Deanism, feminism & feminine essentialism

Erin,

Excellent questions, and ones that I actually think about a lot as well. As an academic who wants to be able to do and publish more research involving Filianism and Feminine Essentialism, I am constantly asking myself how far I can partner with the infrastructure of the fields of feminist thealogy or feminist-dominated women's studies without compromising Feminine Essentialist thought. As a man, I am constantly reflecting on the meaning of femininity and the extent to which it can manifest in diverse ways given the teaching that all souls are, at their deepest level of reality, feminine of necessity.

In regards to your first question, I think it depends on which feminist values get to call themselves "mainstream". As your post notes, feminism is far from monolithic. Forms of feminism that regard femininity solely as a social construct certainly appear to be incompatible with Feminine Essentialism. Forms that regard it as a patriarchal construct engineered to suppress women by rendering them subservient are unquestionably locked in a struggle to the death against Feminine Essentialism. Forms of feminism that acknowledge femininity as in some way objectively real and value it as a moral or aesthetic positive, however, could very well be compatible (depending on the details). Which of these is most "mainstream"? I'm not sure, and it probably depends on the scope of our inquiry. Some combination of the first two may well be dominant in the West, but contemporary Muslim feminism (to take only one example) came to my mind straightaway as a group of feminisms likely to be broadly compatible with Feminine Essentialist thought, so on a global scale the "mainstream" may look somewhat different. Of course, there is also the question of how essential Feminine Essentialism is to Déanism. Need one be a Feminine Essentialist to be a Déanist? I am both, so this is something that I don't actually think too much about, but I imagine some of our colleagues on these boards have interesting perspectives on the question.

With regard to your second question, the devil is once again in the details. The Aristasians seem pretty clearly to have developed the category of "brunette" in opposition to whatever exactly was meant by "butch" in 1970s Oxford (hence their famous tagline, "women who like women who look like women"). I would not dare to opine on how similar the usage of that term was in a community of which I am not a member, in a country I have never been to, in a time before I was born. Whether their original rejection of "butch" expression is still applicable to contemporary butch expression is well beyond my expertise. I notice, however, that the category of brunette was treated in interestingly nonconforming ways by comparison to schizomorphic femininity. If you go back to the very first few pages of the archives of the old Aphrodite Cocktail Bar (http://aristasia.net/Archives/aphrodite.html), you will see some playful interactions there in which brunettes take roles in social interaction and engage in behaviors that are stereotypically "masculine" under schizomorphic conditions (though we should remember that, from the Aristasian perspective, masculinity is just an imbalanced expression of the vikhelic principle, which itself is inherently feminine). I also recall a forum conversation (I believe it was at Aristasia Central; please forgive me that I do not have the link readily available at the moment) from the mid-2000s in which a blonde was expressing her bewilderment at the way masculi treated her companions when they went out on the town. In particular, she observed men open doors for one of her friends and remarked how the thought invariably came into her head, "Why are you treating her like a femin? She's a *brunette*!" It has seemed to me from reading all these old conversations that the use of the term "feminine" in respect of intermorphic sexes referred specifically to Feminine Essentialist ideology, and could sometimes be misleading if it were thought of only in terms of a schizomorphic feminine/masculine divide. My understanding is that femini were regarded as being necessarily somewhat limited, insofar as the schizomorphic context laid the entire burden of expressing metaphysical femininity on them, and one sex really wasn't enough to cover the gamut of possibilities that metaphysical femininity contains. Intermorphic sexes made possible the expression of a wider range of that metaphysical potential, including expressions that masculi and femini wouldn't necessarily regard as "feminine," if that makes sense. It seems to me, then, that there are solid grounds within the context of Feminine Essentialist and intermorphic thought for affirming the femininity of "gender nonconforming" and perhaps even "tomboyish" women, though I would pause at the term "butch" only because of the difficulty of clearly defining it in this particular subcultural context. While I think Feminine Essentialist thought does tend to look askance at any behavior or presentation that purposefully seeks to imitate masculinity, it does not seem to me a foregone conclusion that expressions of femininity that are nonconforming from a schizomorphic perspective are necessarily considered to be "aligned with maleness."

