|
GREEN PARADISE LOST |
|
12. Woman as Bearer of a Different Consciousness I know I am most content when my days are filled with a constant awareness of the sun rising and setting, of leaves unfolding in spring, flourishing in summer and dropping in the fall. I find my spirit thrives when close to the ebb and flow of Nature's tides. [1] Experiencing the Ebb and Flow "It has long been an aspiration of men," Robert Jay Lifton and Eric Olson write in Living and Dying, "to experience the ebb and flow of human existence as rhythmically as the passages and changes in the rest of nature." [2] This may be an aspiration of men but clearly it has been difficult for men to accomplish. Why? When I contrast "male" and "female," I do not mean to make the contrast between stereotypic "masculine" and "feminine" traits. I do not observe that all men are active (and all women passive), or all men intellectual (and all women emotional), or all men achievers (while all women are nurturers). Thousands of lives, both male and female, contradict those generalizations. It is clear that both men and women have what I think are better seen as human capabilities to think and feel, to achieve and nurture, to love and hate and aspire and fear, and so on. Of course these capabilities are present in different degrees (and developed to different degrees) in different individuals. Thus the similarities in our human capabilities far outweigh our differences as males and females. Having gone this far in turning aside from stereotypic differences between "masculine" and "feminine," I want also to be clear that I do not in any way mean to imply that male and female are absolutely the same, for it is obvious that they are not. What the actual (nonstereotypic) differences between males and females may be, however, is something we as a culture are only beginning to clarify and research. Because (as Lewis Perelman has observed in quite another connection) "Consciousness is experience; ... one's consciousness is what one 'experiences.'" [3] Let us begin by looking at what bodily experiences the man does and does not have. Puberty brings to him strength and vigor and sexual appetite and performance. It does not however bring to a normally healthy male any bodily experiences of weakness, limit, or intrinsic connection to natural processes. In short, the male bodily experience is quite lacking in experiences which would help him forge an adequate world view or relationship to nature or concept of limits. Contrast that with the bodily experience of the woman (an experience and "consciousness" which has never been allowed by patriarchal society to be expressed as a world view). For more than forty years the cycles of menstruation move every month through her emotional and physical system, bringing with them her own particular version of weakness, fatigue, pre-menstrual tension, and cramps. No matter how much she might like to view herself as an individual unit with a world view that stops at her own skin, her bodily selfhood is invaded every month by lunar cycles which come with monotonous regularity, whether she wishes children or not, so that she experiences the surging tides of human reproduction which flow in potential through her body. I myself have menstruated more than 480 times so far for the privilege of having two children, a bit of natural overkill that reminds me of the sorts of firepower used in the Vietnam War! It is clear that males and females experience a life journey from within bodies which differ physically. Men have long been clear how women's experience was shaped and limited by having a vagina and uterus. We are only beginning to perceive how men's experience is shaped and limited by having a penis and testicles. The male life-experience has saturated the intellectual and technological spaces of our culture and has been the assumed norm and referent. But it is the feminists in academia, for example, who have noted the omnipresence of phrases about "the thrust of his argument" or about someone's "penetrating statement." One also notes with humor that when a computer is working it is "up" and when it is unable to compute it is "down." Yet the pervasiveness of this male physical "viewing point" not only in our language but in our ways of thinking and in our artifacts has been scarcely noted, let alone its limitations realistically assessed. Perhaps the reason is that males by themselves have been unable to do this. Occupying a male (or female) body means that male (or female) hormones predominate in that body's hormonal "climate." The effects of these differences in our bodies is only beginning to be understood. For example, it has been ascertained that males as a group have a superior grasp of spatial relationships. Recent research has suggested that this is a consequence of the presence of the male hormone testosterone. On the other hand, the synchrony in monthly menstrual cycles among women living or working together has recently been determined to be a function of females' capacity to perceive and attune involuntarily to certain body odors of those around them. So the first point about female bodily experience of menstruation is that it provides an inescapable limit upon her physical existence, to which she must learn to adapt and to live within. It would be difficult for such a woman to dream up a sense of herself as unlimited or as all-conquering mind or as a Promethean self. Such dreams of glory come crashing down the next time her body experiences the monthly limit. There is no such experience for man unless he is sick or crippled -- which most of our male decision-makers and thinkers are not. Menstruation also provides woman with an inescapable sense of connection to the natural world, a sense which is further heightened by the experiences (if she becomes a mother) of pregnancy and childbirth. This inevitable involvement of the woman with the processes of nature that flow through her body is both conscious and unconscious. There are some deep levels of connection. The pull of the moon upon the tides is common knowledge. There is beginning to be evidence that people bleed more at the full of the moon, so that some surgeons are now refusing to do major operations at that time. There is some evidence that mental illness (which, you will recall, used to be called "lunacy") peaks at the full of the moon. But what has not been investigated, I am informed, is the relation of women's menstrual cycles to lunar cycles. I know that I am perfectly synchronized with lunar cycles, and when I get "off" I experience ovulation pains, and only then! There is also increasing evidence about women who live together (college dorms, mothers and daughters): even though they begin on different menstrual cycles, their cycles over a period of time