Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00015)

Kym wrote:

>Implying that
>women (as you did in an earlier post) are predominently desire-mental
>(kama-manas)and men are predominately mental (manas) is the same as saying
>women are emotional/thinkers and men are rational/thinkers.  In either
>language - it's sexism and discriminatory, and demeans both men and women.
>It has already been proven that gender-differences are "largely irrelevant
>anyway," - what I see being attempted here is to clothe and promote, and
>even re-animate, harmful ideas with the cloak of "divine wisdom" or
>"enlightenment."

This depends on what is meant by sexism.  If sexism means to believe that
men and women are not identical, then saying that women are more emotional
than men and that men are more logical than women is sexist.  If sexism
means to be prejudiced towards men or women, then these contentions might be
sexist and they might not be.  If sexism means that what general differences
one sees between men and women are incorrect, then it depends on their truth
value as to whether these contentions are sexist or not.  Regardless of
whether or not these contentions are sexist or not, the accusation of sexism
merely because they do not regard men and women as identical is very likely
prejudiced itself, since it is so obvious that men and women are so
different.  In fact, one of the many differences is that men think more
generally than women, so that women are more likely to see sexism in
generalizations that they are not willing to make.  Since I agree that men
are more logical than women and that women are more emotional than men, in
no sense do I consider these contentions to be sexist.  The "divine wisdom"
does not mean promoting harmful ideas, but it does not mean not seeing
differences between groups of people, either.


>Some "interpreters" of esotericism have managed to insert a skanky side into
>the literature (ex: Aryan "superiority," Monad "laggards," etc.)

If Aryans really are superior, what is wrong with regarding them so?  Unless
the spiritual development of all individuals is identical, there have to be
laggards.  I see no virtue in not making comparisons.


>With this
>and more, it is not surprising that a division of the sexes would find
>endorsement with some similiar juggling of esoteric wisdom.  I guess we just
>see what we want to see and practice what we want to practice, and interpret
>the literature in the way that suits us most. "Know a person's god, and you
>will know them."

To some extent, people see what they want to see, but to some extent, they
are objective, also.  People are a mixture of the two.