Women Hooded: a Time to Shed Imposed Identities

The audacity of our culture to celebrate anything masculine and diminish the feminine is beyond comprehension. Our silence, appeasement and gentleness has allowed it to continue because it fits our profile and upbringing; in the quest to always do what is right, we end up devaluing ourselves. Think of all the times you were told to let it go, that they are just boys, or how frequently you were told “what can you do about it”?

Somehow, we have come to expect less of boys and hold girls to the highest standard of humanity. If boys act up, don’t listen, bully others or are just plain disrespectful, we have collectively made the space in society to make it okay. But let that come from a woman and we are enraged and ready to berate the unruly girl into submission of what it means to be a lady. This is not only done by men but is actually further perpetuated by women who have been led collectively to believe and perpetuate this archaic system in the dark corners of their brain regardless of what many may say in the light of day.

We have yet to realize that both masculine and feminine energy are required part of keeping balance in society. When one goes unchecked and unchallenged, we arrive at a troubled society which creates an excuse for those we elevate while debasing and marginalizing the rest. In the back of our minds, most of us realize fundamental iniquities that should be dismantled. What we witnessed with the election of this most juvenile president and now see in this debauched Supreme Court nomination is the very system we have kept alive for far too long. We are somehow surprised by the actions of some men in our time but society has been complicit for generations. It starts at an early age, this double standard we apply, we dismiss and at times encourage the indiscretions of boys while being outraged when the same actions are performed by girls.

Women have been always been persecuted, ridiculed and shunned if they dared to stepped outside the boundary of what society holds up as being “lady like”. Books have been written, movies produced and fables passed down from one generation to the next institutionalizing women on how to act and how to be. The very value and definition of womanhood has been reduced and given to a patriarchal society that determined and continues to define a woman’s value and place in society.

We shame women that speak out, speak their mind and honor their voice. We overly emphasis words like nice, kind, gentle, peaceful, generous, emotional and pretty—traits that emphasize docility—when we describe women. This is a manipulative approach to condition women and hold her hostage to an image of how she is supposed to present herself. We describe men as powerful, go getters, driven, decisive, smart, capable, trustworthy, and leaders to ensure that they continue to hold their position of authority above all else. The saddest part is that a mediocre man can be measured as an equal to a brilliant women because we somehow can’t get over our built in filter that already measures men and women from an unequal scale.

We don’t have to demonize men to change these things. We just have to acknowledge the power structure we have built within our consciousness and continue to propagate by how we raise our children. Nothing needs to be taken away from men to create space for women to define who we are. Threatening the power structure of men without acknowledging our own power is unproductive and a waste of time. We only have to stand in our truth and acknowledge the silent power within that has been screaming to come out. The true enemy is not men, it is the collective system that we have all helped create and foster. We have to know that we are no longer on a bidding block waiting to be measured for our beauty, domestic value, gentleness, and caretaking. We have to honor that we are an equal divine spirit created to pursue our own goals and aspirations and contribute to the betterment of our society.

Without our voice, contribution and truth, we will continue to witness a decaying system that continuously needs to persecute and devalue others based on a narrow view of what we deem acceptable. All you have to do is look back throughout history to know that atrocities, genocide and violence of the past are mainly in the hands of men who were eager to harness their insatiable greed for power, money and control and by women who remained silent and obedient. It is now time to change to course of history and let women bring the feminine energy that can bring balance and harmony back into society. Click To Tweet

This does not need the permission, acceptance or approval of men, it just needs to be changed period. It requires women willing to be ostracized, ridiculed and shamed in order to stand up for truth. It requires the ability to ignore the external conditioning for the sake of our internal truth that is screaming to come out. So, let this be a declaration for women who have had enough living in the shadows to emerge into the light. Let this be done not by condemning and destroying men or by being distracted by them but by loving them despite their flaws. Love never means silence and approval as we have been conditioned to believe.

Love means truth and courage and it is time for men to understand the value of a women and the power of her truth. In time, men will come around and will stand in truth to create a society where our daughters are not judged by the way they look and sound but by the value of their humanity and contribution to our society.