Fact #1 There are almost no women participating actively in the psychedelic community.
Fact #2 Besides anatomical differences, every sex experiences a different set of difficulties because of how culture reacts towards the sexes.

Therefore, the community could greatly benefit from female and queer perspectives.
Some in this forum are queer or female. Good, but why not more. Is it the scientific atmosphere? Are guys too aggressive? Alright, this is an excuse i could accept in a different environment (think business school, management training etc)...but among psychedelic people? Come on, it doesn't get more loving. But there must be a reason.

Annie oak rightly pointed out, that without women, the civil rights movement for cognitive liberty can't progress, because women traditionally oppose drug reform (think of the children!). It's funny, psychedelic experiences can create such fragile, emotional states, sensual, loving etc etc...it paralells female gender stereotypes.

So what is it. How about some women get together to support each other ? There are many topics which are exclusively female...think birth, think menopause, think "the time of the month". Topics which can be discusses in a deeply "psychedelic" way. Men are currently starting to get sick of the fact that there are not enough women from what i can gather (source: psychedelic salon). Sure, there is annie oak, mountain girl, the teafarie, shonagh home, kathleen harrison and quite a few more. But not enough.

Perhaps you disagree. I know, most women must be disagreeing otherwise the situation would be different.

I am just speculating but maybe most women have better things to do than spend all this time exploring inner and outer spaces.
Lets face it you have to be quite self absorbed or have a rampant ego to get heavily into psychedelics. Hence the constant search for dissolving said ego.
I am not making a comparison but not a lot of women are into wars either.

If it helps any I can wear my wife's panties while I am in and on the Nexus. Sorry!

It's interesting. Taking DMT and psychedelics, more than once or twice, takes courage. It must be an exploration thing. Is it right to say that most adventurers and explorers are (and were) men? I think its fair to say that.

I can see she shows some wonder and marvel at the (DMT) tales I tell her, mostly!

But she would never try it.

Unlike me and her panties.

(And I can dance)

As a women, I can safely say there are MANY women in these forums/psychedelic worlds(maybe in less numbers than men) but we are generally more based on the "doing" than debating/writing/chatting.

The message/point gets lost in the text most of the time. So for me spending a day or week sitting/writing is better spent integrating my experiences in my physical life.

Some women would also want to be portrayed as men here to avoid sexism, flirting and other issues that would distract from whatever message one is looking to put out there.

To me-who cares if it's only men or only women or cookie monsters...why place value on a persons sex?

Most forums on the internet are filled with dudes, not just psychedelic forums. I've noticed that guys on average tend to spend more time on the internet in general, and especially more time in forums than women. I could be wrong but that's just how it seems to me from my limited perspective.



no...you need to get out more man. Sure, sadly there does seem to be more guys into psychedelics than girls (I'm not sure why that is... it might be complicated), but there is not "almost no women participating actively in the psychedelic community". Not by a LONG shot. Go to a festival or psychedelic event of some kind.

Its kind of odd that you feel the need to generalize this "Fact" out onto the worlds population when really its just your subjective perspective.

Exactly.

In my experience, men are much more concerned with labels and categories and other such physical divisions instead of probing deeper universal truths. (Could this be why a man started the thread instead of a woman?) I could care less what's in your pants as long as you have something meaningful to say and follow what you say with right action.

Too often I see this tired debate between men and woman when, to me, gender is only a small fraction of the whole self. So many of us talk about transcendence through the use of psychedelics when in fact we can barely transcend our own gender. I think we could all learn something by working to embody both genders.

Pharmer made an excellent point. I would have to agree that women are present more than appears to be on here as well as in the psychedelic community but this is a forum and in forums views and opinions are expressed.

Expressed opinions often turn into some type debate, confrontation or even arguing or at least some level of defending ones stance. Women are much less apt to engage in this type of communication statistically for reasons I wont get into. This is why I feel women make great leaders and wish we had more of this in our world. They don't have the burning need to be right or heard but that's another discussion.

I think another reason you don't see a lot of female activity on forums in general not just the nexus is the double standard that is present on forums. If a guy defends his opinion strongly he is considered passionate about his stance, if a women does the same thing she is viewed as a bitch.

Id like to think this happens much less on the nexus than other forums but it certainly happens a lot on line therefore makes forums generally less attractive to women than men.

