Day 178: Separation of genders

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This post is a continuation to:

Day 177: Relationships and cross-gender support

I've continued with private writings. For my blog I chose to elaborate on a topic mentioned in yesterday's post:

“So here I associate “strength” with the capability for violence, which in itself is fascinating and another facet in how I have separated myself from the male gender as humans as LIFE simply because we come in a different packaging.”

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from the male gender by perceiving them to be alien to me because there are in-born differences in our physical bodies and learned differences in our personalities and behavior.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be fascinated and frightened by the differences between myself and males, going from one energetic polarity to another and seeing the differences as reasons to perceive males to be more than me (and in some cases less than me).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the male gender because I perceive them to be “alien” to me because of qualities they possess and I do not.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I am fascinated/frightened by the differences between me and males because I am drawn to that which I lack in myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from those qualities which I lack at the moment by believing and perceiving them to be exclusive to the entity in which they commonly appear (the male gender).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to interpret the qualities that the male gender commonly has and the female gender commonly doesn't to be exclusive to males because this is the prevailing norm – not realizing that the current state of things is not necessarily the true nature of things but just the way things are run at the moment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to the word “female”, thus seeing myself as separate from all that I associate with the word “male”, creating a separation and a competition.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the two genders are meant to live in separation to never have full understanding of each other because this is how the humanity operates relationships currently.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see past my perception of gender to see, realize and understand that the only actual difference between the genders in this physical reality is just the physical differences – that everything else is generated and upheld in the mind, which is the domain which is in no way real.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive gender to be a relevant defining factor in who people are, not realizing that the practical differences only have to do with reproduction and different types of physical work (which may also be overcome with practice).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to magnify the physical differences between males and females and give them “meanings” in my mind, within this justifying the separation of genders and my compliance to it.

Male = strong / violent, straightforward / inconsiderate, non-emotional / dense, stern / immobile,

Female = gentle / weak, empathetic / ineffective, sensitive / hysteric, soft / limp,

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to associate the male gender with strength, straightforwardness, rationality and sternness and their negative polarities and to believe them to be exclusive to males.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to glorify those with strength, effectiveness, rationality and steadfastness and hold on to them to always live out these qualities for me instead of looking at myself to find these qualities in myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to associate the female gender with gentleness, empathy, sensitivity and softness and to define myself according to this perception because I believed that because I am female I need to live up to it – not realizing that I am not looking at what the female gender actually is but only my interpretation of it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a teenager to perceive myself to be rebelling against the female gender when I did not fit my interpretation of it, creating a personality from this rebellion and refusing to embrace myself as a female member of my species.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be ashamed of being a female because I live in a male-dominated world run by masculine structures, designs and systems and to try and escape my gender by developing qualities that were masculine and ignoring those that were feminine.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to survive in a male-dominated world by becoming more masculine motivated by my fear of death (not surviving).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear the male gender because the current structure of the world/society/humanity is male-dominant and as a female I saw myself to be in a losing position.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see, realize and understand that the current structure of the world is not necessarily the best we can be as humanity and as Life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to succumb to the current male-dominant world structure because I have perceived myself to be powerless to change it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that all change begins within the individual, and that I need to look at the male-dominance within myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become male-dominant myself as I succumbed to the fear of the masculine world structure and tried to become masculine myself, overriding feminine qualities in myself to replace them with masculine qualities – not realizing that as I do this from the starting point of fear I am simply trying to survive without actually facing the problem and looking for a solution.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that by having the power to balance the masculine and the feminine within myself I do have the power to affect the world structure that is in imbalance.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that one cannot be both fully masculine and fully feminine, because I perceive them to somehow contradict each other – not realizing that all the things we have named as “masculine” and “feminine” are in fact just different points and areas in the full scale of human expression, and that human expression is not limited by the bodies we are born into (unless physically disabled).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe the two buckets titled “masculine” and “feminine” into which we throw and separate different qualities to be real – not realizing they are concepts created in the mind and not the physical reality itself, as the physical reality will stay the same whether these concepts exist or not; if the buckets disappeared, the qualities thrown into them would still be here, just not in separation but in one pile.

I commit myself to study the world structure in order to see how the imbalance of the feminine and the masculine has been created and upheld and to through this find a solution to it.

I commit myself to explore the full scope of human expression by investigating the “masculine” and the “feminine” buckets and their contents and by challenging myself to try whatever lies beyond my comfort zone.

I commit myself to further investigate my relationship to femininity from within the realization that I've been rejecting it for a long time.

I commit myself to further investigate my relationship to masculinity as I now see and realize I have practiced masculine traits from the starting point of fear.

Most importantly: I commit myself to realize that the words “masculine” and “feminine” are merely words as symbols and guidelines for us to organize information within our mind-realities / conceptual realities – and that these words/symbols/concepts do not in fact concretely exist in the physical and thus are irrelevant.

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I watched a documentary on sexual harassment which happens to fit this subject. Why I'm mentioning this is because at the end of the document I had a panic attack, which hasn't happened in ages (I had just been reflecting back on my panic disorder and realizing it's been gone for a long time already – nope!). I realize this is because of the general point of view of the documentary, where holding on to one's fears is justified and all the blame is passed on the other participant of the interaction – and I'm NOT saying there's nothing wrong with the world, that misogyny is made up, that we're all just “hysteric” and “overreacting” - which is what some also do on that documentary – because I do realize there's still a major problem with the power structure that favors some over others (in this case men over women). A reason why the separation between genders prevails is because they are seen different by “nature”, that they are “supposed” to be different and treated differently. But what this “feminine empowerment” that this documentary represents is actually doing is supporting the fear, it's validating the fear, it's saying “look, men are not to be trusted, you SHOULD be afraid!” as if this was valid – it may be rational to be cautious but fear is never justified.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my experiences of sexual harassment on the streets may have been very different if I had faced the other without fear and looked at who the other is and what it is they actually seek instead of instantly locking myself into fear of getting assaulted, flooding my mind with worst-case scenarios and thus disabling myself from actually doing something about the situation because my mind was preoccupied with survival strategies.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I have been harassed on the street, to blame the other for my experience of anxiety, fear, vulnerability and helplessness, not realizing that I create these experiences myself by seeing myself as less than the other.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to position myself towards a man primarily by keeping in mind that men are physically stronger than women and have the ability to abuse this advantage and have done so throughout human history – completely disregarding all the other traits that people consist of and the fact that the decision to abuse is made independent of all human history and tendency within the moment of interaction, which I am a participant of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see men as human beings but as abusers because of my prejudice through which I perceive men to be a threat.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I am doing men a disservice by perceiving them to be abusers instead of human beings, because as I perceive a man to be an abuser I support him to live according to my expectation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that whenever I expect something of another, be it positive or negative, I support the other to live according to my expectation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see myself as one with and equal to the male gender as I have for a long time been wary of the physical disadvantage, this being the first thing that comes up in my mind when interacting with men in most circumstances. [This, yo, this needs to be specified.]

Fascinating stuff opening up. I'll continue tomorrow again.