time back then, it was a good thing to take out the Taliban. But since things are always gray, rarely black and white, America is committing a tremendous blunder and evil in the followthrough; we are on our "War on Drugs" high horse and have decreed that Afghanistan shall not grow the opium poppy. The main cash crop of the poor has been banned; we go free that country from Taliban rule, then we impose an INSANE policy of forbidding poor farmers to grow the only crop that can reasonably feed their families, thereby driving them right back into the arms of the enemy (Taliban) and keeping that enemy from dying out, and keeping Afghanistan from strengthening its economy and becoming a free market democracy. They're now being persecuted by America instead of the Taliban. (Incidentally, this does support Keegan's point; forcing away the opium poppy is a cultural war; in Afghanistan, and on the streets of America, the State has decreed that the people cannot be trusted to choose what they put into their own bodies.)

To address another false premise: men have all the power; women are still oppressed. In a world where women can choose to work, or stay home with a man supporting her, or stay home man-less having babies and being supported by the State, where a man has a choice basically between work or prison, I simply do not see this premise played out in reality in America today. Perhaps in the 1800s a woman could not become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, but we did not have birth control then. The simple reality of birth control more than anything else, has empowered women, by freeing her from pregnancy and childbirth - which is really the biggest obstacle to a career. It never was MEN keeping them from careers; beyond force of habit (the "good ole boys" club was all male simply because men were all there were. Once women entered the work force, they joined the work culture). Any woman who gripes that she has been edged out by the "good ole boy" network MIGHT be in denial, that actually she isn't as quality a worker as she imagines herself to be, nor has the people skills that she imagines herself to have. Nobody wants to work with a bitch, and while "if a man does it it's assertiveness; if a woman does it, it's bitchy" might be true, this very thing also empowers a woman with tools no man has with which to get her way. I'm not talking about flirting and winking; I'm talking about the feminine verbal gymnastics with which we can unbalance and defeat a man - get them off their linear rail and overwhelm them with global logic. This is our power, and we've ALWAYS had it.

The other factor that influenced woman's station in life is that until now, most of humanity lived in rural communities, whether hunter-gatherer or settled agriculture, the greater male strength and the fact that men did not carry or nurse babies, gave men the default jobs of hunting and farming and protection, and women of course childcare, food preparation, clothes and basket making, etc. The rise of civilization led to the rise of a FALSE (in my opinion unnatural) system in which the nuclear family replaced the tribe (or village) as the focal community, and relegated women to being the "housewife", which, in the day of slaves and servants and a lot of children, was not so problematic - you were surrounded by your "pack" (we're much like dogs, socially) - but when technology brought mechanized labor saving devices, washing machines and electric stoves, and then the automobile brought suburbia, this became absolutely disastrous for women. This brought the rise of bored, resentful women, stuck isolated at home with a whiny toddler or two, who attempted to express their distress at being marginalized out of productive society by coming up with "anxiety" disorders and being put on Valium, and then of course arose feminism which put the blame for all this squarely on men, as if men had forced women into this predicament when in reality the true culprit was cheap and abundant fossil fuel. That and only that, is the force behind our incredible explosion in technology. Womankind imagined that man had oppressed her into housewifery, ignoring the fact that it was and always has been childbearing and her inferior physical strength that kept her occupied and out of the male world, and now, it is modern technology and the automobile that has taken her out of her close-knit village and support system.

Technology is also the culprit behind the false and unnatural modern declaration that a child is a child until age 21, and that an education is the answer to all our problems. We have legislated away a teenager's ability to work. Child labor laws.. YET AGAIN... gray, not black and white... really good to stop 10 year olds being used basically as slave labor in factories; really TERRIBLE to forbid a 15 year old to work in a garage as an apprentice learning about car engines when that is exactly what he wants to do. Our educational system forces them into pre-college and ignores productive training, ignores what they WANT to do, and ignores their economic realities. The 15 year old is forced to sit in a boring classroom, flunking history and French, maybe turning to drugs for recreation, selling drugs for money (because he can't get a full time job; it's against the law), being guided by an unnatural social system telling him that he, as a male, is responsible for all the world's evil, for wars, for women's suffering (where from his point of view he does not see women suffering, he sees selfish and stuck-up girls getting everything they want and treating him like dirt).

Far better in my opinion was the system when you were initiated into manhood upon puberty, and womanhood the same, so that your social recognition equaled your biological reality. Makes the whole problem of "statutory rape" go away, doesn't it?

Likewise, it has been fossil fuel, not "males", that has now brought us to the predicament of not having any personal connection to the production of our own food. We don't kill our game. We don't grow our produce. We drive to the grocery store and buy it. What evils has that brought to us? Well, for one thing mass industrialized farming has resulting in a huge overabundance of food, and de facto abolished starvation in America. Good thing? Of course (leaving aside overpopulation). But it has also put us into a terrible, terrible position of vulnerability and dependency. We are all one little catastrophe away from being cut off from our food source, and a generation or two away from even know HOW to hunt or grow something ourselves. Barnes may make the fantastic point that we are disconnected from Mother Earth and I couldn't agree more. But unlike him, if I perceive him right, I do not presume masculinity was the root cause of this or that feminism is any kind of solution. Quite the opposite... from the experience I've had with women in the workforce, I can imagine no greater nightmare scenario than putting them in charge of producing my food. They'd organize it to death with endless committee meetings where the men I worked with would grab chainsaws and get outside and get to work. I'm sure this is an extreme perception from my particular office, but my whole point is... so is the reverse! It's all gray, flowing, changing... and men and women at the heart and truth of it, generally work well together for survival.

I do not argue that men have been asses. I do not argue that the Catholic church was a male-dominated tyranny. (So was the Godless Soviet Union.) I do not argue that men have appropriated obstetrics and gynecology - some ways to our good but in many ways to our detriment. I don't argue that Barnes' assertion that the myths of goddesses and the rise of male gods was associated with a change from matriarchal to patriarchal societies. I DO argue against this being an entirely bad thing. I don't view the world in black and white, with "good" eras and "bad" eras, but rather, good and bad is woven all through time and space like a tapestry. I call it gray, but really it's like black and white threads so numerous that when you view the whole macro-cosmically, it appears gray. Maybe sometimes more black, sometimes more white, but always flowing, changing, and always containing both. Therefore, nothing is worse than women calling themselves victims of men. It ignores the other threads, the threads of female power, that exist, have always existed and always will.