Today is International Women's Day, March 8

I hesistate to even start a thread, since there's so much really good/deep stuff going on already, and I don't really have time to formulate a position or statement here. But it's today, and by Jove, we only get one day a year, right?

Answer any or all questions or come up with your own:

Does integral theory fully embrace feminism? In what ways has it excluded when it should have included?

Is the Divine Feminine fully included? Or is the very notion of maps and lattices and altitudes just antithetical to really including the feminine aspectsand thier inherent unruliness? Or is it just that masculine energy has been directing things (as is necessary of course) and women just need to get their hands a bit more dirty?

Try to forgive the lack of defining these terms or do it for me if you like. I just really need to get this thread started and I can get back to it next week.

Liz

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

These are great questions, Liz. Thanks for starting this thread.

It gives me a lot to think about. I'll also probably have to ponder a bit and return next week …

So many threads, so little time …!

Mary

(p.s. – I do think March is Women's History Month – but probably only in the U.S. …)

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Thanks for starting this Liz - I'm definitely going to give this some thought.

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Happy International Women's Day!  Great idea for a thread. :)

Here are a couple of images of Sophia to celebrate.

http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/storage/212/20318/sophia20.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors." /> 

http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/storage/212/20319/SophiaAlexGrey.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors." />

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Liz,

I'm rather thrilled that you are posing these questions!

My PhD, due in December, is actually an attempt to answer some of these questions - i am setting up dialgoues between Wilber's work and feminist theorists and philosophers of religion - to see if I might not be able to brew up a more Integral Feminism : that is to add a female perspective on history and religion to Wilber's (predominantly male persective) map and to add AQAL to feminist thought. Its a challenge!

Also, I have an essay which is an early extract from my PhD called Towards an Integral Feminism which will be in AQAL journal (issue five I think)

Also, I set up the pod Masculine and Feminism Faces of the Divine
http://pods.zaadz.com/divinefaces
to discuss very much that question you pose about the Divine feminine.. I would love you to pose it there (also).. I have been sadly neglecting my pod for some time (eek, life keeps getting in the way).

love to talk about this more!
sass

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

I'm not an expert on Integral, or Feminism.  I have read and studied Ken Wilber's books, and discussed with my best friend, and listened to a lot on IN, and I have certainly followed the feminist movement - but I have never been to any Integral workshops and these are just my views on what females bring to the collective table.

I hesitate these days to call myself a feminist - because of all the man-hating implications that go along with that.  While I have certainly been an “angry feminist” in the past (when you really look, who could not be?), I have definitely never been a man-hater, although have projected my anger onto various men at times.  But to be honest, I am, however, a feminist (last time I checked  ; ) ).

Some things I like to ponder:

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, Yin is the female energy:  Earth, Female, Space, Stillness, Night, Darkness, Cold, Contraction, Interior, Falling, Condensation. 

Yang, or the male energy, has the characteristics of: Heaven, Male, Time, Activity, Day, Light, Heat, Expansion, Exterior, Rising, Rarification.

Every human contains both Yin and Yang qualities, but I wanted to put these descriptions out there for some possible jumping off points.

In some martial arts studies, they talk about the softness, Yin, female energy overcoming the hardness, Yang, male energy. (Again, in martial arts, you need both qualities).

In other traditions women are considered receptive, vessels, containers.  Mother Earth energy.  There is a popular saying: “If momma aint happy, aint nobody happy”.  I think this is true, to the extent that I think women hold the emotional space for families and even in the workplace (often I have been in this position), and probably the world-space.  This takes a lot of good, clean, steady energy - and I am better or worse at it depending on how well I am taken care of at the time.

These are just some thoughts I wanted to add to the discussion.  Hopefully this is not horribly off-topic.  I would love to hear more from the women on this forum who have attended Integral Feminism workshops! 

My general view, to answer one of Liz's questions, is that I have not seen enough female influence in Integral, and even in this forum.  I have tried to hang in there and add my own voice, as this forum is very important to me, but often feel lost in all the grunting, shoving, and intellectualizing going on here at times.  I have something to say too, dammint!  But this is good, it's stretching me and growing me and I am learning a lot and I am grateful for that.

