A month ago I attended this open forum on Gender Issues at one of my former universities. The invitation had been rather huge, the number of confirmed attendees had been rather decent, and yet the real number of people who ended up showing up was ridiculously tiny.
It’s funny how masses of people complain about stuff, but it’s only a very –and i mean ‘very’– small percentage of them who are truly willing to make a difference.
This event really opened my eyes to how serious Gender Issues actually are even in our day and age. I often hear people say stuff like “Oh, things are not that bad or different between the sexes anymore, so stop complaining, yo lame feminists”. And even though I’m no feminist, I can tell things are pretty much worse than we want to convince ourselves they are.
It’s true that in many countries, opportunities for men and women appear to be pretty much equal these days. However, the problem from my perspective doesn’t demand that more equality is created, because if that were the solution, men and women would be experiencing a pretty decent amount of harmony among themselves by now. I strongly believe that the problem lies in the fact that neither men nor women feel loved, acknowledged, honored and respected for who they truly are, by one another.
There’s just so much resentment coming from women towards men and viceversa. This so called ‘equality’ has not only allowed women to vote, get good-paying jobs, or have the right to wear pants; but it has also made gender-biased jokes, movies, and societal beliefs go both ways. Let’s say now women have the same right as men to diminish the opposite gender. Where’s the evolution in that? To me, it is just absolutely ridiculous!
Maybe one of my biggest take-aways from the open forum was that both, men and women, are still playing very wounded interchangeable roles as perpetrators and victims. And instead on focusing on the future we wish to create together as a species, we’re still focusing on the mistakes each gender has made in the past, focusing on the pain, the anger, the frustration and of course only to create more of it in the present.
What we focus on, we create more of. And we can in fact only choose whether to focus on separation or in union, because both cannot co-exist in one single reality.
I am sure that as human beings, both men and women, deeply wish to unite in harmony. But none of us is making the first move toward it because:
1. we think that the other gender should take the first stand –in the end, they owe it to us!
2. we are afraid to be ridiculed, rejected, hurt… again.
And clinging to this really immature posture only means that things will have to stay the same for another long time till one of us –or hopefully, both– grow up.
Creating more pain is unnecessary. It’s been too long of that already, and our hearts know it. We’re missing on the greatness of sharedness, the gifts of intimacy, the fun of co-existing & co-creating, but above all we’re giving up on the expansive power of love.
What would happen if we would just try to change bit by bit our current reality? If each one of us focused on becoming the type of man who honors women or the type of woman who honors men –a kind word at a time, a gentle action at a time, a smile at a time, a leap of trust at a time, with one single intention at a time to be loving and not judgemental.
I will tell you what would happen if we did that… We would simply MAKE IT HAPPEN! Because when we align our words, our thoughts and our actions to correspond with a new reality we want to create, we actually manifest it. It’s no science, it’s no mysticism, it just is. Human beings have the power to create whatever reality we choose to create, just look at how far we’ve come thanks to our determination to create flying machines that could not only browse the skies, but the universe. We can cure illness, we can explore the deepest parts of the ocean, we can clone organs…. How come we haven’t created harmony between Men and Women?
The truth is we haven’t set out minds and hearts to getting there. We have been too busy criticizing each other, making sexist jokes of each other, trying to prove who’s stronger than the other. And since that is where our words, thoughts and actions have been invested, that’s what we have been producing.
This tension is getting boring, my dears! We can really do better than this and we must. We ourselves already know how painful it’s been having to go through our parents fights, their divorces, our own experiences of sexual or emotional abuses and heart breaks. This violence between the sexes has to stop, and I mean ALL OF IT. Yes, even the most innocent sexist joke, because we’re bigger than that, greater than that, we’re freaking royal –if we choose to.
I’m determined to play big. I’m unavailable for Gender Issues… I’m only about Gender Consciousness now. Let’s heal the world with our highest example, one man and one woman at a time. Who’s coming with me?
With Love & Respect,
MaLe Corona <3
