The problem with gender assigned qualities and Tantra

Dear readers, it's a balmy summer afternoon, August springs upon us and time flashes by so quickly I sometimes fear I cannot keep up! Since returning from the U.S where I attended the very awesome Desiree Alliance conference 2 weeks ago, I find I'm given to serious consideration of gender, both in general but perhaps even more specifically within my tantra practice and my personal awareness.

Now before I went to the conference, I'd already expressed concerns in various tantra chat threads on Facebook and elsewhere about assigning qualities to gender within healing practice. Of course this doesn't only apply to our work practices, but to life in general. One thing that really impressed me, amongst many, at the conference was the very keen awareness of allowing people to self identify their preferred gender pronouns, and to keep out of assumption about what that then meant to those individuals. Some make choices for political reasons, some for personal reasons, some for social reasons and many to challenge to status quo. So, on getting back to the U.K (where in my view we are still pretty behind on this), once again I find the issue of not only gender pronouns but gender meaning is up in my face.

Even as I try to find images to suit my blog today, I am still besieged by pink for girls blue for boys and pinky-blue for transgender, half dress half trousers. How woefully inadequate is that?!

One thing I've found in my tantra practice that has consistently troubled me is that within tantra there is an idea mooted that women, as 'shakti' or the 'divine feminine' need to bring men, or shiva 'the strong masculine' into healing and into their hearts. Well now, for me as someone working with sexuality and healing for over 25 years now, I don't personally want that job! I don't think it's up to women to bring men into healing, I think it's up to MEN to bring themselves into healing. You see the problem in assigning this quality of the nurturing feminine into gender roles is that for me, we can get so easily stuck there. My personal inner Goddess is way more Kali than Tara. That's not to say I am all fire and no frill, or all rage and no receptive, but I most certainly am more than this soft 'feminine' I hear about a whole lot in tantra practice.

My Kali is powerful and strong in her sense of self autonomy. She has clear boundaries and knows her own mind. She can breathe fire when necessary and can heal and transmute with equal potency. For me, her depiction atop a male figure is not about destroying the masculine, more the quashing of the rigid and unyielding elements of either the self or the other. In other words as easily applicable to slaying the internal demons as externalising a negative image of the masculine. I do not wish to be perceived as woman responsible for healing all ills in the world if it means I can only get there from my soft heart space, my womblike womanhood. Sometimes my passion comes from my sex, from my core of the wild woman, like those Women Who Run With The Wolves in Clarissa Pinkola Estes's seminal book. The archetype of the Wild Woman and the Witch suit and serve me better than those of the Virgin (not literal) and the Mother (again not a literal interpretation). I quite like Crone as it seems she too holds the capacity to be more akin to the Medicine Woman or Shaman of the tribe.

For me, some of these wilder gender assignments hold a distinct element of the 'other' within them. Genderless, wild and free. For men, I imagine you too get tired of having to uphold the strong masculine, the Warrior? What if those archetypes don't speak to you. In retrieving our sexuality, we MUST reject gender based stereotypes in my view and move beyond the 'soft feminine' and the 'strong masculine', or at the very least remain super conscious of how, why and where we assign those qualities.

Men are more than capable of stepping into their own healing, their own vulnerability, of finding their own courage. Women too. Let's challenge this assumption that all women are nurturers, and all men active proponents. And for all genders, however we may choose to self-determine, let's free up the range of possibility.

My tantra has teeth, and it has balls. Where do you stand?

Gender bending & the construction of sexual identity

I recently completed a homework assignment in my sexuality study course which posed the question "what does it mean to be a woman (or man) in today’s world"? I answered from the female perspective as it’s my gender and therefore the part I’m most equipped to answer. That said, one thing I know is that for every response I have about what it means to be a woman in todays world, there is a knock-on cause-effect response on what it means to be a man. The question, seemingly so simple, yet so complex - what is it to be a woman? What makes a woman? How should women ‘behave’ and what expectations of womanhood (or manhood) do we carry? Are notions of masculinity and femininity entirely the results of social construct, where gender is biologically defined?

What chance do we have in the face of such early 'programming' as seen in the above girls babygro image, not just in the pink/blue separation separating boys from girls, but in the idea of girls as 'princesses' and boys as mummy's little monsters? Boys are trouble and girls are princesses? Really? 

