As Purple to Lavender - Shakesville

I left the following comment to a post about the racism v. sexism argument.

Feminist. Womanist. Bitch. Witch. Priestess. President. Labels don't really matter at this level. There are many women's movements co-existing, but that isn't the point.

There's no up side to arguing about who is the more oppressed party. We're dealing with 6,000 years of an unnatural social order called patriarchy, which is by definition sexist, racist, elitist, greedy, violent and intolerant. None of us is untouched by this no matter whom we are. America has had ignoble beginnings. It began with an act of genocide against the First Nations, prospered from the work of slaves, sustained itself by breaking the backs of women who had no say in the governance of their own lives or bodies. For the most part, we've been taught to overlook these waves of oppression and take what we can get.

The founders of the country knew intellectually that their society didn't meet the measure of their own philosophies. They did what they could get away with and left it to future generations to make the wrongs right as it became possible. We're chipping away at a power structure that oppresses everyone in one aspect or another, and even those with the most privilege are hobbled by that oppression in some way. Patriarchy hurts everybody.

Yes, the MSM is sexist and racist. It is owned by greedy elitists with a financial interest in keeping women subservient and people of color powerless and dependent, and our country at war. I've been told by people I respect that I am betraying my Sisters by not supporting Hillary, but I refuse to believe that having a vagina is enough qualification to justify my voting for and elitist, racist and dishonest politician. Yes, she has been the object of extreme sexism and that is wrong. I don't have to support her to recognize that she has been treated badly. My objections to her largely stem from her race-baiting. She is both a victim of bigotry and a bigot herself. Many people fit comfortably into both categories. We are all damaged by patriarchy to some extent.

The mistake is that we think there's a difference in racism, sexism, classism, or any other form of oppression. Social Justice exists for all or it exists for none, and the situation might be improving here or there, but we still essentially live in a state of social INjustice. It doesn't matter what element of our person or position provokes the oppressive treatment - the treatment is the problem. The sense of entitlement that tells some elite group or individual that they are "more" is what we need to challenge. No one has a right to own, oppress, cheat, hurt or kill another human being. (Some would extend that to include animals, too, but one fight at a time.) That basic truth is violated all throughout our society. We have an elite group that feels blessed by a white male deity who loves them best of all, and that love justifies anything they want, at the expense of anyone or anything else. While we fight over who is more oppressed - WOC or women in general, the elite class continues its vampiric drain on our money, our culture and our lives. Our anger toward each other keeps us down. Only directing that anger where it belongs, at the elite classes who have stacked the game against us, is going to make a difference in any of our lives.

We can't afford to be divided - that serves the elite class. Why do their work for them? Why make it easier for them t6 keep us down? Everyone who is not independently wealthy needs to work together. We're a giant game of whack-a-mole and the moles only win when they all rise up together and take away the hammer. Ok, it's a stupid metaphor but you see what I mean. They can keep some of us down over there, and some over here, but if we all stand up together we outnumber them. This is class warfare and the only resolution to it is revolution. Solidarity.

A person of color should feel just as offended by sexism and they are by racism. Women should be as offended by racism in every form or situation. It's all the same hate from the top of one dominant hierarchy we need to tear down. This should be the function of the Progressive movement. If we aren't directly attacking that power structure, our efforts are wasted. Let's put all that hurt and anger where it belongs and get something done. Barack just might be able to focus our energy and make some real changes. I wish he were more liberal, but the movement behind him is more important than the man himself, though he gives it a name and a face. He creates the potential for a kind of healing both here and in the rest of the world that simply won't happen if Hillary is in charge. It's a long shot, but it's our only shot at the moment.

An Appeal to the People of New Hampshire

You all are being inundated with information about all the candidates right now. I know you probably can't wait for it to be over. Before you cast your vote Tuesday, please take a moment to consider this. Very powerful forces behind our media don't want the people to hear what Dennis Kucinich has to say. His exclusion from the New Hampshire debate on Saturday is the single best indication that he's the candidate you should vote for.

When the corporate owners of this country go that far out of their way to silence the voice of the people, we need that voice to get louder. You have a chance to send a clear message. Please don't be one of the people that say their heart is with Dennis but he can't win - he can, and we can make it happen. This is your moment New Hampshire - make us proud!

Want Dennis Kucinich to come to your town?

To ODE Magazine: Move beyond the Binary!

