Democracy, even when the electorate was all male, is feminine in nature. Masculine features include strength, decision making, hierarchy, decisiveness, providing, cohesion, leadership. Feminine features include weakness, consensus thinking, mothering, community building, nurturing, planning, influence. Of course these are not complete lists but they do give an idea of each sex’s strengths and yes feminine weakness is a strength. Because it gives a place for men to excel.
What does any of this have to do with Democracy?
Each system of government has strengths and weaknesses, because perfection does not exist. However Democracy is presented to us as the best form of government. So to hear that it has features, let alone flaws can be quite confronting to many people, because they have simply never thought about the subject.
We do not have direct Democracy, we have instead representative Democracy. Which means that we do not represent ourselves but we have proxies to represent us. Even direct Democracy is feminine in nature as it requires the strong to give way to the weak, it requires consensus thinking and it takes away hierarchy, decisiveness and cohesion. Instead of men working behind a leader, now men are regarded as having equal say and equal responsibility, something most men know instinctively is not true. Each man has different qualities to the next man, that is why in nearly every culture a man’s character is important. Democracy says as each man is as good as the next man, not only does his character not matter but that each man has the same character.
In a representative Democracy feminine qualities are much more important than masculine ones. Each voter is regarded as equal in character to every other voter. Someone of bad character is treated the same as someone with good character. In fact we are told that character isn’t real. Each vote is of the same value because we are all equal. Even though we all know people who have a bad character.
Bold decision making is nearly impossible, everything must be agreed upon, no one must be left out. If someone doesn’t agree then that person or group can gain power simply by implying that a decision is illegitimate, because they do not agree with it. We see this every week, nearly every day!
Leaders are not respected because we know deep down that they are not leaders, simply placeholders. Here today gone tomorrow. Instead of appearing to us as if they were human mountains, something so permanent that we could not imagine life without them. We view them as a cloud, blowing all over the sky to be replaced by another cloud of a different shape. They think that they reign over us but they only rain upon us.
Men have always provided for women and children. It is something so ingrained that we still think that way. We still think of men as the provider. That’s why men should pay on dates. Men hunted, men did the heavy labour, brought home food, money, prestige. Men provided protection by keeping away hostile animals and men. They protected by building houses. Today all of that is done by strangers. We cannot even provide for ourselves. Protection is provided by the government, as is food and money.
As each year goes on we become less free because we are mothered. Mothering is a beautiful thing, we all needed it and without it the world would be intolerable. And as mothering has its rightful place, it also has a wrongful place, a place it should not be. Increasingly we find ourselves mothered when there is no need for it. Of course we need rules, people do need rules. But there is a limit to how many rules there should be. We are told that safety is important, yes but safety like all things can be taken too far. I think everyone reading this can thinking of an example. Regulations, paperwork, everything over planned. It is no coincidence that when men ran the world things were strict but with a light touch. You were trusted to behave and if you didn’t you faced harsh punishment. In today’s world it is exactly the opposite; you are watched and monitored, we have rules and regulations for everything. We even have more rules in our social life, they may not be enforced by the government but they are just as strict and they are everywhere.
I am not saying that feminine qualities are bad, in their place they are powerful, needed, even beautiful. But so are masculine qualities. Democracy takes away society’s masculine qualities and replaces them with the feminine. Leadership, decision making and decisiveness are urgently required, as are the other masculine qualities. Democracy cannot provide these things for us.
Originally published at Upon Hope.