For most of my life I have bought into a myth of such magnitude that it is impossible to either calculate or fathom the sum total of its catastrophic effects. It is a myth that is held almost universally and one that is encouraged and perpetuated by both men and women equally. Popular culture coined the term for this myth, ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus:’ in a nutshell it describes the seemingly irrevocable differences between men and women. And up until very recently this is something that I simply took as gospel.
I felt that everywhere I looked there was evidence to support the myth. Growing up in the 70’s in England, the differences between what the two sexes actually did was stark.
Men almost exclusively held positions of power, not just as world leaders but leaders in religions worldwide, as well as in government, pretty much all businesses, schools, local authorities and indeed most organisations. Women on the other hand were generally always the ones who were at home with the kids and if they did work, then it tended to be as nurses, in the typing pool, as secretaries, in the school canteen etc. It was a given that women did the jobs that supported the men to be able to do their jobs.
The myth was mirrored in my own home. My dad was a manager in an insurance company. He often travelled a lot for work. My mum looked after my sister and I when we were smaller and then when she was able to return to work, my mum worked in secretarial and personal assistant roles. I never remember Mum working for a woman, only ever men. The other thing that mum did, which seemed to bolster my belief that men and women had very different qualities, was that she ‘helped out a lot.’ Mum did lots of charity work and she cared constantly for those around her. As a result, I grew up believing that women were naturally more caring than men.
Even though I grew up in a family where my parents shared the decision-making process and always showed one another the greatest respect, I was very aware that this was often not the norm. I knew just from being out in the world that men were by default the decision makers – they were the ones that said what was going to happen. I knew that they didn’t have to justify or reason why; they were able to have the last say based purely on the fact that they were men. I was also aware that violence towards women was an accepted part of our society and I saw what I deemed to be the ‘aggressive side of men’ as simply yet another glaringly obvious sign of the differences between men and women.
Growing up, the evidence was all around me: men and women were indeed a completely different species. As I became a teenager and started to go out with boys, the differences between the two sexes were further confirmed. I had boyfriends who drove cars in destruction derbies, boyfriends who volunteered to fight fires, boyfriends who were enthusiastic about cars and motorbikes, boyfriends who loved competitive sport and boyfriends who loved going to the pub with their mates. Basically, boyfriends who loved doing things that many girls didn’t.
Although my relationships always started off well, they also ended up full of struggle, a familiar pushing and pulling, a lack of understanding one another, an inability to see things in the same way – basically a breakdown in communication. I remember being in my mid-twenties and thinking to myself that although I was not attracted to women in a sexual way, I could see the benefits of being in a relationship with another woman – at least we would speak the same language!
So when in 1992, John Gray’s book ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ was published, I thought, “How true that is – men and women are indeed a different species,” and I saw the prospect of spending my life in a relationship with a man from another planet as rather gloomy.
In the last several years, I have been involved in the process of healing: a process that has involved the stripping back of many layers. Layers of muck that I have accumulated not just from my current life, but from many lifetimes. These overlapping layers are multitudinous, made up from an array of different things; reactions to being hurt, beliefs that I have taken on, ideals that I have tried to live up to. They are many and varied but basically what they all have in common is that they are all not me.
When healing is true, then the false layers get stripped back and removed for good.
I have received true support for this healing process through Universal Medicine. There are many men and women who are on the return leg of the journey with me and as a result of being with, and feeling the quality of the men, who are also stripping back their layers, I have had a revelation of such magnitude that it has quite literally taken the top of my head off.
When you strip back everything that does not belong, then what you are left with in both men and women is exactly the same essence; identical in fact. Ok sure, we have different bodies and yep, men can lift more weight than women, but in our essence, we are the same. The alarming thing is that I have had the living evidence with me my whole life: I have a dad who is the most tender of men and a partner who is a naturally gentle and caring man but the belief that men and women are different was so strong that it overrode the evidence that was right under my nose.
How destructive a force must beliefs be that they have the power to do this?
