I was in the shower this morning contemplating an email I received about cleaning. Ok, let’s just ignore for the moment the synchronicity of me ‘cleaning’ in the shower whilst the email was about cleaning! Sometimes a washcloth is just a washcloth! (To paraphrase Freud and cop his plea.) 

The email in question was titled ‘Dust if you must, but….’ It offered sage advice, peppered with images of outrageous baggy women cleaning various parts of their houses. (I don’t know about you, but I am tired of women being portrayed either as porn star wannabes advertising their boobies as if they are gems to be bought or freely bestowed upon the ogler, or frumps with warts and wrinkles, the aged hag.  

When media generated stereotypes emphasize these values, we grow up plugging them into our self-concept either consciously or unconsciously. And then, even when we know that these stereotypes are exaggerated and not true representations of the female being in all her glory, we start to believe in them somewhere deep in the pit of our stomach, despite what our logical left brains tell us. 

We need to move beyond gender stereotypes and talk about being our whole selves. But first let’s look at the counterbalancing genderisms men have been wearing for as long as women have been relegated to frumps.  

Men are the decision makers, the heads of the house, the policy makers, the war makers–the action figures of society. It’s easy to lose sight that these are also unfair stereotypes, no fairer than the dusting brigade! Wow, what imbalance on both sides of the gender blanket.  

If women are seen as the cleaners and dusters, the sirens, and the hags; men are given the unfair responsibility to be the warriors and leaders in our imbalanced cultures. They are asked to be warriors in business offices making ‘take over’ corporate raid strategies; community gangs; or in the halls of the military sending the newer generation of people, into war.  

Men are from Mars we have been told. Well, if we look at our left brains, these stereotypes most clearly embody Mars as the planet of action. But attributing Action, with a capital A, only to the male of our species creates imbalance. When that action is out of balance it competes, it causes rifts, fights over territory and power, and makes war …big world level, community, or right in our own homes   

The bottom line here is for thousands of years we have been severely out of balance, both women and men limited to only certain specified and sanctioned roles—no matter how far we think we have come. We have all been living heavily in our left hemisphere of the brain, with little if any input from our amazing right hemispheres.  

Hmmm, we are born with two sides…why aren’t we using them?  

And now we must grow up and grow back into our own personal wholeness and balance. We must allow and expect and support each other no matter our genders or concepts of gender. The concept of male and female, the take charge vs. the creative nurturer, both exist in all of us. We must allow both to flourish for our inner beings to flourish. When we have that that balance in each of us as individuals, it will show itself out there in society at all levels. Women can be decision makers; men can be dusters and cleaners. But the cleaners can also be decision makers. Everyone reaching their true potential and whole self. 

The imbalance of trying to cause peace  

Let’s talk about our true potential. Let’s talk of humans existing in a balanced state and focus on the real power of people. Since wars of all forms are so ever-present in the news of late, let’s talk about the antidote to war: peace. 

I want to focus on the real power of the feminine, and it lives in all of us – regardless of gender. Reminder: each human has two brain hemispheres…our left brain offers us the capabilities of turning thoughts and ideas into action by analyzing and breaking things down into linear, sequential, and doable/actionable pieces. And let’s try to resist calling them “masculine” abilities. The other, the right brain hemisphere, that we are no longer describing as the “feminine” qualities: feelings, intuition, seeing the whole or the big pictures (macro-focus), creative abilities, imagination. Instead of thinking of them as feminine and masculine, let’s just think of them as right brain and left brain. 

For thousands of years, humans have been solving problems by warring on one another, or one community or group. Let’s be sociologists and look closely at this. Dominated by left brain thinking, because of these old stereotypes, men have been using these energies, including fists and missiles (fist-extensions that look like penises soaring through the skies) in attempts to cause peace. Note that I did not say “create” peace.  

Women as a group shake our heads “NO,” but because we have been out of balance and had no power or respect as equal contributors to deciding over our futures, we are outvoted or simply ignored, stuck in our passive stereotypes, and so we have war. And in war, women, children, and community suffer as much as the warriors themselves. 

We are growing a bit wiser with each generation, and more of us are escaping the prisons of stereotypes. We are realizing that we have a choice to be creative nurturers or action takers and deciders. Even better we are realizing that we can integrate both sides of ourselves. Left and right brain. Nurturer and warrior in balance.  

When that happens, we can finally shake our collective heads NO to the confrontational warrior tactics responsible for all the strife in the world.  

We don’t have to blame the old warriors for doing the job we have ingrained into them with our faulty stereotypes, but we do have to change them. Wash them clean of these old ways. Clean up the imbalance of messaging and funding for our warriors. Whether we own up to that responsibility or not, that is a challenge we must examine within ourselves. 

Until now, our society has been good at causing war in a battle for peace, but can we create true peace? And if so, how? 

Using the nurturer within to create peace 

In the 60s, people glued ‘Visualize Peace’ slogans on their bumpers along with peace signs. Things have gotten easier now with peel and stick bumper stickers. But the actions that used to go along with those glued on stickers in the 60s had faded a bit over the decades. The recent resurgence of action to go with the nurturing messages makes me hopeful more people are abandoning the old stereotypes and integrating both left and right-brain.  

But now we need to remember the message: visualize peace. 

From a true power perspective, the way to create peace is to see it, imagine it and hold it in our mind’s eye. This is what we have been missing in the left-brain action dominant world. If we have no imagination, we have no right-brain creativity to balance the left-brain action. No space for seeing the world as one ecosystem and community, no focus on looking at the consequences of short-term actions.  

The truth is, our inner warrior only works with effectiveness when it is connected to the creative visualization of a goal. If there is no overall reason for something, we just have the busy-ness of a hamster running around on his wheel endlessly. Doing, doing, doing…running around being ‘big wheels.’ 

When we are balanced in our humanity, women do more than dust and clean, and men do more than take action and make decisions. Women take our place as decision makers in society. And men take their place as creative nurturers. That balance is how we heal. That balance lets us create peace in the world. 

There’s the turning point that happens when a certain number of us imagine the same thing and poof…. there it is, manifesting in culture. It started with us imagining that people were prisoners of certain stereotypes. We did it once, we can do it again. We can start a new reality. It’s imaginations that rule stereotypes, not stereotypes that rule imagination. 

We can do this. Simply agree as a group, right and left brains, to imagine a wonderful peace and then take action to create it.