One of the curious things about the last epoch is that not only did it spawn the ‘power-over’ dynamics, hierarchical thinking generally and the gender wars, separating us from each other, but it also separated the personal masculine and feminine within.

What does that mean?  Everyone has masculine and feminine within; traits that we all have, that can be identified as either masculine or feminine.  And just as the masculine and the feminine have been traditionally driven apart from one another by patriarchy in personal relationships and in society generally, so too have the masculine and the feminine been driven apart within the individual person.  What does that look like?

The person with separated masculine and feminine within, who has predominantly masculine traits will present with ‘toxic masculinity’.  The person with separated masculine and feminine within, who has predominantly feminine traits will present as ‘hysterical’, ‘flighty’ or ‘whimsical’.  What’s interesting about these ‘driven apart’ dynamics in the person, is that the inner psyche is reflecting what the outer world has decreed.  We have unconsciously agreed with societal norms and it’s tearing us apart, from the inside out.  In truth we need both types of traits working cooperatively in order to function as healthy individuals, but also as a healthy society.

Masculine traits traditionally included assertiveness, competitiveness, logic, linear thinking, physicality, independence and a problem-solving mindset. Feminine traits traditionally included empathy, nurturance, cooperation, intuition, compassion, modesty and being relationship-oriented. Obviously neither list of these traits are biologically determined; we all have some of both lists to lesser or greater degrees.

But the last epoch, and patriarchy generally, with its bias, meant that we (men and women) not just oppressed and suppressed the feminine in society, but we did it internally as well.

Feminine Wisdom as a Threat to Emerging Patriarchal, Capitalist Control

We suppressed our femininity because it was considered ‘less than’. In fact, the wisdom that came with intuition and the empathic healing arts was considered such a threat to the emerging capitalist and patriarchal control systems, that that ‘female-wisdom’ was denigrated. And the so-called ‘wise women’, or witches, who held that knowledge were seen as such a threat to the emerging social order that thousands of women were burnt at the stake or hung to undermine their power structures and act as a deterrence to anyone seeking to quell the rising tide of misogyny.

Previously, women had control over herblore, the healing body of knowledge passed down by generations of women, and similarly, over midwifery, cooperative farming and indigenous teachings around our spirituality and interconnectedness with all of life. Women who had economic independence, or widowed women with no man to control them, were seen as threats. Women who spoke out were seen as socially disruptive. These typically were the women who were targeted in the witch hunts.

Racism

Witch hunts were deeply rooted in early forms of misogyny and social control, and they played a powerful role in enforcing emerging capitalist, Christian and patriarchal societal structures, especially as they pertained to state and church control. That control subjugated women, but in particular, it subjugated Black women, Indigenous women and women of colour.

Capitalism extracts labour and thrives on inequality, targeting the poor and working class, but especially women of colour. Patriarchy enforces unpaid reproductive labor, and unpaid and invisible domestic gender roles that particularly impacts women, but especially Black and Brown women. And racism justifies exploitation via dehumanisation that disproportionately targets Black and Indigenous people.

Angela Davis

Angela Davis wrote about the intersection between racism, capitalism and patriarchy, saying that these systems are mutually reinforcing and cannot be dismantled in isolation. She eloquently wrote: “The struggle for an egalitarian society is not only one against racism, but also one against capitalism, sexism, and imperialism.” And that “(f)eminism involves so much more than gender equality. It’s about challenging racism, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy”.

Together, they form an interlocking system of oppression that Davis would later call part of the “matrix of domination”.

Suppression of the Feminine Within

Prejudice during and since the Witch Trials has created this imbalance that has subjugated the feminine causing severe damage. The damage of these prejudicial dynamics has been significant at the collective level in our cultures and in our compassion for our fellow humans (and all living beings). But these dynamics have also embedded that bigotry into our physiology and our subconscious, eroding our relationships with ourselves, each other and the planet.

The systems of control that support heteropatriarchy, capitalism and racism in society, is the mechanism that teaches us to suppress the feminine within ourselves. Suppressing the feminine within, means that society has taught us to surrender into the roles that the power structures apportion for us, to quieten our voice when we see injustice and to support the systems of controleven when they hurt us, or anyone else.

