Why can’t we fully blossom into femininity without the presence of masculinity? Because we are image-bearers of God. In this episode, Amy Killingsworth explains how God is the perfect expression of masculinity and femininity in equal measure. So if we want to know who we are, we have to look to Him, our Creator. Since God has both qualities in Him, we, too, need to have access to masculinity to express our femininity. Tune in to unlock your design as a feminine person!

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Femininity: Why We Need Masculinity To Fully Embrace The Feminine

In this episode, we are expanding on the idea of gender polarity from the last episode and we are taking a deep dive into femininity. Without any further ado, let’s get started.

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This episode is about femininity. It’s a follow-on episode to the one I did prior to this, which is about polarity. If you haven’t heard that one, there is a little bit of background information about the topic and some foundational information I shared that you might want to go back and read to maybe even before you read this one. Femininity is one side of the polarity pole. It’s an integral part of our original design. God is the perfect expression of masculinity but he’s also the perfect expression of femininity, which sounds weird because we say He because he’s represented throughout scripture mostly as a father. He’s also represented in ways in the Hebrew language that is feminine and as a mother and with feminine qualities as well. God isn’t a male because we identify him as Father. He is the perfect expression of femininity and masculinity, equal and the same.

When we look for our original design since we are image-bearers, we always look to God, to the source, to the creator, to the most high, to see what it is that we are supposed to look like before the world gave us a script to read off of. Before the world put layers upon layers on us and traumatized us so we developed unhealthy patterns and styles of relating. This is a topic where angels fear to tread. I’m going there because it is so critical to your design. It’s so critical to our healing. It’s critical to us living fully expressed, fully alive lives so we understand who we are. We take those layers off and those wounds in it, we heal those wounds and we allow for our true nature to shine forth because that’s where we find our fulfillment.

As we say all along, the Rise to Reign process and fame framework are about healing because God wants you healed so you can wholeheartedly live your purpose and live your life. If we’re having a conversation about purpose and we don’t have a conversation about polarity or where you are in the masculine-feminine pole, where you are versus where your authentic self is then we’re not having a full and robust conversation. When we have a conversation about loving your life, we’re not having it fully and robustly, if we don’t talk about this issue. It’s very critical to your quality of life, well-being and success. I don’t mean monetarily or career success but your success as a human and person in the world is that you are expressing exactly who you truly were made to be before you were wounded in this area.

Since we are image-bearers, when we look for our original design, we always look to God. Click To Tweet

Interestingly, the adversary comes and attacks gender more than anything else because gender is at the heart of our representation as image-bearers. Gender is how we express the character and the nature of God. All throughout the scripture when it talks about characteristics of God, it is both/and but it’s either/or. It’s never one at the same time. He’s either a mother or a father. He’s either behaving masculine or he’s behaving and expressing feminine. “Never the twain shall meet.” They’re blended perfectly in the father but they’re not blended perfectly in us.

We are further on the spectrum on one side or the other. I want you to imagine gender polarity as a spectrum. Way over on the far-right side is feminine and way over there is masculine. There’s a dividing line between the two. If you are a feminine person, you will be able to tell because your body will tell you. You are on the feminine side if you have a feminine body, which we all know what that means. When a baby comes out and it’s a girl, we can tell because of the anatomy vice versa, when a baby comes out and it’s a boy, we can tell because of the anatomy. We can even look inside the womb with a sonogram and see what a person is gender-wise by physical characteristics. There are some very rare anomalies I’m aware of.

In general, we know if you’re on the feminine side of the spectrum of polarity or the masculine side by your physical attributes. That’s easy. It’s become cloudy. It doesn’t have to be but when you use logic, it’s easy to see where you lie on which side of the spectrum. Within that, on the feminine side, there is a multitude of variations. On the masculine side, there are multiple variations. If you’re slightly over the line on the feminine side, you’re going to have a lot of masculine energy. You’re going to express a lot of masculine characteristics as a feminine person.

If you’re slightly on the masculine side as a male, you’re going to express more feminine. I would like to submit to you, if you are a feminine person or a masculine person in a feminine or masculine body, the further you move towards the far side of the spectrum, the happier, the more relaxed and the more at home you’re going to feel as you heal. You have to heal the trauma alongside this because people will argue me to the ground on this. Don’t worry, I’m used to it. If you have arguments or offenses in your heart, that’s okay. I’m okay with that. I hope you’ll stick with this and open your mind to maybe consider this.

