Days 320-321: The woman in me

22-23092013

To me the pose in this picture says: "Be a man!" And this is what I get when I google "female empowerment".

Ever since teen age I've been trying to be “one of the guys”. With this I mean that in social situations I have tried to adopt “guy-like” traits and behave like a “guy” because at some point while looking at the people in my life (parents, siblings, friends, relatives) I had learned to admire masculinity (rational, relaxed, stable, well-grounded, honest, loyal) and to resent femininity (moody, unstable, dishonest, spiteful, unreliable, tense). I didn't want to show my femininity even though I didn't exactly dislike being female, because when I was using masculine traits I felt strong and big and smart while being feminine I felt small and weak and stupid. Being “one of the guys” has also been an attempt to gain status and respect, because from my perspective it appeared as if men were socially appreciated more than women who were easily put down.

So, shortly put, I have defined femininity as “negative” and masculinity as “positive”, not realizing that they both have their upsides and downsides, strengths and weaknesses, and thus I have suppressed my femininity.

The reason I am writing about this is the fact that recently I have seen myself change. Yesterday I committed to writing about “who I am” with others and today I have been writing about an encounter I had yesterday with a friend. I saw that with this person I allowed myself to be feminine - soft, empathetic, caring, gentle – and I am glad to see this change in me, because it indicates that I have managed to release some of my social fears, the masculine personality being a “shield” to defend myself with.

I have also noticed this with other people recently, where I have been dropping the “tough guy act” and instead allowing myself to be exposed. I've for example been going through my work personality, allowing myself to for example be empathetic instead of abusing my position of power. So this is not something that is personally connected to the person I was writing about, but a process that is going on within me which I see reflected in different moments of interaction.

So in a way this “tough guy act” is also a very good indicator: when and as I see myself doing it, I can check myself to see if I am in fact doing it out of fear. I can think of several situations where I would very likely still hold onto this pattern, and those especially I need to investigate.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define masculinity only according to what I perceived to be its positive traits (rational, relaxed, stable, well-grounded, honest, loyal), disregarding the negative aspects of this polarity and thus creating an imbalanced view of masculinity that was detached from reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define femininity only according to what I perceived to be its negative traits (moody, unstable, dishonest, spiteful, unreliable, tense), disregarding the positive aspects of this polarity and thus creating an imbalanced view of femininity that was detached from reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that some traits and qualities are exclusively “feminine” or “masculine” (stuff that commonly appears in either men or women) as I have not realized that even though we are all born into a gender which becomes our primal expression, our expression is not limited to what is commonly associated to be the qualities of that gender.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the definitions for “feminine” and “masculine” are inherently true, not realizing that a lot of these qualities are learned through conditioning that is beyond our scientific tools of measurement.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that when a tendency passes on through genes, it is “inherent”, “natural” and thus “unchangeable”, not realizing that genes, too, are molded from generation to generation (and according to some, could even to an extent be molded during and within an individual's life) and that the traits, qualities and tendencies we seem to have “inherently” are the result of countless of choices being made along the way of human history and evolution – not something that “men naturally are” or “women naturally are” - this norm, too, has been created.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent the traits, qualities and tendencies that are commonly associated with the female gender and to thus start resenting women.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to admire the traits, qualities and tendencies that are commonly associated with the male gender and to thus develop a desire to be like men – not to physically be a man, but to express myself through the traits that I perceived to “belong” to men.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe and perceive that the qualities I have labeled as “masculine” are exclusive to those who are physically of the male gender.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define “femininity” according to what I saw of the behavior of women/girls in my environment when growing up, picking up only the negative, and to start resenting all females according to this negatively filtered perception – not realizing that women are not in fact “less” but that my perception makes them appear that way to me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent moodiness in women – going from one extreme emotion to another – exploding emotions, feelings and reactions onto others – blaming others for your emotions, feelings and reactions – creating “chaos” instead of upholding “peace” --- I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to accuse women of “creating chaos” by expressing their inner experience explosively because as a child I did not have the stability or the tools to handle this kind of conflict without assistance.*

* This relates to female family members who were emotionally explosive. During their shitstorms my family members were too preoccupied to give me the support I would have needed, and because I thought of my role as “the stable one” I didn't express my confusion about the “chaos” around me and tried to appear calm.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define femininity as “dishonest”, “vicious”, “poisonous”, “unreliable” and “back-stabbing” according to a girl / a group of girls who bullied me in primary school, not realizing that their actions had nothing to do with them being female but that their actions were an expression of who they were as human beings.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define people according to their gender, thus creating a database of “female” and “male” qualities which I have perceived to reoccur in people of the same gender, not realizing that by upholding these “male” and “female” stereotypes and believing them to be somehow “naturally” true I have limited myself from seeing people as human beings one with and equal to each other and have instead always seen people according to this dichotomy which is in no way accurate or, in this case, relevant. [To me focusing on gender seems to be relevant only when reproducing, lol.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent women because to me they appeared tense, thus admiring men who appeared relaxed, believing “tension” to be a quality inherent to women and “relaxation” a quality inherent to men – never asking myself why it is that women (mostly my peer group = teenage girls) are tense and men relaxed, not realizing all of the cultural, evolutionary, psychological, social and sociological history that was intertwined beyond all of our visible behavior was dictating our actions in ways most of us were not at all aware of.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the “tension” I saw in my peer group in school was mostly pubescent terror caused by pop culture, school culture, physical maturing, the human history of female abuse, family relations ET CETERA (!!!) and that it was NOT a quality inherent to women of all ages, cultures, eras and/or ethnicities, but something we as a gender within a certain context had been conditioned to.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that my perception of men being “relaxed”, “care-free”, “honest” and “reliable” was not based on proper investigation but only how boys of my age group appeared to be in school (which is where many put on a “mask”), and that they, too, had their share of conflict and fear, only expressed in a different form.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resent expressing myself in any of the ways commonly associated to be “feminine”, even if they were positive traits, because I wanted to distance myself from the female gender, not realizing that by doing so I've suppressed empathy, sensitivity, intimacy, and a huge range of my self-expression (emotions, feelings, talking, touch).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stand as a woman because I have feared being “fragile”, “frail”, “vulnerable” and “soft” – not realizing that I have defined womanhood by these words according to physical traits only – and that being an empathetical, sensitive being is by no means the equivalent of being weak; quite the contrary in fact.

I commit myself to map out and place myself in situations where I have the need to be “masculine” and the fear of being “feminine” in order to investigate why I do this (what in the situation triggers this fear) and to little by little move myself out of this behavioral pattern through exposure and consistency.

I commit myself to investigate the dichotomy “male = smart” - “female = stupid”, which is another facet of this point that has influenced me vastly.

I commit myself to explore myself as a human being containing the full range of expressive tools – both the ones I have defined “feminine” as well as the ones I have defined “masculine” AND everything that falls in-between.

I see realize and understand that “feminine” and “masculine” are just labels I have given to things arbitrarily based on my narrow subjective experience; Thus, when and as I see myself defining something with the words “feminine”, “masculine”, “manly”, “womanly” or any other gender-related words I come across – I stop, I breathe and I realize I am using labels that limit my participation in this reality. I flag the term I was using and investigate more thoroughly if necessary.