Presence Has No Gender
Beyond Masculine and Feminine: A Return to Reality
There is a pattern I can no longer ignore.
Across spiritual spaces, dating discourse, and pseudo-psychological narratives, the language of “masculine and feminine energy” is being used once again to justify hierarchy. This time it doesn’t come wrapped in religion or explicit rules, but in soft aesthetics, Instagram wisdom, and the promise of polarity.
The story is familiar: feminine energy is receptive, nurturing, yielding. Masculine energy is active, directional, penetrating. And this framing is presented as ancient truth, as biology, as something natural that should not be questioned.
But it should be. What is being sold as spiritual evolution is very often an old survival-based power structure with better branding.
Conditioning Disguised as Nature
One of the most persistent claims behind this narrative is that women are inherently more emotional, more relational, more attuned to care. This is repeatedly framed as biology. It isn’t. There is no solid scientific consensus proving that women are biologically predisposed to emotional expression in the way this discourse suggests. What does exist is overwhelming evidence of social conditioning: girls are rewarded for emotional attunement and punished for assertiveness, while boys are discouraged from emotional literacy and rewarded for dominance, control, and detachment.
This is not nature. This is education. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote decades ago, “one is not born a woman, one becomes one.” And yet here we are, still essentializing gender as if the world were built on fixed binaries. The issue is not difference. The issue is reduction.
Where the Masculine–Feminine Split Comes From
This dichotomy did not emerge spontaneously.
Western philosophy has long relied on binary hierarchies. In Aristotle’s work, form is understood as active and masculine, while matter is framed as passive and feminine. Early Christian theology reinforced this split by placing spirit above body, and the abstract above lived, embodied experience. Woman became associated with emotion, flesh, and temptation, while man was aligned with reason, authority, and order.
Even philosophies that were originally non-dual suffered distortion. Taoism describes Yin and Yang as interdependent, fluid, constantly transforming forces. Yet modern spiritual discourse flattens Yin into passivity and Yang into dominance, stripping the system of its original intelligence.
What These Energies Were Pointing To (Before We Gendered Them)
If we step away from labels for a moment, something becomes clearer.
What is often called “feminine” has historically pointed to depth, receptivity, cyclic movement, emotional intelligence, and mystery. Like the sea: ancient, soft and wild at the same time, capable of holding life, shaping land, and pulling us into what we do not yet understand. A portal of life itself. We literally come into the world through bodies that carry this energy.
What is often called “masculine” has pointed to direction, structure, initiation, and expansion. Like the sun, or the seed that moves outward, seeks form, and grows into something visible. But a seed without water dies. A tree without nourishment collapses. Expansion without depth burns itself out.
These are not opposing forces. They are relational ones. Every human inhabits both. We move between depth and action, stillness and movement, containment and expression, depending on the moment, the context, and the phase of life we are in. The moment we classify ourselves or others as only one, we polarize reality again. We turn complexity into sides. And in doing so, we keep feeding an endless war that leads nowhere.
How Survival Logic Still Shapes Our Relationships
Then came the misuse of evolutionary theory.
Charles Darwin never claimed that social hierarchies between men and women were morally justified or spiritually ordained. Yet social Darwinism took concepts like competition and sexual selection and turned them into cultural prescriptions. From there, a dangerous idea took hold: if life is about survival of the strongest, then dominance becomes destiny and submission becomes “natural.” That logic made sense in a world structured around scarcity, threat, and survival. But we no longer live there.
Life today is not just about surviving. It’s about thriving. About meaning, joy, and presence. About how we live with ourselves and with each other once basic survival is no longer the only question. Clinging to survival-based gender narratives in a world that asks for emotional maturity is not wisdom. It’s fear.
Unhealed Masculinity and Instrumental Relating
This becomes very visible in everyday life. During this trip, I consciously approached men the same way I approach women: openly, warmly, without flirting, without hidden agendas. What I noticed was telling. The moment sexual or romantic possibility was removed, interest often faded. Conversations shortened. Curiosity disappeared. Presence withdrew. I realized that wasn’t chemistry. It was instrumental relating. It points to a form of masculinity that only knows how to engage when there is something to gain: validation, sex, status, access. Within these dynamics, friendship, shared curiosity, and mutual humanity are not enough.
These relational patterns can also show up in more harmful ways.
