What Actually Holds Women Back?
Questioner: Just a thought. I have seen that the basic approach, the very base of how a woman is looking at the world, as well as I have come near to a woman’s mind and I’ve tried to understand is that they think through a lens that I cannot even fathom is that obviously has the kids in the center. They are always thinking about a family. In fact, when I look at societies, when I look at colonies, when I look at the whole thing or when I go to a mall or anywhere, I find that every kind of infrastructure that has been laid in the name of civilization has been laid keeping the family in the center and family basically means that you are simple nature’s game. Because ultimately what we are, we are products of nature and everywhere when I look at in nature, the only two things are getting — that save the body and propagate the body. Genes are being saved; genes are being propagated. So, I always find that the basic thing that socialization is doing is that they are saving the human body and they are propagating it. Here what I find is that because the woman’s role is that they are the ones who are creating that body inside. Whereas man has the freewill of impregnating may be two or three women. It doesn’t have any kind of what you can say, liability or collateral liability just after the act. So, I have observed that for a woman, the family, the kid is very important, the nest is very important.
Acharya Prashant: This woman that you are talking of, is she a function merely of her body or also of the school she studied in, the college and university she went to, the belief system she inherited from her grandfather and mother, the kind of things she saw in the movies and the serials? Is she a function merely of a body or also of these things?
Questioner: But these things are also a genesis. They are coming from somewhere — the university or the belief system.
Acharya Prashant: They are not really coming from the woman herself. They’re coming from the collective ignorance of mankind.
Questioner: And the ignorance might have started from the biology itself.
Acharya Prashant: That’s true. The ignorance starts from the body itself, right? And the ignorance is therefore on both the sides.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, the Marxist feminists say; I mean it’s a very cliçhe statement, that sex is born but gender is created.
So, the probing, fundamental probing is, in the process of gendering, so sex is assigned to you when you are born by the doctor seeing the chromosome that you carry and your genitals, but the gender that is assigned to you in the process of gendering is indeed very complicating.
Acharya Prashant: Fully agree. That’s why the female gender in, let’s say, India, will be very different from a person of the same gender, in a first world country. But physically they will be absolutely alike.
Questioner: Two kinds of bodies are born and so what forces decide which body is going to become so called man and which body is going to become a woman?
In this sense the LGBTQ discourse is very revolutionary because they have proven that a female body can also be a man. That you can have genitals, I mean you can have a vagina and be a man. So, this is a revolution which is really trying to deconstruct the process of gendering — if you are a male you have to be a man only. So?
Questioner: My basic argument is that when it comes to, I totally agree with the fact that a woman is born, but gendering is something that is a long-drawn process. My argument here, as far as my observation or my convictions stands is, that the biology has a very vital function in the basic approach of how they perceive the world. And that has the kid in the center. That is one of the most core values of their existence, because logically speaking, just my own logic if I may, that nature, we are a part of nature, apart from the from the fact that spirituality enables us to go beyond nature. But we are a part of nature. What are our basic functions? Okay, we have the civilization, we are earning, we are dead. But ultimately is propagating the body. So, if the basic function of our existence as human beings or as any kind of creature in the animal kingdom is — Save your body and propagate the body. The basic approach propagates from that objective and that objective in itself, when looked at from a woman’s perspective, it is that they have to think about the kid. With gendering, the intensity with which the value that objective that may change. A woman in America — she might not think about a kid or might not favor so much. But the fact that they have that very system of thinking about the kid itself, I think that very value system, that very value or that very outlook is something that is missing in man.
Acharya Prashant: It’s not missing, it’s relatively smaller in man. But all that you are saying is applicable only as long as we take ourselves as physical beings, as you said, parts of the animal kingdom, driven purely by our physical desires. If we are driven purely by that, then obviously we live to just eat and reproduce. But that’s not where we stand as human beings.
I would agree that even in a well-educated and spiritually liberated woman, the desire for a kid would be probably relatively larger compared to that in a man. But I don’t suppose that kind of a difference is a problem. Because ultimately, the earth does need kids. And I’m saying this with all consideration. We are talking of responsible reproduction. We are not talking of zero reproduction. So, we are not wanting a state where the woman becomes an absolutely zero woman with no desire at all, to bear kids. That’s not the objective, is that? That’s not the objective. What we want to talk of is whether the compulsive desire or passion to keep the kid and the family at the center of her life is necessary, right?
If the kid is just one of things in her life, what’s the problem? What’s the problem? Nobody would say, in his right senses, that we want a situation where the fertility rates drop to absolute zero. That’s nobody’s objective.
