The question "What is the difference between men and women, between masculinity and femininity?" is a big one here at Sherlock Tam. And this is to be the first post in which I attempt to begin answering it. Rather than beginning by looking at the positives, or at what, technically speaking, femininity and masculinity are, I'm going to begin by looking at the shadow sides.
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Femininity and masculinity are not confined to women and men respectively. Every person has a certain breakdown of each. But the problem is not masculinity; the problem is not femininity. The problem is the excesses and inherent weaknesses of each type of being. They both have great and terrible power, the reverberations of which are felt in all spheres of life. Every person is flawed. Every good thing can be turned bad. The excesses of femininity leads to a failure to respect and honor the self, to giving of things that should not be given, and allowing things that should not be allowed. The excesses of masculinity lead to a failure to respect and honor others, to taking things that are not one's to take and pushing all of the boundaries of what is humane.
The excesses of femininity can lead to being locked in ones own head, to codependency, to being overly accommodating, to being silent, to minimizing ourselves, to being passive aggressive, to sadness, worry and weariness. It is a turning inward and a destruction from the inside. It is the dozens of little pills poisoning the body that has never been quite good enough, from within.
The excesses of masculinity are greed, selfishness, pride and taking, they are rape, they are outbursts of anger, they are assault, they are maximizing oneself and minimizing others, they are abuse and murder. It is a turning outward and a destruction from the outside. It is bullets itching to explode from their chamber and into the body of the person that unsettles you. From the outside in.
The feminine asks for too much permission as it floats in the unseen, taking everything in.
The masculine doesn’t pause for consent, as it only takes.
The excesses of femininity lead to internal destruction. The excesses of masculinity lead to external destruction. Perhaps we really are yin and yang. The predominantly feminine among us are not so much “dark” as living in the unseen - and then are greedily mined by those who value only our seen places.
The predominantly masculine among us are not so much “light” as living in the physical realm. They do not really see those of us in the unseen and bulldoze over all they do not value. They fail to value even the unseen parts of themselves.
The more power is inherent in something, the more dangerous it is. The excesses of masculinity have become the most seemingly dangerous on this earth with countless shootings and rapes and molestations and beatings. Femininity has as much power as masculinity, but it not of the same kind. It is not as physical. It is not as seen by the light of day. It is the power of philosophy and spirituality and compassion and interconnection and metaphor and dreams and the nourished soul. And when that power is turned to darkness… it is from thence that all depression, anxiety, self-hatred, shame and despair spring.
When the feminine is poisoned, dreams perish. Voices and creativity are stifled, dying the wasted death of divine potential. It is the sin of voices unused and stories swallowed.
When the masculine is poisoned it silences things that should not be silenced, takes and destroys what should never have been taken or destroyed. And in so doing, in its continual pushing, it grows ever more hollow. It expands and explodes like a bomb rushing to prove its potential and leaving nothing in its wake.
Femininity, rather, condenses and collapses like a spent star, leaving a black hole that can never truly be seen.
In both cases the true self is not utilized. In both cases lie the destruction of life. As with the plants maintaining animal life on earth and the animals maintaining plant life through our continual exhalations, femininity and masculinity need each other to thrive. I don’t pretend to know how, or to know what each truly brings to the table. But we know that much to be true.
I pause there for today.
Happy dreams and happy daylight,
S.B.T.
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