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Living the "Feminine Genius"

Thread ID: 17453 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-03-22

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Walter Yannis [OP]

2005-03-22 11:14 | User Profile

[URL=http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?art_id=27930]Catholic Exchange[/URL] Living the "Feminine Genius"

03/22/05

“Male and female He made them,” says the book of Genesis, introducing the reader to the two-sexed universe of God. It is a beautiful and wondrous thing to see the nuptial backdrop to creation, and in this time of confused sexual identity, it is more urgent than ever to understand authentic masculinity and femininity.

One way to look at the vocation of woman is to offer a paradigm of holiness so that women will know when they are authentically feminine and when they stray from their calling. “Men are strong, women are good listeners” is an example of useless stereotypes that have caged everyone for a very long time. Similarly, dividing the sexes by “appropriate” jobs, roles, or wardrobe apparel has caused more frustration than understanding. What paradigm, then, will include all women and yet offer enough structure to guide their actions within God’s will for their lives? Without one, we wander lost and without tangible purpose.

The Church — there is the model.

In a practical sense, we have to take the spiritual realities of Holy Mother Church and nail them down into everyday actions. Simply put: What does the Church do? She washes, welcomes, reconciles, nourishes, teaches, heals, and confirms all of her members. In the end, she gives them one last embrace before burying them. Here is the work of women with enough latitude for freedom of expression, but enough structure to keep them from wandering into the masculine world. Women should love Christ with every fiber of their beings, and yet model their lives on His Bride in order to retain their femininity.

One cannot help but be riveted to the story of how Ashley Smith was held captive by the accused murderer Brian Nichols and changed his life in seven hours. What began as a frightening encounter — complete with gun and overwhelming force — ended in a calm surrender and peaceful transferal to the appropriate authorities. From start to finish, Ashley Smith used her God-given feminine genius for the good of all.

To refer to the short list of “what the Church does” given above, Nichols's victim did it all. From the shower, to the hours of conversation, to the pancake breakfast, he found in that apartment authentic love in a feminine way. While never diminishing the nature of his crimes and the call for justice, Ashley affirmed his dignity as a person in the image of likeness of God, she reminded him of his worth and responsibilities, and she loved him as a sister in Christ. No doubt scared out of her wits, enough clarity of vision remained for her to guide the encounter to a proper end, and her faith carried her according to the promises of God.

There is an old country song in which a killer on the run bursts in on the home of a elderly woman one morning. She is cooking breakfast and casts her motherly eye on him. Her immediate reaction is, “You look tired and hungry, put that gun away and sit down.” Implausible, one would think, and we never imagined we’d see it lived out. Would a stack of pancakes and sausage really “sooth the savage beast”? Lo and behold, the transcripts of Ashley’s account lead up to that very moment, when Brian said, “Wow, real butter!?”

This is not the miracle of butter — it was only a natural gift from the heart of a disciple who knew what Christ would have done. It was a meal offered in love after sharing God’s word. She had known grievous loss and suffering through her own husband’s death four years earlier. Having buried a loved one, she knew the enormity of his crimes. Ashley was a mother, and driven by the love of her own daughter, she knew the value of Brian in God’s eyes. Having found the peace of faith, she wanted that crowning gift amidst the madness — even for Brian.

This is not a “paint-by-numbers” life, where we add each pigment according to a formula in order to create a scripted image. God has given us both a wealth of diverse gifts, and the freedom to use them. What is lovely about femininity is that we can create a sanctuary of love in the very same way that Christ’s Bride the Church does — and each of us in a unique and life-transforming way.

Most women have been doing this for millennia — but they just didn’t know the name of it. In the last century, many have gone a little askew, but God in His infinite wisdom has seen fit to offer the Theology of the Body to give a firm structure to the game plan for men and women. Since we have questioned masculinity and feminity, since we have dabbled with androgyny and stereotypes, God has revealed His plan for human sexuality in terms we can understand. John Paul II has been speaking and writing about it for decades. We only need attend to these teachings.

And for those who don’t know where to find the encyclicals, for now they only need to turn on the news and hear the story of Ashley Smith. Like the Bride she unknowingly imitates in her own unique way, she received the love of Christ and offered it to those in her path — even the unexpected guest. As her pastor said on camera, “I am so incredibly proud of her.” Aren’t we all!

[I]Genevieve Kineke has contributed to a book, The Gift of Femininity, found at [url]www.SacredArtsCommunications.com[/url]. [/I]

Jack Cassidy

2005-03-22 17:17 | User Profile

We all know the gist of the IQ studies and the bell curve. I wonder what the natural reason is for this phenomenon? Women are, in a sense, both smarter and not as smart as men. The range of distribution for females IQ's is significantly more narrow than for men. That's why you see alot more really stupid men than women. But, just as men are more numerous at the low end of the bell curve they are also much more represented in the upper-end of the bell curve. So, there are many more geniuses who are male.

mwdallas

2005-03-22 17:56 | User Profile

[QUOTE]We all know the gist of the IQ studies and the bell curve. I wonder what the natural reason is for this phenomenon? Women are, in a sense, both smarter and not as smart as men. The range of distribution for females IQ's is significantly more narrow than for men.[/QUOTE] It has to do with the differential reproductive potential of males and females. Because a man can have so many more offspring than a woman, an exceptional man can contribute more to the well-being of the group than can an exceptional woman.

Professor Walter Block of Loyola (New Orleans) states it well:

[url]http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block13.html[/url]

[QUOTE][B]If women are God’s (or evolution’s) insurance policy, then men are the crap shoot.[/B] It is for this reason that men but not women, in the main, have been able to rise above the "glass ceiling" (A), and that women but not men are rarely found below "hell’s floor" (D), to coin a phrase. Go to any prison, mental institution or homeless shelter, and count the numbers of men (C) and women (D) on the left tail of the bell curve. The former outnumber the latter by roughly the same proportions that hold true on the right side of the normal curve in the boardroom, or in the executive suite, or in the president’s office, or on the battle field (A vs. B). (The curves are drawn freehand so as to exaggerate the differences between male and female standard deviations for purposes of illustration.)

[B]Moreover, there are good and sufficient sociobiological reasons why this should be so[/B], which stem from requirements for the survival of the human species (something very far removed from the concerns of the feminists): it takes far fewer males than females to create the next generation. It is not for nothing that the farmer keeps 50 cows and 1 bull, not the reverse. Biologically speaking, if there were 50 bulls to go along with a like number of cows 49 of the former would be superfluous, and the reverse does not hold at all.

[B]If human males are heterodox in their abilities, and there is a bias in favor of the genes of the smarter ones (strictly speaking, those whose survival until child rearing age is more likely for whatever reason) then great male but not female variation improves the quality of the human herd. This argument does not apply to females, since they are the bottleneck when it comes to raising the next generation.[/B] That is, with the usual proportion of 50 cows and one bull, not a single one of the former is superfluous, so there are no particular gains if they vary greatly in ability.

[B]Imagine two tribes of ancient humans, otherwise identical, except that one was like our own, and the other had a great variation in female, but not male abilities. Which would out compete the other insofar as improvements in the gene pool were concerned? Ours would, since virtually all the females who wished to could become impregnated (this was before the era of feminism), while mainly the superior males would supply the sperm. In the other tribe, again virtually all of the females would become pregnant, if the tribe is to survive, but very few of the fathers would be "superior" types, since by stipulation, there are few such in this tribe. Thus, our tribe is eugenic, and survived, while, relatively speaking, this other tribe was dysgenic, and becomes extinct[/B].[/QUOTE]