How to under­stand and appre­ci­ate a woman

This is a com­ment I made on Tak­en­In­Hand that the edi­tors chose to dis­play as a stand-​alone arti­cle. They chose the title; I believe I would have cho­sen a less ambi­tious title myself. It was writ­ten as a response to some misog­y­nis­tic remarks on another thread that angered and dis­ap­pointed me. Peace­ful­Spirit found it and it’s such a blast from the past for me that I wanted to show it here as well.

I am as sad­dened as the next man when hear­ing fem­i­nist rhetoric about the evil of men. How­ever, I take excep­tion when I see what looks like a dis­missal of fem­i­nist con­cerns or por­tray­ing men to be more eth­i­cal or more right or more capa­ble just because of their gender.

We live in a patri­ar­chal cul­ture and I see no point in argu­ing that fact. Male val­ues, hier­ar­chi­cal and process-​oriented approaches are revered in busi­ness and soci­ety. Women, bless them, so flex­i­ble and adapt­able, have man­aged to not only suc­ceed in our male-​oriented cul­ture, but even excel in it. They are a force to be reck­oned with, to be respected if not feared, and we men have a choice to make: make allies of them or ene­mies. Per­son­ally, I would much rather have a woman at my side than to face her in battle.

The slow­ness, the tar­di­ness, of our cul­ture to accept women for who they really are in busi­ness and lead­er­ship posi­tions, has irrepara­bly harmed all of us.

Emo­tional ath­letes and experts in relat­ing, women are on the track of mas­ter­ing male val­ues and approaches to get ahead in our cul­ture. Before long, the glass ceil­ing will be shat­tered by indi­vid­u­als exhibit­ing male aspects bet­ter than most men.

And I weep.

We don’t need more men. We need our women; our wives, our moth­ers, our sis­ters, and our daugh­ters. We need to acknowl­edge and uti­lize the fem­i­nine nat­ural resource so eagerly avail­able to us. We need the voice of rea­son, of prag­ma­tism, of com­pas­sion, of nur­ture, that we are so sorely lack­ing today.

Women are the bedrock of civ­i­liza­tion. Our patri­ar­chal cul­ture has accom­plished won­drous things; we have planted foot­steps on the moon, we built the Great Wall, we founded reli­gions and whole nations. And noth­ing could have been accom­plished with­out our women. We have been, and still are, stand­ing on their shoulders.

In the tree of life, men are the branches, the out­shoots, expend­able gam­blers that may or may not cre­ate value for soci­ety. Women, how­ever, are the trunk and the roots. Each woman a price­less link in the great chain of moth­ers, nur­tur­ers, and cre­ators. Each woman a door­way into the ele­men­tal fem­i­nine, our very con­nec­tion to human society.

I am not a fem­i­nist. My motives are purely self­ish. The unen­cum­bered female per­spec­tive is a resource that we have been dis­card­ing for too long. I dearly hope that our patri­ar­chal cul­ture sees and starts to appre­ci­ate this trea­sure sooner than later.

I am not a fem­i­nist; in fact, in my per­sonal rela­tion­ships I would best describe myself as a male chau­vin­ist. I con­sider my lady’s bot­tom and hair my per­sonal prop­erty and those parts of her can never count on any peri­ods of pro­longed dig­nity. I deny her and com­pel her and trea­sure her and cher­ish her; she is mine and she belongs to me.

But that is the dynam­ics of a rela­tion­ship between one man and one woman. I am only happy in a rela­tion­ship when my lady sur­ren­ders to me and thrives on it. But in her pro­fes­sional life, she and her sis­ters deserves the respect and encour­age­ment they have already earned. Nei­ther the male nor the female approach is supe­rior, but when they con­nect, when they inter­min­gle, they are unbeatable.

We should be less con­cerned about what women say and do, and instead work on pro­vid­ing these won­der­ful crea­tures the men they truly deserve. You won’t get her respect and admi­ra­tion just because you are endowed with a Y chro­mo­some. You have to earn her trust. Only when she feels safe with you will you receive the great­est val­i­da­tion a man can hope for: the trust, respect, and admi­ra­tion of a good woman.

I acknowl­edge that women do seem irra­tional and para­dox­i­cal to many men. I assure you, how­ever, that appear­ances can be deceiv­ing. Only if we dis­miss women as small men that smell good can we infer male mean­ing on female com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Women are deceiv­ingly sim­i­lar to men on the sur­face but it would be fool­ish to assume that we approach our world the same.

A woman’s brain is a mas­sively par­al­lel super-​computer and there is no way to express the emo­tional cur­rents in her heart in such a recent inven­tion as lan­guage. Instead, look within you and let the ele­men­tal con­nec­tion you feel with your lady to guide you. Take a leap of faith; she won’t bite you. At least not hard.

Within you, the ele­men­tal mas­cu­line knows exactly how to con­nect with her ele­men­tal fem­i­nine in a way much, much older than lan­guage. She won’t sur­ren­der to you until you have sur­ren­dered to yourself.

And when she sur­ren­ders to you, you have finally come home.