Sitting in the airport amidst a 14-hour journey gives one the opportunity to think. Specifically, I was pondering the upcoming New Moon and Venus retrograde highlighting the balance and imbalance of masculine and feminine forces in our lives. Indeed, one doesn’t need to believe in astrology for this fact to be evident- just take a look at any current news feed, and the discussion is ripe with this theme. Yet, while pondering the topic, an article caught my eye. The article cited a twitter feed that posed a simple question.
“What would you do if all men had a 9pm curfew?”
The answers were as astounding as the question itself. Most surprisingly so because it was as if a spell was broken shedding light on accepted norms. It wasn’t that the information was new of course. Statistics abound that cite gender bias in our modern world.
Stuff like 1 in 3 women will experience sexual or physical assault in her lifetime. Rape happens to 1 in 5, and 1 out of 4 girls will be sexually assaulted before eighteen. (LiYana Silver, Feminine Genius)
“There are 220 words for a sexually promiscuous woman but only twenty for a sexually promiscuous man. 26% of women between 18-24 have been stalked online, and another 25% have been a target of online sexual harassment.” (LiYana Silver, Feminine Genius)
It is sometimes easy to gloss over numbers, our minds lost in minutiae. Something revealing happens though when we make those statistics real. When we can feel how fear shapes the everyday lives of women.
“What would you do if all men had a 9pm curfew?”
“Oh my god. The mind reels. Go dancing? Take a walk? Open the front door without fear?”
“Sit on the beach at night.”
“I’d sleep with ground floor windows open on a summer night.”
“I just booked an Airbnb for a work trip which will have me out late into the evenings. Took me an hour of google mapping to see how I’d approach different properties, whether streets were lighted or populated. So, for starters, I’d book any damn place I wanted to, without worry.”
“Actually walk to places I wanted to go without horns and hearing things about my anatomy shouted from a car window. Shop in peace. Go out for a drink because I really want to have a drink and watch the band.”
“I’d go to the bathroom without worrying that someone was drugging my drink. I’d go out dancing without worrying about someone sticking their hand up my dress.
“I’d play pinball without worrying that someone was going to grab my ass.”
“For me, the saddest part about all this is teaching my daughter to constantly second guess her actions. Don’t put your drink down and walk away. Don’t go to the bathroom alone if it’s near an exit. I love you in that skirt too, but it’s not a good idea to wear it.”
This isn’t to demonize men of course. It’s not an issue of gender at all, but of accepted cultural biases on both sides. I have three boys ages 16, 14 and 9. I have heard it myself from society, friends and family members.
“Boys will be boys” .
What does that even mean?
How did this imbalance become normal?
The answer is layered, of course, speckled with historical, psychological, cultural, and religious fear-based overtones. An understanding of cause is undoubtedly important, but perhaps not as important as what we are going to DO about it now.
What was equally intriguing and inspiring was the masculine response to the question and subsequent comments.
“I’m a white guy who regularly visits other countries by himself, walking city streets after midnight while listening to music on my headphones while not speaking the language. Never even occurred to me that this was a gender privilege.”
“Wow, I feel horrible right now. None of this has ever occurred to me as an issue. I run, I go do whatever I want whenever I want.
Why aren’t women filled with uncontrollable rage all the time?”
Well newsflash, we ARE. Thank you for listening. The problem is we have been told that too is a masculine privilege. Women are as disconnected from their anger as men are often conditioned from emotions like empathy, sensitivity, and other emotions labeled “weak”.
Which is a huge part of both the problem and the correction of the collective script we have seemingly unconsciously or consciously acquiesced.
With weakness on either side, there will be dysfunction. A weak feminine side leaves us without a feeling compass causing selfish, controlling, and domineering behavior. A weak masculine side leaves us with quenched fire, boundary-less and lacking assertion.
For centuries we have been in a masculine dominated world.
We are now in a correction phase. And by definition, they are notoriously messy.
We astrologers have been predicting this year as the rise of the feminine.
Man or woman, it is about reclaiming this force in our lives.
Real change is always preceded by revelation and then the reckoning.
Let us welcome the fire that needs to burn. Let us not judge, project, condemn, blame, or shame it away. Let us tell our stories. Let us have permission to say no and yes and even be unsure. Let us look squarely at what spells and paradigms require burning. And burn them once and for all.
Let us also welcome empathy, understanding, and vulnerability. Let us own. Let us acknowledge. Let us soften any sharp masculine edges. Let us feel so we can access the correct action from a universal place.
Let us listen and let us learn to do better.
The article in its entirety can be found here. https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/this-is-what-women-would-do-if-there-are-no-men-on-streets-post-9-pm-1895757.html
Cited form the Book:
Feminine Genius: The Provocative Path to Waking Up and Turning On the Wisdom of Being a Woman by LiYana Silver