What happens is when we get traumatized usually through either sexual abuse or being rejected because of our gender or gender qualities of our specific gender being denigrated, are we tend to create a personality. We tend to create a style of relating to get us accepted and to be able to move through life as it is, not as it should be. We tend to say, “Being a feminine person, feminine qualities aren’t working or it’s getting me rejected or I’m not able to be promoted or I’m not able to get respect or I’m being abused because of it.” We look over on the other side of the spectrum and we’re like, “He’s getting promoted and he’s getting what I want. I’m going to take that attribute and I’m going to mimic it and I’m going to mirror it.” It’s not me. It’s like a coat or a piece of clothing that I put on or more accurately, a piece of armor that I put on.

 

Since we’re talking about femininity, I’m going to do an entire episode on masculinity. Don’t worry, guys, you get your moment too but this particular episode is about femininity. Now we’re going to get into femininity and I’m going to talk about it specifically in how it relates to women. That’s what happens in our world, feminine qualities, feminine skills, feminine energy are considered weak. It’s considered less than the more masculine qualities. As women, we are also generally speaking physically weaker and prone to being perpetrated against, to being attacked and abused. We’re more vulnerable because of our size and strength than our masculine counterparts.

What happens most of the time, I would say, growing up in our world is that because of how much it hurts to be a woman and because we’re not valued for our true nature, we put on a masculine mask and a masculine set of armor. That’s not right but it’s true. We reach for masculine qualities so we can have a sense of being protected. There’s a lot of things at work here because we are supposed to be protected but we’re supposed to be protected by men. Men’s roles are protectors and providers. There’s a definite interplay here. When our father, when our primary masculine man in our life doesn’t show up in a godly, healed way as protector and provider, that is the impetus for massive trauma and woundedness around our femininity.

Because we have this need, this desire, we are supposed to be protected and provided for, we go to this toxic self-sufficiency usually through a process. We get to where we’re like, “I’m going to do that for myself. I’m going to take care of myself. I’m not going to be vulnerable. I’m not going to be soft because being vulnerable and soft only gets me abuse or only gets me neglected or only gets me abandoned or left out.” We go to this place where we harden up and put a shell on, a mask on and we begin to protect and provide for ourselves.

If you haven’t noticed already, that’s the main characteristic of the male. Masculinity is protecting and providing. All males have an inborn, innate makeup that they are hardwired to do. Men can be dysfunctional as well because of wounded illness and trauma and not be showing up that way but that’s a healed perspective. Protection and provision are masculine energy. It’s a masculine effort. When we are wounded as females, it’s usually because our primary masculine role model didn’t show up adequately in protection and in provision for us. We’re not able to blossom and grow our femininity in that environment. Understand this, women learn femininity and the presence of masculinity.

We can't fully blossom into femininity without the presence of masculinity. Click To Tweet

It’s taught and passed down through mothers, either poorly or correctly or usually some combination in between. We can’t fully blossom into femininity without the presence of masculinity because we learn who and how we are by observing and interacting with its opposite. That’s a way that we explain things a lot of the time. It’s like, “What does it mean to go fast?” Fast is not slow. Fast is other than slow. Femininity is other than masculinity. In addition to watching and learning from the female role models that we have, we learn, develop and grow our femininity in the presence of masculinity. Healthy whole masculinity is where femininity opens and blossoms because it feels safe.

If the masculine is protecting and creating the container, the feminine can blossom and open and be soft. These are feminine qualities. It’s qualities of playfulness, openness and softness. It’s true for both genders but what happens is as we grow, these hard shells around our heart and as we put on this masculine armor and this masculine mask, we realize, “That’s not attractive to men.” As we maybe enter into puberty and start to notice boys, we start to want to be desired by them, we then try to create femininity but we do it on the external of the masculine armor that we have on.

This looks like makeup, hair, wearing seductive clothing and trying to attract a man’s attention visually because males are typically very visual. We try to attract attention and it works to get their attention but it doesn’t work to keep the attention or to build a lasting, fiery and passionate love relationship. In order for the masculine to be drawn in, the true divine feminine, our true characteristics and nature need to be expressed. You can’t fake it. You can’t mimic it. You can’t mirror it. It is there but it needs to come out from under the layers of armor that we put on.

I’ve already alluded to it but I want to be clear about what feminine qualities are. Femininity is the desire to fill up. You can see this anatomically and I won’t get too graphic. Femininity is an empty space that wants to be filled. You can see this with women who wanted to talk to us and we want your attention. Many of us in a shadow sense, overeat or over-consume or shop too much or are workaholics because we’re trying to fill an empty space with something other than what it was designed to be filled by. Femininity is the empty space that wants to be filled. Wanting to take in, to receive is very feminine, receptivity. Receptivity is very feminine.

