Differences between the sexes

[Poledra]

Some pagan paths make a big deal about the dualism between male and female, and to a certain extent I can see the point. I mean, different sets of plumbing allows us to continue our species, but I'm not sure I see the entire universe as divided into male and female components. On the other other hand, there is some evidence for differences between the way men and women think and approach the world. Hmm. . . I'm having a hard time working this through, so I'm just going to throw my question out there!

How do the sexes fit into your view of the world? Does the dualism take on a mystical meaning? What about gender (as opposed to sex)?

Poledra

[cheddarsox]

Dualism is one of those things I see as having a practical societal use..like good and evil, but not representing an ultimate truth.

I do think there are basic gender differences, both physical and psychological that are certainly strong tendencies. And there is day and night. So yes, there are things, significant things that come in twos.

But I don't get any sense of gender/masculinity/femininity to be universal concepts, or to have any deep mystical meaning. They are survival tools for some living things. Nor do the tendencies carry from species to species. In some species the male is the more aggressive, the "hunter", but in other, the female is. It depends on how their society or lack of society is, on what they need to do to stay alive and take care of the young.

I think that it is mostly one of those poetic metaphors that people found useful, that then took on a life of its own and became a sort of sacred cow. I think a lot of religious doctrine is that way.

So I think there are times and places in religion that the gender aspects make a perfect way of describing things, or a beautiful symbol. But I don't think they are an intrinsic aspect of all things.

cheddar

[Windsmith]

Meh. I got no use for sexual polarity. I don't view the Universe or the Earth as having a sex. And, sure, though tons of species reproduce by sexual means, lots of others don't, but you don't see Pagan traditions built around Sacred Binary Fission. I think there are more Pagans than would like to admit who have latched onto the "Sacred Marriage" as an excuse to git it on.

People talk all the time about how important male/female polarity is in Nature, and that that means it has to be of utmost importance to humans, but I find that line of thought limiting, uninspiring, and just plain uninteresting. In some species, there are no sexes. Members of others can be either sex, both, or can switch back and forth as needed. Among humans, I know people who are either, neither, both, or who slide along a continuum depending on mood, day of the week, and what clothes are clean in their closet.

I also dislike the reductionist thinking that the elevation of sexual polarity tends to lead to. People who feel that the balance of male and female energy and procreation/reproduction is the ultimate spiritual goal often reduce all sexuality and all creativity as mere metaphor for that great Gettin' It On. I've ranted about this elsewhere at MW, but I don't mind repeating it: I do not need to justify my sexual relationship with my wife by saying that "one of us is more masculine and one of us is more feminine." Nor do I view other forms of creation I undertake - writing, cooking, crocheting - as a metaphor for the heterosexual procreative act.

If celebrating the marriage of male and female works for someone, they're free to go for it. For me, what works is ecstatic elevation to a place beyond binaries, to a place where everything is possible, and everything Is, and "male" and "female" are just these goofy ideas we came up with to help us keep All That Is from getting too messy for our minds to comprehend.

[RavenStars]

My beef? Developing the inner man/male. Excuse me? I'm not incomplete or stunted and in need of some psycoanalitical gym class. I tried that guilt trip when I could never put enough objects/energy/attention onto the God side of the altar. I got better when I did away with it.

Personally, duality in general doesn't work for me. Sex isn't something in my life by choice and circumstance. Why would I want to remind myself of this? Let alone do magic using it's energy? While I recognize the solar holydays of day and night, what about twilight, the liminal time? What about clouds and storms? There are far too many other ways of dividing up the universe that are far more interesting to me then sexual duality. But heck, I've got a little zen in me, why does there have to be any division at all? Everything just is.

[TygerTyger]

I agree with the two great minds that have posted before me!

Sex is a practical means to reproduction and the survival of the species in a majority of life forms, but it has no greater significance. The imposition of gender on the universe is indicative of a lack of original thought. Why should the universe be either male or female when it has no corporeal body and, therefore, no need of sex as a means of reproduciton?

