I’m No Longer A Feminist???

Yes, after a lifetime of feminist consciousness (well since I was nine years old anyway) I was told the other day I am no longer a feminist because I reject the victimhood hierarchy that passes for feminism among so many younger feminists today. I was told this in no uncertain terms by a young lady on her blog who then proceeded to lecture me, apparently in total absence of any knowledge of my body of writing or my actual life, about the evils of the second wave feminists, gender as having any meaning and, as has become strangely common among some like her, my own relationship with Goddess Consciousness.  Oh yes, I’m also an “ablist” too despite the fact I walk with a cane due to multiple back injuries and have chronic pain as a result.

What happened to Feminism?  I will freely grant I am not a Feminist by her definition but not a Feminist?  Hardly.

A brief history lesson might be in order.  “First Wave Feminism” spanned almost a hundred years beginning with abolishing slavery as it’s first goal then suddenly expanded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the famous Seneca Falls conference where she proposed womans suffrage to the shock of almost all who attended.  You might notice, because it is significant, that First Wavers were tied to what became the Civil Rights movement from it’s very beginnings.  Stanton, basically a stay at home mom, and her close lifelong associate and friend, Susan B. Anthony spent the rest of their lives dedicated to womans suffrage and Stanton continued until her death to keep pushing the envelop on woman’s rights and sexual equality, so much so that in her last few years she was so far ahead of the curve the Movement denounced her.  Women like Rebecca West and Alice Paul continued the fight using direct confrontation, picketing the White House and eventually hunger strikes when they were imprisoned.  If these women were anything, it was not victims.  And eventually they prevailed and won the right to vote for women. Frederick Douglass supported Stanton at Seneca Falls but later, when Black men were granted suffrage told the Suffragettes they had to wait their turn and denounced tying womans rights to voting rights for Black men.  It’s history people, read about it because the history of the Movement reads better than any thriller ever penned.

So called Second Wave Feminism began in the late 1950′s as essentially a Housewive revolution and has morphed many times into goals and positions  that are often contradictory as it moved through the sixties and seventies because it’s goal was less narrowly focused and much much wider in scope as a result.  The basic goal?  Full social, economic and educational equality of the sexes which we still have yet to achieve.  Younger women don’t remember but most of my lifetime, even want ads in newspapers were divided by sex long after it was supposedly illegal to do so under Title VII rights.  You had ads declaring they were from “equal opportunity employers” separated under “men” and “women”.  What is frequently decried today as “Second Wavers” was hardly monolithic movement and never was.  You had lesbian separatists, sex positive vs sex negative schools, liberated housewives, matriarchialists, andro positive and andro negative and the European school that preceeded it all by around twenty years or so that was just plain Espirt Feminique.   In the early stages the main message to women was self empowerment and the European Second Wave was very much about celebration and restoration of women’s strengths as of equal importance to humanity.

What is being called Third Wave Feminism today is all about oppression with every fraction within jockeying for position as more oppressed than the other.  This is the polar opposite of empowerment.  This is the school the young lady who told me I am no longer a feminist belongs to.    This is passing strange to me because it also, on a fundamental level, feels downright anti-feminist to me personally in that the focus is individual groups vying for position to advance individual “wrongs” based on dis-empowerment and completely at the cost of one of women’s greatest strengths, the ability to compromise and cooperate as a whole for the good of all.  The young lady in question compared me to Sarah Palen and called me a fascist right winger which is ironic because I see true feminism as essentially socialist (in the communal as opposed to communism sense) in nature and my studies of ancient history seem to confirm that egalitarian societies always had a primary socialist organization by their very nature.

I fear we have lost an entire generation of potential feminists to the disempowerment of the oppression Olympics who have been seduced from goal by self indulgent whining and finger pointing at others while crying “me me me” rather than “we, we, we”.  It is no accident that so called Third Wave Feminism began at the same time the “transgender” gender deconstructionist appeared and they are hopelessly entwined.  The supreme irony being the entire goal apparently is erasing women and womanhood.  Does it get more patriarchal than that?  Also interesting is that they decry women of history defining “transsexuality” in it’s original sense and claim the right to expand it to include those who clearly do not have the medical birth condition the word refers to and yet they then turn right around and narrowly define feminism to exclude anyone who disagrees with their position.  Their logic is so fuzzy one is at a loss how to point it out.

I remain a proud European school Second Wave Feminist who has dedicated the rest of her life to full economic and social parity with men and full valuation of so called “woman’s work” with male occupations.  I am not a victim, I am woman, hear me roar.

Postscript:  Susan’s Tranvestite Place linked to this blog and now a bunch of crossdressers are also engaging in revisionist history….way to prove my points.  In response to my reply that they engage in wholesale censorship of ideas, it was denied by a moderator then I received a “warning” and the entire discussion was erased.

