#031922: Femininity

Thoughts on feminine energy

It was Purim on Thursday – a Jewish holiday based on the book of Esther that goes the same way many other celebrations in the Jewish faith do: someone tries to exterminate all members of the religion but fails because of the heroic strength of someone else. Teachers of the story of Purim never fail to mention its uniqueness: the story doesn’t appear in the bible (it is from the book of writings) and God’s name is never mentioned. So the theory goes that his divine presence was so obvious and clear, it would be redundant to make any further mention at all.

I’ve always liked this theory because the hero of Purim, the one who saves the Jewish people, is Esther — the orphaned woman who is taken as queen by the king of Persia.

A tl;dr if you’re not familiar with the story

Once upon a time there was a king named Ahasuerus who threw a 180-day party in his kingdom. At the end of the party, the drunken king called down for this wife, Vashtie, who was upstairs and refused to come down.

So he killed her. Literally. Like didn’t even just banish her from the kingdom, he straight up executed her on the advice of one of his guards.

He gets pretty lonely because he has no wife and as u know, NO WIFE NO LIFE. So he starts the search for a new companion and takes an interest in this quiet orphan named Esther. She was raised by a close relative (maybe her uncle, maybe a cousin — there’s confusion around iy) named Mordechai who was the leader at the time of the Jewish ppl in Persia.

King A goes, “I want that one,” meanwhile Esther didn’t even actually want the job. The guards forced her to come to the palace to be paraded before the king and probably much the same way Vashti was like, “Fuck off,” Esther, in her head, was like, “Hard no to marrying this guy.” But he’s into her! And Mordechai is like, “I think you should do it, just whatever you do, don’t tell him you’re Jewish.”

And she concedes. It was like her burning bush moment. No one talks about it this way but I see no difference. In the story of Moses, his purpose is revealed to him by this burning bush that represents his coming into consciousness of the work ahead of him — to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt. He wrestles with it and is like “I have a speech impediment, God, how am I supposed to talk to the Pharaoh. Maybe ask my brother to do it?” before ultimately conceding.

In this story, Esther is confronted with an option: appeal to the part of herself that is like, “No I don’t want to do it,” or to the one that is curious enough about what would happen if she did. We don’t really hear about the deliberation from Esther’s vantage point, so it seems more like she was forced into it, which, maybe, but it feels more Timothy Chalamet ca. last scene of Dune to me.

So, she becomes the queen. Concurrently, a new prime minister is appointed. His name is Haman, he wears a ridiculous triangular hat and absolutely despises the Jews. He makes this plan to annihilate their entire population. He also gets super pissed that Mordechai refuses to bow down to him and starts planning his death.

In the background, Mordechai finds out that Haman is trying to kill all the Jews and starts scheming with Esther to save them. Or, she’s resistant again when he is like, “You gotta do something,” bc her response is, “The king hasn’t summoned me in a while and he’ll kill me (like actually) if I show up unannounced.”

But Mordechai is like, THIS IS EXISTENTIAL FOR ALL OF US, and this is probably her coming-to-Jesus moment where she is like, “Oh, that’s why I’m here!”

In the end, she takes the risk of showing up unannounced, requests that her husband and Haman join her at this series of feasts where ultimately she reveals her faith, asks the king to take mercy on her ppl and then to kill Haman, the aspiring manslaughterer with a pointy hat.

Which is how the Jews of Persia got saved.

Why am I telling you any of this?

Because I’ve been spending a lot of thought on femininity lately and something clicked when I revisited the book of Esther.

For a long time, I perceived her story as this thing that happened to her. She was dragged into the kingdom and made queen, it’s not like she went after it with the goal of saving the people. She didn’t even wanna do it! Her uncle had to convince her. It bothered me that her effortlessness underscored her role as heroic salvation when within the stories of our male heroes, there is often a thread of determination and hustle and action and visible/loud/forceful strength that weaves them together. 

So what I was doing, really, was comparing this story of feminine triumph with that of masculine triumph and judging the way that feminine triumph occurs – like saying it’s not good enough. On second reading, it’s more like, Esther’s story isn’t defined by her effortlessness so much as it is the process of her acceptance of some of her innate qualities – her feminine energy among them.

Energy

I think we all contain masculine and feminine energy, that the healthiest among us have been able to reconcile and integrate both while those who struggle with understanding themselves are still figuring it out.

A good personal example would be in the thoughts that accompany interactions with my kids. It’s like, if they fall and get hurt and start crying and go to their dad as opposed to me when we’re both around, I get pretty down on myself. Can feel like I’m failing as a mother, which is really another way to say like I’m less of a woman. It’s interesting to say out loud because it makes me question: a woman according to who?

I’m not actually less of a woman, but some idea of what I thought it mean to be one, or how I want to be one is misaligned with how I am one right now.

Although actually, it’s less about being a woman. I see womanhood more like the vessel I’ve chosen for my femininity. And femininity to me is what contains and can unlock a very fluid form of energy. This energy is less conspicuous, less rigid than masculine energy, which is the one that’s more often celebrated in our culture. Neither of these energies, for whatever it is worth, are contained to specific genders. And neither is better nor worse than the other. They’re different and all of us carry elements of both but whether we let ourselves accept this is another question entirely.

In my adult life, I have definitely been more focused on pruning my masculine energy but the feminine has been coming out more and insofar as I have been able to assign its attributes, what I know for sure is that it’s not as loud as the former.

I don’t even know if you can actually hear it.

It is also very nurturing — like a young kid flocks to it when they’re hurt.

This is all new to me.

All energy — masc., fem. — is effortless when you let it flow/can accept it. I think that’s one of the things you get from the story of Esther.

There’s a gift to be had in her mere existence. That existence was a force in its own right. Culturally speaking, we seem to be much quicker to embrace the acceptance of masculine energy. Less so on the feminine front.

Take Kim Kardashian for example. We hate her why — because she is famous for no reason? In other words, for simply existing? Because she hasn’t vanished in the wake of any number of very public disgraces or scandals? Yet no one doubts that she is a shrewd business woman. It’s when other elements of her character are in question that the parade of critical opinions chime in on how vain or shallow or privileged or “affected” or toxic she is.

She has wielded her celebrity in such a way that’s made her both one of the most bashed-upon icons of our time but also one of the most powerful. And to think that she’s used elements of this power to save lives (literally! By getting incarcerated inmates off of death row or chartering flights full of refugees out of Afghanistan) makes me think there’s a lot we don’t know or see, that maybe she’s responded to her own burning bush moment.

I’m not really sure. And didn’t expect to get here, but one thing I have noticed lately as it relates to my personal writing is that I don’t really do it to convey what I’m sure of — like what I think I know to be true. I take to the page when I want to figure something out, when it’s not fully formed or fleshed out, when I’m in pursuit of clarity but not exactly there.

In a best case scenario, I find the clarity. More often lately, I don’t. I think this lack of finding has been wrestling me into quietude and that has just been confusing me more. So I have wanted to start somewhere. Today, the Book of Esther was a good place for that.