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Wow, great! I can't wait for that to come to fruition. It does seem like once the space is created, the women (I shouldn't be so sexist-it's feminine energy, really) start blossoming into it. Men often don't leave that space (or create it) when they're doing the incessant intellectualization game (though I'm not minimizing the important contribution that makes). It's important, critical, really, that we do the work of including both energies in Integral.

I can't promise to put a lot of energy into another pos, to be honest. But I will keep the flame burning here.

Liz

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Liz -

I love what the guys bring to this Integral forum! - (don't want to be misunderstood on that)

And hey, you may not know this, but I can kick ass and take names when I have to, and I know you can to, as I'm sure a lot of the other ladies on here  : )

But I don't think Integral would be Integral without both/all of our male and female energies present.

I hope some other folks will jump in and add to this too.

-humble

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

oops, I see now Liz was responding to sass - my mistake!

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Thank you for this, Liz.

My lazy conceptualization is that the feminine energy is the space, and that the work of the feminine is the continual practice of opening in which arising can occur. Obviously the whole topic is much more nuanced than this, but again, when I'm feeling less-than-verbal, my general conception is that the feminine is the broader space in which the whole integral project emerges … and that the only way for integral to keep unfolding is if that space continues to be made (both in the largest sense and when it comes to the nuances).

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

What I want to ask is, what exactly is feminine as opposed to masculine and in what ways are they ontologically tied to the sexes and not notions of gender? That is, if gender is culturally prescribed, along with notions of feminine and masculine, then what are these in any ultimate sense?
Again, this is something that we talk about as though it is obvious, but we never look to our preconceptions of these notions.

rick

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

So then that which is feminine is the space, and that which is masculine is the process of unfolding?

rick

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Wow, you really are a deconstructionist, aren't you, Rick?

It's why I corrected myself. Both masculine and feminine are in all of us, so I don't know how much it's necessary, for me at least, to really go into just exactly what I've presumed. Feel free to do so, Rick. I'm just not that interested in it. Lived through that in the 80's. I'm just not that patient. I really do think there is a difference between men and women, as a bell-curve, spectrum kind of thang, not any sort of absolutist stance, and the science backs me up.

Yeah, I suck at defining terms. Please, everyone, pull up a chair, have some chips and have at it.

Certainly, I'm not proscribing that everyone has to adhere to Wilber or Deida's notions of what is feminine or masculine, but their work, as well as Gillgan's, is what resonates for me: agency and communion. Eros and agape.

I've seen a real tendency to push forward, to search out frontiers, and it seems like it's time for a bit of homesteading. Slow down, gather our thoughts and check to see what we've left out. Wilber has said he's really leaving the details for others to fill in, and it seems like time to do that.

My questions really are questions. I don't have a lot of answers or formulated opinions on where to go from here.

Liz

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Oh, and Humblgodes, will get back to what you said. I have to turn over the computer to my son for his homework.

Liz

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

No biggie LIz, really  : )  I was just re-reading after Rick and Siona's posts and felt like an idiot when I realized who you were talking to.

The way I understand Eros is as an ascendent love, a love from mankind to God.  The way I understand Agape, is as a descendent love, from God to mankind.

The Divine Feminine

“As much as I love you, we are not alone. Through loving you, I have learned to open my heart and feel everyone's heart. Their love is my love, as is yours. Their suffering is my suffering, as is yours. Just as I am committed to loving you open to God, I am compelled to claim the world as my lover who I must do my best to enter and open to God “- From Dear Lover, a book by David Deida

This is Agape. The Goddess. The feminine face of Spirit, the descending, immanent and “manifesting current of the Kosmos, the principle of embodiment, and bodily incarnation, and relationship, and relational and manifest embrace, touching each and every being with perfect and equal grace, rejecting nothing, embracing all.” (Wilber, A Brief History of Everything)

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Hi all,

I just wanted to jump in and say that I think Rick's question is a great one.

The more I look at the notions of masculine and feminine the less sure I feel about what they actually are. I think they are very deeply tied to (ontological : world views) notions about what men and women are .. (notions which themselves arise from a matrix of biology, culture, psychology and the social) . These older notions of necessity have to drop away or at the very least change profoundly as we (as a human group) continue to change.