 

The Rise and Fall of the Illiterati, Part 2

The Spiritual War of the Sexes

One of the lessons I learned from studying history is exactly how much of it is wrong because of cultural bias, a concept understood in cultural anthropology as ethnocentrism.  Ethnocentrism affects understanding so completely that even facts plainly staring you in the face can be ignored completely, something I’ve observed my entire life on an individual basis, that if something challenges the worldview you hold, most people are somehow capable of total blindness to that even when it’s right in front of their nose or happening right in their presence.

Bearing in mind what I said about thinking globally in part 1, let’s look at fetal development among mammals.  Nature’s default is female meaning absent those factors needed to shift natal development to male, all mammals will develop into females in form regardless of genetics.  I believe that is also true of human spiritual understanding and the human default understanding of spirituality is the concept of the Divine Feminine principles.  It took a cataclysmic event to androgenize human civilizations throughout Europe and the Middle East, one every historian knows about but most universally ignore in importance.  And yet the evidence of this stares every ancient historian in the face!

Everything anywhere near the Mediterranean changed in the course of two days, everything.  It was the almost total destruction of the Minoan civilization by the explosion of Thera, the centre of that civilization.   The Minoans were the last true expression of the Goddess Consciousness, the apex of ancient civilization, the “rulers” of the ancient world, not by military might but by economic cooperation.  The explosion of Thera, one if not the most powerful volcanic eruptions in all recorded human history literally wiped everything in the eastern Mediterranean coasts off the face of the earth with the resulting tsunami in two days.  The volcanic ashes covered the Middle East all the way to the Indus valley and changed the weather throughout the region for years.  If you are a historian how can you ignore this in understanding the complete changes in the nature of civilizations that “just happened to occur” at this precise moment in time?

In Egypt this is the exact moment of the Exodus and when an Asian population, the Hyksos, Semitic people from Palestine, seized power in northern Egypt (the Delta), with capital in Avaris, and introduces the horse-driven chariot.

This is the exact moment that the Mycenaean Greeks invaded Crete (where the last remainders of the Minoan civilization was still intact (that part high enough to escape the tsunami) and feasting of the scraps of them suddenly went from barbarian tribes to a civilization that became the Greek one of classical times.  This is the time when civilized people suddenly changed from a Global Goddess Consciousness, true monotheism, to the concept of an anthropomorphic and fairly nasty Poppa God sitting on a cloud in judgment of all humanity by rules no one could understand.  The world shifted overnight to patriarchy, literally overnight.  The entire concept of civilization was androgenized…and never again was characterized by peaceful trade as the primary lubricant of societies.

But Global Goddess Consciousness is nature’s default and thus cannot be erased completely.

So what exactly do I mean by Global Goddess Consciousness?  It survived in Asia as the concept that the Divine is within all.  It survived for a time in the Mystery Schools of the classical period.  It survived for a time in Phrgyia where the last of the Minoans made their way to the inlet, in the lee of a large island that shielded them from the tsunami, facing Mount Ida and brought the Goddess full circle back to the very home She came from originally and then to Rome.  It teaches you that you are part of the Divine, a scrap of the hologram that contains the whole and you only need to acknowledge that, embrace that to be connected to the Divine whole.  That is the polar opposite of the teachings of Poppa God religions where you are sinful, always in danger of pissing him off and require a priest to intervene for you on behalf of the Divine of which you are not a part.

The story of Adam and Eve lays it all out for you.

First we have the expression of male jealousy of the female creative element in Yahweh “creating” Adam and then taking part of Adam’s side to make Eve.  He makes a present of a naked Adam and Eve of Eden with the stipulation that they never eat from the tree of knowledge (stay stupid) and the tree of life (never connect with their own Divine nature)or he will kill them deader than a doorknob.  The serpent, an ancient symbol associated with Goddess Consciousness, tells Eve, the woman in the story, Yahweh is lying through his teeth and wants to keep them from their Divine nature and stupid.  It’s all right there laid out clearly.  Even the fruit of the tree of knowlege is consider by most the apple, which when cut open reveals a pentagram, yet another symbol of the Goddess.

Thera exploded and gave rise to the Illiterati that makes a virtue of being stupid to enslave you by insisting you need others to know, give you knowledge and keep you disconnected from your own Divine nature.

 

RIP Mary Daly

Mary Daly passed away some time yesterday.  To many she is best known as the lover and mentor of Janice Raymond but among Pagans she is remembered for her ground breaking work in the formation of the Dianic Pagan traditions.   Her 1973 work,  “Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation” was a seminal work in spiritually oriented feminism.