What these realisations have led me to understand is that any differences that exist between the two sexes have been introduced by us and are as healthy as the introduction of myxomatosis to rabbits. What’s worse is that we have lived with these introduced changes for such a long time that we have come to see them as normal but they are not – they are not normal at all.
So, something to ponder on is how would life be if we lived free of the largely unchallenged myth that ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ and simply allowed men and women to be who they naturally are?
By Alexis Stewart, Disability support worker, yoga teacher, massage therapist, mother, partner, patch of God, Sydney, Australia
Further Reading:
Equality – What Does it Mean?
Gender Equality – It Starts With Me Now
Love – the missing link in gender equality
Gender equality: how far have we come?
579 Comments
Great question Hm and one that leads to another question, which is ‘why isn’t saying yes to who we are the same as saying yes to society?’
Society has separated men and women – but a baby boy and baby girl has little difference. So the question is are we growing up saying yes to who we are or yes to society?
I agree Jenny and those ‘beautiful qualities’ that you so truthfully attest to, get completely trampled in the process of squishing ourselves into the mutated versions of men and women that we have currently settled for.
This is just creating more separation and false ‘role modelling’. We have beautiful qualities as men and women that come from the one same source.
Super Alexis. To approach a woman with a picture and believe she is different, is a block on understanding and having an equal relationship at the start. Good to let these images go.
By seeing men as ‘men’ and women as ‘women’ we are prevented from understanding that everyone is a potential rabbit warren into God.
Great point, lets see us as equal and potentially then we can see the depth of God within us.
The equality of God is who we all are and so if we’re not able to see each other as equal then there’s no way that we can possibly know God.
Pictures keep us stuck in very narrow bandwidths, they prevent us from ebbing and flowing in the way that the rest of life naturally does.
Pictures corrupt. When men are not only the species that hold power or decision making power, Women are not the gender who only know how to take care of children and stay at home. We are much much more than pictures allow us to be. Without pictures we are free to be ourselves, not perfect but free to express and free to change and deepen to expand.
So the antidote is to run our own lives as much as possible, which means making conscious choices with our body as consistently as we can because the moment that we are not consciously choosing, then something else is choosing for us.
Yes, beliefs are a very powerful and destructive force if we allow them to run our lives.
I remember reading that book two or three times!!!! One thing that stood out the most was the “rubber band effect” whereby they describe men as being in a pattern of getting really close, then freaking out and temporarily running away. The advice was to give them space to come back in their own time. In a way this has some truth to it but my feeling is that it applies to both men and women; as you say, we are equal and the same inside.
We have all been hurt in one way or another and its often that hurt that’s the foundation for a need that could perhaps lead to us starting off eager, only to freak out that we may get hurt like last time and therefore run away. In that instance its up to both men and women to have understanding and provide space for the other to feel what they’re feeling without imposing and needing them to be a certain way. When hurt, that can be challenging and I guess that’s why relationships can be so tricky, because we have let our hurts define us rather than the fantastic-ness we all actually really in fact are!
Any-thing that only contains ‘some truth’ doesn’t come from truth and if it doesn’t come from truth then it is designed to keep us from the truth.
Amazing how a myth or slogan or motto can shape our whole lives around something that’s no even true. It really reminds me of two things:
1. How powerful our words are
2. To be incredibly discerning of what’s true or not
Otherwise we can end up building our whole world on premises that are not even remotely accurate.
and Meg ‘building our whole world on premises that are not even remotely accurate’ is precisely what we’ve done. If we pulled the plug on every single lie that currently exists then the whole illusion that we are currently living under would collapse over night and we would be left with the truth of all things.
No matter what the package, we are all the same in essence regardless of our gender, age, sexuality or nationality. There may be differences in our expressions but in our inner hearts we are all equal.
“So, something to ponder on is how would life be if we lived free of the largely unchallenged myth that ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ and simply allowed men and women to be who they naturally are?” This myth seems to be an easy way out for both sexes to not take responsibility in the challenging areas where we are fully capable to do so.