come to coincide. Some deep connections to the natural world do seem to flow through the bodily life of the woman, and she has some deep or subliminal senses of these connections which have never been expressed as a comprehensive world view. What Our Bodies Teach I see nothing like this in the life of the man. Rather, the male bodily experience is of a lack of such connectedness -- which is exactly what the masculine consciousness expresses. And, I would ask, could it be otherwise? Can the world view cast up by males express a connection with nature which nothing in their bodily experience causes them to know and feel in their bones and nerves and bowels? Or take the sense of caring about future generations. It does not seem to me accidental that the dominant paradigm today does not concern itself about the life of future generations. What is there in the bodily experience of the male which might cause him to feel involved in future generations? The male's one function of providing the semen is overwhelmed by the exploding sensation of orgasm, a sexual satisfaction he seeks innumerable times, in many contexts, and often with little reference to human reproduction. And that is his entire bodily experience of producing the next generation! Contrast that with the woman's dawning awareness of the new life growing within her, carried by her body, nourished by her blood, kicking and turning, gestating with the slow ripening of natural cycles which seem interminable near the end. Finally that new life within her is ejected laboriously and with herculean movements of her uterus and birth canal to begin its first life apart from her body. Now, ask that woman to cast up a world view that ignores the life of the next generation! Or take women's intuitive understanding of short-term pleasure (making love) and long-term cost (producing and then rearing a child). Women during puberty come to awareness of the long-term parameters of their sexual encounters, and if they do not immediately understand, they pay the price for their lack of comprehension. There is no comparable biological occasion for helping men overcome their penchant for taking short-term profit and exporting the long-term costs to others -- women, other social groups, or the environment. And women's consciousness, which is so beautifully but painfully programmed by her childbearing potential to understand the long-term consequences of short-term actions, has not been allowed into the board rooms and our society's centers of policy-making. The different socialization of males and females constitutes a third major cause of observed male/female differences. Men have been taught to be strong, never cry, aspire to success, "prove their masculinity," and so on. Women, on the other hand, are allowed to feel hurt, to cry, to feel vulnerable. Women are encouraged to succeed vicariously and feel successful when they help and nurture a child or husband or boss -- someone else -- who succeeds. And women are socialized to feel successful themselves when they are loved. Males, on the other hand, are not socialized to feel successful when they are loved. Differing male/female socialization experiences are a major part of why many adult men experience difficulty expressing feelings of fear or inadequacy or dependence. Adult women characteristically have their difficulty when trying to define themselves as autonomous, aspiring and inner-directed adults. Cultural patterns of male/female socialization both produce and reinforce "masculine/feminine" stereotypes. So cultural stereotypes about what constitute masculine or feminine traits not only color the experience of us all, but they also cloud our seeing precisely which of the observed male-female differences are biologically-grounded and which are, instead, culturally induced. In summary: to contrast male and female is to contrast different (1) bodily physical experiences, different (2) hormonal climates in those physical bodies, and different (3) experiences of sex-linked socialization. The contrasting of males and females has been done in the past by cultures dominated by males. Furthermore, the principal assessments have never been done in order to perceive the limitations of males' own physical experience -- the life-realities which a penis-bound bodily experience does not permit one to perceive or grasp. If these assessments were to have purely personal consequences, we could all afford our blind-spots and foibles. But what we are speaking of are the ways in which men's (and male-dominated cultures) particular window upon reality is incomplete and insufficient, and currently constitutes a danger to human survival. If no other human viewing point were available, then "that would be that." But happily for our species, such need not be the case. A Biologically Conditioned Consciousness I am asserting that there is a definite limit to the perception of men. It is a limit imposed upon their consciousness by the lack of certain bodily experiences which are present in the life of a woman. No matter how androgynous men may become, it is therefore not possible for men alone to lead us into a society with a fully developed sense of its limited but harmonious place in nature. It is not possible for men alone to do this because the male's is simply a much diminished experience of body, of natural processes, and of future generations. I do not by this mean to downgrade men but only to point out their limitation. I also do not want to romanticize the bodily experiences of women. For me and for many women these have not been altogether pleasant experiences. But, pleasant or unpleasant, these have been powerful learning experiences. And they are experiences which do have a powerful molding effect upon women's consciousness and view of the world, in ways I do not see even approximated in the life of males. • • • Audrey Drummond writes about the shaping of a woman's consciousness by her woman's bodily experiences: Think of the profound times of the female body ... menstruation ... childbearing ... menopause. The necessities of her body are never trivial. They are deep with meaning. On the day of her first menstruation she is ready for childbearing. There is no chronological time. There is no rabbi or priest to welcome her with ritual. It is her body that decides when it is her time. Then, when -- and if -- she decides to let another enter her body sexually, she must accept the physical act as well as the psychological concept of an outside force within her own body. If she should decide to become pregnant, she must ready herself for another intrusion. If she is ready, she opens herself to the sperm, letting it flow in and absorbing it, but always holding on to her inner being. As the zygote grows, the intrusion into her body can