I feel this is utterly false, at least for myself. I first got heavily into psychedelics for exploration, philosophical reasons, just general curiosity about the human experience. Then finding how effective they are as medicines, healing all kinds of suffering, I chose to go even deeper. Dissolving of the ego was never my intention. My ego is rather small, I'm very quiet and unassuming. At least in person, maybe not as much on a forum


I think this nails it. This is the core of it. Women tend to just go, do it, first-hand experience, rather than sit around and pontificate and stroke their white beards and discuss and discuss That doesn't mean they can't, or won't, but the whole debating stance of holding a point unflinchingly and defending it isn't necessarily how women are wired. I consider myself to be quite feminine and I absolutely detest arguing. Unless it's a friendly discussion and everyone is open to the new ideas and isn't rooted to the spot with their beliefs, I don't care for it at all. A lot of men enjoy it. It's a type of competition with words.


Unfortunately, yes. There is still a lot of sexism towards women from men. Of course it could go both ways, I've been on the receiving end of sexism from females. But guys will gang up and pounce on a girl just for expressing a different point of view. Archaic BS if you ask me. In the back of their minds they seem to think men are smarter than women somehow. We just have different ways of looking at things, that's all.

I wouldn't get hung up on the ratio of male to female but I also appreciate that in general as well as in psychedelics, the two perspectives differ.

IMHO, the more diversity of perspective, the better for everyone.

I'm glad this has spun a healthy debate! Still, a few clarifications are in order.
First of all, i was trying to make sure that this is not viewed as yet another gender debate.



To me, it's not about placing a "value" on someone because they have a penis or vagina. It's more about:



...and if you got a vagina, you are automatically confronted with a plethora of problems you would not have otherwise...and vice versa of course! This is why there are automatically different perspectives...even if you are queer, don't feel like a standard man, woman etc.



This is all fine, but i personally would think that female spokeswomen are needed too in order to reach out to those who are currently not part of any psychedelic community. This thread has been created in a CEL context: How can more women get active, not only as healers or examples of good living within a group of psychedelic people...but how can they bridge a gap between themselves and the more or less "general" public? How can women feel comfortable and stop "sexism" if they are not present in sufficient numbers. Sure, i can imagine that it is uncomfortable as hell to expose yourself to that....but then trying to establish real cognitive liberty is no trivial matter and might require some sacrifices. Of course not only on womens side.



Interesting theory, but i would share Dioxis sentiments: There are many many more reasons to enter psychedelics.

My speculation is purely based on personal experience of myself and the people that i have come into contact with over the years and not a blanket statement. I could be wrong. I also can see the merits of being a little self absorbed, every now and then.



That is because you are uncaging that rampant ego of yours and letting it roam, untethered into the far reaches of this cyberforum. Let it soar into the stratosphere like a bald eagle my friend!


I do agree with the folk that say there seem to be less women that do psychedelics. And the reason i said that most women may have better things to do was due to a couple of conversations i have had with my friends....One of which occurred while i was trying to articulate the philosophical quandries that i was put into by being off my head.
My friend cut me short and exclaimed "I don"t have time for all that self indulgent bollocks! I have 3 kids to bring up!".
Ofcourse this does not stop me from trying to engage with her about the fripperies of the psychedelic experience.(she smokes weed like the proverbial chimney though).

Most of my female friends that i used to trip with when younger seem to have "grown" out of it. Whether they could benefit from going deeper i really do not know, as they all appear to me to be well balanced and as happy as can be expected in the modern world.

It is not something that i dwell on. If a female wants to pipe up and give her point of view then fair play and i am all ears. If not, then i will just have to put up with reading the posts from all the self absorbed, male egotists (myself included).

Research actually shows that there are less female users then male.


http://www.plosone.org/a...1%2Fjournal.pone.0063972

Also when i look around me there are less females using drugs (psychedelics included) than man.

why? I don't have a clue, but I also think its fine by me. For the community's sake I think its good to have female members in same way its good to have female colleague at work.

I definitely know female psychonauts, but they are all (to a man, as it where) a lot less gung-ho about it then myself and many of my male friends (for the record, I accept all pronouns, male, female or otherwise, and live mostly outside the gender binary, but most people use he/him since that's the 'obvious' one).

Myself, and plenty of guys will get really excited about psychedelics, psychedelic research, talking about it a lot, thinking about it a lot, and definitely being more vocal about them.
The girls on the other hand, who take them with us and get just as much out of them, are way more likely to keep their mouths shut on the issue.

I asked one about it once, and she said she didn't get why we think about them all the time: that they are amazing and wonderful, but so are a lot of things, and they'd rather talk about those (it mostly seems to be the comparative hotness of guys on campus, so go figure).