Beatrijs Smulders

It’s a sunny afternoon in a tastefully decorated Amsterdam canal house. This is the home of midwife Beatrijs Smulders (1952), her husband, documentary maker Roel van Dalen and their two sons, Mees and Stijn. Beatrijs Smulders is sitting at the end of the long wooden table at the centre of the living room. She needs space to talk; she gesticulates broadly and lets out primal screams, for instance when she explains what a foetus is thinking when it’s about to be born. ‘You never have it better than you do in the womb. You’re still at one with your mother, you’re fed through the umbilical cord, you’re floating in total harmony with yourself in warm amniotic fluid. And then suddenly – waaaaahhh – you’re shoved mercilessly into that birth canal. I can assure you, as a newborn baby you’re totally disorientated.’

Animus and anima

Originally, photographer Daniel Koning didn’t want to interview any women individually for his project ‘Women of the Netherlands’. This would arrange them a certain order of importance, which is exactly what he wanted to avoid. After all, seen from the moon all women are the same. Still, for Beatrijs Smulders the photographer made an exception, because if you spend you’re whole life helping women to give birth, surely you must be able to get down to the essence of womanhood, he thought. And so here are the interviewers, two men, sitting at the table with the midwife to learn everything there is to know about… women.

Before they get that far, Beatrijs Smulders gives them a talk about mice: ‘If a female mouse has young and she’s attacked by a hostile male mouse, she never fights back. That would be the end of her and her children. She protects them, that’s the main thing. So she distracts the male, squeaks for help and meanwhile tries to keep her young calm. Then she tries to make friendly contact with the enemy’s females, or if need be with the enemy himself. But if a male with babies comes face to face with another male, immediately it’s war. It’s just the same with people; a man either fights for what’s his or runs away. So I can only conclude that in our basic responses as humans we’re still pretty animal.

The conclusion: men and women are essentially different from one another. Men have a lot of animus – proactive, ‘hard’ masculine qualities. Women are particularly blessed with a lot of anima, the ‘soft’ side. Smulders thinks that these two sides combine in people, but she has a deep-seated conviction that in society today we deny the differences between men and women too much. This means there is a lack of much-needed synergy. ‘Forced by the present culture in our society, many women are constantly in their animus. Men quite often feel like ineffectual clots.
Women are putting off having children longer and longer, or deciding not to have them at all, and they see their career as a redemption; they constantly feel that they have to compete with men. But they don’t at all. You can work together with men perfectly well, but on different terms. It produces something positive, something completely new. I see a lot of women who are perfectly in touch with their anima. I see their vulnerability and strength during the birth, in a very intimate setting. But society today forces them to go back to their masculine energy straight after the birth, so after three months of breastfeeding they have to stop and put their baby in day care. In this respect feminism has missed its mark. You can see that it also confuses men. Sometimes I really pity them. They don’t dare to be themselves any more; they don’t know how they can make a positive male contribution. They become insecure and allow themselves to be snapped at by their wives too much. And if they put up with it, that brings out the devil in the women even more. Take housework: women go on at their husbands because in their eyes their husbands don’t do enough. In bed women take the animus role too much. As a midwife you hear a lot about this. They’re completely preoccupied with performing and having orgasms. A one-night stand is totally at odds with the essence of feminine sexuality. The importance of orgasms is terribly overrated.’

‘To describe women’s sexuality, I can best relate it to giving birth. You’ve got a baby inside you that keeps growing bigger. At a certain point the baby wants to come out. For women that’s a huge feat of strength. In fact it’s a potentially life-threatening stress situation. The baby literally attacks your pelvic floor, drills its head into your crotch; I can assure you, that’s incredibly painful. You’d think that terrible pain would make you clam up, but what do women do? In between contractions they relax and completely open up – it can move you to tears, it’s so beautiful. It’s the willingness, in spite of the pain, to open yourself up completely. That’s real power, the power of love. And it’s in your crotch, not between your ears.’

‘It should be just the same thing with sex: you meet a man and you love him because of his masculine strengths – passion and aggression are part of that. The fact is that men have that animus, so in bed its fine if the passion gets pretty heavy. The man penetrates the woman and in the same way as when she’s giving birth to her children she completely opens herself to his male energy. She ‘receives’ and ‘encircles’ him and surrenders herself completely. But this is only possible if he makes love to her with an unselfish penis. Then you can talk about making love, instead of having sex, and only then is there all-embracing satisfaction. Sex is about surrendering, not about receiving – so-called – attention and love from another person.’

