Truth that is in Uncertainty

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A distressed and crying baby cannot be forced into submission.  It can be quietened only by feeding and comforting. 

There are times when the apparently endless screaming of a baby can drive you to distraction.  Nothing you do seems to make any difference, and night after night you are deprived of sleep.  The whole world has to stop; your own life is subordinated to that of the child.  Virtually no time is your own, for year after year. 

The child grows.  The total dependence on you continues.  Every waking moment you have to be on guard.  Where is she now?  Has she run out onto the road?  Is she sticking cutlery into the power point?  Why has it gone quiet in the bathroom? 

It is not until four or five that you can begin to relax just a little.  But only if no others have come along in the meantime.  It used to be that they came along as quickly as you could have them.  Three under three!?  The stuff of nightmares.  But what do you do - what do you do when he snuggles up to you for his conjugal rights? 

You could not deny him.  After all he was the head of the household; the socially sanctioned provider and protector.  He provided for you and the rest of the family when you could not, because society had denied you that option, or because you were too pregnant or too focused on the young to do the providing.  He protected when the hostile outside world, especially predatory males, came too close; when brute strength and aggression were needed to keep the threatening at bay. 

Since the very beginnings of the species, women have been programmed genetically not only to nurture, but also to resolve conflicts and problems in a non-linear and oblique fashion with manipulation, intrigue, deceit, mocking, consensus, compromise, and too often, outright capitulation.  Much less frequently than men do women resolve conflict head-on, with force, with intimidation, and with humiliation. 

In contemporary society the fundamental differences between men and women are downplayed.  Anyone who openly comments on specific differences and on women being more suited to some roles than men and vice-versa can raise the ire of powerful lobby groups.  Yet the differences are plain to all.  It is not a question of superiority or inferiority – it is a question of difference.  A tall blonde Scandinavian male has much more in common with a short dark African pygmy male than with a tall blonde Scandinavian female. 

Women are much less likely than men to indulge in the expediency of creating simultaneous and inconsistent realities.  A woman's reality and conscience tend to be more continuous and consistent.  Yes, you will find cases such as the prostitute who considers herself faithful to her partner because she reserves particular sexual acts or the engagement of particular emotions for him.  But, anomalies are less common, and when they do occur seem to cause much greater psychological stress than in men.  It is perhaps for this reason that women figure less prominently in crime statistics, but are more likely to suffer from mental illness. 

All this is not to say that women do not, like men, have their obverse side.  Base woman is just as amoral as base man. 

In their need for a stable nest and a mate on whom they may depend, women have developed jealousy, possessiveness and vindictiveness to a fault.  Women are generally risk-averse and will seek to rein in the male from wandering, not just extra-maritally, but also financially, professionally, and intellectually.  While this may well brake his fool-hardy and aggressive behaviour, it may also have the effect of stifling necessary change and creativity. 

Women do also possess the more unpleasant characteristics of men, though generally in much lower concentrations, just as men share the qualities which may be described as "feminine". 

Life's constant interplay between the "feminine" and the "masculine", between the creative and the destructive, between good and evil, has been a consistent theme in religion and philosophy.  The male/female dualism of life was formally recognised several centuries before Confucius, perhaps even as early as 1000 B.C.  Chinese philosophers distinguished two interacting energy modes: the yang and the yin.  Everything that is in existence, they said, is constituted by the interplay of these two modes of energy, and therefore has the characteristics of each. 

The yang is described as masculine in character - active, warm, dry, bright, procreative, positive.  The yin is an energy mode in a lower and slower key; it is fertile and brooding, dark, cold, wet, mysterious, secret, the female or negative principle in nature. 

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Men and women are considered to be the product of the interaction in varying degrees of the yang and the yin.  They show differing proportions of the qualities of each activity-mode, men being heavenly (that is, predominantly yang) and of great worth, whereas women are earthly (predominantly yin) and of less account. 

Clearly this philosophy was developed by men in a social and physical environment that favoured the supposedly "heavenly" qualities of the male.  The Chinese philosophers of old extended the yin-yang principle to everything that is in existence, ascribing human dualism even to inanimate things.  Thus the yang was seen in the south side of a hill (the sunny dry side in the Northern Hemisphere), and the yin was seen in the north side of a hill. 

The yin-yang principle is fundamentally useful and correct, except in its denigration of the yin which is, at any rate, perhaps a latter-day corruption of the original conception.  The Taoist yin-yang symbol, which depicts a fluid equilibrium between two equal and opposite forces, certainly gives no inkling of any intrinsic female inferiority.

Nature left woman the physically weaker of the two sexes, and saddled her with nine month gestation periods, and even longer periods of total post-natal dependence.  Dependence on and subservience to males, were the inevitable social consequences of the biological imperative, particularly in early societies where physical violence and aggressive behaviour were success factors critical to survival. 

The unevenly shared procreative burden combined with the greater physical strength of the male in an environment that was physically hostile, defined a relationship of subordination between the sexes, and caused religions, laws, and institutions to develop along patriarchal lines.  

Fertility control has been absolutely central to the emancipation of women.  The oppression of woman by man as a result of a rate of fertility that was not of her own choosing, is, at long last, coming to an end.  Much more than that, the increasing interdependence and technological power that characterises modern-day society is rendering typically masculine behaviour increasingly anachronistic, ineffective, and dangerous. 

Until recently human society has placed a premium on physical strength and the behavioural tendencies of men.  With technological advance, physical strength, even in combat, is no longer an advantage.  Intellectual agility and flexibility are now the keys to success.  Aggression, intimidation, and impatience, although still admired and rewarded by the patriarchy, are becoming liabilities in a world where saying `no' is becoming more of an option for more and more people, particularly women, and where, instead, success is increasingly linked to the ability to persuade, and to create a consensus. 

We have had the age of Man, aided and abetted by the great patriarchal religions - belief systems that in their time, before the advent of the secular State, the Rule of Law,  and modern technology, were absolutely central to maintaining social stability and civilised behaviour. 

We are now on the threshold of an Androgynous age where the Yin is able to engage on equal terms with the Yang; where the innate qualities of both genders are engaged to ensure our long-term viability: tolerance with a firm edge; consensus without capitulation; service without servility; and compromise, but not when you are right. 

But an Androgynous age does not mean a genderless or sexless future where masculine women of no sexual orientation share the corridors of power with effeminate mandarins.  Let us always celebrate and savour our differences.