Here is an extract from my blog - on masculine and feminine:

 I believe, along with [feminist theorists], that it is important that we give full regard to the ‘feminine’. It is also equally important that we should also be clear that those things named the ‘feminine’ are qualities which are not related to women in perpetuity. It is a mix of cultural, social, psychological and physiological factors that determine the manifestation of feminine and masculine attributes. In exploring the practice of self development it is important to both utilise the existing pool of knowledge and practices (the canon of teaching in the great transformation traditions, coupled with scientific insight) and also to acknowledge that less is currently known, or documented, in relation to the specifics of women’s developmental and spiritual practices. Separating type from gender, we should not collapse our inquiry into the depths of the questions: What is feminine? What, masculine? And how they relate to man and woman?
(full blog here )

Oh and btw, I have been informed that my Toward Integral Feminism article is in AQAL 1 vol 2,  pp297-319 (ie not vol 5 as i said previously)

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Oh, sure, make me try to think, whydoncha? Ok, Sass, will give this my full attention perhaps tomorrow.

Liz

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Wanting to bring this thread back up, and also pondering Rick's and Sass's comments above, I thought I'd transcribe a passage from Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything
(1996). In that book's introductory chapter, he spends quite a bit of time talking about feminism, gender roles, and gender value spheres.

In hopes of eliciting more comments, responses, and thoughts, here's that passage:

———————————————–

KW: Part of the problem is that, whereas masculine and feminine roles can indeed be redefined and refashioned–a long-overdue and much-needed refurbishing–nonetheless male and female characteristics cannot be changed much, and in our attempt to level the differences between masculine and feminine, we are dangerously close to trying to erase the difference between male and female. And while the former is a fine idea, the latter is impossible. And the trick is to know the difference, I suppose.

Q: So some of the differences between men and women are here to stay, and some need to be changed?

KW: Something like that. As we continue to investigate the differences between men and women, related to both sex and gender, there are indeed certain differences, even in the cultural domain, that crop up again and again across cultures. In other words, not only certain sex differences, but certain gender differences tend to repeat themselves cross-culturally.

It's as if the biological sex differences between men and women are such a strong basic platform that these biological differences tend to invade culture as well, and thus tend to sho up in gender differences also. So, even though gender is culturally molded and not biologically given, nonetheless certain constants in masculine and feminine gender tend to appear across cultures as well.

Q: Even a decade ago, that was a rather controversial stance. Now it seems more commonly accepted.

KW: Yes, even the radical feminists now champion the notion that there are, generally speaking, very strong differences between the male and female value spheres–that is, in both sex and gender. Men tend toward hyperindividuality, stressing autonomy, rights, justice, and agency, and women tend toward a more relational awareness, with emphasis on communion, care, responsibility, and relationship. Men tend to stress autonomy and fear relationship, women tend to stress relationship and fear autonomy.

Carol Gilligan's and Deborah Tannen's work has been central here, of course, but it's amazing that, in the span of just a decade or so, as you say, most orthodox researchers and most feminist researchers are now in virtual agreement about certain fundamental differences inthe male and female value spheres. This is also central to the new field of study known as “evolutionary psychology”–the effects of biological evolution on psychological traits.

And the tricky part now is: how to acknowledge these differences without using them, once again, to disenfranchise women. Because as soon as any sort of differences between people are announced, the privileged will use those differences to further their advantage. You see the problem?

Q: Yes, but is seems the opposite is now occurring. It seems that these differences are being used to demonstrate that men are rather inherently insensitive slobs and testoterone mutants who “just don't get it.” The message is, men should be more sensitive, more caring, more loving, more relational. What you call the male value sphere is everywhere under attack. The message is, why can't a man be more like a woman?

KW: Yes, it's a certain amount of “turnabout is fair play.” Used to be that women were defined as “deficient men” – “penis envy” being the classic example. Now men are being defined as “deficient women”–defined by the feminine characteristics that they lack, not by any positive attributes that they possess. Both approaches are pretty ridiculous, not to mention demeaning and degrading to both genders.

The tricky part, as I started to suggest, is how to do two very difficult things: one, to reasonably decide just what are the major differences between the male and female value spheres (a la Gilligan), and then, two, to learn ways to value them more or less equally. Not to make them the same, but to value them equally.

