Weakness
Talking to my baby brother about quieting those voices in his head, the ones that tell him he's not a real man if his wife doesn't take his name, that tell him he's weak and lesser if he's not in charge... Makes me ALMOST glad to have grown up a woman in that religion.
The messages we're all given, religion or not, are so ugly and destructive to our sense of self. My brother is a sensitive, aware, smart human being. Who is having a hard time with the concept of his incredibly strong, smart, self willed wife not wanting to change her name. He's having a hard time with it in part because it takes away from his sense of being masculine. Her need to maintain her own sense of self threatens his sense of self. While he was taught it was weak to allow a woman autonomy, he has never been forced to realize the weakness inherent in the inability to be strong and masculine within oneself, without need of subjugating others. That, right there? Is weakness. Relying on others to make you feel strong will always be weakness.
And you see that sentence above? That right there is my own weakness. An inability to be balanced about need, an inability to be anything but completely alone, because on the other side is being completely subsumed. That's weakness as well. That's lack of balance, and lack of understanding.
Well shit.
The messages we're all given, religion or not, are so ugly and destructive to our sense of self. My brother is a sensitive, aware, smart human being. Who is having a hard time with the concept of his incredibly strong, smart, self willed wife not wanting to change her name. He's having a hard time with it in part because it takes away from his sense of being masculine. Her need to maintain her own sense of self threatens his sense of self. While he was taught it was weak to allow a woman autonomy, he has never been forced to realize the weakness inherent in the inability to be strong and masculine within oneself, without need of subjugating others. That, right there? Is weakness. Relying on others to make you feel strong will always be weakness.
And you see that sentence above? That right there is my own weakness. An inability to be balanced about need, an inability to be anything but completely alone, because on the other side is being completely subsumed. That's weakness as well. That's lack of balance, and lack of understanding.
Well shit.
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