Velvet Revolution

Beatrijs Smulders thinks that the time is ripe for a new feminist wave. Not a wave in which woman take to the barricades, like they did in the sixties and seventies. No, this time it has to be a velvet feminist wave, a movement from the outside in, in which men can be masculine and women can be feminine. “Feminine authenticity is still massively suppressed. What women don’t realise is that they mainly do it themselves. That’s a crucial insight and fortunately I see it increasingly often among the younger generation of women. Because the fact is that women are the centre of love. It’s not for nothing that the woman is the symbol of the Holy Grail in the Da Vinci Code. That’s why all men want to get back into the vagina and the womb – that’s where love is. The main thing men want is constantly to be inside a woman, because that’s where you can make life and love. That’s logical, isn’t it? But at the same time it’s almost incomprehensible. We’re too much in our heads. Our brains are nothing more than a computer, but real power, real insight, is in your body.

It’s beyond questioning that women also need to show their teeth in the same way that men mustn’t be afraid to show their softer side, Smulders believes. But please don’t let us deny that men and women are essentially different from each another. Women today adapt themselves en masse to a society geared to men. One thing the velvet feminist wave should do is ensure that women who work part time are better paid than they are now. Work is about quality, not about the number of hours you work. ‘I know from my own experience that a woman can work three days a week perfectly well and still be the boss of a big company. Because women are much better than men at doing everything at the same time and still producing quality. Working from home and flexible working hours should be much more widely accepted; we have to develop our own feminine work ethic.’ In Smulders’ eyes, straight after giving birth women should be able simply to be mothers again. ‘At the moment, a lot of women with newborn babies are hardly able to carry on,’ she says fiercely. ‘In other words, the first year after the birth is a real battle. Women are completely exhausted from the pregnancy and then after only a couple of months they have to be back achieving at work again. This means they don’t get enough peace and quiet for their babies, they have to put them in day care much too early, breastfeeding goes wrong, it’s a complete disaster. And yet a secure bond in the first year is a foundation for a healthy society. Children are tomorrow’s gold, you’ve got to cherish them in the first year. In England, fortunately the tide is already turning: Tony Blair has decided to extend maternity leave to a year, on 70% pay. I hope that this kind of legislation will also be passed in the Netherlands. Men should be allowed to take a three-month sabbatical too. Because while the mother is important for the baby, the husband is indispensable to his wife. The first year after the birth, mother and baby are one, it’s a physical symbiosis. A man shouldn’t try to come between them; he should earn money and protect his family against unnecessary stress. That’s what makes you a real man. Your mother gives you roots and your father gives you wings to fly away. The father becomes more and more important the older the child becomes. When a child is twelve, the father becomes incredibly important, then everything’s more about animus.’

Who does Beatrijs Smulders consider to be a role model for other women? In other words, who could act as a standard-bearer for the velvet feminist wave? ‘Hedy D’Ancona is a strong and gentle woman. She brought her children up lovingly. She likes strong men, because she’s a strong woman. When her children had grown up, she totally came into her feminine power and became a Secretary of State. Then she went to the European Parliament in Brussels, started the menopause and found love again. Fantastic! She’s an example of how you can dive from the second wave into the third velvet wave. Sonja Barent and Dorien Pessers are also examples of ‘velvet wavers’. They’re women with the capacity to be vulnerable and strong at the same time. But there are also a lot more young women who are role models for the soft wave. Take the vulnerable passion of the singer Anouk when she sings ‘Love’. Wow! But Halina Reijn, Wende Snijders, Kim van Kooten and Sanne Wallis de Vries are also role models. There are a lot more, it’s something in the air. That’s why I’m picking up on it.’
According to Smulders the menopause is still a taboo in our society. ‘Actually women are then at their most beautiful. And very sexual. They’re more fascinating to men because there’s more love, devotion and surrender. Men who switch to a younger woman are missing the point. They’re scared of their own masculine energy and love. It’s quite pathetic, just like men who visit prostitutes. But yes, a lot of men don’t realise it. They’re scared and superficial and respond to appearances. They think, my wife’s getting wrinkles, it’s time for a younger woman. Women whose husbands leave them like that should actually be relieved that the bird has finally flown the nest! Inner freedom is more important than anything else.

Why did Smulders become a midwife? ‘As a girl from Brabant I moved to Amsterdam. For a time I was very depressed and confused. Then I had a flash of inspiration: I decided to train as a midwife. That would bring me close to sexuality, which was something that I found incredibly intriguing as a young girl. A birth is an explosion of sexual energy, caused by man and woman. It’s an earthquake of energy that can last eighty or ninety years. A miracle.’

A tolerant country

Smulders gives another example of male tolerance: ‘In our country, until the sixties men were traditionally the breadwinners and women did the housework. Discrimination? No, I think it stemmed from a respect for motherhood, for the wife; she didn’t actually have to work. Because of this, women have become increasingly strong in their motherhood. Today women in the Netherlands aren’t hardworking drudges, as they are in many countries around us. No, Dutch women work part time and don’t allow themselves be done out of the joys of motherhood. I think that’s a very advanced form of liberation. They don’t let themselves be talked into believing in the glass ceiling. It’s this no-nonsense mentality that Dutch women have which reveals their inner power. Precisely because of this tolerance towards women, the Netherlands is ready for the next step, the velvet wave, a re-evaluation of real femininity. To be clear, the velvet wave shouldn’t be confused with the soft new-age culture that many women are attracted to. So-called spirituality is usually a way to escape from real womanpower’.

