.jpg)
Viewpoint
Sexual Politics: The Rumor
by Barbara Emrys
Not so long ago I was in a relationship with a neurologist. We were on our way out to an important dinner one night when he discovered a small rip in the seam of his jacket. I found a needle and thread and was ready to take charge of the situation when he calmly took the needle away from me.
“I’ll do it,” he said quietly.
“But I’m the woman,” I insisted, certain that I had the upper hand.
“And I’m the surgeon,” he answered.
And just like that, the argument was over. The game, if you could call it that, was finished. My power card had been trumped. My role as a wizard of all-things-domestic had been undermined. I walked away from thread, from needle, and apparently from my purpose in life. If I ever wished to exploit my advantages as a woman, it would have to wait for another venue.
And, of course, there would always be another venue.
We will forever be playing power games—not necessarily because it’s a biological imperative for men and women, or even humans. Power—a radiant force that is implicit in all living beings—is a hard-won item only in the minds of men and women. Having reduced life’s greatest mysteries to mundane concepts, our minds proceed to assess their usefulness and to determine their overall global market value. Our idea of power is useful in a certain sense, but it is a small concept in comparison to the truth.
Politics is a term that suggests the use of tactics in order to gain power and influence. To put that definition into a sexual context, we need to be blind to truth. Life owns the truth, not our mental programming. It is life that makes sex a powerful act, not our whimsical ideas of right and wrong, weak or strong—or supreme. Supreme power created us and designed the game of existence on this planet, with all its evolutions, mutations and mandates. It is a supreme mandate for all creatures to reproduce. Gender distinction—at least in the world that is familiar to us—serves that mandate. So, gender serves the sexual act, which in turn serves life.
The wars between us—man against woman, human against human—are first and always waged inside our heads. To make the misguided assumption that men and women are at odds with each other, and to exploit that assumption, seems like a transparent act of treason against nature. Why would we commit such an act? Because we are unaware of ourselves—and because we are bullies. Once again, I’m speaking of the mind—us. We talk, we think, we create realities out of wild guesses and presumptions, and we insist that we own the truth. We come up with phrases like the weaker sex and the male animal to denigrate each other and life. We conceptualize gender wars and sexual politics and we strive to make these concepts real.
Humans are, in fact, animals. Out of words we build a narrative that elevates us to the stature of artists and custodians of this planet. We could exist without words, but it seems evident that they enhance our life experience. This fact alone makes us magnificent! Creating a world out of beliefs and concepts is not a talent reserved just for men or just for women. We do it as a species. We are endowed with an imagination that can lift us to exhilarating heights of awareness or drop us into bleak chasms of fear. It is an act of grace to apply words to a more loving human condition. There is no grace in using the fact of our genders—the servants to life’s supreme mandate—to create conflict.
So let’s dream this: that there is no human life without men and women. Any discussion about conflict is the result of repeated suggestion and too much hubris on the part of the mind. To be blind to the truth means we see only differences and discord—in gender, race and faith. There is no difference. There is no discord. There are just ideas of conflict waiting for us to come out and play and ill-considered rumors waiting to be endorsed.
Power. Justice. Loyalty. These words, once calculated to represent the truth, have lost all authority in their continual misdirection. The greatest human act of power comes when the mind does not believe itself, but uses its considerable influence to support life. It is to life that we owe all of our loyalty, and to that end, these beautiful bodies of ours deserve the full force of our good justice.
Let someone else play politics with the many changing ideas of power. We are not here to verify our worth. Why should we? For each of us, personal power is an inarguable and supremely genuine fact of life.
Barbara Emrys is a speaker, writer, and teacher of Toltec Dreaming, based on the philosophy of living life as art. The author of Dreams of Mirabel and Burundi and the Birth of the Beatles, she presently conducts monthly workshops in San Diego and is also holding a workshop in Teotihucan, Mexico, February 18-23, with don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements and the newly released The Fifth Agreement. Learn more at BarbaraEmrys.com.