Questioner: We started with a question, not being upfront, but it’s not about just men and women in the society, generally the urban society, when nobody is upfront. Like, they talk in terms of hints, symbols, like they incorporate, in like for example if somebody handicap, we don’t say handicap, we say some nice euphemisms. And like that we hide the facts.
Acharya Prashant: See, that’s when these things are absent in your life — fearlessness, love, truth. When the relationship has a lot of love, then you are not afraid to be blunt. Because you know the other one will understand. You also know that the other one would not be hurt. You also know that being straight and blunt and direct, deepens love. So, you are not going to hesitate then.
Equally, when you value truth a lot, then you do not want to deal in symbols and indirect kind of diplomatic behavior. But when the most important values are missing, and there’s a lot of fear and there is a chronic need for security, then you don’t open up.
So, when that is happening, you probably need to look at the entire ecosystem rather than one single gender — Why is there so much of fear in the environment? And also, mind you, when there is fear, it would be affecting not only one gender but the entire population. In one gender it’s more readily visible, more readily visible to the other gender because the other gender does not behave in that way, so they can spot it out or she is being just too roundabout.
But the same kind of fear in the ecosystem is troubling men as well. Won’t it be pertinent to see how even men have to cater to their own insecurities and their own stereotypes and their own false beliefs, right?
Because if women have been trained to live in and behave and be in a certain way, equally men have been trained to live and believe and be in a certain way.
At this point, I’ll present certain things to you all. You see, they are what we call as womanly values, right? You can identify a woman with those values — human being, giving value to this, this and this and you’ll be easily able to say this person is a woman, with almost 90–95% accuracy.
Another human being giving value to this, this, this thing. For example, somebody giving, value to, what do women give value to, what would you typically say? Yes, children and the nest and clothes and emotionality. So, these you could call as the female values, or want of a better word. I know it’s a generalization, but because it’s a general thing, so generalization here is not very useless.
And then there are a set of what we can call as the manly values, right? What do you call as the manly values? Achievement, chivalry, ambition, aggression. What we probably need to consider is whether there is a third set of values superior, to both these sets. No point declaring one set higher than the other. If we indeed are caged consciousnesses, yearning for freedom, then neither the womanly values nor the manly ones take us to a liberation, do they?
One is emotional, one is logical. Neither of them necessarily give to you, what you want. If I am the suffering consciousness, logic does not take me to liberation nor do my emotions. Because they all arise fundamentally from the same center of bondage. That which is arising from your bondage, cannot lead you to liberation. So, she is emotional, he is logical, right? She cares more, for the nest, he cares more for ambition. Neither her nest will bring her deliverance nor would his ambition bring him freedom, right?
So, is it men versus women or is it so that both men and women are equal partners in their slavery? It’s just that either side calls its own slavery as better than that of the other side. I’m enslaved, you are enslaved. But because I’m enslaved, I call my slavery better than your slavery.
Had this been an all women gathering, I’m sure they would have had much the same things to say about men, same in the sense of opposite. Opposite things in the same tenor — why are men like this? Why are men so ugly? Why can’t men understand subtle things? Why do they have to be so gross?
Questioner: What’s convoluted to us, what’s convoluted and dishonest to us may be subtle and mysterious and beautiful to them.
Acharya Prashant: Subtle, mysterious and aesthetically nice. Do you have to punch in somebody’s face to communicate? That’s how they say. They say the way men talk to each other is like punching each other in face. It’s very gross. What we are calling as convoluted and roundabout, is in their language, subtle and aesthetically beautiful, which is not true. That’s not the case maybe. That’s not the case to anybody. Just as your manly stuff is a great thing only to you, similarly their womanly stuff is obviously great only in their own value system. It’s not an absolute virtue.
There has to be a third set that both men and women have to be educated into, indoctrinated into. If you turn the man into more of a man, then he’s just an alpha gorilla, right? If you turn the woman into more of a woman, then she is just the mate of the alpha gorilla, right? I don’t know how it sounds, but from where I see it, the man has to be de-manned. The woman has to be de-womanized. I’m not talking of emasculation, don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking of neutering and stuff.
The man has to be liberated of the social and biological values that give him the persona of the man. Equally, the woman has to be liberated of the biology and the history that turns her into the kind of woman that we see on the road. Yeah, de-gendering. That de-gendering has to happen, and equally a love and appreciation for the right values, right and gender independent values has to be fostered in both the boy and the girl, the man and the woman.
