Feminism's New Age by Karlyn Crowley

Author:Karlyn Crowley [Crowley, Karlyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Women's Studies, Body; Mind & Spirit, New Thought, Religion, Sexuality & Gender Studies
ISBN: 9781438436272
Google: _NE1kxKz_lUC
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2011-06-01T05:37:22+00:00

In this misogynist diatribe, if a woman appears too yang, then she has rejected her “natural” yin role and is “no longer a woman.” Ohsawa's insistence that female sexuality is only recognizable when it is stereotypically “feminine” is both aggressively sexist and implicitly homophobic. From his perspective, woman must not only be appropriately yin and display no signs of yang (hair in particular), but she must be properly heterosexual to follow the law of the attraction of “opposites.” In macrobiotics, the loss of sexuality is “fatal” not simply because it denies a man pleasure but because it kills the biological family, conceived as the microcosm of the world. For heterosexual mating to lead to procreation, men and women must not disrupt the “antagonistic complimentary opposites” which they embody (Macrobiotic Seminars of Michio Kushi 68). In contrast, “the modern world” misunderstands yin and yang principles to such a degree that they treat the sexes similarly through such practices as coeducation, argues Kushi. Thus the sexes “are becoming more alike and the attraction between them is growing less” (Macrobiotic Seminars of Michio Kushi 69). Sexual attraction depends on gender polarity.

Macrobiotics also has essentialist gender beliefs when it comes to a woman's place: many macrobiotic theorists believe that women belong in the home. They argue that a macrobiotic woman has power because the family is in her hands: she can create or destroy the health of the family and the quality of their dreams, an important macrobiotic focus. Kushi explains:

The trouble with our society is that woman has forgotten the endurance and patience that enable her the final victor (sic) … she wants to win in man's world of competition (sic). Because of this, families are decomposing faster and faster. Women do not need to struggle to win; at the moment of birth, they have won. Unless we restore this understanding, human happiness will never return. (“What Is Love?” 48)17

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