the role of a toxic patriarchy culture in suppressing the sacred feminine energy

If you are a women, particularly holding a feminine energy, there is a 90% chance that you are battling body image issues, struggling with the different types of diets, and feeling awkward in your own body. Research has proven that nearly 80% of young teenage girls report fears of becoming fat, 70% of adult women report withdrawing from activities due to their body image, and among 50,000 adults, 60% of women thought they were too heavy, were self-conscious about their weight, 30% reported being too uncomfortable in a swimsuit, and 20% thought that they were unattractive.

What is the real reason behind this dissatisfaction?

Sexism

Sexism is prejudice based on a person’s sex or gender. Sexism in a society is most commonly applied against women and girls. It functions to maintain patriarchy, or male domination, through ideological and material practices of individuals, collectives, and institutions that oppress women and girls on the basis of sex or gender. Such oppression usually takes the forms of economic exploitation and social domination. Sexist behaviours, conditions, and attitudes perpetuate stereotypes of social (gender) roles based on one’s biological sex.

Sexism is usually presented through media, both traditional and social, whether it is a model in a magazine, an actress on television, or a mannequin in a store window, images of how women should look, dress, act, and even react are everywhere. Adhering to society’s unrealistic and often varied models of the ideal woman makes it difficult for women to find and accept their own identities and bodies. In fact, the sexist beliefs associated with women, both negative and positive, have been linked to numerous physical and mental health issues for women, including depression, anxiety, binging, purging, and anorexia. Young women are also heavily influenced by the opinions and judgments of those closest to them, including their family members, friends, and coworkers. Understanding how the beliefs of others and internalization of those beliefs affects a woman’s body image is necessary in order to help women overcome any challenges related to self-worth, self-esteem, and positive self-image.

What is body image? and how does it affect self- esteem and self-concept!

Body image is the way we look at ourselves physically, it is a set of beliefs we have about our physical body, this includes our attitudes towards our body.

Women base their body esteem on three distinct aspects: their weight, physical condition and sexual attractiveness. Many cultures around the world link femininity to physical attractiveness, and they place a major focus on it, as a result, girls ,in their late childhood, start to experience social pressure, fear of rejection due to how they look, and, develop an obsession about their appearance, that keeps increasing over time.

A negative or unhealthy body image can contribute to low self-esteem and cause persistent anxiety. In extreme cases, it can interfere with daily well-being. it does also involves a preoccupation with one’s perceived flaws. Individuals experience shame or even disgust around their appearance. Some may go to unusual lengths to alter or hide their bodies, even at the expense of their own well-being, and we can see this if we look at the amount of cosmetic surgeries performed by normal people around us!

When one has a negative attitude towards an aspect of “THE SELF” which is their physical body in this case, they are constantly judging, criticising and rejecting themselves, they dismiss their strengths, their gifts, their contribution to community, their smile, their presence….etc and they focus solely on one factor ” how they look? how much they weigh?” to decide their value and self- esteem, this leads to low self-esteem, low sense of self, because your self esteem is so weak and can collapse once you put on few kilos!!!

the danger of BoDY Image Distortion

Body image distortion can be seen in eating disorders performed to reach a fixated goal (weight or size), which can lead to starvation of the self, unrealistic diet habits, over exercising, purging and detoxing. This obsession can even result in suffering from Anorexia or Bulimia , these individuals often have neurological differences in their parietal cortex, the part of the brain that helps people sense the dimensions of their bodies. In other words, these people may overestimate their body size because their brains are giving them inaccurate information.

A Spiritual Look into Sexism & Body Image and its danger on our feminine energy

We previously discussed how sexism and body image can lead to mental health and cognitive and neurological disorders! but how is this affecting our Sacred Feminine Energy?

“The patriarchy seeks to disrupt our sense of worthiness, self-trust, and authentic expression, resulting in a haze of feelings of self-doubt, inadequacy, and shame.”

The patriarchy is a system of thinking and beliefs built upon superiority, control, and exclusion. It’s based on fear, greed, and scarcity, rather than love and inclusion. And it maintains its power by reinforcing hierarchical structures and systems of dominance by amassing influence, wealth, and control. An obvious example of this is the segregation of social classes and discrimination against genders and races.

