What Modern Culture Gets Wrong About Femininity | Ep 18

December 09, 2024

Does being feminine mean being agreeable, endlessly nurturing, or willing to put yourself last? This episode challenges the cultural expectations that confuse femininity with self-sacrifice and leave ambitious, capable women wondering where their own needs belong.

Want to begin reconnecting with your own needs? Start with the free Feminine Reset.

Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D., examines how cultural ideas about success, logic, caregiving, and womanhood influence the way women understand themselves. She distinguishes healthy masculinity from restrictive expectations and explores femininity with room for ambition, emotional depth, receiving, and personal fulfillment.

In this episode:

How the ideal of the self-sacrificing woman can shape your daily choices.
The difference Alanna draws between nurturing others and receiving nourishment yourself.
Why caregiving can be fulfilling while your own needs still deserve attention.
How to question inherited expectations without giving up your strength or ambition.

Go deeper:

Explore the feminine psychology framework behind this conversation

Listen next:

Timestamps:

00:00 Modern expectations for women
02:31 Healthy masculinity and cultural distortion
04:43 Success, logic, and what culture values
08:09 The self-sacrificing woman
10:03 Receiving and feminine energy
11:29 Nurturing and nourishment
13:34 Caregiving and your own fulfillment
15:18 Ambition, strength, and femininity
16:53 Questioning the expectations you inherited

About Alanna:

Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology. She is the author of The Way of the Satisfied Woman and creator of The Satisfied Method™. Her work brings feminine psychology and mythological insight to women’s lives, relationships, and personal development.

Follow The Satisfied Woman wherever you listen, and share this episode with a woman who needs it.

The recording mentions an earlier resource. For the current free starting point, use the Feminine Reset linked above.

