An Oldie But Goodie
Published by Atheneum in 1981, decades before our current understanding of gender fluidity, Partners was written for cis-gender men and women struggling to reconcile changing sex roles within the context of marriage and committed relationships. However, the psychodynamics and interpersonal conflicts depicted in the analyses of the interviewed couples are just as relevant today as they were back in those gender-rigid dark ages.
Here's an excerpt from the concluding chapter:
Homo sapiens is so myopic that he seldom realizes what a social movement is about until dome years after it takes place, when it can be seen in its historical context. While in the midst of rapid social change, we are normally so hypnotized by the slogans and clichés used by the opposing factions to defend what they think are their best interests that we don’t see how the particular battle being fought fits into the course of mankind’s social evolution.
This has been true of the women’s liberation movement and its little brother, the male liberation movement. We have gotten so excited about the possible consequences of modifying traditional sex roles that we don’t realize that our efforts to change our rigid ideas about the nature of men and women represent an attack on the tip of a giant iceberg of socially conditioned habits and beliefs that dictate our behavior. The assumptions we hold about ourselves as male or female are only a tiny subset of a vast collection of categorical, self-fulfilling, and contradictory ideas about who we are, what we can and cannot do, and what we ought and ought not to be. Some small, still part of us suspects that all these ideas are garbage that needs to be sorted and selectively dumped, but it such comfortably familiar garbage that we hate to give it up no matter how useless and rotten it may be.
The best we can hope for, without an incredible amount of inner work toward spiritual liberation, is simply to loosen our hold on these ideas (or their hold on us) so that we are not quite so enslaved by them. Our ideas about sex roles are a good place to start loosening the conceptual bolts since these particular ideas influence, directly and indirectly, so much of our behavior. If we can create a little space between ourselves and just this one set of beliefs, we will greatly increase our options in life.
Our options will increase because, for one thing, we will probably become more androgynous. At first glance, androgyny, which means the coexistence of both masculine and feminine characteristics, may seem a dubious reward. It hints of hermaphroditism and sexual anomalies. One might envision a nation of trousered bisexuals, whose gender is identifiable only by examination of their quite possibly atrophied genitalia. Actually, androgyny is a much more abstract and inclusive concept that predates the idea of the bisexual hermaphrodite. It is, according to Jung, an archetype present in the unconscious of all human beings and represented in classical and primitive myths the world over. June Singer, in her book entitled Androgyny, defines it as the expression of a fundamental duality in unity, the masculine/feminine polarity coexisting in a primordial unity inaccessible to ordinary consciousness. In modern day usage, the term refers to the union of the masculine and feminine qualities within the individual.
Becoming androgynous does not imply losing the qualities associated with one’s gender and taking on those associated with the opposite sex. It involves developing those opposite-sex qualities that already exist within us and manifesting them in ways determined by our own-sex qualities. Thus an androgynous woman’s aggressiveness is tempered with a feminine sensitivity, and an androgynous man’s capacity for feeling is informed with a masculine resilience.
We are, of course, all potentially androgynous. We just don’t know it because our cultural conditioning has encouraged us to push those tendencies identified with the opposite sex deep into the unconscious. There they lie, restless and undeveloped, only to pop up in undisciplined forms at inappropriate moments. Were we to become aware of them and integrate them into our personalities, so that they would be subject to conscious control, they would be less liable to possess us and desex us than they are when they remain repressed…
Perhaps the greatest reward conferred by androgyny is not the expansion of the self but the possibility of achieving a greater degree of intimacy with one’s mate. It has been observed time and time again by sages and philosophers, and sometimes by psychologists and psychiatrists, that only when we are complete in ourselves can we achieve union with another. One way to become complete in oneself is to make the unconscious conscious, which involves, in part, acknowledging the existence of our opposite-sex qualities. By doing that, we gain at least some understanding of previously unknown aspects of ourselves, and once we understand ourselves, that is, recognize, accept, and assimilate the components of our personalities, we may be able to understand our partners. It is probably safe to say that a woman can understand a man only insofar as she understands the masculine side of herself, and a man can understand a woman only insofar as he understands the feminine side of himself.