As far as other thoughts go, I think you make an excellent observation about the way in which Déanic teaching is almost uniquely supportive of trans women, who otherwise suffer so much exclusion even in religious communities that are generally supposed to be the most inclusive. That is something that I think we can proud of, and of which we really ought to make more people aware. Also, tremendous respect to you for your recovery. Though eating disorders are not something I have struggled with personally, I know many who have, and thus how very difficult it is to overcome.

-Race

Thank you both, you've made excellent points. The more I ponder on this the more I see that it isn't as simple as I wish it were! Essentially all I want is for Deanism to feel like religious community that is accepting of all regardless of gender presentation, relationship with gender, sexuality etc. I think we do an excellent job with some of this but I would hate for, say, a butch lesbian to find she relates with Deanism on a thealogical level but not a cultural one.

Erin

I am very grateful for David’s reminder that we must think down from the spiritual and not up from the material. Materialistic thinking is so pervasive in our society that it is a difficult habit to break, and I find myself guilty of it all the time. One of my personal rituals is to go to an apple orchard during the month of Abolan, find a tree beneath which to sit, and read again the Sermon of the Apple-Seed. Obviously, I have not yet done that this year, so I was as much in need of David’s wisdom there as anyone.

Glenn raises some really good points about the difficulty of defining femininity. A research project whose edges I’ve been exploring as time permits involves looking at the ways in which the intermorphic gender system attempted to reconcile third wave feminist insights on this point with the essentialist perspective of the second wave on which so much Filianic and Feminine Essentialist thought depends (I imagine you may have some interesting thoughts on this, Erin). I think we need to bear in mind first that different cultures can certainly manifest or perform femininity in different ways (as Glenn noted), and that a great diversity of such manifestations or performances can be compatible with essential femininity (however we understand that), and thus be equally valid. Since all manifestation is a combination of essence and substance, all manifestations and performances of femininity on the plane of manifestation, will be imperfect reflections of essential femininity in some degree. Aristasian thought, classed our plane of manifestation’s “masculinity” as one such imperfect manifestation. Our “femininity” in schizomorphic terms is a more perfect one, but perhaps still less so than being either chelani or melani, as maids are in Aristasia Pura. Even there, there are some interesting points for consideration, such as the fact that Sai Thamë—whose principle is manifested by brunettes—is traditionally held to be blonde.

I return now to the question of essential femininity. We often find ourselves unable to put words to this, but we should have no shame in that since Nietzsche reminded us that “That for which we find words is a thing already dead in our hearts.” (Beyond Good & Evil) We come from the background of a Western civilization that has grotesquely exaggerated the importance of precise definition, as the Chapel has noted in its reflections on creedal statements and denominational differences. Even if our lunar intellect cannot put exact labels to the principle, however, I believe it can be directly apprehended by the solar.

Glenn is something of an expert on the monotheistic cultus of Isis that developed in the late classical world. I find it tremendously noteworthy that Osiris did not develop into a monotheistic figure. During the same period, Venus came to be seen by many worshippers as the supreme deity, of whom all others were manifestations. No male Roman god made the same transformation (aside from some allegorical use of Jupiter by the Stoics to represent an abstract deistic principle). In a similar fashion, active cultic devotion to Brigid outlasted any of the other Celtic deities, and the scant available evidence suggests that the same was true of Freyja in the Norse world (aside from a survival of Thor within the Saami pantheon, to which he had been assimilated). What is the difference between these goddesses and their male counterparts? In meditation on this, I think we begin to apprehend something of essential femininity. During the middle ages, large numbers of Western Christians came to believe that it was possible for souls to fall off the perilous “Red Ladder of Christ” on their way to salvation and be damned, but that no soul was permitted to fall from the much surer “White Ladder of Mary”. This, of course, is a bizarre inversion of an absolutely central Christian teaching, but it was tremendously popular in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, during which, as Bernard of Clairvaux said, Mary was called “the gate” because no one entered heaven except through her. During the same period, popular literature in eastern India rapturously described the shepherd girl Radha with whom Krishna—the “Supreme Personality of Godhead”—had fallen in love as “the soul of Krishna.” This moniker soon grew in importance until the Gaudiyas and a handful of other sects elevated Radha first to the status of divinity as a goddess in her own right, then to fusion with the supreme personality as a singular deity Radhakrishna, and then to supremacy over her former consort in a startling reversal of the process by which the Madrians thought male deities had once supplanted female ones. What is the difference between Mary and Jesus that made her ladder surer? What is the difference between Radha and Krishna that transformed her from God’s beloved to God Herself and rendered him subordinate? In our reflections on this, we begin to perceive essential femininity.

