So What Does All That Mean?

I suppose that the penultimate post ( I just like the alliteration...) really did leave a lot of room for questions. I guess the most common would be something like, "Ok, so women should act like women... so... how should women act?"

I have heard many people say that it is hard define femininity in the modern world. That especially now, since women are told they and can and should do everything, and are made to feel inferior if they don't, the definition of femininity has changed and we have yet to define it in concrete terms. I do not agree; femininity is femininity whether a woman works or stays at home to watch children- 1000 years ago or now. I think that it's the application of femininity that is hard to figure out. At what point do careers/pleasure/whatever get in the way of true femininity? How should women act like women?

Well, before acting, women should think. How a woman thinks determines how a woman acts; what a woman thinks it means to be a woman is the way in which she lives out - or does not live out- her femininity. A woman should think that she has dignity and worth simply because she is, not because of what she does. If a woman does not think this, she will not be able to act as a woman should. Femininity seems to me to be more a kind of state of mind than an act or series of acts. The state of mind is reflected in the actions. There are some women who are very good at balancing home life and work life, and others who aren't so good at it, and I think this has to do with the way a woman thinks about what it means to be a woman. If a woman thinks that in order to prove her value as a person she must compete against men- that her worth and dignity depend on what she achieves in a male dominated work world- then she must reject her femininity because it will get her in way.

The difference between men and women encompasses both the physical and psychological. It is an essential difference. A woman's essence is different than that of a man's. It follows, then that because of this essential difference, the ultimate purpose of men and women, though the same (to get to heaven) would be achieved in different ways. These differences are not so much that one sex is better than the other, as that one sex is nothing without the other. Men need women (Yes, J.C.) and women need to men in order to reach their full potential as human beings.


Humans are composite beings (matter and form- i.e. body and soul). Differences in form -the intellective soul, the part that deals with how a person reasons, thinks, and responds to the world- are expressed in the matter (the body). The differences in the matter are expressed in the form. This does not necessariraly mean that the physical and mental capabilities of one sex are better or superior than the other's, it means that they are different.


A woman's body is potentially capable of carrying a child and giving birth. This is reflected in her intellective soul. The way she thinks is dictated by the fact that she has the potential to be a mother. It is in the nature of a woman to be a mother. This does not mean she must have a child to be a woman, or even that she must actually be physically capable of motherhood. There are women who give up physical motherhood for the good of others and have been for thousands of years. This does not make them less womanly.

So feminity is the embracing of motherhood (whether one is a mother or not). It is realizing that this is why we think the way we do and not fighting against it.