Mary Daly’s last book  “Amazon Grace” marked a departure from her former, often somewhat over the top,  radical feminist philosophy to embrace the model of the second wave European schools that emerged first in Spain and then later in France embracing the “esprit feminique” –the feminine spirit that embraces rather than reject those unique attributes of women as not weakness but indeed our strengths.  This is the essence of  “Wholistic Feminism”.

Rest in peace Mary, may the Goddess’ arms enfold and keep you.

“The Goddess Movement would not be the same without her. Contemporary Paganism would not be the same without the Goddess Movement. The radical essentialism of thinkers like Daly was a challenge to the pole that said “only men can communicate with the divine”. That pillar that she went up against? Mostly it has changed, leaving behind laughable relics, some of whom unfortunately still hold a measure of power. Yes, inequality still exists and yes, I am still a feminist, but things have gotten better. Much, much better. I don’t know if Mary Daly was able to see the battles she actually won.” – T. Thorn Coyle

postscript...Do You Renounce Daly and All Her Works?
As a Pagan feminist theologian, the debt I owe Mary Daly is huge. As a feminist woman, that debt is also huge. As one with an intersexed/transsexed history I cannot and will not join the hate fest against her because my own experiences as a feminist woman taught me she wasn’t completely wrong. Please allow me to explain.

Almost none of the transwomen trashing Daly even knew who she was prior to her death, I can practically guarantee most of them never read any of her books. No, if they know her name it is because she was Janice Raymond’s mentor and among transwomen, Raymond is Satan. Now most of them never actually read Transsexual Empire either, it is an article of trans-faith one must hate Raymond with the irony being I’d never met a feminist who even knew who Raymond was until some transwoman told them about her.

Now was there ever any justification for the positions that Daly and Raymond held? Many years ago I used to argue with rad-fems on that and then a funny thing happened. Over and over I was personally exposed to exactly those same behaviours both complained about…..by those who claimed some sort of “sisterhood” with me by virtue of my having been surgically assigned male at birth (I was born intersexed) and transitioning as an adult. With one major difference to most of them beyond the intersexed thing, I had always been a lifelong feminist, always been aware of my own femaleness and hyper-aware of male privilege.

I watched feminist after feminist do a mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa on trans people when I was beginning to experience something I had to coin a word for, neo-gynophobia, in the various “trans communities”. It’s out there in plain view but any mention is immediately shouted down as transphobia. Now that’s rich. My need to make my body match my soul/central nervous system/whatever was downplayed and even insulted and the rationale to do so was exactly the same as Raymond expressed! My, and other’s like me, post corrected bodies were insulted as faux vaginas, inverted penises, mutilated crotches and we were told we would never ever ever be “real” woman. Not by rad-fems, by transgender identified people! My participation in NOW was criticized by trans women because I did so as a woman without modifiers!

And talk about hatred? I’ve been subjected to hate crimes, death threats, open attempts to destroy every aspect of my life, even turned in to Homeland Security as a terrorist and outed so I would lose my job. By evil rad-fems? By the Christo-fascist right?…….no, by transpeople because I named and talked about neo-gynophobia. I know first hand the hatred Julie Bindle has experienced.

So will I repudiate all that I gained from Mary Daly’s life work because she had issues with trans women? Not on your life. In this respect she was wrong in many ways but also she was no worse than many that now demand her life be judged on this aspect.

 

Wholistic Feminism

The violence done on the self esteem of women by the patriarchy is almost so universal it is often hard to grasp it’s full extent.  It spreads from economics to political organizational to religion and philosophy…and the underpinnings of all of those and more.

As long as feminist women use “oppression heiarchies” as the model to understanding all this, we lose.  As in total thermonuclear war, the answer is quite simple, the only way to win is not to play.  Personally I feel it is no accident that history is barely taught today in our schools and ancient history, when covered, rewritten completely to serve the political agendas of the patriarchy.

The logic of men is domination, the logic of women is cooperation.  This basic principle is clear throughout human history.  In political terms male logic yields monarchies, theocracies, dog eat dog captialism.  Female logic give us “socialized medicine”, the concept of the commons for communal raising and sharing of food resources, the idea that many hands make lighter labour.  In theological terms male logic give us gods sitting in judgement and handing out vengence and punishment while female logic gives us universal divinity, Gaia, understanding of the interdependence of all life, ecology.  Male logic gives us subdue the earth, rape it’s resources for our own immediate gain while women’s logic gives us the sense that we have an obligation to future generations and finite resources need to be preserved.

You can find male logic in a lot of women and female logic in a lot of men.  The difference is in style and gross numbers.

