And Still I Rise
Yin is in and we've got to support her rise, even if we hate her outfit.
If you haven’t read my last two posts about The Feminine Rising, you may want to go back and visit them (Part 1, Part 2) before reading this one, or you can feel free to jump in here.
My last two posts have been about feminine consciousness, the Yin consciousness, rising. I’ve written about the Yin and the Yang. The Yang has been in power for so long, yet now it appears the scales are tipping. Yang is male, bright, fiery, above, active, scattering, advancing, attacking. Yin is female, dark, cool, deep, substantial, below, still, flexible. There is a shift in the natural order of things after one element has dominated. The transition is powerful, and it cannot be stopped. This feminine rising is the blooming of the forest after the fire. It takes years of underground work before the first shoots of growth can be seen, but work is being done. As the Yang fires consume our rights, the yin of regrowth and rebellion are gaining strength down below. Women continue to expand their roles in public office, publishing, and education. We are making sure that our voices will be heard and that we are in positions that can influence how the United States moves forward. Our seeds are germinating even as the fire rages.
I had written an early draft of this post, which was good. At least my 81 year old mom said it was good, and she’s an excellent proofreader. But when I talked to her about it I could tell the tone of the piece just wasn’t sitting well with her, and then my husband said something about a harsh phrase I used, and…you all know how it feels, right? So here I am on a fresh page, at it again and thinking about how to write about women and emotional contagion.
Emotional contagion occurs when a group begins to feel and behave synchronistically. It is a trait that has evolved in humans to help us survive. It is the feeling you get when you walk into a room light and free, and then immediately the heaviness of the mood in the room makes you adjust your own emotions to fit the surroundings. It is a survival skill, we need it.
This week I read Anna Warton’s substack post, What Would A Woman Do To An Unconscious Man If She Thought No-One Would Find Out?, which focuses on the disdain that “Mr. Everyman” feels for women. After reading the article my memory was full of my interactions with men’s disdain. I felt sick for the rest of the day. I felt like I had a thin film of male disdain covering me as I moved through my routines. I fell asleep with it like sand on my tongue.
Before the November election, my son and I discussed who his friends and co-workers were voting for. “Everyone at work is voting for Trump, he said shaking his head.
“Why?” I asked exasperated.
“They hate women. Even the women hate women.”
I’m not saying that a woman who voted for Trump hates women. The experience that my son has is what I’m trying to write about though; how men’s disdain for women is like a virus that has polluted the feminine consciousness. This emotional contagion is like poisoned gas, so subtle that many times women don’t even realize we’re acting out of it. That’s why my first draft of this essay had to be sacked because it was so laden with subtle hints of misogyny. From me! The woman who is writing about a feminine rising!
I’ve started to mentally label it when I hear disdain for women pop up in conversations with women. Sometimes it’s me saying something, sometimes it’s someone else. When I hear deeply veiled disdainful comments about a woman I think to myself, that’s misogyny. It shocks me. It saddens me. It happens a lot. We’ve all got it. The COVID of feminine bias. Sometimes it’s as clear as a hacking cough with snot running down your face, but other times we are infected and spreading it without knowing it.
The comments cause little cuts to my subconscious. When a friend sends a horrible picture of a woman we know who has gained weight with a comment veiled as caring, “I’m so worried about her, look how much weight she’s gained.” Slice. When I watch a successful woman speak, instead of thinking about how remarkable she is, thinking, “How can such a rich woman have such a bad hairstyle?” Slice. When I see someone parodying a Trad Wife as if what she is doing is a threat to women’s autonomy. Slice. When my 18 year old daughter and her friend are talking about some girl who is a treesh. Slice. When an older woman and I are discussing the new Bob Dylan movie and she refers to Joan Baez as a slut. Slice.
Feelings of disdain allow us to view the object of that emotion as less than, as other. Disdain separates us. Disdain allows us to feel superior, and righteous. As the feminine Yin rises, we have to start to shake off the emotional contagion of disdain we have caught from the patriarchy. We have to teach ourselves to stop disregarding women and treating them as “other”. It is a switch from being “not that girl” to “all together we rise”. Women must begin to examine our own reactions to women and wonder where they come from. Is this feeling something I’ve been taught to feel? Is it a disease I’ve caught from Mr. Everyman? Am I an unwitting super spreader of contempt towards women?
Left to his own devices Mr. Everyman is not going to evolve to view women as equals. Women must demand respect from every man, we must teach them how to treat us, but first, we have to raise regard for each other. We must overcome our own misogynist thinking which is veiled as caring, concern, or righteousness. We must recognize and bring our own misogyny to light and encourage Every Woman so we can allow women to rise without the fog of disdainful judgments tying us down.
This is HARD work. It is retraining our brains to reject years of ingrained thought patterns. It is second guessing our first negative thought and reframing it to something based on truth, not prejudice created by years of male contempt for women. Can we allow a woman outside of our sphere to shine even if we disagree with her choice? Can we respect a woman’s ability to choose a life for herself?
Looking deep within ourselves to root out the emotional contagion of disdain will require the fierce practice of compassion toward women we would have dismissed in the past. When we allow our sisters to rise, we will no longer ignore our communal feminine glory, Mr. Everyman will have no choice but to fall in line and do the same. Stepping into our power free of prejudices, we, as mothers, wives, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters can finally rest comfortably in our power.
