I'm surprised yet again at the comments in this thread. Gender is a social construct and has, according to anthropological research, been fluid, changing, in some societies, over human history. This means what traits are considered "masculine" and what traits are considered "feminine" in a given social group have, and therefore can, vary. How can that be indelible in the soul?
What I hear here is a dogmatic attachment to ideas around gender and what constitutes "masculine" and "feminine." This likely reflects some inherent assumptions and biases, most particularly against women and what's considered "feminine," at least in the western world. It has been a patriarchal power MO to divide the sexes, to emphasize their difference, because in so doing, women were, and are, subjugated as "less than."
The lack of equality, the disparity in power, between men and women in the most developed nations in the world evidences how deep these dark undercurrents run. And yet it's so much a part of our social context, accepting as “natural,” for example, that we haven’t had a female POTUS in over two hundred years of history, the vast majority don't see it for what it is: a horrendous disparity, an awful, unrelenting injustice against half of humanity.
From a metaphysical perspective, Consciousness is what's important here, not materialism. The "material facts" of gender and what's considered "masculine" or "feminine," have been ascribed tremendous power in the material world, but not beyond.
Our souls have not mandated the subjugation of women. If that were true, it would go against everything good and loving most of us hope characterizes the Universe/Source/Creator/Designer/Godhead and our existences as spiritual beings experiencing incarnations.
Therefore, if a soul does express a preference for being male over millennia of lifetimes, that soul is falling behind in every reasonable measure. There is nothing to be learned experiencing one side of sex and/or male-identified gender identity. There is no wisdom accumulated in such an enterprise. I suspect that those who only recall, or relate to, male (or female) lives are souls who are struggling with the purpose of the Human Project in a fundamental way -- or, they are simply people, in this lifetime, who harbor prejudices against the "opposite" sex, or gender, which they don't recognize.
It’s probable they have lifetimes as the sex, and gender, they feel implicit bias against in this lifetime.
If being both male and female over lifetimes feels a bit threatening, right there, that's evidence of what I'm talking about.
We can't be here just to experience being oppressors -- men who enslave others, men who rape others, men who exploit others -- without the balance of lifetimes where the soul experiences what it means, what it feels like, to be a recipient of those brutalities, those injustices -- and not just as men who are enslaved, raped, or exploited, because we all know the status of women versus men in western civilization (and beyond). Many more women are enslaved (even today, sex trafficking is epidemic), many more women, than men, are raped, exploited and killed (in non-combatant contexts).
Over the course of millennia, women tend to be the recipients of male aggression, male possessiveness, male domination. The soul cannot fully explore, grasp, or complete the Human Project without knowing, deeply, viscerally (materially), what it's like to be a woman in this world, what it's like to live in fear of men's bad actions, to receive the blows, feel the hunger, be overpowered and raped repeatedly, forced to carry a pregnancy after being raped by your father, uncle, grandfather, or a male stranger, accused of disloyalty and beaten, or shot, to death, intimidated into cutting out all family and friends, molested by a doctor, a priest, a neighbor, a male family member, frightened to ever walk alone anywhere at night, frightened to speak up for yourself to the man who has full economic power over your life...
This is just so obvious -- only having male lifetimes would leave a soul stunted, ignorant, jejune.
Consciousness being what it is -- EVERYTHING -- if souls, when incarnated as women, began to believe they are physically stronger than men, better at STEM subjects than men, etc. I believe they would end up being so -- inevitably. If this were to happen -- and I imagine it IS happening in some parallel universe-version of our own Earth -- it would subvert and invert gender norms and definitions. The big obstacle, however, is belief. For millennia, women have been chattel, and so it requires nothing short of a revolution, perhaps a socially and materially catastrophic circumstance (such as the global warming crisis taken to its conclusion?) to change what has been true for too long.
I find that too many 'metaphysical types' seem to be lost in an airy-fairy abstract world that pays little attention to what's happening here, what we humans are doing to each other, what structural patriarchy has done to the Earth and to women and children.
The darkness of our Human Project is not easy to grapple with, but there's something fundamentally off course about ignoring these dark realities and what they mean for us at soul, and Oversoul, levels.
Preferences stated for male, or female, lives seems rather trite in the great scheme of things, given the historical trauma incurred by the long dominant patriarchal paradigm. What men have been, the actions they have tended to take (dominating the Earth as well as women and children), what “masculine” has meant, needs to change -- NOW -- for the survival of the world as we know it— and for our souls and our collective Human Soul (if you believe in it).
