It’s Women’s Month in South Africa, a time for reflection, a time for speeches, a time for action. But the greatest difference we can make to society is a whole, is to focus on reawakening and appreciating the feminine energy that is such a vital part of what it means to be human.
August is the month I receive a flurry of requests to speak at Women’s day functions. I am usually invited to give an empowerment, or even worse, motivational talk. There is only one topic I am ever interested in addressing during this month of women gathering over champagne breakfasts. It is the understanding and appreciation of femininity. I believe that if we gave more attention to this macro issue, it will automatically shift many micro issues plaguing women and society as a whole.
In many the term femininity evokes Stepford Wives-like mental images. Our understanding of femininity is woefully inadequate and distorted by our patriarchal society. Femininity is relegated to a joke, an embarrassment, a distraction or even an insult by many women.
This is because it has been suppressed, denigrated, demonised and demoted for millennia now. Now men and women alike not only have a distorted perception of what is feminine, we also have very low regard of it. Stroll through a bookstore and notice the sheer volume of books teaching women how to manage, date, or think like men, which we buy.
You will struggle to find 10 books teaching men to do anything like women. Usually when a woman is likened to a man it is perceived as complimentary, but when a man is likened to a woman it is usually intended as an insult. Women will tell a man to “stop acting like a pussy or a bitch” without a second of self-reflection. We suffer from Stockholm syndrome.
Last year a church hosted a huge sold-out event at Gallagher estate. Tickets went for as much as R5 000. The gathering was to help women attract husbands through prayer. It caused a storm in a teacup on woke social media. There were numerous comments along the lines of “why not take that R5 000 and invest it in your career/education/finances instead of wasting it praying for a man? A man would never invest that kind of money to bag a wife!”
That is probably true, if you are generalising. A man is unlikely to spend R5000 on a prayer meeting to attract a spouse. This is not because men are saner than women. Women, again I generalise, carry more feminine energy than men. The masculine values the individual and the feminine values the collective.
Femininity prioritises relating and relationships. Masculinity prioritises status and hierarchy. One is not better than the other. Yet in a world that has been mesmerised into viewing the feminine as defective, a woman who puts R5000 into unit trust is clearly superior to one who invests it in pursuit of a life partner.
Women regularly, probably unconsciously, communicate that masculine is right and feminine is bad, weak or frivolous. A friend of mine, a qualified Chartered Accountant, was cautioned by an older female colleague that if she hopes to get a permanent seat on the board, she must stop wearing bright dresses to board meetings.
Where masculine energy is assertive, feminine energy is attractive. The masculine goes out to grab attention, the feminine evokes it. It often uses beauty to draw attention, instead of say, banging a fist on the table. Why is one better than the other?
Then there is the word classy. It is the euphemism women now use to police the bodies of other women on behalf of men. I have noticed women posting and liking memes like “Classy is when a woman has everything to flaunt, but chooses not to show it.”
Here is the thing, it is apparently not tacky for a woman to drive a R5-million Ferrari, but it is to wear a short, form-fitting dress. So you can flaunt money (masculine) but not curves (feminine). You know what else is apparently not classy? Breastfeeding in public.
Children have the right to be breastfed in any place that adults have a right to eat. If you can eat in a plane, a child can breastfeed there. If you can eat in a restaurant, so can a breastfeeding child, without a tablecloth over her head. I have done a lot of breastfeeding in public spaces. Two kids later, I have never had a man complain about my public breastfeeding. I have only ever received glares or complaints from women.
Being the person that I am, I will often engage them on the matter. Invariably they end up mumbling words like “decency”. They look at the breasts of another woman – designed for the beautiful feminine traits of nourishing and nurturing – through a sexualized male gaze and then declare it low-class.
Femininity is in desperate need of good PR. There are many feminine attributes that are highly valued in our society which people don’t recognise as feminine. Creativity relies on the feminine. To innovate, you need to connect to the unknown, which is a feminine realm.
The ability to inspire, to motivate and to influence – these are feminine traits. The feminine evokes, it brings forth, it is the energy of the muse. The feminine is the part of us that values connection and communication, networking, listening, sharing. We know that emotions are a feminine charge. What we often forget is that when we disconnect from the heart – emotions – and rely solely on the mind, we become cold, domineering and controlling. A recipe for wars, greed, exploitation and abuse.
Women tend to embody more feminine energy than men, again I generalise. Thus we, male or female, cannot fully value and celebrate women without appreciating femininity.
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