Experience Gender Physics at the Movies

The film depicts a westerner experiencing the brutality of Turkish prison guards – surely masculine energy run amok – but the peace and tranquility he creates for himself under such conditions is feminine energy at its best. That’s Gender Physics: develop and embrace the two energies within yourself, and use the most appropriate energy for the circumstances to establish your most rewarding life.

In terms of their power, movies in themselves are a form of feminine energy. They can – through their ability to attract – lead you to new places and expose you to new ideas. In that way, Hollywood exercises more educational power than Harvard over everyday, working people. A movie like Schindler’s List allowed more people to understand the realities of the Holocaust than any History 101 lecture ever could. That kind of receptive power is the opposite of the striving, unemotional power of the masculine – but it can still be complimentary to it. We just need to be aware of which power is appropriate for the situation.

An example of positive masculine power in the movies is Braveheart. Mel Gibson plays the role of William Wallace, a medieval Scottish hero who takes up arms against the English after his wife is murdered. The energy of the commanding, raw masculine power is depicted in the famous Battle of Stirling scene, in which he rallies the troops and defeats the superior English force.

By contrast, consider the feminine power of Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List. During the Second World War, the businessman and war profiteer saved over a thousand Jews from extermination by creating a list of essential workers for his factories and then forming relationships with the Nazis to gain support. He used feminine energy to get his way when he had no outward, external power.

The Sound of Music is another classic movie, and I just love to watch it at the lake in the summertime. Here, the masculine energy of the military is pitted against the feminine energy of culture and ideas. Remember when Maria meets Captain Von Trapp, and he’s ordering the children around with a military whistle? He lords over them like a drill sergeant, but she wins them over through creative story-telling and song. Their family was out of balance with masculine energy but she entered, soothed their hurts, and provided music. In the end this addition of feminine energy saved the family.

Neither energy is enough on its own. Take the actions of Sidney Poitier’s character in To Sir with Love. He is a hard-nosed, unemployed engineer who finds himself working as a high-school teacher, attempting to get through to a bunch of unruly teenagers. First, he tries the feminine energy approach by caring deeply about them. But it doesn’t work. He brings the hammer down with consequences, and gets the attention of the students. After a display of masculine energy, the students fall into line, and the learning truly begins. The language of the masculine was all the students knew growing up, so he had to start there to communicate with them. Once he aligned the masculine and feminine energy he had great success.

As demonstrated by these movies, sometimes we need a prevalence of one of these energies to accomplish our goals. We can start by respecting what the two energies have to offer and accepting both – and that means developing our opposite. Each of us is primarily characterized by one energy, and have at least a speck of the other. It’s time to step forward and embrace it. Can you see the power in doing that?