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sitting down for a girl is just as noble as peeing standing up is for a boy. My daughter's temporary brush with penis envy was easily explained by a socialization process that was currently prominent in the culture of our home. This all seems very clear to me now, and with tongue in cheek, I hope my now thirty-six year old daughter is no longer traumatized by the consequences of her discovery. Nevertheless there is something very significant here.

Many women have been socially conditioned to believe that the accomplishments of males, even those as mundane as toilet training, are somehow more significant than their own. Freud was not the only voice that perpetuated theories of a weaker/fairer sex who by nature were unable to accomplish as significant a purpose on earth as their male counterparts. Women were acculturated by society to see themselves as subservient to the vitality of males rather than as co-creators of equal significance to the common objective of human advancement.

This forced sense of subservience has created a number of aberrations in the female psyche both in the real and imaginary realm. Among them penis envy remains alive and well and is expressed in such images as the "chick with a gun". Such asinine sagas as the "Kill Bill" series are just case in point. Make a woman vengeful, violent and dangerous and somehow she becomes "chick with a dick". Not only does she have "balls", she has bigger ones than all the men who get in the way of her objectives. This woman is empowered with the same machismo as the most predatory of males while at the same time maintains just enough feminine wiles to make her a bit mysterious and don't forget seductive. After all, seduction is the one great power that women have always had over men. To me this is not an image that is empowering; it is an imagery that maintains the status quo. It is nothing more than an exaggerated expression of penis envy.

True empowerment is the capacity to resist evil and to transform personal circumstances into something more conducive to the actualization of one's potential to produce positive change. Empowerment comes from within and is not compliance to a pattern of social conformity whether this pattern is produced by male or female role models. I believe some of the most powerful words of guidance into an empowered state of thinking that have ever been given are the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 12:2 "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed

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