I can’t do this separately because I have to show the inverse. Masculinity wants to empty out. It wants to give. Masculinity is the provider and femininity is the receptivity, the reception of that provision. Masculinity wants to empty out and femininity wants to fill up. That’s why guys want to come home from work and zone out. They don’t want you to talk to them. They might need a little bit of a transition period because they want to empty out. They want blank nothingness. That’s where they feel at home where femininity is trying to receive and get something out of them. I don’t mean that in a sense of empty-headed or empty life.

 

Receptivity is a very feminine quality but a prerequisite to receptivity is openness. Think of a flower that’s a tight bud and it’s closed down together. As it blooms and opens is when you see its real beauty in that blossom. Openness is a beautiful feminine quality. It’s that openness. Conversely, masculinity is very guarded and closed or shut down usually. Hopefully, you can see some problems developing and those are by design. They’re not problems. They’re challenges. It’s like a treasure hunt we have to navigate through. Receptivity and openness are very feminine. Chaos is a feminine quality. I’ve heard it said that femininity is the hurricane and masculinity is the wall. Masculinity is the anchor that holds inside the hurricane and the hurricane is swirling around you. Chaos is a feminine quality. I don’t mean chaos in a dysfunctional way but I mean chaos like the cutting edge of creativity. Something, before it comes to order, has to rearrange and there’s an element of chaos.

Order and steadfastness are masculine qualities. Another masculine quality as strategy, whereas its feminine counterpart, is intuition. Women’s intuition, it’s world-famous. It’s a real thing. It’s a feminine quality whereas men are more logical and strategic. Women’s femininity is more like feeling and intuiting. That’s why we can feel a situation and we’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t trust that guy.” He’s like, “You got to give me something more than that,” because he doesn’t get that because it’s a feminine quality.

We have openness, receptivity, chaos and intuition. I would say there are a lot more nuances to that. If you add nurture to it, it is a cross-gender quality because men have it. Nurture is more on the feminine spectrum. The desire to gather people in and create community and make sure that everybody’s taken care of and that people are included and connected. Connection is a very feminine quality as well as creativity. Those would be the hallmark feminine qualities. What happens is as feminine people, we have to access masculinity or we can’t live in the world. There’s no way that we can live in the world without some level of strategy and execution. There’s no way we can live in the world.

I’m a single mother so I have to protect and provide for my children. It’s not the place that I’m in my design. It’s not the place that I feel is going to be my reality forever. The reality is the situation I’m in, in life is I have to protect my children and I have to provide for them. That is every mother’s reality. Even if there is a strong male in the home that’s protecting and providing, women still have to protect their children. If the dad is at work and your kids running out towards a car or fall in the pool, you’re going to protect the kid. When you do that, you’re accessing masculinity.

Another thing that I do is run several businesses. I have to access strategy. I have to access execution. As women, we have to be able to access masculinity but we also need to know how to be able to come home to femininity. This is where we get stuck is because we try to live in masculinity because of the world prizing those efforts over masculine skills and traits over feminine traits. What does it look like? Number one, in the presence of your man, a romantic relationship won’t work if you’re going to be masculine. If you’re going to be masculine at home with your man, you probably don’t have a man. If you do, you’re butting heads with him because you’re trying to be the man. Unless he’s very in touch with femininity, which is not necessarily a great thing because we as women despise that.

Knowing who we are and our design as women is vital to healing. Click To Tweet

If you feel a high level of contempt and disgust towards your man, don’t look at him, look at you. This is important. I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong with the way that he is or isn’t showing up but that is irrelevant because we are sovereign individuals and we take radical responsibility and we don’t blame. If you see that dynamic and you’re thinking, “The guys that I date or the man that I’m married to is so weak. I have such a high level of disgust and contempt for that.” What you need to be aware of in that is how you are showing up in your masculine at home, in the bedroom versus in the boardroom. It’s a great little way to think of it. If you show up at home in your masculine, you probably have attracted a man who has armored up with femininity.

I’ll get to this in the next episode. That’s what happens. The masculine attracts the feminine. If you are heavily in masculine energy, you’re going to attract a man who is heavily in feminine energy, which equates to the perception of passivity and weakness. As women, we think we want that because it’s non-threatening but the truth is we hate it. We despise it because what we want with our heart underneath all of the dysfunction, the trauma and the hurt, what our little girl feminine heart wants is a strong man who will protect and provide for us. Does that mean that we’re going to sit home and bake bread and raise children and not do anything that is influential or impressive as far as business or ministry or calling goes? Absolutely not. It means you do it from a place of covering at home. It means he has your back and he is running interference in making sure all of your needs are provided for and you are protected.