be overwhelming as she feels a body within her own body. Two hearts are beating in one body! Yet the woman must stay centered as her body yields to another's demands. It is the first thought of the infinite, body within body. In its time, when the babe feels it can no longer be sustained by the mother's body, there is a separation. The babe moves out into its own space and time. The woman and the child join then with all living beings in an infinite chain -- past, present and future. Human life is seen in sequence, one after another, each life having its place in time. Remember this as you think of this human chain of ancestors. We see this chain as the passing of time because our selective bodies have taken the cosmic moving whole and stilled it into fragments. But there is still one more stage for woman and that is her menopause, the time when her body no longer prepares itself for childbirth. At that time woman acknowledges the passing of time and sees herself as an ancestor. Death becomes acceptable as part of the time chain. For she sees the chain of ancestors reaching deep into the past and far into the future. It becomes an infinity. [4] Anatomy-as-Destiny Frightens Us All Both men and women, I find, have a difficult time with the idea that our consciousness is biologically conditioned. Women are often fearful of any anatomical or biological differences between males and females being brought to the forefront again, lest these once again be used to put women down. Women fear questions such as: "Would you want a president having pre-menstrual tension during an international crisis?" "If women have menstrual problems, how can they hold responsible jobs?" So instead we have presidents whose male anxieties about proving their own toughness and masculinity impinge upon policy decisions every day of the month! Should we pretend -- in order to further female equality -- that women do not menstruate? Should we instead dope them up with pills that make them function on the same unreal, unbodily and straight-out-with-caffeine way the male executive functions in our society? Should that then be called progress? Men have a different sort of problem with the idea of biologically conditioned consciousness. Men truly can't imagine a situation in which they alone are not equipped to lead the world -- if not as they are now, then improved with a little tinkering. If their sense of relationship with nature is a little off what it should be, then reform it; change "dominion-which-has-become-exploitation" to "responsible stewardship," and it will be all right for men to continue to rule the world. If man's present consciousness is not large enough, add some transcendental meditation, a few altered states of consciousness, a little therapy, a few more female roles, a concept of androgyny, lots of self-actualization, and you'll have a perfect male who is now really fit to rule the world. Even the left brain and right brain research seems too good to be true. Just when our society begins to sense a need to turn away from overexposure to the stereotypically "rational" male ethos and for balance to turn to the supposedly "intuitive" female ethos, science discovers both are really in the male head. How fortuitous! Without such a discovery we might have thought women would actually have to have a major place in the seats of power in order to balance things. But now men can merely emancipate half their heads instead of emancipating women. How convenient, and men can continue to rule the world as before! Men's confidence that they can or must "lead the world" is a confidence reinforced by their socialization but also intimately related to their lack of bodily limiting experiences. Men cannot seem to understand that this is their persistent problem they cannot get away from. Men's biologically conditioned consciousness is their Peter Pan shadow. It dogs them at every turn, because it is rooted in their own life experiences. Woman, the Other Giver of Symbols The solution? It cannot lie with the benign paternalism of the powerful -- which the man (because he is a male and powerful) would always like to look to for solutions. Rather, I suspect, a balance between male and female perceptions needs to emerge. A balance which would be based upon recognition that humans come in two diverse forms. This more inclusive human experience of reality has been prevented by the powerful social conventions of patriarchal society from ever shaping for us a more adequate world view. Thus the problem is not that men perceive like men -- but that the male perception is not the entire human perception. What has been lacking is articulation of and attention to perceptions rooted in female experience. • • • I don't believe that I am alone in writing of childbirth as an ecstatic experience of my own body and one able to be shared with my husband. For me as a woman my body taught me to surrender myself to the processes of life and to trust them. Surrendering did not mean submission or passivity or giving up of myself or lack of activity. It did mean allying myself with the natural flow of energy. In that effort I discovered the inner dynamic of the process of life. "I" did not "have" a baby. She is not "my" daughter. My body became the instrument, the means by which the graceful, giftful dimension of life is experienced .... I found this experience caused me to reflect on the meaning of the word "creation".... I used to think of creation and the image of God as Creator as one who made, fashioned or shaped. I feel now, however, that the image of creation is best understood as being open to, sharing, participating, working with, surrendering to the movement of life, which will then give us more than we could ever gain by our own agency. This, ultimately, is the graceful dimension of existence, of relationships, of artistic creation, and I feel that through my body, specifically through the natural functioning of my female sexual structures, I have been given a perception of these graceful dimensions. [5] (Emphasis added.) The very physical nature of a woman's being is no longer inarticulate as it was for so long. Penelope Washbourn is one of the women who are beginning to give expression to a new metaphysic: woman as open, woman as connected, woman as one who can trust the processes of life. But the question now is whether we -- especially males -- can accept the giver of new symbols, new metaphors, and new modes of viewing reality if the giver is Woman. Can the male give up his old monopoly on the role of decisive gift-giver? Can he share with Woman the role of image-maker in the culture? Even beyond that, can Man find in himself the open hand to receive a new image to complement his own when the giver is The Other? Even if his life depends upon it?
|