Episode Transcript

growing up in this modern patriarchal culture is a challenge and I thought I would take this time to outline some of the challenges that really are present for us as women and hopefully some opportunities for us to lean in and shift The Narrative welcome to the satisfied woman podcast I'm your host Alana kyala this podcast is dedicated to helping women lean into their femininity and ReDiscover the power of their feminine gifts we take a look at what it means to be a modern woman and how we can live A Satisfied life on our own terms visit the Hub atthe satisfied woman.com and make sure you head over to my special page just for my podcast listeners and get all your free gifts at the satisfied woman.com Empower me so I know it may seem like I'm being captain obvious here talking about the culture that we live in and the culture that likely you and I grew up in and I recognize that there are many cultures at play here and that not all of my listeners will have grown up in America like I did but if you are here in the west and frankly if you've grown up as a woman anywhere in the world there's going to be some similarities and things that you recognize we've been living in a patriarchal dominant culture for thousands of years is a little bit of um speculation on exactly how long definitely for at least 2 200 years but some resources point to us being in a mostly patriarchal type of society for 8 to 10,000 years that's a lot of feminine oppression and it really comes from the fear around the power behind femininity and the desire to have power over femininity perhaps one of the most key factors in the dominant rise of the patriarchy was the fact that women have the ability to Bear children and this idea that your family lineage comes from a woman that they're the ones who bear the children means that men want to possess that kind of power in order to control how families grow and are dominant in a particular society now there are of course lots of factors that have folded into the growth and development of this patriarchal culture that we live in today and I am certainly not blaming men men just as you and I have have also grown up in this culture they're not at fault they didn't do anything wrong now when they continue to play into some of the more distorted or toxified ideas of masculinity then we've got something to talk about and there are really really wonderful groups out there who are doing men's work to help Rectify that and strengthen the healthiest ideas of masculinity because masculinity when it's in its healthiest expression is not only amazing and powerful and strong and directive but it's also a perfect complement to the amazing strength of femininity so we do need both masculinity is not to blame it's not bad there's nothing to to to put shame on or around the toxicity and the Distortion of masculinity and the oppression of the patriarchy that's what we want to challenge that's what we want to challenge and look you know I know that this podcast is geared to women and particularly the satisfied women or the women who want to be satisfied but you know if you're a man and you're listening to this podcast maybe your girlfriend wife partner lover friend has offered it to you then um listen up listen up because the Good Men the good masculine people out there those who identify as primarily the masculine polarity they're going to want to do a good job with their masculinity just like you and I want to do an excellent bang up job with our femininity what we want to do is try and move these energies these masculine and feminine energies into their unique yet complimentary highest expressions for the benefit of all okay so right from the outset that's my disclaimer then it's not men that are bad it's simply the cultural narrative that we've grown up in where it oppresses and harms femininity that we're trying to rewrite and overcome and it is not easy masculine qualities are more prized these days uh the idea that we have to be successful success itself is a masculine notion that idea of a linear Pathway to sort to some sort of end goal or finish line that is often hierarchical and to the detriment of others is a masculine idea it is not a feminine idea and yet I remember even as a kid and you might remember as well and even still we are all sold a bill of goods that success is the most important factor uh in life you know this idea that the keeping up with the Jones's narrative um we're also living in a time where we value science now I do too I mean my um my undergraduate studies were actually in physics and astronomy I went through calculus 3 I love me some science and math um as a as a holder of a doctorate I love research I love the scientific method so I'm you know science is science is is here it's our future it's our way of life but sometimes this lean into science and this uh Reliance even on science me means that we value logic and reason over other valuable ideas like emotion and intuition well if we can't prove it how can it be true and if it's not true and provable then it must not be valuable well that's just not the case there are a lot of things in our everyday lives that have no quote value and are not quote provable or true that are so important for us as hum friendship being one of them music being another did you know that there's no evolutionary purpose for music and yet every human being on the planet responds to it and in some way thrives on music it is a joyful expression of life that I think many would argue are necessary so while science is really something that we have placed a tremendous amount of value on now in our culture it's not number one inherently masculine science is neutral science is is what it is I know plenty of incredible female scientists who love the uh research methods as much as I do so science isn't inherently um you know masculine or femin feminine but I think that because we rely so much on it we really focus on the logic and the reason which are masculine traits logic and reason are masculine traits and again as people who identify as the feminine we still have the masculine within us and we still are able to have logic and reason it's just not necessarily our default or what we will trust first or most we might check our intuition and our emotion against logic and reason not the other way around so just something to consider so we're living in a in a time in a society that has a bit of a distortion of the masculine and still oppresses and reduces and minimizes the powerful and strong qualities of the feminine the other part that is challenging for us is what people believe femininity or women should be we still have a notion uh that women should be nurturing and self-sacrificing and that success is defined in that traditional masculine way we actually don't have no those things just aren't true women shouldn't always be nurturing and self-sacrificing first of all this idea of self-sacrifice you know I write about this in my book quite a bit um we are very much told and trained and raised that as women we need to just give ourselves away that we need to do everything for everyone be all things to all people say yes to to to whatever comes our way that no is not an option and that becomes very dangerous it drains us it depletes us and it ravages us as opposed to allows us to be ravished being ravished is exciting it's fun it's mutual being ravaged means that we are simply taken from we are simply drained we are simply depleted so self- sacrifice is not a feminine quality it is not it we've been trained that it is we've been told that women should be self sacrificing um because that keeps us disempowered it keeps us small it keeps us on our back foot it if we if we are drained and exhausted we don't have the power to speak up for ourselves and say no so self-sacrificing if that's something that you've witnessed either in yourself or the women around you um it can stop you don't have to I'm fully giving you permission to knock that off it's not it's not a part of your femininity don't believe that lie um is not a part of Womanhood it is not a required um trait in fact for femininity it's not self-sacrifice it's reception we actually want to take on we don't want to give away self-sacrifice is a giving away of ourselves we actually want to take on and receive we want to absorb we want to enhance we want to build from the inside up that's how femininity works so femininity really doesn't give anything away if you think about even one of the most um kind of Primal aspects of being a feminine woman it is the potential and not all women have this capability or will choose this but the potential to grow life and you think about that nine or so months that women will grow a baby inside of them boy oh boy that is from the inside this development that is a self effulgence we're not giving anything away in that development and we think of that as a primal metaphor we are building from within from our own resources we are self-generative not self-sacrificing now once the baby has been birthed things shift a bit and that is for another podcast I write about it a little bit in my book we go from being inherently feminine in that um pregnancy process to being actually in the masculine as we grow the child on the outside so um the other Narrative of women should be nurturing interesting I find this word all the time describing femininity and Womanhood it is not it's not a feminine word nurturing is actually a masculine word I know what the correct feminine word would be nourishing women want to be nourished the feminine needs to be nourished and again that is that receptive energy we want to be fed we want to be filled fulfilled to nurture is to be externalized and to grow something on the outside and nurturing is actually very directive and very developmental if you look up the definition of nurturing it is for growth and development and growth and development externally is a masculine trait nurturing is one of the Premier masculine qualities if you have good masculine people in your life you will know this about them I think of um this kind of maybe a silly um parallel but I think of Gandalf in this regard talk about a strong masculine nurturer you know froo is his mentee let's say Frodo is asking for advice he's asking for guidance and gandal is always there it's always being supportive and nurturing to Frodo helping him grow and quite literally in the books helping him to move forward along his path that's what nurturing is that is what the raising of a child is is that nurturing once they have exited the womb and are free in their own uh right to to live in the world um they are they are in need of nurturing so we can start to turn on its head these Concepts that we've been raised with that we've been enculturated to that are supposedly feminine and qualities of women that actually aren't quite in alignment with our most true and core energy and that have actually been to us as ways to keep us depressed and

