masculin/feminin

I can't believe how busy I've been and have decided that I incredibly value my downtime. I am elated that I no longer have to work 2 jobs and am now down to just working one (isn't 1 enough?) until December and then I'll have no job at all!

Lately I have been pondering the notion of masculine and feminine because my girlfriends and I have been observing that we often possess more masculine qualities than our male counterparts. And what I mean is what is typically known as qualities that are typically assigned to men and qualities that are typically equated with women. However, I think our society is wrong to call them masculine and feminine, but we are offered no other vocabulary in the English language and American culture in which to describe these qualities. Why is a man who shows emotion called feminine? And why is a feminine man considered weak or even "gay?" And why is a woman who is strong and powerful called masculine, or even worse domineering, or a bitch? What I'm getting at is why is it considered negative in our culture if a man is soft and nurturing, and a woman is hard and decisive?

I prefer the concept of yin yang. It carries no stigma of flip flopped gender roles. Even the symbol of yin yang is more forgiving. It is not a circle divided equally in black and white. It is a circle whose amorphous halves flow into each other and even contain an eyelet of the other within its core. I believe it is much healthier to use the yin yang model with the human species. We all possess soft and hard qualities. We are all black and white. We humans, as a species, are all both opposing sides.

What comes with seeing the human race as yin and yang is that you can't have one without the other. You can't have hard without soft. You can't have nurturing without demanding. You can't be one half of the whole because the other half will fill itself inside those areas where you are lacking. And we all need the balance. White without black seems blank and black without white looks like nothing.