In terms of background I’m Cap Sun / Libra Moon / Asc-Venus-Pluto Scorpio.

“In some ways it is subtle, and we think that things have changed…below the surface, I am not so sure.”

This is my sense as well. “Taut” is the word I’d use to describe the relationship between men and women, throughout the ages.

Agreed.

“The battle of the sexes has raged on since time began…”

Women are still underpinned in how they are posted up on billboards semi-naked to advertise products. Featured in music videos as the sexy “bitches” and “hoes” of men. Portrayed in the media constantly as sexual objects, again and again.

This is not only damaging to women, it’s damaging to men too. How?

Well because it portrays men as nothing but sex-craving assholes. It portrays men as power-freaks, when this isn’t always the case.

Both men and women are contributing to this imbalance and inequality.

However fortunately, both men and women are helping to fight this I see efforts all around me where I live.

I could agree with you more.

Elsa, I totally agree with you. And I think that as the stresses of life, particularly economic stresses, get more pronounced, we’ll see the subtleties become more apparent. I try not to dwell on it too much. I like men. I like the male/female energy when it’s flowing nicely. And I just have a hard time wrapping my mind around why gender warfare exists, even as I know it does. We all need one another. We simply do not need the war.

As a man, my life hasn’t really involved many men. So I have always been with women, and have seen many things I didn’t like. Men who treat women terribly and with great violence (mars). the gender roles are changing, but it’s been more like a slow trickling of water. I believe that religion has played a big role over the past centuries, treating woman largely like second class citizens. I have read and seen in documentaries that early civilisations worshipped mother goddesses, she represented life itself.

I asked my G-mother what the secret was to her 55 year marriage. She said, “I could never drive or I would have left him years ago”…I asked her what she thought changed over the years that made it better for me. She said, “Not much, you can drive away but the world will still see you as just a woman and you will always have to work twice as hard for recognition, when you speak behind your back their eyes will roll, and most of the time you wont be paid what your worth”!

Then she told me to always remember that I am just as worthy and said don’t you ever let anyone stand in your way. You can do anything you want with your life. You will have obstacles but I believe in you. And, you will overcome them.

As an example and PLEASE this is not political and I am not claiming that I have or would vote for these people….BUT…how long did it take the world to discredit Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin. These women have accomplished many things but the media buried them as quickly as possible. And Hilary Clinton ….I have no idea how the heck she has survived the baloney she has gone through….these are strong women. You may not like their politics but I’m looking at accomplishments!

Everytime I hear people talking about how they hate their hair or their clothes the little hair on the back of my neck stands on end! We don’t notice what a man wears….

It’s still a man’s world. I haven’t bought into the illusion that we live in a society where everyone is treated equally.

I read an article somewhere about the fixed star Regulus and it’s movement into the sign of Virgo. The point was that the entry of Regulus into Leo heralded the rise of the Roman empire and a 2,000-year male-dominated world. With Virgo, the influence is more feminine. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but hey. Nor did it fall in a day. You have to start somewhere. Makes me feel like a speck.

I appreciate Caribou’s views and choices. Whatever our lifestyles, it becomes about getting clearer as we go, and living as much as possible without engaging in or supporting abuse.

When my son was little, I caught his babysitter playing this weird game with him. She was taking his little hands and hitting herself with them, and saying, “don’t hit me” in Spanish, teaching him the game. This woman was very cool and strong, and had been around. She was probably 70 at the time. And here she was, conditioning a little boy to get a thrill out of hurting women, and to seeing women in a victim role. Who knows how deep those roots go? I’ll never forget that.

Patriarchy – a question of Power – often when woman get higher status she turns into a patriarch.

Yes, I agree with P, although I will say that ‘first’ world women do have it better than their not-so-lucky sisters. The biggest stumbling block to achieving a balance, it seems to me, is the fact that most women and men do not support women. The ‘competition’ between and amongst women is bad as when their survival depended on ‘hooking’ a man; and how many men have you met who stand up before other men to condemn their maltreatment of women. Until these behaviours change, the power will not shift. And, yes, there is some cool stuff online about the ingress of Regulus to Virgo and , despite the fact I will not live to see its fulfillment, I am optimistic seeing where profound change for the better is beginning to occur.

It’s complicated. I think this issue goes deeper than religion or politics, although it is exploited by both.

I don’t have any answers, only observations.

Men and women have different capabilities because of physiology – our brains our wired differently and our bodies are built differently. The basic source of male power is that, on average, they’re bigger and stronger. And they are fuelled by testosterone. Women tend to be more strategic to compensate for the lesser physical strength, using technique over brute force.

Women often treat other women worse than men do – highly competitive and back-stabbing.

Many men seem to be quite bewildered by women’s minds because we can solve certain problems faster and with more depth than they can i.e. integrating intuition with evidence. I think our power lies in this ability.

A lot of conflict between men and women seems to come from lack of understanding.

We should not have to stay single to stay out of the shit. It’s about owning and understanding and exploiting our feminine attributes – and I don’t mean giving blow-jobs to get a promotion, but on the other hand we should not deny our beauty either! I mean we should have total respect for what we are and use all our resources – start with ourselves and try to lead by example. This requires give and take including trying to understand how men’s minds work, their strengths and what they find difficult – otherwise we cannot expect them to do the same for us.

( How balanced is that for a Libra rising hahaha! )

It doesn’t matter much what we Western women think: there are billions more women in Asia than there are of us, and they are mostly still totally subjugated by men, and male-dominated religious systems.

Some of these systems are colonising the West too, and with a much higher birthrate than the host countries we can expect over time to see conditions for women deteriorate even further as political power shifts to the immigrant communities. In Britain now, the laws of the host country as regards women’s rights are being disregarded wholesale but a heavily male-dominated parliament is too afraid of these people to do a damn thing about it

Here in the West we’ve kinda thrown the baby out with the bathwater anyway. Think of the Russian Revolution: in the 1920s women were given political and economic equality, which meant they went out coal-mining, building roads, and driving steam trains … then going home to cook and clean after queuing for hours for scare food in the shops, while their men drunk themselves senseless on vodka. Some equality!