ALIVE WITH DR. ZIVE : Parsing Out the Feminine and Masculine
Dr. Z and Robin McNulty went LIVE on Facebook on March 10, 2022, to talk about femininity and masculinity and how society has prescribed what it looks like to be a man and a woman.
If you’re following our Alive series in blog form, here’s a tip, grab a pen and paper. You’ll disrupt the narrative that’s told about women and femininity by writing your own. There are some prompts below to inspire you.
Dr. Z kicked off the conversation with an oracle card reading from the Kuan Yin Oracle by Alana Fairchild, bringing us a message around blessings. The universe wants to remind you that there are blessings of prosperity meant for you. They are flowing to you if you are open to believing what’s possible for you and then reach for a vision beyond.
In tonight’s centering practice from the oracle card, Dr. Z asked us to draw attention to the areas of our life where we’d like more abundance and healing. By bringing abundance and healing into that area of your life, Fairchild argues, it creates abundance for all areas of your life. The card asks us to consider, for a moment, three negative and then three positive things about this area of your life. What words, phrases, and emotions come to mind? Just take some time to journal these thoughts.
Dr. Z reflected on the prompt by expressing one of her negative beliefs surrounding her attention and energy. “I’m way too scattered,” she said, “I’m all over the place.” She affirmed “I have the capacity to change the story. Instead of me telling myself I’m scattered, I say I’m creative and I have energy.” This new story inspires her.
This reflecting and rewriting process is the focus of this Alive session.
Below are a series of images curated by Dr. Z. These images were chosen purposefully as they exhibit femininity and masculinity. Grab your journal and write down thoughts and feelings for each one. Take a moment to slowly scroll through them. Write down your immediate reactions to each.
We make many assumptions in the way we perceive men and women and masculine and feminine. We need to evaluate our biases and conditioning. The images were chosen based on Dr. Z’s research and the associations with masculine and feminine expressions. Typically, if one searches using keywords such as “power,” “leader,” or “boss,” images of men will result. Words relating to softness or emotions result in images of women. This societal conditioning results in the visual narrative results.
What words, thoughts, emotions came up for you while scrolling through the images? Do they align to your associations with masculine and feminine expressions?
Wingwoman, Robin McNulty, used keyword
“what does it feel like to be a woman” into her search bar and found images of Shania Twain in relation to her song, “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” This exhibits that our main method of accessing information in the 21st century (search engines) affirms rigid and archaic messaging about what it means to be a woman or a man.
Dr. Z pulls poignant questions from the book, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. When someone says, “doctor,” what gender role will many of us assume that person has versus when we hear “nurse.” Our media is laden with assumptions about the roles of gender types that women, all women, get lost in the common narrative.
In what ways have your biases influenced your way of evaluating what is feminine and what is masculine? Are you able to parse out feminine and masculine from woman and man?
How can we start having positive conversations and imagery around masculine women and feminine men?
How can we step away from binary, rigid thinking and start embracing the unique place we each find ourselves on a beautiful spectrum of expression?
What can we do to make a change? Robin suggests we make the change by changing from within first in order for that change to ripple out.
Send your images, stories, and quips about femininity and feminism to the RR Rebels so we can represent you! Shoot it to info@representationrebellion.com