Irena although I agree that ‘ this myth seems to be an easy way out for both sexes to not take responsibility in the challenging areas where we are fully capable to do so’, following the myth does not lead to ‘an easy way’, per se, quite the contrary in fact. Relationships between the sexes for all of us, have become a very poor representation of the united and glorious expression that they can be.
Indeed, we are all the many glorious expressions of God.
We are all one and the same just with different ways of expressing ourselves.
I too bought in on this believe Alexis, like many many others did and still do. The truth is: It divides society. If the world would accept and see that men and women have the same essence but only different expressions, it would be a paradigm shift in the same order as accepting that the world is not flat but round. Again back to the planet metaphors:-)
We have all reincarnated numerous times, lived under many circumstances, various nationalities and as both men and women. That is why it is ridiculous to fight and act superior because of one thing or another – and certainly irresponsible to champion such behaviour by ascribing bogus causative factors such as men and women coming from separate planets. We are all in essence the same and we need to return to honouring of this fact.
As I was reading this I had a thought…I love seeing men with babies, I just melt. Then I realised that why is this different to a woman holding a baby? Is it because I don’t see that as often? We have so many pictures of what men and women are like that we can often just convince ourselves that those pictures are true.
Take away the pictures, take away the ideals and take away the beliefs and we are largely left to simply be in our essence.
Deep down under all the layers we are all the same in essence, a quality within that is tender, loving and caring
How can we differ men and women when the innate quality for all is to live the harmony that resides within?
Quite simply because we are living in such an estranged way from the essence of who we all are.
The image of men and women being form a different planet is an image that is false and we only use it to maintain the configuration between man and women that feels comfortable to us and gives us a position in our relationships and into society. Much different from when we would let go of these images. We then are asked to live from our innermost and besides the disturbance that this can bring in the beginning compared to the comfort of the images, we are well on our way back to living closer to the nature of our being than ever before.
What amazes me is just how comfortable we are with discomfort! Most of us not only accept the discomfort and seeming incompatibility between the sexes but we actually expect it. In fact our whole notion of life is being comfortable with our accepted discomfort. We expect work to be a bit of a grind, we all agree that families are painful, we anticipate trouble from our kids, we’re not surprised when things don’t work out and often feel nervous and uncomfortable when they do. We have accepted such a reduced version of life and seem to be completely at ease with it. It’s crazy because we could actually be living Heaven on Earth, not as some airy fairy idea but in a very practical lived way and we shall, it’s only a matter of time and space.
Well if that were the case Andrew then the world would be a very different place.
What if instead of the age old story of the separation of the sexes and that the genders are very different from each other, we understood that in every man and woman there are maleness and femaleness energies or expressions and if both the genders balanced these within their own gender, they would understand and connect with each other in a beautiful divine union
Indeed Brendan, while the image of men are from Mars and women are from Venus brings the idea that the genders have no commonality, letting go of these will open us for the truth that besides the bodily expression men and women have so much more in common and when in union make up the whole.
We are the warp and the weft threads of life.
We are all from the stars – that’s another way to phrase it 🙂
Yes and therefore we each shine equally brightly! The need for individuality and comparison takes us so far away from the Light and Love we naturally are.
Well said Lucy. The truth is we are the collective Light and Love of God, there is no such thing as individuality, it’s simply part of the illusion to keep us at war with our imagined selves. But in truth there is no such thing as ‘self’ there’s only the collective Us. The One melting pot of all that God is, understanding that there is no-thing that he isn’t.
Beliefs have an enormous impact on us, even with, like you’ve said, the evidence right under our nose we stick to what is there in general in society. When we start to respect the truth we feel in our body, beliefs get exposed for what they are and we can choose to not buy into them any longer and see how men and women share the same essence but in a female or male body.
Annelies having just, in the last few weeks managed to escape the stranglehold of a belief that I had to do with what I could and couldn’t eat, I have been reminded yet again of the overpowering effects of beliefs. And yes, the evidence was ‘right under my nose’ that the way that I was eating was not working for me, but I continued on, held tightly in the grip of the belief. Now that I am free of that debilitating belief, I can feel how hemmed in and held down I was by it and also how being caught up in beliefs blinds us to the truth.
