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Originally Posted by Antarananda  I don't see how it is harmful if I recognize that the world, with myself included in it, needs to cultivate more love, patience, compassion and tolerance to shift the present power dynamic towards one which is more peaceful and harmonious. I merely ascribed the label "feminine" to these traits because the original poster's beef was about religion having been historically patriarchal. |
Antarananda, by no means did I mean that your declaration of a desire for those virtues was harmful. In fact, I'm here to help you practice patience! What is harmful is ascribing masculine and feminine labels -- that's what gets abused.
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Originally Posted by Antarananda A woman can be nurturing in ways a man cannot. |
I don't agree -- except for breast feeding, I wouldn't wish for a man to think that he can't nurture as well as a woman. Look at you, for instance! Mr. Nurture!
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again, I don't see how celebrating and honoring traits exhibited by women as loving, nurturing, maternal beings can possibly lead to manipulation  |
Once again, it's the labels, you see, not celebrating and honoring the traits themselves, that is used for manipulation. For example, girls are trained to be "sweet" (yin) and avoid being combative (yang) even to the point where they find themselves vulnerable to an attacker. Victimizers look for victims who display yin traits; they're looking for easy prey. Another example:
Kylark's "timid man", who is punished and humiliated by being constrained to women's work, which sort of indicates that punishment and humiliation are women's default lot in Karma Yoga, right?! I think both aspects of that, for the man and for the woman, are what stopped Kylark in her tracks, and made her then question the validity of the entire thought system.
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Ebb and flow, dynamism and passivity, positive and negative magnetic poles, are all natural phenomena, not human inventions.
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These are natural phenomena, yes; referring to them as feminine/masculine or yin/yang is the human invention.
Atarananda, I honor you for your intention to cultivate love, peace, compassion, and patience in the world. I am with you. I hope you can see that it's the labels I reject, not your beautiful values.
Love, "Warrior Woman"