Valuing the Feminine in Perilous Times
Hazel Scott
As we move into Women’s History Month, amid the torrent of masculinist energy in the White House, the need could not be greater to embrace the qualities, sensibilities, and character that women bring to the leadership landscape. Efforts to recognize women who have been instrumental in shaping our culture and American society is something I believe we all can appreciate.
Greg and I recently watched PBS’ documentary: The Disappearance of Miss Scott. The film tells the story of trailblazing classical and jazz pianist, Hazel Scott. I realized I knew very little about her impact as an artist and civil rights activist as the story unfolded. A prolific musician from the age of five, Scott began playing in Harlem in the 1930s as a fifteen-year-old piano prodigy, dazzling patrons with her stride playing and her ingenious melding of classical and jazz. Virtuosity notwithstanding, Scott was confident of her worth, courageously taking stands to challenge the status quo. She negotiated higher wages for club engagements; was the first black woman to host a television show; set her own criteria that did not include stereotypical roles when Hollywood came calling; and voluntarily testified in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee to clear her name.
In honor of all the women whose contributions we are aware of and those we have yet to learn about, I share the following post, originally written in 2020.
Embracing the Feminine: A Leadership Necessity
Some years ago, I participated in Women and Power for the 21st Century, a one-week intensive at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Fifty women from around the globe attended to explore how they could become more effective leaders and advance in positions of influence. It was an incredible week of absorbing and reflecting on the collective energy, experiences, and power of these dynamic, openhearted women. The flow of information was ceaseless, the connections forged authentic, and the exchange of perspectives abundant. Every year thereafter, for the next five years, I attended the reunions, meeting the women from that year’s class, and reveling in newfound knowledge and relationships.
Women are critical to the great forces of change; the repatterning of human nature; the regenesis of human society; the breakdown in the membrane between cultures and peoples, the breakthrough of the depths, both psychological and spiritual.
—Jean Houston
A Reunion of Energies
In the Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas maintains that the most obvious generalization about the history of the Western mind is that it has been “an overwhelmingly masculine phenomenon.” In every aspect of Western thought and language and in the central scientific, religious, and philosophical perspectives, he intones masculinity as pervasive and fundamental. He says that this all served to evolve the autonomous human will and intellect, the independent ego, the self-determining human being. But, in order to do this, the feminine was repressed.
The crisis of modern man is an essentially masculine crisis, and I believe that its resolution is already now occurring in the tremendous emergence of the feminine in our culture.
Tarnas details the myriad ways that this emergence is taking shape—the rise of feminism; the increasing awareness of the ecological; burgeoning gender-sensitive perspectives; the accelerating collapse of long-standing political and ideological barriers separating the world’s peoples—these and more, he says, are indicative of the birth of a new reality. A new form of human existence is emerging, a “great archetypal marriage”, of which both masculine and feminine are affirmed and transcended.
Anything that requires us to “do” something, to take any sort of action, needs masculine energy. Feminine energy is one of “being”—a receptive, heart-centered mode that integrates core values like connection, collaboration, intuition, and empathy. Feminine energy allows us to be a vessel of receiving and giving, striving for qualitative rather than quantitative growth.
Transformation: Intersection of Feminine & Masculine
Systems are failing—collapsing and disintegrating as they no longer serve our highest values and best vision. In this liminal space, the breakdown is challenging us to dig deep and unearth a community of being. There is an urgency towards an unfolding and a profound need for in-folding. The call is for a shift in consciousness.
As leadership adapts to meet the needs of the times, we must integrate the masculine and feminine energies within us. This will require humility and courage to enfold the feminine qualities often repressed or dismissed, as they are central to the work of transformation and rebirth.
Understanding the wisdom and transformative nature of the feminine (in both men and women) is essential if we are to move individually and collectively to awaken to a deeper awareness of our own nature. The expression of masculine and feminine energies has to do with the degree to which a person can or chooses to focus their attention on issues of “I” or “We”— caring for one-self while nurturing those around us.
This is where the real act of heroism is going to be. A threshold must now be crossed, a threshold demanding an act of unflinching self-discernment. And this is the great challenge of our time, the evolutionary imperative for the masculine to see through and overcome its hubris and one-sideness, to own its unconscious shadow, to choose to enter into a fundamentally new relationship of mutuality with the feminine in all its forms. The feminine then becomes not that which must be controlled, denied, and exploited, but rather fully acknowledged, respected, and responded to for itself.
—Richard Tarnas
Tarnas believes that this is a challenge that “the Western mind has been slowly preparing itself to meet for its entire existence.”
Hazel Scott is one of countless heroines that should not go unsung. Our job, this month and beyond, is to recognize the value and strength in female leadership and not be swayed by extreme polarization.