You come from this space of being protected and provided for. Imagine, you can focus then on your mission or your calling. Maybe your mission for a period is raising children and taking care of a home. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done it all. I’ve worked in Corporate America. I’ve made tons of money. I’ve built multiple businesses and I’ve raised children. I can say from my heart, when it’s done well from femininity, raising children and nurturing a family is the most fulfilling work there is but that doesn’t mean that’s all you’re suited for. It doesn’t mean that’s all you’re qualified for because you’re feminine that you need to be the nurturer. We’re not even talking about roles. We’re talking about energetics, skills and how you show up as your most authentic self.

Is femininity weak because it needs to be protected and provided for? Absolutely not. That is our power position. Our position of strength comes from having support. If you haven’t watched the movie Elizabeth, there are two of them. I want you to watch those. I want you to think about her on her horse. I think it’s in the second one. There’s a scene where she’s leading her army into battle. She’s on her horse and in full battle array. She’s in armor. Behind her is this army of men and they are ready to do her bidding as a sovereign of the country not necessarily as a woman but as the leader. She is leading this army into battle and is a powerful picture of the strength of femininity when it is fully expressed with the protection and the provision and the backup of the masculine.

It doesn’t mean that we’re weak, pathetic and we can’t take care of ourselves. It means that when we have the protection and provision of a masculine man, we are able to fully express our femininity in that environment. It is a beautiful, powerful thing. Quite honestly, I’m constantly developing and moving into because I come from that background of having a father that didn’t father me in this way. This is something that I am diligent about healing in my own life. It takes self-awareness to be able to choose it, to understand why you’re choosing it and be intentional about reconnecting. Intentionally living in that zone of femininity so your life begins to arrange around it.

 

It doesn’t have to be romantic partners but strong men can be men and the presence of feminine women. I am raising two sons. I notice when I relate to them in the masculine, we butt heads. I’m an authority over them but when I relate to them as a woman in my feminine strength, they respond to that. They don’t respond to masculinity. What does that look like in parenting? Masculinity is strategy and direction. Femininity is asking for them in terms of what they can protect me from and what they can provide me with. When they do something that I don’t want them to do, we have a conversation. I let them know how that made me feel. I let them know how they can show up in the future to protect me and provide for me. They puff up and they connect with their true masculine hearts. They show up and it is a beautiful thing to watch because this is our healing.

This is a big important part of our healing. It’s knowing who we are and our design as women or as men. As feminine people or masculine people, we have to know what that is. We have to know what it looks like so we can begin to express it and notice when we aren’t it. This is a big reason why I created the archetypes. There’s a download available on my website, AmyKillingsworthPodcast.com where you can grab the archetypes and have a little cheat sheet there. I encourage you to do this because this is why I created the archetypes so you can have the self-awareness of, “I’m being the princess. I’m being a prisoner.” You can intentionally choose to rise up out of that and reign as the queen or as the king. An incredibly important part of the queen is knowing who she is as a female, as a feminine person.

I couldn’t end this episode without talking about feminism. How feminism is, I believe, the most toxic ideology and harmful to women in true femininity. When I say that, I hope you know that I am all for females being empowered. I am all for females occupying positions of influence. I certainly believe women are equal and as important to men and deserve equal pay and to vote and all of that. Please, don’t get it twisted. I don’t believe females are better than men or men are better than females. Feminism is toxic because the message is that men are worthless and they screwed it up so women need to get their chance. That’s the core of what it’s become, modern feminism or feminist activism. It has become as it is like men are worthless. They’ve screwed it up. It’s our turn now. It’s like a reverse. It’s like a swing back of like, “Men were on top for a while and now women are going to be on top.”

We can’t be on top or on the bottom. We have to be side by side. We have to be equals but function in our design together. The other thing that feminism does is that it tells women that they have to be successful. It reinforces that toxic ideology, that masculine quality like direction, strategy, execution, protection and provision. They are superior and for women to be superior, we need to access and display aggressive tendencies and that is so far from the truth. We can be very effective without being aggressive. We can be what we were supposed to be, what we are supposed to be and that my friends, us and our power as women functioning in critical roles in areas of society is what will heal the world.

Conversely, it’s calling men up to true masculinity. Giving them the space to operate in that role. That means we abdicate it and let them rise into it. We abdicate the masculine position and let them rise into it. In the presence of a masculine man, we understand what it is to be feminine. In the presence of a feminine woman, he understands what it is to be masculine. My friends more on this in the next episode when we were going to take on masculinity and the context of the rise reign framework and juxtapose it with femininity. We will wrap up our discussion on the pillar of polarity. That’s it for this episode, my friends. Thank you so much for reading. I will see you next time.

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