Carol Driscoll, Aesthetic Realism consultant to women, writes:

In the late ’60s I was a member of the Boston Women’s Health Collective, and this sentence by Ellen Reiss was true of me: “There’s…a tendency to say that men and women are after fundamentally different things.” I thought I knew what men were after—they were insensitive, carnal brutes, while women were discerning, understanding, and sympathetic. I had no idea then that my way of seeing both sexes was inaccurate, and that this inaccurate way of seeing was what caused me so much pain. I love the beautiful, exact way Aesthetic Realism sees both women and men; and studying Aesthetic Realism, my life changed dramatically. In issue 1709 of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known you’ll get a rich sense of the comprehensive fairness with which Aesthetic Realism sees people. In her commentary, Ms. Reiss writes:

With this issue we begin to serialize an important lecture Eli Siegel gave on May 15, 1952: Some Women Looked At. And we print an article by Aesthetic Realism consultant Bruce Blaustein. It is a portion of a paper he presented last month at the public seminar titled “Men Want Praise, Kudos, Cheers—but How Can We Be Sensible about These?”

So this issue of TRO spans over half a century, with Aesthetic Realism principles true about our very moment, all the centuries before, and, I’m sure, all that will follow.

Women, Truly Seen

Aesthetic Realism is great on the subject of women. With the many changes that have taken place since 1952, including the women’s liberation movement, there’s still a tendency to say that men and women are after fundamentally different things—that one sex is “from Mars,” the other “from Venus,” etc.

Aesthetic Realism explains—beautifully, richly, and clearly—that the questions of men and the questions of women are essentially the same. Our largest hopes are the same, and so are our largest mistakes. The big fight within every person is between respect for the world and contempt for it. Whether we’re Mike or Megan, Lola or Lyle, Craig or Kristen, we’re in a battle all the time between the hope to like the world honestly, to know it, be just to it, and the desire (in Mr. Siegel’s words) to get an “addition to self through the lessening of something else.” That second desire, which is contempt, is the ugly, hurtful thing in man and woman. It’s the source of all unkindness, no matter what one’s gender. >>Read more