Making distinctions

I was struck by the relevancy this subject has today in our world - a world that offers many of us the vote, good jobs, professions, etc. And it clearly has poignant relevance in countries where women still have zero rights. But I was struck by another sensibility as well - the distinctions between gender rights (ALL human rights, actually) when restricted, as being restricted by men (gender-based) or, more accurately, a culture and body politic defined by the archetypal distorted masculine.

The distorted masculine values power-over, rather than shared power; it values doing rather than being; logic and reason, rather than imagination; competition rather than cooperation; it values perfection, hierarchy, either/or. The task is not to eliminate logic and reason, for instance, but to find the balance with feeling, creativity, imagination. To allow conception and perception to be valued along with action and understanding. Before there is substance, there must be space. The feminine principle is in balance with the masculine principle. And this is not gender-based per se.

And so, I was struck by the need for much conversation to heal that distorted masculine in our world, and to bring back, to nurture our sense of the sacred feminine AND sacred masculine - as embodied and expressed in both genders - men and women. Then, the conversation becomes about ALL rights for ALL life and the context becomes one that lives larger than gender definitions. It's there we can create and discover our new realities.