RE: To be a woman - natural, but still so many taboos
I love this post @kerlund74 and you've given voice to many thoughts I have. I actually have begun a post on this subject but it's been sitting unfinished for a few months, in any case we all need to speak up about what equality means to us, about our experience of being women because it helps other women and also men to create a new vision for our future as a society.
I am 100% in agreement that equality has to do with equal respect not sameness. Women and men as a whole as well as individually have different strengths and the world is a better place if we bring the best of what we have to offer rather than trying to be the same.
The problem is that as women we've internalized the messages over thousands of years that all that is feminine is negative and by definition "less than". So it's hard not to feel that we have to suppress our femininity in order to excel in the work place. Hopefully with the changes happening in our world today, society will learn to value women and we as women will learn to value ourselves more fully as well.
ibidem. On the unfinished post #natureofbeing speaks of and the praise for Kerlund's eloquent thoughts.
All of supposedly progressive Europe still has way too many taboos (add grey, silver, and white hair, please: I almost got stoned to death when I stoped dyeing my hair at 35 already, for letting the team down, since nobody is supposed to know we turn grey...). It seems very tricky to be a woman who is not like a man in her aspirations or superior to a man in her manipulations (bitches at the top, and too many bossy pensioner-wives for my liking). Try being a stay-at-home-mum and still find yourself respected (not so easy as it looks, folks! Full of daily sacrifice).
We have to start making new role-models for our daughters, showing them how to be truly themselves and in touch with the Sophia-force. Only then can these new women raise better sons.... It is pivotal to reassess womanhood and become much purer, freer and more authentic in our expression of it. We are too often designed by a man's world (still in 2018, yes!).
@sukhasanasister, I really appreciate what you're saying here and isn't it amazing how many of us women are giving each other a hard time! Again, all this internalized sexism for several thousands of years does really affect how we see ourselves and each other. I think that as women anytime we feel critical of another woman we need to look inside and ask ourselves how we are critical of ourselves in the same way because that's all it is.
About the grey hair, I don't know if this is a trend worldwide or just where I live in Portland, Oregon USA but since last year all the 20 something hipster women are dying their hair grey or white! It makes me smile each time I see it, looks gorgeous and really makes a statement about what defines beauty.
And thanks also to @kerlund74 and @katrina-ariel for the encouragement for finishing and posting on this subject! It helps nudge me to get to it ;-).
Cheers to loving ourselves, supporting each other and having the courage to make our own choices!
Wow, an amazing answer! And I fully agree on what you say here. We have a long history to work with in many ways, it's getting better and better, which brings hope. Still it fascinates me that countries with such equality still have the same old taboos and that people spend their lives believing they have to act in certain ways, else they aren't "equal".
Thanks a lot for sharing your thought in this subject:-)
I think you should write that post @natureofbeing!
I hope you write the post, too @natureofbeing. The more discussion happens around this, the more we as women can shift the way we think, and maybe inform a few men as well. Keep the conversation rolling. :)