I have experienced situations where generosity from men was not actually free. Money, favors, or opportunities offered quietly carried an expectation: emotional labor, nurturing, sexual access. When boundaries were reintroduced, the narrative flipped. I became “confusing,” “unstable,” “too much.” It was never about intimacy. It was always covert control. And when this behavior is justified through masculine–feminine polarity rhetoric, it becomes especially insidious.
I’ve seen this logic amplified in places like Southeast Asia, where economic imbalance and spiritual narratives intersect in uncomfortable ways. Older men arriving with money, status, and Western privilege often frame their relationships as consensual, spiritual, or “aligned,” while benefiting from conditions of vulnerability they rarely acknowledge.
When access replaces connection, and power disguises itself as choice, what looks like polarity is often just inequality wearing softer language. It isn’t desire that’s at play, but advantage. And that, more than anything, is deeply sad.
Why Cross-Gender Friendship Matters
Something else worth naming here is how difficult it still is for heterosexual men and women to be friends without suspicion or expectation. Many women actively seek male friendships precisely because emotionally available men are rare. Many men, however, struggle to imagine connection that does not lead somewhere sexual. That gap alone speaks volumes about emotional socialization.
In my own relationship, I’ve seen the contrast. My partner has been asked by women if he could be a male friend to them, because that kind of grounded, non-instrumental presence feels scarce and safe.
A healed masculinity does not fear closeness without conquest. A healed femininity does not require submission to be valued.
Power, Money, and the Illusion of Worth
At some point, we need to name how tired this constant division is. The endless fight between genders. The pointing. The justifications.
Money, status, profession, and success are often used as tools to feel more worthy, more powerful, more “ahead.” But this is an illusion. You come into the world with nothing, and you leave with nothing. What remains is how you lived, how you loved, and how present you were in your own life. Nature does not care about your gender. The sea does not care. The sky does not care. And neither does truth.
What matters is your inner authority. And real authority is quiet. It does not need to dominate, perform, or control. Someone truly powerful does not need to prove it.
Beyond Performance Spirituality
This is also why so much modern self-development feels exhausting. Another course. Another modality. Another healing technique added to the to-do list. Another attempt to “optimize” oneself. And yet the base remains the same: a self still trying to position itself as dominant, healed, awakened, or superior. A self still operating from survival-based, unintegrated power dynamics. That is not growth. That is fear in spiritual clothing.
We are not here to perform healing. We are here to integrate. And integration is not about choosing one energy over another. It’s about allowing the nervous system, the body, the mind, and the emotional world to speak to each other. The left brain organizes, plans, and learns from the past. The right brain feels, connects, cries at movies, and dissolves at the sight of the sea. Both matter. Neither should dominate.
You are not just an animal. You are not just a machine. You are a living, sensing, meaning-making being.
A Return to Reality
People say they want healthy relationships. But few are willing to examine how they relate to themselves first. This does not mean you must be healed before you love. That is unrealistic and denies the nature of being human. It means you must be willing to question the stories you’ve been sold.
The Oracle of Delphi said it centuries ago: know thyself. We keep growing in spirals until we integrate what we refuse to see.
So this is my invitation: question what you are being told, especially when it comes wrapped in spiritual language that discourages questioning. Examine not only the message, but the motives and fear beneath it. Education without critical thinking is indoctrination. Developing your own inner certainty is the most reliable compass you will ever have.
There are many tools. Some are good. But the common thread is always you. Find your own way of doing life. Your own rhythm. Your own truth. And always try to contribute to community rather than control it.
The highest expression of masculinity is not dominance. It is not control dressed as safety. It is not avoiding vulnerability disguised as power. And the highest expression of femininity is not submission. It is not self-erasure dressed as flow. It is not inaction or silence mistaken for wisdom.
Both return to the same place.
A quiet, grounded presence. The kind that does not need to dominate or disappear. The kind that does not perform, explain, or seek permission. A presence that knows itself, inhabits the body fully, and meets life without fear.
And that presence has no gender.
With love always,
Maria Luisa
References & Context (for you to dig deeper and keep questioning)
This piece draws on ideas discussed in:
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949), on gender as a social construct.
• Aristotle’s metaphysics, particularly the active/passive hierarchy of form and matter.
• Taoist philosophy (Yin–Yang) as dynamic, non-hierarchical forces.
• Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and later cultural distortions through social Darwinism.
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