[Tanya]

sexes are different... its more than plumbing.. though that is part of it...
after being pregnant twice.. I know.. women are more concervative.. inately.. we have babies to protect.. we are the last line... and men are the first line... they can go out there... they MUSt g out there and fight to keep the wolf from the door. and if the wolf gets in... the mother offers herself to it so the it will not hunt her babes....


we are different generaly.. for sure.. women are set to look for details and are inately collaborative..... men look to logic and are somewhat competivive...

why.. if you are carrying a small child you can't hunt big game.. but you can pick grain, catch hares, gather plants... to know what each is is important for... and how.. its a huge body of knowledge.... which muchrooms are good,... which are poison what herb for what illness... that is all about talking and sharing.... and you do it with others... you can nurse eachothrer's babies... and the others.. they would be your sisters and cousins.. what is good for one is good for all..... you watch each other's backs... you child and your sisters child... are they so different?

men... they hunt the mammoths... they work together only to plan the stragegy.... they work together.. but lets face it.. one man can impregnate 100 women... only the best, the strongest will breed... why shouldn't they be inately competitive...inately distrustful....

we are what we are by our evolution.. we are beautiful and mad and perfect in our maddness.

[Windsmith]

But a lot of what you're talking about is gender, not sex. Sex is just the plumbing; gender is a social construct - makes no difference if we're talking about the construct of the last 30 years of women's lib. or the construct of the last 30,000 years of evolution. And I feel that saying "Women are like this; men are like this," when we're talking about anything other than which chromosomes and which dangly bits we're talking about, just reinforces the stereotypes that keep scores of members of both sexes from breaking through the binary limitations and becoming their truly best selves.

I will never be pregnant. I don't give a rat's patootie about protecting babies. If we go by your definitions, I probably fall into the "men's" categories more than the "women's." Does that mean I'm a guy? Or does it, maybe, mean, that male/female isn't the best way of dividing the world after all?

sexes are different... its more than plumbing.. though that is part of it...
after being pregnant twice.. I know.. women are more concervative.. inately.. we have babies to protect.. we are the last line... and men are the first line... they can go out there... they MUSt g out there and fight to keep the wolf from the door. and if the wolf gets in... the mother offers herself to it so the it will not hunt her babes....


we are different generaly.. for sure.. women are set to look for details and are inately collaborative..... men look to logic and are somewhat competivive...

why.. if you are carrying a small child you can't hunt big game.. but you can pick grain, catch hares, gather plants... to know what each is is important for... and how.. its a huge body of knowledge.... which muchrooms are good,... which are poison what herb for what illness... that is all about talking and sharing.... and you do it with others... you can nurse eachothrer's babies... and the others.. they would be your sisters and cousins.. what is good for one is good for all..... you watch each other's backs... you child and your sisters child... are they so different?

men... they hunt the mammoths... they work together only to plan the stragegy.... they work together.. but lets face it.. one man can impregnate 100 women... only the best, the strongest will breed... why shouldn't they be inately competitive...inately distrustful....

we are what we are by our evolution.. we are beautiful and mad and perfect in our maddness.

[Tanya]

we are so flexible, that's one of the cool things about us... and I would think women without children WOULD do the man thing... why the heck not... its FUN and exciting and challenging..

your right I was speaking generally of gender wiring... my poor mom is such a girly girl, she can't really read a map yet she speaks 5 languages... she's not dolt.. but she's got what I think of as 'woman' intellegence... my sister is all about logic and...lol.. likes to hunt....

that's a big reason why I love working outside the home, the modern world lets us have so many more choices about how we find a place that suits us....


I love that I can be a nester AND go out there and fight big fights and have big wins...

I was talking above in generalities... and anytime you generalize you are making errors...

I hope I didn't offend you....

[Eleisawolf]

On the one hand, I do think there are definitely differences between the sexes that are not just sexual differences. Our chemistry is different, and that affects our mental and physical responses. And I think that all the generalizations that can sometimes be exaggerated enough to be offensive that fall into gender differentiation DID arise out of those basic differences. In other words, there's a spark of truth to the generalizations. And humans are hard-wired to categorize, so categorize we did. Thus, we have gender.

However, on the other hand, the chemical differences between male and female also exist within male and female. It's not a duality--it's a spectrum. And the spectrum means that there are some sexual females who are more male-like gender-wise, and vice versa. And there are some that combine many gender traits no matter what sex they are.

To come right down to it (or, as Skilly would say--on the gripping hand), the world is full of a wondrous variety. To categorize it is often useful in our day-to-day lives, but if we base all our perceptions on the categories we impose on the world, we miss the full spectrum--the rainbow--of variety we all have, both within our communities and within our own selves.

