Femininity

Last Sunday I attended a womens' workshop at B. Yoga. The theme was "womens' power through yoga" and I didn't know exactly what to expect. To attend was awkward from the beginning, as I realized getting dressed Sunday morning. I have always imagined events with titles like "womens' power through yoga" to be the stomping grounds of amazonian feminists and a few emotionally inept wusses. That's a pretty ballsey judgement, coming from a person who has barely stepped into adulthood biologically...Admitting my initial contempt for the workshop seemed like the first step of something changing in my view of women, myself, or something, and I left for the workshop excited to explore more.

The first thing we did was sit in a circle, holding hands and recieving energy from the left while passing it to the right. To my surprise, I wasn't judgemental of it at all, and felt very comfortable. We talked a little about our concepts of femininity and masculinity and then began to practice yoga together, about 25 of us. We did the entire asana practice, an hour and a half, and returned to our circle. When D. asked us questions about our own very personal responses to issues, and to the mediation we all took part in for 5 minutes, I was shocked at how many identical phrases there were. For example, we practiced entering our masculine half (the right side of the body) with our breathing and awareness and then compared it to our left half, the feminine. In myself I could feel a serious difference, and I haven't been in the past a person who admits to the possibility of anything less than scientific. Still, many of the women said they felt a perfect balance, and this really seems to be either simplification or denial; who is perfectly balanced??

As we continued discussing the subjects that arose-mostly self-consciousness, self-doubt, and the constant, subtle struggle of all women stuck in a male-oriented society-I felt a weird conflict with my emotions and responses. A lot of the things the women said made me a little angry, annoyed. When I spoke, no one looked me in the eye, and as the youngest person present I felt resented by the other women just for the fact of my age. I am not sure at all if that was my own insecurity about it creeping into the situation or if there was really something being directed at me. Something in between i guess, but I couldn't relax and my voice was shaking when I finally said simply that it was very hard for me to be in just a group of women, discussing women. "And that discomfort," I stuttered, "really freaks me out. Why am I so uncomfortable facing my gender and myself? Why is it that I am more comfortable practicing yoga in a group of men and women than just women? I feel there is a connection to femininity in my life that is really lacking, andI am a little surprised that I never noticed it..." Still, no one responded, and I finished the workshop confused and withdrawn.

Two days ago, after missing a few classes, I had a really fantastic silent class with D. and another woman whose name I spaced. After I asked D. if she had something I could read following the subjects we'd discussed in the workshop. She immediately gave me Yogini: the Power of Women in Yoga. The past few days I have almost finished it, and last night I woke up suddenly after falling asleep late reading a chapter about a woman who abandoned traditional yoga to find her own feminine practice. I sat straight up with words already running through my head, and I started writing and writing in my journal the whole series of my life based on my ideas about my gender. I couldn't even verbalize, I just let eveything come out in one long jumbled chain starting with "My earliest memories about gender were of wanting to be a boy," and ending with the most recent, "I was pissed at all the women at the womens' workshop and I felt like they were pissed at me. I don't like that women are ever critical of other women."
In between, a bulleted list appearedthat seemed more clearly informed of my feelings than I have ever felt. All my fluctuations, from ardent tomboy to cantankerous feminist, and all the things I've never admitted I felt.

I felt a little weird at 4 in the morning with a scrawled list of emotions in my hand, but I know that something like it is inside probably every woman (and man). Where are we as a culture (and what culture am I claiming? Is america to blame or is the western world altogether?) if women are so confused about being women that they can't comfortably open up to each other in the saftely of an environment they share almost every day (i.e. B.Yoga)? After thinking about it all day, I am so foggy in my convictions I can't exactly write what I want to about it, but tomorrow I want to give you the whole spiel.