What does the feminine form of power look like if it is not externally defined?
Are women switching stereotypes from the side of being culturally defined as subjugated to being culturally defined as liberated?
Are we simply masculinizing the feminine—because that is how power currently expresses itself in culture—and calling that liberation?
Are we basing the concept of liberation on the conditions of masculine values, such as materiality and buying into the notion that money is power?
If every woman on the planet came into power, would that remain true?
Would money still be what made the world go round if every woman knew her value, and as a result, the value of the wisdom she carries?
Rather than seeing herself as a reflection of man, always positioned for or against him, what would this power look like if every woman knew her value and how to operate it as a sovereign being?
If women were to truly access their power—the type of power that, like gravity, moves the world around it instead of using force or the push and pull of being in reaction or response to everything—what would she look like? What would the world look like?
We have been remiss in the collective calling that could bring women the real liberation she seeks. Women’s approach to liberation has been to act in response to the masculine form of power by fighting against, positioning against, or separating from it.
But, when she does this, she is operating from that form. Fighting the powers that be is a method learned from the powers that be. Believing there is anything to fight is a legacy passed down from the powers that be. Believing that fighting is power—rather than love—is a legacy passed down from the powers that be. Ultimately, the powers that be want to lose the fight to something more powerful.
A woman’s liberation, and the path to it, involves not engaging with, fighting, or wasting energy on a system that is ineffective for all, including the powers that be. Instead, it is in building a new order that makes the current one so clearly obsolete. And, not in spite of anyone. A woman’s power, when it is true power, knows there is no one against her.
To operate as if there is anyone or anything to fight is the old paradigm—a paradigm that prevents her from doing the real work of liberation that is at hand. The real work is to remove, define, and build. Remove the old ideas. Define the new.
Build accordingly.