Do Men & Women Have the Same Question About Strength & Tenderness?
First presented in a public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City.

Had I not studied Aesthetic Realism, I would have spent my life trying to be strong in ways that hurt me, and feeling that when I was tender and affected by things, I was weak. In The Right Of #1354, Ellen Reiss explains the trouble I had about tenderness and strength:

A woman does not feel she is the same person determined in her career, holding her own in an argument—and yielding in a man's arms....Both man and woman feel, with the old pain of centuries...that when we are tough we aren't kind or sweet but mean; and when we are tenderly considerate and yielding, we're not strong but foolish and will be taken advantage of.

This describes the fight that was going on in me. Then, at 23, I met the understanding I was looking for when I began to study this principle stated by Eli Siegel: "Every person is always trying to put together opposites in himself."

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