"You and I are not the polite people that live in poems. We are blessed and cursed by our times."
-Guenever T.H. Whites The Once and Future King
I believe that females are born with certain gifts that differ from men. We are all born with the seven sense; sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intuition and equilibrium. Female sense is different from males. Take the gift of sight for instance. About the time we notice we are different from boys we also gain the insight to see into our futures. We suddenly know what we want out of life, or what we don't want. Intuition tells us we should be wives and/or mothers; because lets face it, those don't always come hand in hand these days, but common sense teaches us that we can have more along with being a wife and/or mother. We all know that our gift is to nuture; whether it is nutureing a family, others, or a career. Female senses are hightened. Doctors and scientists will imply that the reason female senses are more in tune is that it has something to do with nuturing, more specificlly, being a mother. This sense doesnt diminish when and or if we choose to not be a mother. We are the caretakers. We care for hearth and home, we care for those around us, we care for the environment. I think it goes farther than that now. Women have learned to take their innate ability for nurturing and use it in other areas of life.
I have been on this earth for half a century. I remember when I was younger, and my female role models were what my age is now. I remember thinking they were old. Funny...I don't feel old. Well I take that back, some times my body does, but my mind doesn't. I feel, experienced. Now I watch all the young women in my life in awe. Much the same way, I think, the women who have gone before me watched my generation. Some of these young women are close to my heart, some are not, but all have been worth watching.
It is interesting to me how every generation of females thinks differently about their surroundings and how they grow with in them. I still remember the first feminine hygene commercial on tv. My mother, and especially my grandmother, were appalled. I remember thinking that it was progress and I watched in fasination. I remember the first man walking on the moon, and Seseme Street in black and white with Jim Hensen himself. Bell bottoms were the in jeans, not skinny jeans. We wore the first mini skirt, hot pants, and no bra's (even if they sagged to your belly button). Women were just beginning to have their voice's heard. Then I think further before my generation, when my grandmother's voice was not, and when my mother's was just a little better. My grandmother took a job as a hobby. My mother took a job out of necessity, I choose a career. I had an Aunt who was one of five women to first graduate from Wayne State University with a law degree. SHe was also the first female president of the Macomb Bar Association in Michigan. All these women showed me, in there own way how to define what I wanted in life. Its easy to look with in your own family and see evolution. If you read how ever, or even watch movies, you see more.
I love the story of Arthur and his knights. It is romantic and most women love romance. The round table, their quests, and the legends surrounding them all. I always found the love triangle between Arthur, Lancelot and Gwenevere a little disappointing though. What I was more interested in was Gwenevere.
There is a passage from "The Once and Future King" by T.H.White about Guenever that reads,"There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops. You can't teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to her logically-she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience. In some way like that, you cannot teach a young woman to have knowledge of the world. She has to be left to the experience of the years. And then, when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living-not by principle, not by deduction, not by knowledge of good and evil which defies each of these things often. She no longer hopes to live by seeking the truth-if women ever do hope this-but continues henceforth under the guidance of a seventh sense. Balance was the sixth sense, which she won when she first learned to walk, and now she has the seventh one-knowledge of the world." I love this chapter and have stuck, long ago, a sticky note in this portion of the book, even though the book will now flop open to that passage, so I can read it over and over again. It is a piece of literture written over 75 years ago but it still speaks of womens roles in history and how important they were and still are. Profound verse for a fictional story about the deeds of men.
In the past nuturing meant, mainly, to feed and protect, protect our home and family. As time has gone by we have added support, encourage, train, and educate to our lists. But not as teachers in a small one room school house, or the woman behind the man. Now we are CEO"S, Doctor's, Professors, Politician's and business owners, while still manageing a family and home. We take those great professions that men have dominated for century's and add a new dimension to them. We cause these professions to evolve, createing a new dimension and out look, we create a work of art, no matter what path we take. We have found that love is not limited to just family and home; there is great pleasure in watching our careers and business's grow. All the women who have gone before us showed us how to be who we are now. And we continue to role model for the next generations.
I while ago I watched a documentary on PBS on the Womans movement. They spanned from the early 1900's to now. They inverviewed some of the most promenent women who made changes that, as females, and even men I think, take for granted. You know what I found most interesting? The generation of women, who are in the generations just after mine, shared that the one thing that their mothers forgot to teach them was how to manage having it all. How to balance being a mother, being a wife, taking care of a home, and still having the career along with doing things for them selves, all at the same time. Many men, they shared, were not taught to behave any differently then they always have. Some men are wonderful at helping manage the house, kids, careers and personal lives along with their marriage; some how ever just still expected dinner on the table and a clean house while contributing minimally. There was a piece to the puzzle missing. I think the piece that is still trying to be put in is transtion. I started paying attention to the relationships around me. I wanted to know how true this statement was; had we evolved? Or were we all just saying one thing, but actually living something else?
This is what I think finally. Based on what I have observed; I think there are still some people out there who would prefer to stay in the same place and not evolve. But for these people life is passing them by. They are more often than not alone not only in their perceptions of a womans place in the home, or a mans place for that matter. But...just alone in general. (I would like to share that this attitude dominates one gender or the other, but you will find persons of either male of female gender believing and living this idea. I would also like to tell you that it dominates one generation, but it doesn't.)
I have noticed that the majority of persons now in healthy relationships share...everything. And I think the younger generations are doing an extraoridinary job of having it all. Many men are co-parenting more, women are sometimes the major wage earner. Everyone cares for the home. Basiclaly I think that transitional period of manageing everything is beginning to level out, and it is a wonder to observe.
I have wondered if the women who stood up for all of our rights, men included, really ever understood the full extent of what would happen afterwards. You know the consequences of it all? In the end it has been good for everyone I feel, but I feel that most changes, the really big life changing ones, happen with little thought to the future. Yeah, we all say things need to change. Spousal abuse will never end unless women have rights; the right to vote, the right to earn a wage, the right to be independant and have their voices heard. Truley, that was one of the major reasons for the Womans movements.
I think it is far easier for humans to look at the smaller picture, the more individualized piture; how is this going to effect me, not society as a whole, but me. Technically this is the way it should be. None of us go to school to learn about sociology, anthropolgy, the economy, etc. It takes a truley gifted person to analyze changes of grand scales. BUT I do believe that change starts with the little guy. It trickles up not down. For instance; I know in our house my sons are very healthy happy individuals who are in relationships with women who are very independant, intellegent individuals. They repsect equality and even more importantly dont judge the individuality due to being different sexs. I would love to take alot of credit for this, but the bottom line is this change in thinking, perception etc. would never have happened if our culture were different, and more importantly if our family had been different. It is all the generatsions of women who have gone before us, and the men, the little people, who promoted and supported everything that we have now.
YES, the wage is still not the same, but when I personally find this out I have the tools to question and debate this reasoning with my employer. AND I dont do it on a he's making more then me and he doesnt deserve to stance, but this is all the hard work I am doing and I deserve more pay for it. It is about respect and balance.
T'H' White's writing speaks not only of love, creation and nuturing, but of balance. The thing that usually takes place after periods of..well unbalance. We have had that, I think, what we are beginning to see, and enjoy, is the balance of society. Yes people will say that there is still much discrimination and prejudcie out there, and technically I agree. But sometimes I think we need to remember where we came from. Never forgetting where we want to go. In order to have goals we need to learn from, and remember, where we started. All storys are not fairy tales with happy endings. A fairy tale is deffined as an incredible, or misleading statement, account of belief.
"Fairy tales. The kind you hear about people so brave, so selfless, that they can't be real." -Guenevere. Or can they?
Good blog today, sis. ;)
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