Another important point may be drawn from the cultus of Radha. Glenn noted the way in which both Christianity and Hinduism have taught a universal femininity of souls as an elucidation of their passivity in respect to God. This is another point where David’s reminder serves us in good stead. It is natural enough, of course, that cultures that worship God primarily in a masculine form associate femininity with passivity and use the femininity of the soul to teach accordingly. Hence, the soul is the bride of Christ, who is the bridegroom, or the soul is Radha (in those sects for whom Radha has not become supreme) who dotes upon Krishna. Something subtly, but crucially, different happens, however, in those systems in which the primary form of deity is still (or is again) feminine. In the Radha-centric Hindu sects, both male and female devotees are encouraged to identify themselves spiritually with Radha’s female attendants, who play the very active role of arranging the secret meetings, hidden trysts, and playful sports of the divine lovers. When the soul and God are both feminine, the role is no longer perceived as passive, but as centrally related to the activity of God’s divine play (lila in Sanskrit, lalitha in Raihiralan).

In a fortuitous twist, this may give some satisfaction to our desire to make definitions and lists. The central point of lila/lalitha is creativity (which David already noted was central to the Madrians’ conceptions of essential femininity), but particularly through the qualities of playfulness, spontaneity, and innocent joy in being. Notably, these are qualities that a majority of societies east and west associate with femininity, in opposition to a masculinity considered to be more sober, serious, and considered in action. Thinking up from the material, we might be tempted to say that playfulness and spontaneity are considered more feminine across cultural boundaries because they are traits likely to be developed and preserved by the need to care for children, but thinking down from the spiritual we would be wont to say instead that women are the sex to bear children on our plane of manifestation precisely because they generally (on statistical average, as Glenn rightly observed) manifest femininity more fully, and thus possess those qualities in greater measure.

Which brings me to a point Glenn made with which I am bound as much by self-interest as by the clear evidence of life to agree—that Khear affects men and women alike, and that there are any number of men who have achieved considerable spiritual attainment, while there are likewise any number of women who have not. At this very moment, there is doubtless a man in Orissa who has dedicated himself with great success to being a profitable maidservant of Radha, while there is a woman in New Delhi throwing a coworker under the bus at a board meeting to show that she can be as “driven” and “competitive” as a man. The former, despite being a man, would be, in my view, more fully manifesting essential femininity than the latter. I think we often make the mistake of thinking that Feminine Essentialism, in affirming the centrality and virtue of femininity, sets up a dichotomy between women as pure and good and men as fallen and bad. I suppose I see it more as a question of favorable or unfavorable conditions. In the Pure Land sects of Buddhism, for example, adherents aspire to be reborn in the pure land of their chosen bodhisattva because it is a place where the conditions of life are more favorable to seeking enlightenment, and where that ultimate goal might be more readily attained than it is in our world. I read Feminine Essentialism as saying that women are incarnated in a condition that is more favorable to the manifestation of femininity, and thus more favorable to spiritual attainment, while men are incarnated in a condition that is still a manifestation of femininity (in the form of the vikhelic principle), but in which it is harder for their femininity to be realized. Men are thus, in theory, capable of the same degree of spiritual attainment, but may have to work harder to reach the same level (and, correspondingly, be less likely to) in the face of the greater obstacles that their incarnate form raises.