small you know that realization can come as a shock I understand that um you know I get it I get it I I I know how that concept of nurturing a lot of women have owned that and and I think that's why we see so many women in um careers of care women as nurses teachers um child child care providers they really take on that nurturing and they take it very seriously now many many women are good at it they're excellent at it just be mindful if this is you if this describes you if that behavior keeps you in your feminine in that receptive fulfilling creative self-generative place or if it actually leans you into the masculine where you're there to guide direct and grow so again everybody has their own unique mix of masculinity and femininity within them many many women will be put into that child care or that caregiver role and love it and so that is definitely their fullest form of self-expression but I think just really relegating it and understanding that it is a masculine expression maybe it's the one that we really love and we give it our all and that we're feminine in other ways there are no rules here and there is no one right way to be a feminine woman okay so um just keep that in mind there's lots of ways to to get through this and and maneuver through so these are some of the myths and misconceptions that hinder empowerment for women we are looking for ways to be ourselves in the world and really dropping some of the cultural and social narratives that keep us small the idea that ambition is not feminine the idea that we don't need or want more well one of the classic phrases of femininity is more the feminine loves more the feminine is deeply ambitious especially when we're in our creative power we want that creativity to flourish to flow and to grow and to thrive femininity wants everyone around her and it to thrive in the best way possible so I want you to embrace a multifaceted view of femininity that includes strength and even assertiveness women are not passive femininity is not passive femininity is bold it's strong but it is its own it's its own strength it's its own boldness it's its own expression it doesn't have to look like the masculine it doesn't have to look like we've been trained so I'm excited because you and I in this movement get to start to unpack this and determine what femininity really is in the world we get to reval value re-evaluate what we've been told is Womanhood or is femininity and decide for ourselves based on what we know of femininity and feminine principles and most of all we get to tap into how we feel and what our intuition says about who we are in the world because if we truly take a look at that I bet it's going to be a little bit different than what we've been told part of being a woman part of being feminine is questioning it is that internal Inquisition that then creates external change so question everything that is so in your power as a feminine woman so let me know what you're questioning let me know what you're thinking about let me know what roles feel dated to you let me know what roles feel still authentic to you and let me know what kind of things you want to move more into and please let me know how I can help make sure you head over to the Hub at the satisfied woman and especially make sure you go to the goodies page that I've compiled for you at the satisfied woman.com empowerme and I cannot wait to talk to you on the next podcast and until then please stay satisfied

What Modern Culture Gets Wrong About Femininity | Ep 18

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