Gender Agenda: Gender Issues, Love, Relationships


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Gender Agenda: How it began

Our journey through life as girls and women in a gender-fragmented society has at times seemed like a real 'war of the roses'. As women, we have encountered the privileging of the mainstream male in our workplace, leisure and community involvements. Our reaction to incidents of sexism has been 'Oh no not again!' Having both grown up in a family of all girls, the injustices placed on women and marginalized men seemed more evident and stark. Growing up in families where we could be strong, loud, dominant, and not forced into stereotypical 'girl' roles or being subjugated by 'boy' children, gave us both a heightened sense of the right for equitable voice and identity.

As part of our personal timeline in the gender debate, we have encountered the dizzying reverberations in the gender movement but have found that things have not changed much in terms of equity, violence and dysfunctional relationships. Many men and women are stuck in a cycle of personal distress that is acted out in abusive ways in relationships. On the merry-go-round from victim feminism to power feminism we have seen confusion abound. When women challenge oppressive roles and inequity their struggle is often fraught with problems stemming from their own internalised oppression and low self worth. This estrangement for many women is acted in their continued reliance on looking to men for happiness, a burden for both women and men.

As we became more attuned to the gender conflict around us, we observed the extreme ways in which people behave when feeling personal distress and within their relationships. We noted that feelings of discontent, fear, and confusion seemed to lie at the foundation of the aggression, violence, abuse, rape, and murder. Daily newspaper headlines provide testimony to the breakdown of relationships within society:

Lover jailed for 20 years over murder
Love lethal in a quarter of national homicides
Prostitutes reveal life of rapes and bashings

We found that expectations of 'love' in relationships were compacted by the domination of one gender over another. As constant theme male privilege and patriarchal authority seemed to contribute largely to the gender war illustrated in the headlines.

We wondered where to go from here. We never set out to write a book, but through our interest and concern for gender injustice, it just evolved. We began writing articles as an extension of our Masters theses 'Art, Pornography, Gender and Education'. Our writing flourished into some journal articles, which examined gender, literature and literacy practices. We found that many texts and literature modeled and reinforced gender stereotypes, and though a lot of lip-service had been paid to issues of gender, they had only managed to reproduce the old social order rather than working toward evolutionary transformation. This is not to say that revolution is not important but it is only a starting point. We wanted forward lash not just backlash. So where to look for real change?

In our writing we discovered that the spirit of mutuality, the respectful foundation upon which we worked provided a positive model for change. Mutuality, which draws on strengths, negotiation, and acceptance, seemed a model that both men and women could aspire to. With our belief that people are driven by an energy which seeks balance in the world, then life can be all that one wishes it to be - safe, just, and true. When the world is in conflict then this energy is directed towards attack and self-defense, a reaction to the power imbalance rather than peace and mutuality. It is from knowing this energy, the energy of passion and orgasm, we came to write The Mutual Orgasm: a Clitorocentric Manifesto.