Suppressing the feminine within means that we have been socially taught to believe that intuition and reasoning are enemies, that one is reliable and the other is not. It has also taught us that deduction and reasoning are more reliable forms of information gathering than intuition, and that mathematics, engineering and the legal professions (largely male-dominated) far outweigh in value the nurturing, healing and teaching professions (largely female-dominated).

In the process, an over-reliance on the masculine way of thinking has led to a disconnection from nature and other people, the loss of a sense of meaning and spiritual depth, and the placing of value on an ‘over-abstractive way of being’, for example in blindly revering ideologies or encouraging excessive bureaucracy or a digital life.

Intuition v Reasoning

If we blindly agree that intuition is a ‘less-than’ value compared to reasoning, we will tend to emphasise one over the other. We can study the effects of this tendency by looking at the two hemispheres of the brain with its traditionally masculine and feminine traits.

In his book, ‘The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World’ (2009), Iain McGilchrist looks at how the left and right hemispheres of the brain process the world differently, and how the dominance of the left hemisphere has shaped Western culture, often to its detriment. He maintains that the left hemisphere is detail-focused, linear, and favours abstraction, categorisation and manipulation. The right hemisphere is contextual, embodied, and open to ambiguity, engaging with the whole, the relational, and the immediate. He says: “The right hemisphere sees the whole, the left hemisphere sees the parts.”

Modern Western culture, McGilchrist says, has over-privileged the left hemisphere, suppressing intuition, embodied wisdom, and relational thinking. McGilchrist argues that intuition and reasoning are not enemies, but should work in balance, with the right hemisphere being the Master as it perceives reality more richly, but defers to the left hemisphere being the Emissary for analysis.

McGilchrist links intuition closely with right hemisphere processing, which is deeply tied to the body, making it crucial for “gut” feelings. In contrast, the left hemisphere often denies or devalues intuition, favouring analysis, control, and certainty, even if it leads to distortion. He argues that our thinking has become too mechanistic, literal, and disconnected and that by ignoring the insights of the right hemisphere, we’ve lost touch with reality as it actually is, which is fluid, interconnected and sacred.

In a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein, but echoed by McGilchrist, he said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Going Forward

The inclusive, humane changes in the West in the last hundred years have unsettled a thousand years of power-over systemic control in the hands of the few. Obviously there is more to do. But if we are to move back into right-relationship with ourselves, each other and the earth, we need to clear false layers of who we are not (mind, ego and wounds), harmoniously rebalance and reintegrate our masculine-feminine selves through awareness, challenging our beliefs and healing modalities, and own our truth as non-binary beings.

The future will be more and more non-binary, not just in terms of sexual orientation or identity orientation. We are moving out of the binary epoch of this or that, one or the other, male or female, and into an integrative one, where gender, gender “roles”, prejudice and power-over are redundant. Trans people are among the most under-supported people in our society and yet they are leading the way, holding space for conversations about identity, and challenging norms around what we “should” or “should not” be.

We have come a long way but we have more to do. Allyship is about listening and supporting, whatever those voices need. Our role is to support integration of all beings with compassion. The trends all point to deliverance of a more fair, inclusive and compassionate world. The moment we are in right now is difficult. Conflict and hate are conflagrations that seem to expel hope. But the opposite is true. This is the moment of revelation, where whatever was always there is now exposed. We are now seeing the hate that was hidden but always there, but now with a spotlight being shone upon it.

It is the hate that we are seeing in the world that will motivate us to demand reform of the old systems. The billionaire class that supports controlling others also is the system that has utter disregard for anyone other than themselves. Donald Trump is an example of this mindset but almost the entire Republican Party in the United States has enabled him. And the Donald Trump playbook will be replicated by someone else after he leaves office, if he ever does.

The only way forward is through and that requires the power models inverting and hierarchies being challenged. We all have a significant role to play in this, as we challenge injustice wherever we see it, own our power and our voice and raise our consciousness to see life for what it is: inclusive, interrelated, and sacred; an ecosystem where we all belong.

This will result in a more inclusive, fair and compassionate society of belonging that will emerge. We are the people to help that new world to be born. Do you feel called to help?