Source: “Women and Men” by Jane Hollister Wheelwright
Paper presented at the Analytical Psychology Club of San Francisco – January 14, 1977
I ask myself whether many of today’s women, in their struggle to free themselves from male domination, are not making the mistake of denying their own female natures. Have they perhaps ended up buying, hook, line and sinker, the patriarchal culture’s attitude and condescension toward the female? Are they being caught unwittingly by collective male prejudices, which in turn tend to be constellated and reinforced by women’s own downgrading of female values? And, as a result of all this, is their independence not turning out in actuality to be something of an illusion, an ersatz liberation? In other words, are they now in danger of going from the frying pan into the fire?
It would seem to me that after so many centuries of repression and/or devaluation of the female principle, the need for women today is to reassert this principle. Rather than suppressing it in themselves, they need to allow it to live. If, at the same time, they consciously harness their instinctive male function, they will gain a true independence and individuality, a bona fide liberation. In this way, hopefully, men as well as women would regain appreciation and respect for themselves and for each other as total human beings. Toward this end, I submit the feminist movement might consider switching its slogan from “equal and alike” to “equal but different,” and adopt the approach of another beleaguered contingent of society by taking as their rally cry: “Female is beautiful!”
