Respecting the Feminine

I just had an interesting question about this, as to wheather I respect the feminine as it appeares in others, or in my self. Huge issue, even if (for the non-dualist crowd) you postulate the semanitc impossibility that there is such a distinction as self and other apart from a delusion of incomplete perception.

Yes, I respect, Isis and Maat, not to mention Palas Athena, Sumeramis, and such historic women as were queens, stateswomen, inventors, adventurers, and artists. Not to mention my friends, who are mostly female. My Mentor often said that this was the age where the power of the feminine must be raised. Yes. Look at the shenanigans of today's church, state, and corporations in their unbalanced and unmitigated patriarchic frenzies. Not good for Gaia or her children, eh? My Mentor was a classic archtypal polyphrenic according to Jean Huston. He always was for balance, always exemplified it, and hopefully some of that rubbed off on me.

And yet, yours is a good question: What about men who respect their feminine. Well, very often they are regarded with epithetic comments as to sexual orientation, as if one had to do with the other, except as coincidence. It seems to me that gender and sex are two dimensions that are factors in a bigger equation yet. I know it is not quantifiable, but what do you consider to be attributes of the feminine nature, and what constitutes respect? I've experienced "respect" for different people to mean anything from "tolerate" to "militantly celebrate."

I guess one of the seed ideas in my mind about his area was first verbalized for me by my Dad. He said that generally, women have the power to guide the perciptation of ideas and things by men. I took that to mean that for the most part there is a gender/temperament tendency *on the face of things* that has women percieved as having perceptive abilities that can be seeds for men to use as ideas influencing what they do. So, again, generaly speaking, the feminine has to do with reception, the male with penetration. (Please don't take this to the physical though the "outer" tends to reflect the "inner." I mean psychic tendencies. As in perhaps people with "dirt paths" (see "Announcement:..., next entry down) may be able to concentrate intensely on some small thing well enough to make a breakthrough. And yet, the need to do that may have come from a destinctly receptive component, internal or external.) But things for me in this regard are somewhat blurrrrrred as to the male/female thing. Even as a young man it came to me that there are at least four genders. Later I modified that to twelve. As icing for that view, I found a book called "The Clock of Sex" that personified twelve archetypes, with examples, of six male and six female catagories of gender predeliction. That did not include genuine hermaphrodites. I can't say that there are other than statistical probabilities in gender expression that are surely masked by the need for public appearances. We are, I think, very repressive in general, as witnessed by our poverty of words for the infinite shades, gradations, intensities and kinds of love. We've in English stuffed an infinity of possibilities into "love" and "like," which regardless of some other poor phrases, cannot bear the burden of meaning required of them. I agree with Gandhi, who was at the conclusion of a tour of London was asked what he thought of Western civilization. Without missing a beat he replied "I think it would be a good idea!" Part of that might be to elevate the gender qualities one might encounter and support their creative aspects regardless of the sex of the body they manifest in. For my part, they seem to be coexisting in a mostly balanced happy synergy and are an aspect of my sexual orientation, my art, my trade, and any activity I am blessed to partake in.