The question is whether the women of the second feminist wave will thank Smulders for her standpoint. They struggled all-out to enable women to stand on their own two feet financially. Part-time work is something they see as being undesirable. Smulders: ‘The last thing I want is to betray the second wavers – quite the opposite. I’ve been a fervent second waver myself. We mustn’t stand still, but push on ahead. That means building on what the second wavers have achieved. It’s time for a fresh, rejuvenating wind. The column in the magazine Opzij that measures men against a feminist yardstick I find toe-curling and utterly passé. You ought to love men ­– forget about yardsticks. The feminists from Opzij see the pill as an achievement. The pill gave you so-called sexual ‘freedom’ and what’s more it gave you the freedom to follow a career. That was an incredible step forwards. I went along with it completely myself. But with hindsight the pill has also turned out to be a subtle oppressor. Because what does it do? It’s a hormonal kill-or-cure that brings your ovaries and your sexual energy to a complete standstill. You feel less like having sex, you get depressed more easily and it makes you fatter. And why? So you can always be sexually available? That’s simply not in the nature of a woman’s body. It’s a male invention that has had its day. And fortunately there are now enough other methods of contraception.’

Muslimas and Christinas
Are women from ethnic minorities also ready for the velvet feminist wave? As Hirsi Ali sees it, Muslim girls in particular still haven’t started the second wave. ‘In a sense I’m a fan of Hirsi Ali,’ says Smulders, ‘but she could take her analysis further. The oppression of women is a worldwide theme, but she limits it to Islam. What she doesn’t see, for instance, is the unbelievable force with which women oppress themselves. We ‘Christinas’, Western women who have grown up in the Judaeo-Christian culture, oppress ourselves too. It’s not for nothing we take antidepressants en masse, for example. Hirsi Ali is too impressed by the Western pretence of freedom. That explains why she’s ‘chosen’ to go and live in the US. We Christinas can learn a lot from Muslimas. They’re much more in touch with their soft, feminine side – also sexually. But it’s a complex situation. From a very young age sons are treated in a hard, aggressive way by their fathers. That has to change, because if boys don’t bond securely, they grow up to be insensitive fighting machines; by withholding gentle, fatherly love from them, you’re sending them straight off to war. I think mothers have an important job in providing a counterbalance in the upbringing of their children. That’s why Muslimas and Christinas should reach out to each other and support each other. Mothers make the world. What I also like about Islam is that it teaches that a man should honour his wife instead of desiring and consuming her. By not masturbating inside her but truly loving her in her vagina, he also loves himself. Of course there are also all sorts of orthodox and fundamentalist movements that take this principle much too far, and I’m also not in favour of the burka, but the principle is beautiful: husband and wife are only for each other. Sexuality is sacred. I’ve seen a lot of Muslim marriages in which the husband and wife lead a flourishing sex life, with real mutual surrender and a strong polarity between man and woman. It’s something a lot of Dutch couples could learn from.’

‘Women are completely exhausted from the pregnancy and then after only a couple of months they have to be back achieving at work again. This means they don’t get enough peace and quiet for their babies, they have to put them in day care much too early, breastfeeding goes wrong, it’s a complete disaster.

Finally we ask Beatrijs Smulders to look into the future: what will Dutch society be like in 2050? ‘I hope that we’ll be living in a real melting pot like New York, with people from many different cultures living together more happily. There’ll be more respect for the earth and we’ll be good deal more loving towards one another. Because we’re all desperately seeking one thing: love. That’s what there’ll be: more unity and polarity between men and women, and because of it more harmony. I hope that we achieve this before the world gets lost to aggression and pollution. For me that means that the entire ‘electronic’ society will be geared much more to the biology and nature of women and children. A sabbatical for every baby, more time for breastfeeding, and better day care afterwards. So women and men are able to combine career and family with less stress. When you’re on your deathbed no one is going to ask you how many hours you’ve worked. So there’ll be a new work culture. There’ll be more sexual adoration by men for older women, and there’ll be more old-fashioned courtesy from men instead of the overexposure of breasts, navels, bottoms and legs to excite men by seducing them with a fragile, paper-thin exterior. There will, I hope, be more focus on women’s content than on their form. Less female nudity in advertising, fewer eating disorders and facelifts. All being well, in 2050 plastic surgeons will be a lot less busy! It’s up to women to make the next move now. Let’s get going! The world is longing for pure femininity.