Heroes Not Zombies

Female/Male, yin/yang, moon/sun, there are these two aspects, types or tendencies described in many cultures throughout history. It’s too simplistic to say men are one way and women are the other. However, it’s also too simplistic to say men and women are the same. This way of thinking can be helpful if we consider male or female qualities are tendencies, rather than fixed types, if we see their interaction as being present and dynamic in all human beings, and if we aspire to an integrated, mature state, where each of us access both ways of being.

One helpful discussion about this is in Carol Gilligan’s “Different Voices”, where she highlights masculine and feminine ways or types of being in terms of “voices”.

A man’s voice tends to be focused on autonomy, justice and rights, whereas a woman’s voice tends to be focused on relationships, care and responsibility. In other words, men tend towards agency, and women towards communion (see the qualities of holons).
Men follow rules, women follow connections. Men look, women touch. Men tend towards individualism, women to relationships.

Neither of these are better than the other. For example, if the masculine way goes too far, or goes wrong, we see

not just autonomy, but alienation, not just strength but domination, not just independence, but fear of commitment. And if the feminine way goes too far, instead of being in relationship, she becomes lost in relationship, instead of healthy communion, she becomes dominated by others, and instead of flow, panic, or meltdown.