SELF - AWARENE SS
A country boy discovers his feminine side
What are masculinity and femininity anyway? How do we define these terms beyond simply our gender?
by Tom Christen
S
omething I often think about is balancing masculine and feminine.
I’m a cis-gendered heterosexual white
Aussie guy who grew up in a country town so it’s taken me quite a while to wrap my head around this sort of stuff, but I find that the more I learn about it the freer I feel to be myself. In many ways I am quite masculine, but there are certainly some ways in which I am more feminine. What are masculinity and femininity
anyway? How do we define these terms beyond simply our gender? Being friends with some LGBTIQA
people has taught me that gender roles, along with sexuality, really are more of a social construct rather than a fixed biological reality. As time goes on, it seems to me that our concepts of what is masculine and feminine are shifting, becoming less fixed and more fluid.
HOW THIS NEW PERSPECTIVE PLAYS OUT IN MY DAY-TO-DAY People who know more about this than I do tell me that in Traditional Chinese Medicine, yin energy (which is feminine in nature) is considered
50 MAY 2017
How about cultivating our faith in ourselves and in the infinite wisdom that lies right here in the body’s natural ability to heal itself?
passive, whereas yang is more active. Yin is also about what is hidden or concealed, whereas yang is what is open or revealed. Yin energy, to me, moves inward from the outside; where yang is moving outward from within. Living a balanced life, for me, involves
balancing my yang and yin. It comes up in every part of my day. Waking up - do I spring out of bed as
soon as I wake up, go for a run and have a cold shower? Or do I hit the snooze button and snuggle in with a book for a few hours? When I meditate, do I focus my
attention inward and scan my body for feelings, as I learned on Vipassana retreats? Or, do I focus outwards, visualising spiritual deities or gurus or focus on my goals and what I want to manifest?
I do yoga and Qi Gong in the mornings. Do I bust out some Hatha or Ashtanga, doing strong dynamic moves? Or do I relax into some Yin Yoga, holding gentle stretches for long periods? In a similar way, Qi Gong can be done as explosive, sudden movements or with soft, flowing gestures. I lift weights and do bodyweight exercises most days, which is a fairly yang activity, but even that can be done in a more dynamic or a more static way. (Often what works for me is to put on some heavy metal and pretend I’m a weightlifting robot. Yeah, I’m fairly in touch with my feminine side, but at the end of the day I’m still a dude.) When I look at social media, I can
read other people’s posts or I can write my own content. Both are outwardly focused, but to me reading feels more receptive, and writing is more active. Many people say that receptivity is a component of feminine and being active is more masculine. I’ve gone through periods of being
very lazy, hibernating and “vegging out” most of the day. I find that a day or two of relaxing is okay and can be quite rejuvenating, especially if the rest of my
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