From the moment we emerge into the world one gender or the other by definition of our physical biological gender assignment, we are hit by expectations that shape our concept and awareness of what it means to be a boy or a girl. For girls, pink clothes, instructions on how we should play (nicely), what we should be playing with (dolls, prams, toy kitchens and home making etc), followed by lower academic expectations and subjects in school showing gender bias, i.e arts and home crafts (less girls in woodwork, sciences etc) and for boys maths and sciences (less boys in home economics, needlecraft etc). As girls we are told not to be so ‘aggressive’ or to be more ‘modest’, whilst boys are told they need to ‘man up’, not be so soft, not to cry or show feelings. As we already mentioned, girls are given dolls, boys given toy tool boxes and trucks. Our dresses are frilly, our activities tailored to suit. Boys get hard sportsmanlike activities, clothes are simple and representative of maleness and yet the gender spectrum reaches far beyond these narrow and restrictive confines.

(photograph by Nan Goldin)

When my children were younger, one of my close friends had a son the same age as my own son. This boy, from the age of around 4 years old was VERY clear he wanted to wear only girls dresses; this lasted for about a year and a half. My friend, being a politically aware and savvy woman decided to let him explore this desire without censorship on her part as his parent. Her son wore the most amazingly frilly pink and blue satin dresses everywhere he could throughout this time of his self expression. My friend's partner, the boys father, was very much less comfortable with this and whilst he would allow/indulge it at home occasionally, he felt very strongly that it should not be allowed outside fearing his son would get bullied and picked on, and actually stating that "it’s dangerous in my view”. My friend took her son to the local swimming pool one day. He had been in his dress, the pink satin throughout the day and she saw no reason to change him. They dressed to swim in the female changing rooms as would be expected of a mother with a young dependent child. Half way through the father came to take over the swim session so my friend could go to work, swapping bags so that he could dress him for outdoors again afterwards. When it came to the end of the swim, dad took his son into the mens changing rooms to do so and was horrified to find that he had to dress his son in the pink dress he’d arrived in. The shame he felt as father, the embarrassment, the discomfort was enormous and caused a huge argument between my friend and her partner about the fact “this has to stop”.

(image: Buck Angel, one of the more well known contemporary female to male gender reassignments)

 Well, my friend felt strongly that her son should be free to wear girls clothes, just as girls often define as ‘tomboys’ and have that freedom afforded to them, yet the reverse was evidently so much more problematic. Their son outgrew this phase soon after that dispute, and spent the next four year dressing only in dinner suits with natty shoes and bow ties. He was clearly a boy who liked to indulge his imagination and desires. So what is to be learnt from this exploration and our adult discomforts?

How hard it is for a child to express the many different aspects of their identity as it develops? This boy has grown into a young teenager with no apparent leanings toward any particular gender or status in his sexuality, perhaps largely due to his mother’s permission, perhaps not. What this story raises are some really serious questions about gender, social constructs, fear and prejudice.

As a woman who has really known the exploration of sexual identity in my life, I have some important insights into what it means to be a woman, these ranging from a personal level to a social level. I have most certainly experienced censorship of my behavior and have experienced as much pressure to be ‘feminine’ and ‘beautiful’ as I have limitation of expressing ‘masculinity’ and other less womanly behaviours. We are fed on an almost constant drip-feed of social conditioning, ideas about gender, relationship and sexuality. It’s almost impossible to escape it in fact, so those who know they do not ‘fit’, do not conform to expectations, are almost all of the time squashing themselves into being less than they may want to be, sometimes fearful for their safety if they do not. Remember the case of the transsexual MTF in Macdonalds in the US who was beaten severely in FULL PUBLIC VIEW for using the women’s restroom? This kind of violence is endemic in a culture that does not tolerate difference. That cannot think outside the box. So for me, being a woman in today’s culture is a statement of political, personal and social intent a lot of the time. I love womanhood, I enjoy being female and I'm very aware of my gender and the implied expectations and boundaries within this. I define my sexuality as bi-sexual and whilst I currently identify within heterosexual and monogamous parameters, it has not always been this way and may not always be in future - who knows. I think women have this easier in the main than men, exploring our different aspects I mean. Men who want to wear women's clothes are far more likely to experience violence as a result than women who choose to wear mens clothes. I remain very conscious of my sexuality and the wonderful expression of it, as it's a place of real delight and adventure for me. I wish it were the same for everyone.

