The Problem With Masculinity And Femininity

Is the ‘or’ we put between them and the strangle hold we’ve given them on our sense of personal identity.

Photo by Nathan Walker on Unsplash

We all have both masculine and feminine traits within us at all times, to varying degrees and at certain times some will be more prevalent than others. As in Taoist philosophy Yin and Yang may be opposites but they are always present and necessary for health, harmony, and balance and each contains an element of the other uniting them rather than dividing them. What is causing all the harm in our culture is the exclusionary wall we have placed between the two making them not just opposite but antithetical. People feel they do not belong in one or the other because we have falsely restricted our existence to only one of the two and then given one far more privilege than the other.

Our culture has made belonging to one mean you cannot have access to the other and what’s worse, any sign of the other is grounds for disqualification and expulsion from your current status.

Culturally we are entangled in conversations, debates, explorations, and reinventions around issues of sex and gender. At first glance, and under old paradigms, the concepts of male and female may seem simple but they are not…