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Femininity, feminism and the dangers of independence

Femininity, feminism and the dangers of independence
Femininity, feminism and the dangers of independence
Femininity, feminism and the dangers of independence

This is Part 3 of 5 Parts of the transcript of Patrick Wanis PhD answering questions and sharing insights with Christelyn D. Karazin of www.beyondblackwhite.com on the topic of what it really means to be feminine. Click here for Part 2 “Why women have inner conflicts with their femininity” – https://patrickwanis.com/blog/women-conflicts-femininity/ 

So again, femininity is a threat to feminism because many women, particularly feminists, view it as weakness. It’s not weakness. It’s always about finding balance. For the same reason, therefore, we’re afraid to talk about femininity because I think that it means, “Oh, I’m going to be controlled. I’m going to be a slave. I’m going to be a servant.” That is not what I promote at all, and that is not the true definition of femininity.

There’s an interesting movie you might like to watch. It’s by Luc Besson, the guy who did the Fifth Element and Joan of Arc, and he did a movie called Angel-A. It’s a black and white movie. It’s only a few years ago, but he deliberately shot it in black and white. It’s a beautiful movie where this woman is an angel and she comes to the rescue of a man. There’s a beautiful scene in it where at one point she and he are in the woman’s bathroom, and this other woman walks in and says, “You know this is a woman’s bathroom and men shouldn’t be here.”

And she said, ‘What man?’

“The guy in the stall.”

She turns to her and says, ‘Oh, no, he’s really a woman inside. He just has a male body.’

What she was referring to at that point was that he didn’t embrace his masculine energy; that he had all this beautiful feminine energy but he didn’t have the masculine energy, which leads me to the next point.

We also need to accept and understand that we all have masculine and feminine energy. There are times that men also need to embrace feminine energy. That’s about empathy, compassion, kindness, patience, sensitivity, humor, spirit, receptivity. So we also need to look at the situation and say, “What does it require? Masculine energy or feminine energy?

The other mistake the feminists made was this desire to be completely independent. Let’s look at that word. What does independent mean? It means that I’m not dependent on anyone for anything. Therefore, I don’t need to be in a relationship. Therefore, I don’t need a relationship with anyone else because I’m independent. I don’t need anyone. Therefore, women wonder “Well, why am I alone? Why I am not in a relationship?” Because you’re telling the world you don’t want to be in a relationship because you don’t want to be dependent on anyone for anything.

This also raises another concern for men. For men, once upon a time, the primary, the traditional role was that a man would take care of a woman. He would protect her. He would provide for her. He would provide for her with physical security, financial security, and obviously hopefully emotional security. Now the women have the ability to make their own money, buy their own house, buy their own car; therefore, they can have physical and financial security. Then the man says to himself, “What’s my role? What do I do here? She doesn’t need me.” And then when a relationship begins and the woman keeps telling the man, “I don’t need you, I don’t need you,” then the man goes off with some other woman who says, “I need you.”

This is not a judgment. It’s just the way it is. Men need to feel needed. Obviously, we all need to feel needed. But men need to feel needed by a woman. They need to know that the woman depends on him for something. A man feels and expresses his masculinity by taking care of a woman, by protecting her, by fixing things, by getting things done, by taking action.

You might even think of the example that a woman comes home and tells her boyfriend or husband that she’s had a horrible day at work and someone was really rude to her or someone insulted her or offended her. The first thing the man wants to do is he wants to fix it. He wants to fix that problem. Whereas, what the woman is really looking for is sympathy, empathy, compassion, and understanding. So the masculine energy is “I’m going to take action.” That’s the directive energy, “I’m going to take action.” The feminine energy is receptivity.

Click here for Part 4 of 5 Parts of the transcript of Patrick Wanis PhD answering questions and sharing insights with Christelyn D. Karazin of www.beyondblackwhite.com on the topic of what it really means to be feminine – “The real reason a woman should be feminine”: https://patrickwanis.com/blog/real-reason-woman-feminine/

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