I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

I am so full of rage and anger that I could easily lash out and hurt someone....very badly. I have been stomping aound for days, stewing in anger. Dogs, cats, and small children scamper hurriedly from my path. I have been barking in shrew tones at everyone and anyone. All of my friends are annoying me, leading me to want to make sweeping changes, and kick quite a few people to the curb once and for all. I am unable to enjoy the Spring, unable to wake up happy, looking forward to another day here on Earth.

I am drowning in my anger.

What is it that's got me so upset?

Well first I've been greatly misunderstood. I wrote blog entries, intending them to be nudges to alertness,  to the sleeping adult population, male and female....although I admit to nudging with a cattle prod. Rather than being seen as minute sparks of enlightenment in a dark world, they were interpreted as calls for Fabio stand-ins, feminist rantings, and similar bunk. After the care I put into constructing those pieces, you can imagine my ire. It's like someone seeing a Shakespeare play for the first time and blithely commenting that it was, 'kinda' sad, and did not have nearly enough sex and exploding vehicles'.

And a lot of friendly well-meaning men joked with me privately about what I meant. This made me seethe even more.

But anger is a valuable tool, if one can sit with it and seek its source.

I've been struggling with moving forward in relationships. Whoa, now THERE'S a surprise, Sharon. Think you can tackle the deepest, darkest, ugliest bits of the issues between men and women, and then sail happily off into the arms of your own Fabio hunk dream, who happens to also have a tool belt, Ph.D. in physics, reads Jung, walks the path of mindfulness, and can create a nurturing habitat for me out of peanut butter, a Q-tip, and palm leaves?

Yeah right. Oh...and he's got to be a tantic master as well, able to perform hours of skillful, sensual ministrations upon my feminine form.

Well, hey, if you're gonna' dream, might as well be for what you really want....

But I am dreaming while I use my keyboard to launch vicious attacks on the stupidity of the male sex. Trying to then find my way into a wonderful relationship with a man who really makes me feel like a woman, who can fucking BE THERE, well this is like one of those complicated flow charts where all the lines run hither and thither, like so much abstract spaghetti,  and finally converge on a single black box labelled "And Then A Miracle Occurs".

Or in my case, such a box should perhaps be more appropriately labelled "And Here There Be Dragons".

Because as complicated as my thought patterns are, and with as much cold fire as burns in my belly from anger, I could not name my demon. Oh, it's easy to say men. Mankind. The Masculine Sex. But that's not it, is it?

Because I love men.

You know, as I sat with my anger, and continued sitting with it, I realized that I was indeed angry with men, but only because they act stupid. Many of my men friends are deeply wonderful souls, and I care for them greatly, even when they act stupid, which is surprisingly often. But I spoke with one recently, and bemoaned the fact that I can never meet men who are Men (insert theme from Conan here), who haven't been demasculated into snivelling, overly-caring beings that can scarcely defend me from a spider, never mind build that habitat on a deserted island. I would probably end up with the guy who'd be insistently checking his cell phone for coverage, and fretting about his froo froo dog back home. My guy friend laughed, but also bemoaned that he is longing for love, and really finding it tough out there.

I realized that I might indeed be incredibly angry with men, that this was indeed holding me back from finding love, because when Love doth come near, my eyelids flutter....and then it all comes back to me, I remember the wounding I've had, and promptly whip out my sword.

What does one do in facing their enemy? What does one do to move beyond an endless detante?

Embrace them. Try to see the world through their eyes. Work to understand what is happening in them that is creating the situation.

Though I am angry at men, anger itself is unproductive. I can deconstruct them all day...then what? The better move would be to listen to men, to hear what is going on in them.

We are getting closer to naming my demon. I could feel it.

My guy friend called me back today to say that though he'd never have thought he was less than totally masculine, that word 'demasculated' had hit a chord with him. Really struck a chord, because it was how he felt. He's been in the mid-forties dating morass himself, and contrary to the February edition of Time's optimistic piece on "Love after 40", it's a fricking minefield out there. I am but 38, and feel I would fare better meeting prospects as an ambulance driver in a war-torn country rather than trying to meet someone here, while obeying all these ridiculous dating rules. Really.

I went to have a facial yesterday, and ended up giving therapy to my aesthetician, who is all of 23, and deeply upset over things she's perceiving. As I spoke with her, I shuddered because I heard myself, and  despite my ego's loud protestations to the contrary, I noticed I had indeed become a feminist. Not a bra-burning, demonstrating feminist. Not the kind insisting for the right to go to war, but hey, let me tell you, women would work things OUT and never do this "King of the Hill' crap men seem compelled to do, from childhood. Watch little boys at play. It's not learned. Martiality is innate.

But, I digress. I had become a feminist, the kind who knew the initial battles of access to the workplace had been won. The new battles are the next layer down, the entrenched attitudes, the subtle discrimination, the over-masculinizing of women to the point that they feel being feminine in any way makes them too vulnerable. And therein lies the rub.

My male friend felt demasculated. I felt, and feel defeminized. I know how to play the masculine games of one-upmanship and competition. I have no idea how to be feminine and receptive. I've lost that, if I ever had it.

And now the demon shows itself to me in full light. It is not men I hate. It is the system we are caught in, men and women, that in its death throes is inflicting searing pain across all of our souls. I hate the system that teaches women that we can either be hard-faced sex objects with no value outside of our body parts (meet Pam Anderson), domestic artisan-servants, happily serving from behind eyes anaesthetized by anti-depressants (meet Martha Stewart) or ball-busting de-feminized ultra-masculine thinkers and movers (meet Hillary Clinton). I hate the system that teaches men that sex consists of 1) foreplay,  2) masculine penetration, followed by 3) masculine orgasm. How have women been edited out of our own sexual process? I hate the creation of a monotheism that smashes feminine deities, instills a masculine, angry god, and begins the story of creation by blaming women. I hate the entire system that ensures women can only survive by being masculine, and are denigrated for their feminine qualities. I hate that same system that demands men stop being pigs, become civilized and sensitive, and then calls them demasculated for doing so.

The name of my demon is patriarchy. I will not even dignify it or acknowledge its power by formalizing or capitalizing its name. The problem with it is that it goes unseen, goes undetected, yet scripts out our daily roles and interactions like an ancient puppet-master whose touch we barely notice.

Ahhh, the profound relief I feel.... just in being able to name my demon. See what has come of listening to one's enemy?? It turns out that men are merely actors carrying out the actions and motions of a system in which they too are prisoners.

Now I know how to fight. We are all only acting under a system whose gnarled, Saturnine grip is incredibly, titanically powerful....

....but can be loosened.

I intend to be one of those looseners.


This is the plus side of anger....getting to name your demon, discovering the emerging face of the force that has repeatedly sought you out, and made you aware of its presence by wounding you. Anger's true purpose is a catalyst for transformation. Its energy can be channeled as fuel to direct you to the place where your borders have truly been violated, and where, having named your demon, you can now truly begin the work you are meant to do.

Are you in touch with your anger?