To me, a wholistic feminism is one that rejects the entire patriarchal model for Goddess Consciousness which has been slowly reawakening for the past hundred plus years in waves. Socialism, the Suffragettes, the rise in Pagan religious models over Abrahamic ones, socialized medicine, social security, Medicare, foodstamps and Welfare, worker’s comp, green movement, ecology…..these are all reflections of a Goddess awareness, a spirit of charity and cooperation as opposed to the sink or swim, you got what you deserved, no illegal aliens, social darwinism.

It’s feminism on a total global basis.  Can you be against socialized medicine and be a feminist?  How can you embrace a religious model that promotes your own original sin for being born without a penis and be a feminist?  How can you embrace politics that reject common humanity and the obligations not to mention promote the continued raping of the planet to the point it is in peril and still be a feminist?

Wholistic feminism transcends race, social status, physical bodies.  It is an entire way of being and make no mistake, the patriarchy knows this even if we are slow to understand it ourselves.  Think about it.  Those “matriarchies” of the ancient world weren’t, they were equalitarian.  It’s no accident that liberalism is called “effete”.

The women’s studies programs can take us only so far.  The “schools” of feminism are being used to divide us.  It is time to take a wholistic viewpoint, a global one of our feminism.  It’s not part of our lives, it is our lives and that of our children and partners as well.

 

Racism, Classism and Feminism by Maura Hennessey

Feminism in America was from its inception permeated with classism and racism. Sojourner Truth’s entreaty “Ain’t I a Woman” was a plaintive cry out to a movement that had by and large overlooked women of colour, immigrant women and women trapped in sweatshops. The working poor and the unemployed poor, unwed mothers, widows not only had no place at the table in 19th century American feminism but were covertly and frequently overtly excluded from not only the benefits of the “sisterhood” but also from the “sisterhood” itself.

The”sisterhood” of the 19th century, those women of privilege brought into being a style of feminism that narcissistically mirrored the privileged places in American society that they occupied. Often the wives of prominent man, their feminism was aimed at attaining the privileges held by their white Anglo-Saxon Protestant husbands. But, in addition to already possessing many of the social privileges of their husbands, they tragically reflected the prejudices of the narrow segment of community that brought them forth.

Successive waves of American feminism were built upon the bedrock`of this classist and racist movement. Overt hostility gave way to arrogant neglect. From its inception, the stratified hierarchy of American feminism, motivated by an arrogant sense of noblesse oblige functioned in loco parentis, that is seemingly with the powers of a parent over the agenda of women, whose issues and lives they were wholly out of touch with and made no effort to understand except in terms of their own culture and experience. The faces remained largely Caucasian; the issues remained largely upper middle class. At a time that women of color, immigrant women and single mothers were struggling for survival, mainstream feminism continued to be preoccupied with breaking the glass ceilings, pay equality for executives and reproductive rights. With HIV sweeping through women of color, American feminism politely ignored growing epidemic.

There have been repeated demands and pleas for change; the shortcomings of the feminist movement had been pointed out not only by the Right, which delights in doing so but also by the left, whose diverse spectrum is barely represented at all in the leadership of the feminist movement.

The structure of the movement is hierarchical and therefore vertical. Its goals have been defined from the time of its inception through the modern era by a leadership that in a very real sense rules sometimes more, and sometimes less benevolently over the image, demands, and agenda that it presents to the world on behalf of a majority of women far different than itself

Spanish feminism, as opposed to this, developed as a popular and populist movement of women living with nearly feudal oppression, dispossession and disadvantage. Closely tied with it were the first women attending universities in the country in many instances. It was philosophically allied with humanism, socialism and even anarchism.

As a horizontal rather than a vertical structure, as a populist rather than an elitist movement and based on a fundamental premise of mutual support and improving the welfare of all women as opposed to attaining privileges associated with empowered white males for a select few, Spanish feminism or horizontal feminism is more egalitarian and inclusive with a heavy emphasis upon nurturing support in assisting and uplifting an entire sisterhood with close attention to the individual needs of daily life as opposed to abstract ideals and privilege.

The issues of race inequality have to be addressed for horizontal feminism to truly function; women have the obligation be cognizant of and lend themselves to the improvement of the condition of their sisters as part of the improvement of the condition of women as a whole. Healthcare, child care, safety from assault, employment equality all become issues for the entire movement. The agenda is generated from the far reaches of the community through the center to the opposite side, permeating the whole with a co-responsibility for human welfare

There is one defining feature of the group, the divine feminine, esprit feminine or woman’s spirit. To truly function, to truly reflect the nature of women as a whole, the group must be inclusive, must be diverse and must reflect both empathy and advocacy for the entire membership.

It is time to finally part with the fatally flawed structure that has been the model of American feminism and embrace a different, inclusive, co-responsible model, horizontal feminism too and the racial and class distinctions that poison the well of women’s rights