All our lives, both women and men are told they must fit into prescribed gender roles—women as nurturing and men as enterprising, women as givers and men as takers, women as “gentle flowers” and men as “strong warriors.”
What we’re not told is that everyone has within them a “warrior.” Everyone has a “gentle flower.” Everyone has the capacity to nurture, as well as the capacity to create and be enterprising. Everyone has the capacity to be a “taker,” or as I like to frame it, a “receiver.” Too much of the time, we suppress those traits inside us because we have been conditioned to dismiss certain traits as either “masculine” or “feminine.” The reality is, these traits are just “human.” There are appropriate times for a man to nurture, as well as a woman. There are situations where women need to be “receivers” and men need to be “givers,” and vice versa. There are times in everyone’s lives they need to be strong to make it through the day, and there are times when everyone needs someone else to carry them.
It bothers me to see human characteristics such as these assigned to a particular gender, as if our body parts determine our humanity.
Life throws us a wide range of experiences that call for a wide range of emotions, a wide range of expression, and a wide range of responses to the many challenges we will face. It does us all a disservice to deny such intrinsic parts of our humanity in favor of “fitting in” to a limiting set of ideas about how we are “supposed” to act.
To me, the greatest challenge we face is unlearning the ways we have been conditioned to limit ourselves, and learning to embrace fully our whole humanity. Being authentic, despite the fact that doing so doesn’t fit into the boxes society would like us to maintain, is a rebellious act. Rejecting the limiting ideas we have been fed is revolutionary. Embracing our whole selves, being authentic and true to ourselves, regardless of what others say about it, is how we will change the world.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Juana is the creator of The Apple Orchard, a Facebook Group that educates and supports parents interested in energy healing.
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Photo credit: iStock
This is the kind of babble that inspires teenage girls, and not much else.
The purpose of gender roles is not to deny whatever might exist underneath, but to enforce social inequity through gender specialization. “Do whatever you want” is not the optimal way to structure a society. Your argument is one based on compassion for others, and therefore isn’t much of an argument.
Where is “do whatever you want” written here?
Beautiful and inspiring to read. We are a blend and a balance of many different aspects.
Thank you! I appreciate your commentary.
Loved the article… Reminds of boys and girls when they are young and unfiltered by the world. They are just little humans.
Thanks so much for stopping over here and leaving a comment. I appreciate it!
I agreed with your article, Juana Garcia. Too many men have been denied a full range of emotions and they paid a physical and mental price for it.
Absolutely. We all would benefit so much from allowing every human the full range of expression inside them. I agree, the price men have paid – and it goes without saying, and their children have paid – for this, is much too high.
Thank you so much for your comment. I greatly appreciate you sharing your experience.
Btw. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Agreed!
Thank you Juana for submitting this story in response to the Interactive Quote of the Day. I really enjoyed working with you on this piece! Congratulations!
Thanks, Melissa. Likewise! Thank you for everything.
I’d be on board with that.
Rock on. 🙂
Me too. I’ve been saying this for years. I am a human first, and a male human ad an adjective.
Absolutely, Mark. We are all human first, and I think too often, we’re expected to be some boxed-in version of ourselves first, instead.
Down with limiting boxes! 🙂