There are two evidences that I see for this. One is the overwhelming statistical evidence that women perform better on standard tests of academic achievement (relevant to the vyamati, or path of knowledge), are perceived by those around them as more caring and compassionate (relevant to the vyasucri, or path of love), commit crimes and acts of violence at almost insignificant rates compared to men (relevant to the vyathamë, or path of duty), etc. Their statistical superiority in most standard metrics of human achievement is a matter of clear record. The second is the fact that, across cultures, the traits most frequently defined as “feminine” are also the traits defined as “spiritual” or “humane”. There is a reason that Christianity was originally derided by its detractors as a religion of “slaves and women”. Humility, gentleness, compassion, patience, longsuffering, self-sacrifice, creativity, joy, innocence, purity, modesty… these are all traits to which the great Traditional religions exhort their followers, and they are also the traits most cultures decide are “feminine” in opposition to masculinity. The judgement of world cultures across history thus seems to be, in a surprisingly plain and bold-faced fashion, that to be most “feminine” (within the confines of that particular culture’s performance of femininity) is to be most fully human. (In this context, the expression “man of the world” may be seen to take on its truest, and most sinister, meaning.)

All of which led me to (what I hope is) an insight into the relationship of men to the vikhail. If men are, indeed, most closely tied to the vikhelic principle, we might expect this concept to have some particular relevance to them and, if we see men not simply as more fallen and thus worse than women, but as souls incarnated into less favorable conditions—conditions that, on our plane of manifestation, represent the most difficult conditions for a creature that is still maid—then there is a sense in which we could see maleness as the leading edge of the frontier, relative to our world, between ordinary manifestation and the hells that oppose it. (In other words, it is the point in our world where the condition of maid most closely approaches the condition of the demons without going over. [At some danger of creating a thealogically false impression, we might not be poetically amiss to call this the point on our plane where the Snake is trying hardest to take on the form of Maid, as long as we understand that men are not the Snake seeking to take on the form, but are rather the form struggling in the Snake’s jaws.] All maids, and thus women, too, are on this frontier in their own way, of course, since all maids suffer from Khear, but women are perhaps, on average, a step further back from the brink.) Men, as a somewhat weaker sex, are perhaps liable to the most temptations (hence their overwhelmingly preponderant presence in the board rooms, prisons, and elected offices that house our society’s most delinquent and depraved members) and, in consequence, they are more frequently called into the thickest fighting of the vikhail. (Not that women cannot struggle with issues of equal depth or do not have the opportunity to triumph over equal adversity, but they do appear from the statistics to be markedly less likely than men to struggle with murderous rage, pedophilic impulses, psychopathic indifference to the emotions and welfare of others, and similar depravities.) Men, as a collective group, have historically failed in the lesser vikhail to protect the old matriarchal societies from the advance of patriarchy and, as individuals, they (we) have also failed in the greater vikhail insofar as they (we) have all, in greater or lesser measure, become accessories to the patriarchy. I wonder if some rectification of our culture’s lionization of “masculinity” could be developed out of a healthy understanding of this situation and devotion to Sai Vikhë as One uniquely suited to help men overcome masculinity and cultivate feminine virtues. Something vaguely similar has occasionally been done by some Shakta sects and by Marian societies in Europe, I believe.

This has led me, perhaps, a little ways from Erin’s original questions, but I hope in a way that has been relevant at least to considerations of what “femininity” in the essential sense might mean and how traits or states of being that our society deems “unfeminine” might relate to it.

And, as always, I am no great raya expounding certain teaching, just a thoughtful devotee of Our Mother who likes to think out loud. These are the fruits of my reflections as a man and a Filianist to this point, but are in no way final or authoritative.