Truth is beautiful. The woman is not beautiful, the man is not beautiful either, truth is beautiful—have a thing for truth. Compassion is wonderful. She is gorgeous, he is handsome, none of that is a patch on compassion. The compassionate one stands heads and shoulders above the gorgeous one or the handsome hunk. So, these values have to be there. Shubhankar (Questioner), I can see you restless, but the thing is, if in this society you are seeing a lot of distorted women, the law of duality dictates that there would be an equal amount of distortion in the men as well, because both are products of the same ecosystem. You cannot just say, “Oh! the women are distorted.” The women might be distorted and I concur that a lot of women are indeed distorted, but then equal kind of distortion would then there be necessarily present in the men folk as well.
Questioner: But then, both the genders have their own set of problems.
Acharya Prashant: and hence unless both are taken care of, neither can be taken care of. Men’s liberation just cannot happen without women’s liberation.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, in light of what you’ve just said, a slight small digression, but I’m sure it will add value to the discussion. Would you want to comment on this Indic symbol Ãrdháñáreshwar? It seems that it is a mixture of both the genders.
Acharya Prashant: No, it is not a mixture and that pertains to something totally different. The way you see the Ãrdhànareshwàr image, to me that’s a distortion.
Everything that exists, in the language of Sàànkhyà Dàrshàn, is Pràkriti, which has been taken as feminine. So, the entire body is female. Body means everything that exists, everything that is bodily. So, the body itself is female. The world, the universe itself, is female because it exists. That’s how the thing has been connoted in the philosophy. And everything that exists has at its heart something, that is non-existent in the sense of being formless — formless, nameless.
So, there is Shàkti, the female, which is bodily and at the heart of Shàkti is Shivà. That is the right depiction of Àrdhànareshwàr.
Questioner: We see something else.
Acharya Prashant: Now, what’s shown normally, I beg to say with all due consideration, “Is a caricature.” You you take 50% women, 50% men and rivet them together, that’s not Àrdhànàreshwàr. This kind of symbolism is coming from people who just don’t understand what that great word means. Shivà and Shàkti are not too halves glue to each other. Shivà is the heart of Shàkti. Shàkti is not one half of Shivà. All that exists, is Shàkti herself, the feminine. The entire existence is feminine. At the heart of that feminine existence is Shivà.
Questioner: Shàkti includes both man and woman.
Acharya Prashant: All that exists — man, woman, the road, the concrete, the third gender, the fourth gender, the fifth gender, all that is feminine, everything is feminine.
Questioner: Why they called it feminine because it’s again got distorted into…
Acharya Prashant: See, it’s like this. I mean, you have to understand it almost graphically.
Questioner: Acharya Ji, those who charge of Hinduism of sexism, they take these two words — Pûrûshà, first mistake they do is equate Pûrûshà is man and then they say that....
Acharya Prashant: No, no, Pûrûsha is not man. Pûrûshà is not a man, Pûrûshà is consciousness. Pûr is a fort, the Pûr.
Questioner: The same word is also used for man.
Acharya Prashant: It is used for man; it is a coincidence. It’s a coincidence, right?
Knowledgeable people do not hide behind coincidences. In all languages of the world, we have words that have two or three meanings in two or three different contexts, right?
“D”, “E”, “A”, “R”— You know of the number of meanings it holds. My dear, dear is very dear. Now, it would be quite in fact, malignant of me to pick up one meaning of the word and impose it on the other one, which is a totally unrelated thing in a different context.
So, Pûrûsh is consciousness. Pûrûsh does not mean man or male, no. Pûr means fort, Pûrûsh is the resident of the fort. The fort is the world in general, or the body in particular.
This is the fort (showing the body). In this fort lives the Pûrûsh. Now, the body of the male is a fort and equally, the body of the female is also a fort.
So, the Pûrûsh lives both in the male and the female, right? So, in social language, you have the physical male and the physical female. In spiritual, existential language, you have the physical male who is a female and the physical female who is obviously a female.
And the only male is a cleaned or liberated consciousness — that is the only male; that is the only Pûrûsh. Everybody else is female.
So, men are females with male genitals. Women are females with female genitals. But everybody is in the spiritual sense, a female. But why do you want to get confused bringing in the male, female and then you do not know who is a male or female and get totally confused and end up entering the wrong washroom and get beaten up. So, keep that aside.
In social language, you have the physical male and the physical female. In spiritual, existential language, you have the physical male, who is the female. And the physical female, who is obviously a female. Now, these two sets, they appear opposite to each other, but they are actually one.
We will remain caged there with the hope that one day, circuiting the same loop will bring us out of the loop.
If the woman is caged in the house, why don’t you want to say that the man is caged in the office? Liberation lines in valuing what would turn you into a qualified human being. Qualified in the sense of being existentially there, high up there.