Why is this understanding so important? Because without it there can be no real love, only infatuation or blind adoration. Intuitively we sense this when we complain of being misunderstood by our mates, for we know that unless we are understood, it is not we ourselves who are loved but only an idea of ourselves.
Here's an excerpt from the concluding chapter:
Homo sapiens is so myopic that he seldom realizes what a social movement is about until dome years after it takes place, when it can be seen in its historical context. While in the midst of rapid social change, we are normally so hypnotized by the slogans and clichés used by the opposing factions to defend what they think are their best interests that we don’t see how the particular battle being fought fits into the course of mankind’s social evolution.
This has been true of the women’s liberation movement and its little brother, the male liberation movement. We have gotten so excited about the possible consequences of modifying traditional sex roles that we don’t realize that our efforts to change our rigid ideas about the nature of men and women represent an attack on the tip of a giant iceberg of socially conditioned habits and beliefs that dictate our behavior. The assumptions we hold about ourselves as male or female are only a tiny subset of a vast collection of categorical, self-fulfilling, and contradictory ideas about who we are, what we can and cannot do, and what we ought and ought not to be. Some small, still part of us suspects that all these ideas are garbage that needs to be sorted and selectively dumped, but it such comfortably familiar garbage that we hate to give it up no matter how useless and rotten it may be.
The best we can hope for, without an incredible amount of inner work toward spiritual liberation, is simply to loosen our hold on these ideas (or their hold on us) so that we are not quite so enslaved by them. Our ideas about sex roles are a good place to start loosening the conceptual bolts since these particular ideas influence, directly and indirectly, so much of our behavior. If we can create a little space between ourselves and just this one set of beliefs, we will greatly increase our options in life.
Our options will increase because, for one thing, we will probably become more androgynous. At first glance, androgyny, which means the coexistence of both masculine and feminine characteristics, may seem a dubious reward. It hints of hermaphroditism and sexual anomalies. One might envision a nation of trousered bisexuals, whose gender is identifiable only by examination of their quite possibly atrophied genitalia. Actually, androgyny is a much more abstract and inclusive concept that predates the idea of the bisexual hermaphrodite. It is, according to Jung, an archetype present in the unconscious of all human beings and represented in classical and primitive myths the world over. June Singer, in her book entitled Androgyny, defines it as the expression of a fundamental duality in unity, the masculine/feminine polarity coexisting in a primordial unity inaccessible to ordinary consciousness. In modern day usage, the term refers to the union of the masculine and feminine qualities within the individual.
Becoming androgynous does not imply losing the qualities associated with one’s gender and taking on those associated with the opposite sex. It involves developing those opposite-sex qualities that already exist within us and manifesting them in ways determined by our own-sex qualities. Thus an androgynous woman’s aggressiveness is tempered with a feminine sensitivity, and an androgynous man’s capacity for feeling is informed with a masculine resilience.
We are, of course, all potentially androgynous. We just don’t know it because our cultural conditioning has encouraged us to push those tendencies identified with the opposite sex deep into the unconscious. There they lie, restless and undeveloped, only to pop up in undisciplined forms at inappropriate moments. Were we to become aware of them and integrate them into our personalities, so that they would be subject to conscious control, they would be less liable to possess us and desex us than they are when they remain repressed…
Perhaps the greatest reward conferred by androgyny is not the expansion of the self but the possibility of achieving a greater degree of intimacy with one’s mate. It has been observed time and time again by sages and philosophers, and sometimes by psychologists and psychiatrists, that only when we are complete in ourselves can we achieve union with another. One way to become complete in oneself is to make the unconscious conscious, which involves, in part, acknowledging the existence of our opposite-sex qualities. By doing that, we gain at least some understanding of previously unknown aspects of ourselves, and once we understand ourselves, that is, recognize, accept, and assimilate the components of our personalities, we may be able to understand our partners. It is probably safe to say that a woman can understand a man only insofar as she understands the masculine side of herself, and a man can understand a woman only insofar as he understands the feminine side of himself.
Why is this understanding so important? Because without it there can be no real love, only infatuation or blind adoration. Intuitively we sense this when we complain of being misunderstood by our mates, for we know that unless we are understood, it is not we ourselves who are loved but only an idea of ourselves.