(photo Diane Arbus)

What happened to our Balls?

I've been watching one of my fave programmes on TV at the moment on catch up today, The Crimson Petal and The White, a drama series set in Victorian London based on the 2002 book by Michael Faber. The programme caught my eye as its main character 'Sugar' is a prostitute working out of a well known East End brothel and is quite frankly, totally hypnotic to watch.

For those who don't know or have access to this programme, the series outline is as follows (quote verbatim from BBC website):

"Sugar is a sexually adept prostitute whose reputation for sensuality precedes her; alluring and highly sought after she ‘never disappoints’. Her intelligence and wit sets her apart - self-educated and ambitious, she’s able to engage in heated discussion whilst satisfying her clients.

Having spent years at the mercy of men, Sugar yearns for a better life and craves the freedom to make a living using her brain rather than her body. When not at work Sugar pens a dark, gothic novel in which a prostitute enacts revenge on all the men who have wronged her - a theme that has threatened to seep into reality.
Mourning the recent death of her friend Elizabeth, beaten by two punters, Sugar is determined to flee the hell that is St. Giles. With the arrival of William Rackham, this escape becomes a tangible prospect - and one that Sugar is keen to exploit."

The programme also features actors of the calibre of Richard E Grant, Gillian Anderson and many more and is incredibly well cast in my view. Mrs Emmeline Fox, played by Shirley Henderson has a mission in life to 'rescue fallen women' - and my word don't sexworkers know that there are many still keen to do this even today. In doing so, and in ignoring the reasons perhaps more evident in Victorian times (poverty and lack of opportunity for the working classes etc), they then choose to ignore the personal advocacy of sexworkers, when most of us it's fair to say are more than able to speak for ourselves.

Now what intrigues me about this programme is its timeless topical focus on what makes a woman lose her mind, her virtues, or most sadly for me, her very essence, intelligence and strength. The woman playing Rackham's (the man who takes Sugar from the brothel by paying for exclusive 'rights' to her) wife is portrayed as slowly losing her mind in a way that is utterly comprehensible I'm certain to most women watching. Exploited and patronised by both her husband and her (extremely repellent) doctor who is systematically abusing her in private, separated from her child as being an 'unsuitable' influence, denied her feelings and her 'uncooperative' points of view (i.e one step up from a placid doormat) she begins an extremely well acted  descent into a living hell.  Sugar, originally cast as a spirited, alluring and intelligent prostitute is seen slowly losing her 'fire' as she becomes further and further enmeshed into the 'normal' lifestyle of her patron. It's almost agonising to watch; a bird of prey tethered and controlled until the role of the wife and the prostitute begin to become indistinguishable.

As stated above though, it's not only men who separate us into the Freudian categories of virgin/whore, oh no...as women we have become most adept ourselves. We make women responsible over and over again for the destructive consequences of the male gaze, in fact, so good have we become at labelling ourselves I fear, that the cost is undoubtedly very high in the loss of our fire, our chutzpah, our very balls! 

Virginie Despentes writes a whole book on the subject in her title King Kong Theory, lamenting the loss of female 'masculinity' and the corresponding loss of the male expression of femininity, both so apparently threatening even in today's society that people are beaten so severely they are left traumatised for daring to express those parts of themselves in public: see Maryland attack of this week in Macdonalds store where staff and public not only ignored this vicious beating but saw fit to film it instead!! (WARNING: This video is very ugly and could trigger - please be aware and accept no less than a public outcry - already the 'victim' is being reported a 'prostitute with previous criminal damage convictions' and what a disgusting and thinly disguised attempt at justification that is....).

I can almost not bear to watch the inevitable decline of Sugar in the Crimson Petal, it leaves me feeling so sad to bear witness to this all too familiar 'taming of the shrew', ironically the woman playing Ms Fox in this series, the 'saviour' of the 'fallen women' is also playing the role of Kate in the current theatrical version of the Taming of The Shrew!

My call - Ladies of Ill Repute, guard against the loss of your 'ill reputations' for fear that you become some hideous version of the Stepford Wife, our ambitions are surely far loftier than that!