(Now, this may sound a bit silly coming from someone who does invoke Mother Earth and Father Sky in her meditations--but then I think of the interaction of Sky and Earth in having enabled the formation of life on this planet as a very sexual one. Still, that's neither here nor there. That's all symbolism that I use to enrich my ritual experience, and is quite different from the perception of reality that I have. Again, dualism can be useful, but if we ignore the rest, we're really missing something, IMHO.)

Peace

[Earthwalker]

I primarily share Windsmith's sentiments here. I find the notion of ascribing sex to everything (making the proper distinction between sex and gender, as WS notes) a tad on the absurd side given the vast majority of the universe lacks genitals. As far as using gender, relying on it to a strong degree strikes me as sexist. I have trouble understanding why shots can't just be called like they are instead of stereotyping people by their genitals. Aside from that borderline sexism it also doesn't represent the diversity of the universe. It can be neat to look at sex from the human perspective for rituals where it makes sense to, say, for a human fertility ritual. And yet, what about the other kinds of fertility? How often do you see a Neopagan consider that the vast majority of life on this planet reproduces asexually (gotta love those bacteria!)? Or the fact that many plants are BOTH sexes in one? What does THAT imply in a spiritual context? Why limit oneself to the human aspects of sex?

[teishabee]

Or if you take evolution in your path, then we are utimately from this form of asexual reproduction.

I see everything as indivdual but that there are opposing forces in nature. Maybe people find it easy to catergorise these as male and female energies.

[cheddarsox]

I find dualism, in any form, very confining. I hate it in politics, and I'm not any happier with it in religion. It just forces people to draw lines of distinction artificially.

I like how online, mostly people don't know my gender. I can contribute to discussions and it is not a major issue. My gender isn't clear by my screen name, so people are not automatically responding to my gender, unless the nature of the discussion causes it to come out.

They respond to my ideas, knowledge and the manner in which I present myself.
Sometimes gender is a big issue, but most of the time it is not. And I don't see any reason to artificially apply it to something. I find it more challenging to try to understand thing in their own context than to only see them in terms of human issues and relationships.

I don't see the sun and moon in any romantic relationship or mystical romance. Nor in any competition that involves pride or power or dominion over day and night. Romance, pride, dominion are human traits, not celestial issues.

I find greater inspiration and insight in allowing myself to understand the other ways in which things in the Universe relate to one another, than to only allow myself to see them as if they related like humans. If I can learn a lesson outside myself like that, I may find new, different, freeing ways of relating, rather than assuming the human way is the only way.

Rather than apply my human ways to them. I try to observe how other things act, and see if I might find that useful in my life. And most of the things in the Universe don't seem to be interacting sexually. Sexuality is awesome, but it is just one flavor among many.

[Heart of All]

I very strongly identify as a girl, and, in fact, it's one of the four things I most strongly identify as (the other three being dancer, lover (of things and people), and pagan). But that's because, on the gender spectrum of things that are generally considered "feminine" and "masculine," I'm REALLY far on the feminine end. Which is not to say that I only do "feminine" things. I know how to change the oil in my car and I'm not grossed out my mud or dead things, really. But I do like cooking and pink and being female.

However, I did just say gender spectrum, and I don't really believe in the duality. I'm friends with at least two transgendered folks, and a lot of my friends are ambiguously gendered. I agree with a bunch of the people here that a gender duality does not make sense to be a central part of pantheism. A gender duality ignores so many manners of creation in the universe. Planets and slugs and bacteria and plants and stars and galaxies and molecules.

In fact, when I first became a pagan and I was trying to be a duotheist, my main issue was that I could never figure out what gender things were "supposed" to be. I don't have a lot of use for the gender duality, even though I do identify so strongly with my own gender.

[Poledra]

I find greater inspiration and insight in allowing myself to understand the other ways in which things in the Universe relate to one another, than to only allow myself to see them as if they related like humans. If I can learn a lesson outside myself like that, I may find new, different, freeing ways of relating, rather than assuming the human way is the only way.

Rather than apply my human ways to them. I try to observe how other things act, and see if I might find that useful in my life. And most of the things in the Universe don't seem to be interacting sexually. Sexuality is awesome, but it is just one flavor among many.

I find this a very empowering and engaged way of looking at the world. Taking things as they are as opposed to imposing a system we think should exist.

Poledra