The patriarchy is about those in power fulfilling their personal agendas — regardless of impact on others.

The patriarchy is one of the primary reasons feminine powers have been oppressed by individuals and groups of people operating through imbalanced masculine energies. Subsequently, over centuries feminine powers have innocently become repressed inside of ourselves through social and cultural conditioning — often without knowing how we’re reinforcing our own prisons.

The patriarchal system has severed its access to compassionate and empathetic care for the whole. It has lost focus on the art of listening to the heart, practicing patience, and leaning into uncertainty as a doorway into infinite potential for creative innovation. This extreme imbalance results in alienation and amnesia, such as forgetting our inherent interconnectedness and our embodied knowing that when we hurt another, we hurt ourselves.

The patriarchy is a distorted expression of masculine energies that has overshadowed our feminine nature, foregoing the balanced, harmonious eco-system needed for humanity and the planet to thrive.

When distorted masculine energies dominate feminine energies, there is an observable shift in the following behaviors:

• hyper control at the expense of surrender and flow
• excessive doing and striving over being, yielding, listening, and receiving
• anxiety-induced competition and urgency over collaboration and patience
• obsessively fixing instead of pausing to assess how a challenge may be offering an opportunity to innovate, connect, and grow
• separation and exclusion over connection and integration

“When we’re focused, balanced, and on-purpose, our creative energy spills forth as a catalytic agent of love, inclusivity, innovation, and evolution.”

If we reflect on the agenda of the patriarchy, and observe what sexism, body shaming is impacting our feminine energy, it is very clear that the lack of presence and the over obsession with our appearance, and sex appeal, limits and belittles our powers, instead it does drag us into a vicious circle of separation with self and with one another, our world had become so superficial, that we only look at appearance to evaluate another being, we live in a world where uniqueness is labelled as awkwardness , where everyone is concerned to look just like that actress or top-model.

On another note, there is a degradation of our divine being, that is more than body and mind, as we start seeking satisfaction and validation outside of us, instead of leaning into our heart and connecting with our true essence which leads to more and more disconnect with self, and serves the patriarchy agenda in suppressing our creative powers, distracting us with superficiality, and involving us in boosting industries of cosmetic products, cosmetic surgeries, diet, fat loss products….etc, in other word we are feeding and contributing to the continuation of this entrapment!

The patriarchy wants us to forget the radiant treasure of who we truly are. In truth, our power innately beams from the depths of our whole being — not from what we own, do, or achieve. it seeks to keep us domesticated — to shut down and eliminate our wild, sovereign, and integrated self.

Over time, the matrix’s messages become hardened into our own belief systems, even when they don’t match our deeper desires and authentic yearnings.

To cope, we learn to compartmentalize aspects of ourselves that we feel ashamed of, or that don’t fit into these social and cultural expectations. Each time we banish a part of ourselves, we fragment from our wholeness.

This causes many of us to feel disconnected from our true self, passion, curiosity, playfulness, and wonder.

This wholeness is not limited to an identification with our self-images, but an intimate melding with the depths of stillness and wisdom that live within each one of us, regardless of our status, physical appearance, or perceived success in the material world.

Every day, we’re bombarded by messages designed to induce shame, which drive us towards self-improvement campaigns to fix our perceived imperfections. Shame is a universal experience that leads us to feel unworthy, broken, and hopeless.

One way the matrix does its dirty work is by manipulating us to internalize messages of shame. is by advertising propaganda preys on our insecurities — our pain points — as a strategy to convince us to seek externally for our value, power, and place in the world.

Over time, we unknowingly become the gatekeepers of our own prisons. The external oppressor becomes our very own inner critic, the internalized voice of “I should,” “I’m too much” or “I’m not enough.”

This is how domestication becomes reinforced from the inside-out and why the patriarchal tactics of the matrix lead to one of the most subtle and pervasive forms of disempowerment, manipulation, and misuse of power.

When we pay attention, we start to notice that the matrix’s messages permeate our reality — they’re everywhere! Seeing reality as it is, rather than being identified with the games, is how we begin to unraveling the trappings of domestication.

This is an important call to all genders, to awaken their feminine energy power, because it is your doorway to freedom!

WAKE UP WORLD!