The nature of samsara is circular.
We keep repeating the same behaviors without a root change and as a result, getting the same results.
We end up right back where we started.
Women’s liberation is stuck in this cycle. Decade after decade, with each attempted advance we end up falling right back where we began. We have not done the one thing that would break us out.
Let us review:
1950’s
Traditional marriages.
Women are dependent on men without self-generating income, and must suffer any and all infractions in order to secure safety for oneself and one’s children.
1960’s
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique becomes the symbol for women’s liberation, focusing on a woman’s ennui being rooted in a life that lacks meaning and income. The two primary issues of this time become equal pay and reproductive rights.
1970’s
Feminism goes mainstream. Equal Rights Amendment passes. Roe v. Wade changes the landscape for all women. The 50th anniversary of suffrage. Gloria Steinem reigns.
1980’s
By the early 1980’s, women are granted entry into traditionally male arenas. It is largely perceived that women have met their goals and succeeded in changing social attitudes towards gender roles.
Intersectional feminism grows strong. A quiet divide brews between the likes of Andrea Dworkin, who believes that all heterosexual sex is rape, and Audre Lorde, who believes that Eros is spirituality on a feminine plane.
1990’s
The divide begins to grow. Madonna serves as the symbol of this time. Some view her as disturbingly sexual in such a way that she degrades herself and all women. Others see her as breaking out a uniquely feminine power of self-possession and ownership of sexuality.
2000’s
Enter 3rd wave feminism and the growing divide amongst women grows even wider. A debate begins about sexualized behavior, pole dancing, and a woman’s choice with sexual careers.
That any decision to sexualize their behavior is a result of internalized misogyny. There are also those who say that women’s ownership of her sexuality presents an opportunity for women to find sovereignty on her own terms. Riot Girls become a symbol of powerful, sexualized, political women.
2010’s
The divide comes to a head in the form of #metoo, a massive, explosive movement that bills itself as holding men accountable for sexual misconduct. Those who go against this narrative are deplatformed or ‘canceled’. It is discovered that the creators of the movement are impacted by Dworkins’ work and the concept that all heterosexual sex is rape.
With this implicitly in place there is little need to prove guilt, as the activity is violation by its very nature. There are a few who are vocal and say that if women want equal rights they should take equal responsibility for their sexuality, but they are the minority in the media. Harvey Weinstein and Trump are the symbols of this time. Women have grown tired and wired with work and childcare.
2020’s
Women’s right to choose is rolled back in several states. There are those who suggest that this is because they relinquished the responsibility of adults in the 2010’s. There is a rise of a repackaged version of the 1950’s with what is called the “trad wife”–a woman who stays home and cooks and guards her chastity for marriage.
Today
Samsara continues. We keep going in the cycle–with what seems like progressively more freedom, then less–instead of breaking through to the place where we experience true freedom:
the ability to choose, not from being a puppet to habits, but from liberated volition.
There will come a point when women discover the secret– that our power of sexual energies is the only force great enough to break through the collective ego membrane wrapped around women.
It will be through owning and integrating this power that we find true liberation. That which isn’t integrated, is exaggerated. And a divorced, exaggerated expression proves just as ineffectual as suppression.
It will be when we harness and employ this ultimate biological power that we break through to know ourselves outside of the finite projections laid on us with the temporary spurts of progress, but in a real and meaningful way that we can effect change on the planet– ending greed, hatred and delusion.