Nature did not split the human race into two sexes for no reason; simply trying to make them the same is silly. But even the most conservative theorists would acknowledge that our culture has been predominantly weighted to the male value sphere for quite some time now. And so we are in the delicate, dicey, very difficult, and often rancorous process of trying to balance the scales a bit more. Not erase the differences, but balance them.

–from pgs. 2-4 of A Brief History of Everything

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Yeah, it was the intro. of that book that made me realize that Ken could be very wrong.
Where do I start?
The work of Deborah Tannen was important 20 to 30 years ago, to start a needed discourse, but her actual work and methodology is far from professional. She's a great linguist, and her research in academic journals is good, but a social scientist she's not. Most of her research consisted of asking female friends to tell stories that happened to them at work in the past, or tackling questions like, “why do men never stop to ask for directions.” It was in taking a theoretical and historical linguist class that I learned that while all cultural anthropologists are also linguists, it doesn't go in reverse.

Wilber is smart enough to know this, but I've noticed a penchant in him to embrace and over look the flaws of research or discourse that agrees with his preexisting frameworks. This isn't unusual, and most great theorists are guilty of this.
Both Tannen and Wilber look at superficial cultural aspects of our society and almost ignore the cross-cultural data. Tannen incorporates Japanese data, but the Japanese are about 30 years behind the U.S. in feminist policies.  Neither of them notice that while there are always divisions of labor or other things based upon gender issues, they fail to state that these practices are wildly different across the ethnographic record, including who is given what gender! Many societies have up to 3 or 4 genders without problems.

He also mentioned the genetic and overall biological variation belonging to the different sexes in that intro., but this is based upon a misunderstanding of the data. Testosterone for example, doesn't cause aggression in males, it facilitates the prolonging of possible aggression.  It has the effect of minimizing the refractory period of the neural axons and receptors between the amygdela, which is responsible for the fight or flight mechanism, feelings of agitation, nervousness, etc…. to the rest of the hypothalamus.  Now Testosterone does not cause this reaction in any way, it just allows men to sustain these emotions, or a heightened state of awareness, or extended rage, beyond that of most women. Women, it has been shown are just as capable of these emotions and reactions, but aren't able to sustain them for long periods of time. This is because of testosterone, and this is one of the only psychological effects it has.
While we are animals in the end, we are like no other animal and are bound by our cultural processes, which ultimately has both a sanctioning and stigmatizing effect upon our behavior, and expression of emotions. It has been said by some anthropologists that without culture, we would literally not know how to feel.
How easily a man becomes anger or lashes out physically, is generally unrelated to the hormone and is really tied to personal temperament or is limited by social mores. As our society deems it more acceptable for women to express anger and to commit acts of violence, women do so correspondingly and the prison rates show this.
Sociologists, doing a long terms study on spousal abuse have shown that women are much more likely to instigate violence and to start a physical fight, either by hitting or throwing something at her husband, but the sexual dimorphism in our species means that the man is rarely hurt, and can cause bruising to a woman merely by defending himself or trying to restrain her.  This isn't to say that spousal abuse isn't wrong or a serious social issue, but does help to destroy the black and white dichotomy that I think Ken was also getting at in the intro.

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Thank you, holden, for these excellent points. I'd also like to recommend the work of the biologist Joan Roughgarden, who recently published the book Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. It's far from perfect, but important nonetheless.

Roughgarden makes a brilliant case that the culture-boundedness of Darwin heavily colored his theory of evolution. She points out that presuming two sexes is a heterosexual human bias, that myriad species contain far more than just homosexual / heterosexual behavior, that sexual ambiguity is far more normal in nature than we recognize, and that there's a generallly unacknowledged prevalence of multiple sexes, sexual switching, and same-sex sexual play in all manner of creatures. She lobbies for social selection, rather than sexual selection, as a key force in evolution.  

There's a measured review of the book here. It strikes me as worth of incorporation into any integral framework.

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

I just have a gift for getting threads off topic huh?