Alexis what you say is brilliant when we are held in the grip of an ideal or belief we are completely taken, blind sided by the energy that doesn’t want to be exposed. When we get to a level of awareness and understanding the energy has to loosen its grip and falls away then there is such a feeling of freedom within our bodies that we have at last let go of the contraction that has held sway maybe for many lifetimes.
Mary I get the feeling that there is a part of us that holds onto ideals and beliefs with as much force as ideals and beliefs hold onto us. Ultimately each and every one of us knows deep down the truth of who we all are and so if we know that then equally we must also know that ideals and beliefs are just that – ideals and beliefs, without an ounce of truth in them.
As you described the things your previous boyfriends where interested in I reflected on my own and the many other men who are also on their own path of healing. And that macho man stuff simply isn’t there or it’s dying out. Leaving nothing but a tenderness that asks the same of me.
Unless we fundamentally understand ourselves to be ‘equal members of humanity’ first, then attempting to see others as this, will remain a notion, all be it a very grande one. It is what is known by the body that gets communicated, not what we wish for with our minds.
We take life as proof of the way ‘it is’, if only we flipped this around and lived life from the deep knowing, that we are divine, sons of God, then we would see that there is so much more beauty, to you and to me. Thank you Alexis.
We tend to see life through our hurts and hold back our true expression to avoid further ‘injury’ but when we truly open up to seeing and feeling each other at a deeper level we can experience the delicate and precious and tender essence that lives within everyone.
We only need look to young children and how they interact with other children. No matter their gender, children are generally open to just expressing and feeling from their bodies with each other. There is no stereotyping or biases. This would suggest that it is a natural way of being with others that we know/knew but moved away from for our own reasons.
I’m not convinced that children move away from ‘expressing and feeling from their bodies’ for their ‘own reasons’. I have come to understand that the world is purposefully set up to prise us away from the natural connection that we have with our bodies and this it does in order to disable our inbuilt sat navigation systems, the very things that guide us home.
Indeed there is no natural stereotyping or biases when we see young children’s interaction and this suggests “it is a natural way of being with others that we know/knew but moved away from”. I have witnessed that the more any of us choose to return to and honour our true expression, the less the divide becomes in our relationships.
Far wiser to support everyone to return to the truth of their expression than impose myths to engrain and legitimise disharmony between genders.
Michael, I feel the same can be said of our relationship with ourselves. We are divided and separated from ourselves, which prevents us from ‘recognising the true qualities and virtues that we can bring’.
We use gender as just another way of dividing and separating ourselves instead of recognising the true qualities and virtues that they can bring.
And although I agree that feeling the truth in our own bodies sounds simple, in practice it’s not that easy. The reason being is that life has been purposefully set up to disrupt both our connection to our bodies and our bodies themselves. We are constantly bombarded by distractions that aim to draw us away from our natural connection and these distractions have done such a good job for such a long time, that it now feels unnatural for most people to connect back to their bodies.
We are given so many messages about men and about women that it is hard to discern truth unless we simply feel in our own bodies the essence of everyone we meet because our bodies absolutely know truth.
Discovering who we are is more fascinating than any activity or learned job.
The problem with this being, that when a so called ‘fact’ is backed up by our experiences, not only do we not question it but we then confirm it as being true.
It is so important to challenge the things that we automatically accept as fact when they are not actually true at all.
We have been willing to buy into this lie, as it is somehow easier to accept differences than do the work to open ourselves to the understanding of our natural oneness. It’s easy to have issues with people, especially of the opposite sex. Not so easy to take a look at ourselves and uncover the issues that we hold that get in the way.
Exactly, it’s only by knowing the truth of who we are that we can possibly know the truth of who another is.
I don’t know how many times I have heard men say that they don’t understand women and they are a completely different species but I guess this is a result of us being moulded into the ideals and beliefs of what men and women are instead of us being who we truly are.