Disclaimer: This is a rant, not an essay. Do not let the paragraphs fool you.
Thank God for incredible hormonal mood swings. The angel work makes me so upbeat and even-keeled that it takes a number of house clearings, and shamanic clearings on the grumpy-night-of-the-soul-side of my menses to throw me into muddy waters. Working energetically and spiritually in helping clients release memories and energy in the body connected with miscarriage, molestation, rape, and battery, is very fulfilling. Sometimes it's a challenge for me to completely release that which I help to extract.
Being half-dead and near-lifeless, from the stone cold floor of a castle to the ditch by the roadside, is such a common archetypal feeling, like the fear of dying while giving birth. Most of my childhood was spent fantasizing about having tuberculosis, the black plague, and other haunting wasting diseases. (My seven-year-old games which involved me playing a pimp with a motorcycle who masqueraded as a photographer taking pictures of my best friend evolved into writing historical plays and less mundane tragedy.)...(Where do kids get this stuff?) I thought it would be beautiful to die tragically, chained up in a frozen castle tower. All the beautiful heroines die tragically. I wanted to walk straight into the ocean until I perished from aspiration of sea water, while my dress billowed up around me. And when I came here, where I found a dozens other women just like me. We can blame Masterpiece Theater and literary works. We can point fingers at Hollywood for perpetuating the glamorized death of cute girls in horror films and the abuse or death of prostitutes and strippers in other exploitative fare, but ultimately it runs deeper than that. It's nestled into our genetic makeup, a collective memory and a harsh reality.
Romanticizing death and associating beauty with death is just one piece. Historically, women have been sold into marriages in all global traditions, treated like property and considered inferior and subservient in our religious texts. It is no wonder little girls, teenagers, and women can be so self-disparaging and self-loathing. In high fashion from around the world, look at the emaciated, malnourished, and starving women whose bones are being usurped for energy. Actresses are not much different, and most careers are built on a few ventures into highly exploitative endeavors. These initiations of young actresses are almost a prerequisite to stardom and worship by society. It's part of a death cult, a death/violence/pain culture. Look at the news. The promotion of the post-Victorian-size-0 ideal and the magazines as henchmen for the beauty industry and I'd argue Hollywood as a whole, place the woman who cannibalizes herself, sacrificing her life force to the machine, on a pedestal. The effect these images have on the balance of female-male power, relationships, marriages and partnerships is huge. Look at domestic violence statistics for one. Look at self mutilation and eating disorders in girls. The effect that growing up in these cultures has on women's self-esteem is huge.
In general in our American society, girls are trained to seek male approval, whereas boys are trained to seek approval and validation from their male peers. We treat male and female authority differently. Most of us differ to men, because most of us were taught to do that. The bible teaches to follow the husband/father no matter what, because he has a superior connection with God, with wisdom. It's even prescriptive of violence against women, thus we have a whole conservative movement to physically admonish your wives through spanking and humiliation. No matter what dish Adam dishes out, no matter how condescending he is to your values, no matter how uncompromising, no matter how degrading, no matter how cruel...Eve this is your lot in life. Acceptance. Resignation. A double standard. Being over-ruled.
Look at how our toys focus on boys being active, action-oriented, goal setters, accomplishing tasks, and girls get pretty, frilly, imaginative, domestic and little in the way of concrete. Still!! Is it any wonder there is an epidemic in unnecessary apologies among women. Look at how girls and boys are still polarized in classrooms, how so much behavior falls down the manufactured gender divide that is promoted in blues and pinks. That's a recipe for projecting all of your animus or anima onto the opposite sex. It also promotes, what does Naomi Wolf call it, hetero-normative values which is probably part of the motivation behind what seems to be an agenda to polarize the sexes.
Cape Cod Women's Coalition held a delightful breakfast in honor of International Women's Day. It was well attended with well over 150 in attendance. These women are all concerned about improving the status of women and empowering Cape Cod women. Nice! However, in Mass in general, I feel like we're still living in the 1950s. I have no problem with people choosing the domestic life of being a full time homemaker and parent. I think that dynamic can lead to people falling into traditional binary gender roles, but even career women can do that with their male or butch/femme lesbian partners. I see it here, and not much in the country of Los Angeles where I'm from, that at family parties men gather together in one group and women in another.
The disparity in the way that men and women are treated, the double standards are evident. Look at the balance of power, the status of women, the ratio of female politicians, public leaders, policy makers. The death knoll rings, there's nothing like a dead prom queen. Is today's prom queen yesterday's Ophelia? That's a silly comparison, but so much of literature and film glamorizes beautiful tragic heroines. There's such a huge emphasis on what we look like. We're people first and foremost. It's just skin. People are so used to this paradigm, that it's hard to imagine a world filled with stories of women where their attractiveness and intrigue comes from their minds and spirits. If fat bitch was loud curvy Goddess? Imagine if frumpy was pleasantly-distracted by things that matter? A world where nagging is perseverance and the voice of reason. There are many unspoken things in this world. Some people's secrets eat them up alive. Exposing the darkness of humanity to the light of day, helps to bring consciousness, and where there is consciousness, the integration of mind-body-soul soon follows. Basically, dealing with ghosts and the pain body is intense, and my ass is whipped. I have to not let my essence get muddled when I use my being like Kali's demon-slaying sword. But I always come back stronger.
There is incredible violence, torture and abuse happening today, not just in war-torn regions, but in your city, on your streets. People keep hoping this whole feminism thing is gonna blow over. 'We all have equal rights now. Stop beating a dead horse. Stop bellyaching.' Well, it's not done in India, it's not done in Africa, it's not done in the Middle East, and it's not done here either.
It's time to celebrate International Women's Day. If this was ancient Rome, Feminism would be a Goddess that sits between Harmonia and Discordia. Like a crafty mermaid, Womr's IWD will drag the treasures of the ocean with her aboard ship, and we will all revel in their greatness. Starting Friday at midnight will begin with music, comedy, interviews, a radio play, live music, and Max Dashu's of the Suppressed Histories Archives Top Ten Little Known interesting and powerful women of history on at 9pm EST in my spot. Tomorrow on womr.org