While it is true that paleoanthroplogy has been more than guilty of Homocentrism, and having been guided by a narrative more than by the available data, often because there was little to no data available at the time, I wouldn't want to put Darwin in that boat.  For the fact that he had absolutely no idea about genetics or the bio-chemical realities of mutation, or logitudinal studies of human migration, or a single hominin fossil, he thought out of the box.
The inheritance, variation, reproduction, and competition leading to natural selection are just as valid today as they were then. We now know about macro-evolutionary processes, climatic drivers, gene flow and the founder's effect leading to punctuated equalibrium, and the newest thing epigenetics, but that doesn't diminish Darwin's brilliance for what he figured out by looking at a population of finches on an island chain.
The fact is that we are one of the least variable species on the planet. So much so that 85% of our total genetic variation is within inbreeding population groups. Not only have be continuously interbread as a species since the emergence of Homo sapiens, but we have adapted to our environments via our use of culture and not biological means, which has had the effect of limiting biological selective advantage and making Darwin more and more irrelavent, until we have another pandemic at least.
The point of all this, is that Roughgarden is right in one sense, but wrong in another, if you've presented her accurately. While there are many genders, and there are there is sexual variability in that there are many instances that the sex of a baby can not be determind and is forced upon the baby in that situation, both with surgery and socially, for the purposes of Neo-Darwinian evolution there are only two sexes. Because Darwinian evolution is a zero sum game. Either you reproduce or you don't. For that to happen only two sexes matter. And homosexuality only becomes relavent in the extra support that a homosexual can offer the offspring of close kin. Which is actually one of the evolutionary theories for homosexuality.
Biology is not romantic.
Another good book you might like is Nancy Bonvillain's, “Women and Men: Cultural constructs of gender.”

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Biology might not be romantic, but it is intensely erotic. :) (And thanatoic, for that matter.)  Bear with me.

I certainly don't think that Darwin is at fault, nor do I think Roughgarden discredits his work. Again, in true integral fashion, she fleshes it out and expands upon it, incorporating more material and more truths. Darwin was brilliant. We're in total agreement there.

Here's the thing. It's true, as you wrote, that “either you reproduce or you don't,” but modern-day evolutionary biology is far more nuanced than that. Evolution covers the domain of species and genes, not individuals; talking about “you” makes no sense. What matters – as you've hinted at – is what genes are passed on, and social systems, as well as sexual systems, that determine this. Evolution is shaped by much more than a black-and-white balance of male and female. There are gradations, and these gradations play and important role.

So yes, there might be two sexes that matter, but these sexes are in flux (think of the creatures that switch from male to female depending on environmental need … as I said, not particularly romantic, but definitely hot ;), and occur along a spectrum. Again, I'm only advocating for a less strait-jacketed view of both sex and gender. We all, as Whitman wrote, contain multitudes.

Or orgies.

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Yeah, I think your right on the money.

rick

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

I so want to say something here……. but my thoughts have been dismantled and left in a pile.  I need some feminine to pick them up and put them in the laundry

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Liz started this thread with:

Does integral theory fully embrace feminism? In what ways has it excluded when it should have included?

Is the Divine Feminine fully included? Or is the very notion of maps and lattices and altitudes just antithetical to really including the feminine aspects and their inherent unruliness? Or is it just that masculine energy has been directing things (as is necessary of course) and women just need to get their hands a bit more dirty?

At the time it was posted I wanted so much to jump in and start a dialog in what I expected to be a very feminine exploration of our path in integral.  Maybe it would have been via personal experience or also in theory form yet with a softer gentler voice.  What happened IMO is the thread became very masculine very quickly.  This is not to say we couldn't have brought it back to feminine but it is a good example of how we didn't.

We are Feminine, We are Integral.  Do we have to label it feminism or can we say Feminine Integral?   It is through ourselves where the Integral Feminine will be defined.  IT IS US.

My personal experience has been that I can be very masculine and pointed when in inquiry mode and feminine and rounded when in midst of the flow of interaction.  Yet my masculine is very much present most of the time here in this forum.  Maybe it is because I ask and inquire as a way of deflecting my opinion (or my perceived lack of Informed opinion) and that is my shadow to overcome or maybe it is because this forum is Masculine and in order to be here I adapt.

The question for me is How am I going to dirty my hands and still keep my feminine flowing?

Starting to dig,

Gina 

Re: Today is International Women's Day, March 8

Oh, Gina – thank you for saying this, and for asking these questions.

And as you are posting this, these and similar questions are being raised in two other threads: The Making of the Song of the Nile and Faces of the Feminine and the Masculine.

I am going to copy your above post over on the Faces thread, as I think it would invite others to reflect on these questions too.

Digging you,

Mary