So much to say! This is a post, a letter, an appeal, and an attempt to sort through my own feelings. I’m reeling from tragedies on every level, from the horror at Va. Tech to wondering if the malignancy on my father’s scalp has metastasized. He has surgery Wednesday, and it will be a while before we know where we stand. My mom isn’t doing well and I am overwhelmed with everything that needs to get done.

The tragedy in Virginia could have been prevented if VA refused to sell guns to anyone who, voluntarily or not, had been hospitalized for suicidal ideations. That shouldn’t even be considered gun control. It’s just common sense. The videos shown by NBC et al did give us some important information. It indicated, as did some of his other writings, that Cho might have been molested and/or struggling with issues of homosexuality. They reminded me of the stuff that Valerie Solanas wrote before she shot Andy Warhol - just streams of sexually charged obscenities that didn’t really say anything. It also showed that the guy who says nothing is the one with the most to say. I keep hearing Eddie Vedder in my head singing “Cho Seung Hui spoke in class today.” What a black irony that it scans the same as “Jeremy.”

Goddess bless the victims and their families, and help them find comfort for their grief.

The following is my venting that resulted in reading this month’s ODE magazine. It’s an amazing magazine and I really recommend that people who are committed to creating a better world subscribe, or at least check the website frequently. This was one of those issues where nearly every article wound me up because they’re so wonderfully close, but just don’t get it yet.


Some relevant articles in the May 2007 issue of ODE Magazine:
Pg 4 Marco Visscher states the modern need for the abolition movement because of continuing slavery around the world.
Pg 5 Max Christern relates former soccer star MIchel Platini’s desire to set soccer fans free by taking away the barriers. He believes that people will behave like adults if they are treated that way; put barriers in front of them and they will naturally rebel against them.
Pg 7 the Letters page with responses to a previous “god or not” article by Neal Donald Walsch called “Is God [sic] a Delusion?” re:Richard Dawkins most recent screed against “religion.”
Pg 10 Diana Reynolds Roome writes about the new education of exiled Tibetan nuns in “Sisterhood is Powerful.”
Pg 12 “Surprise Down by the Sea” biologist Mike Barandiaran “[the brown pelicans] were getting bombed left and right all around, but somehow they managed. Nature is persevering.” (She is, indeed!)
“The Secret Economy” cites information that 44% of people’s time in Western nations spent doing unpaid domestic work while they are volunteering 1 hour for every 14 of paid work, creating value that can’t be measured in dollars.
Pg 14 “The Good Don’t Die Young“ “benevolent, altruistic people live longer, stay healthier and experience less stress” because doing good works creates the release of endorphins.

...and more, which I’ll talk about below.

****************************************************

Dear ODE:

There is no word for the odd mixture of joy, optimism and frustration I experience when I read ODE Magazine. People are SO CLOSE to catching on, and there are so many people of all stripes - actors, doctors, scientists, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, mostly male - hitting all around the problems we face, but they don’t have the vocabulary to really get to the heart of the matter.

Take a deep breath, open your mind, screw up your courage and say the word: Goddess

That is the single, underlying theme that your contributors this month danced all around but couldn’t find a word to describe.

Most people will have a knee-jerk reaction at the use of that particular word. Are you picturing kooks in black Egyptian make-up? Hippies? Angry feminists? (I’m all of those, but read on, anyway.) The monotheists will hear blasphemy; the rationalists, superstition. I’m asking for neither faith in what I say nor belief in that which cannot be proven. Instead, I’m asking you to try a new frame for your own observations that can bring disparate and seemingly contradictory concepts into a unified whole. Moreover, it is a real and tangible whole that speaks to the deepest part of our psyches as well as our DNA, and that concept is Mother.

I know you’re a more enlightened group than most, but no one is perfect so try this: Set aside all your conditioning that says women are weak, emotional, secondary. Forget about popular concepts of balance, yin and yang, polarity, 50/50, either/or, black and white, good vs. evil. Reducing our reality to two opposing forces creates opposition, conflict and stagnation. It is divisive and damaging. It creates the idea that if I am to be “right” then you must be “wrong”; That might, wealth or divine decree create an entitlement for some to rule over many and for those rulers to hoard wealth and influence while enslaving, raping, plundering resources and committing genocide, all with the blessings of their “heavenly father.” “Somebody has to be in charge,” they say, and they claim to be the Chosen who have dominion over everyone else (the infidel) and the Earth as well. These are patriarchal concepts that have nothing to do with Nature, who always prefers Her own gender. Humans are 54% female. Using the reductive reasoning so common in Western thinking, we should refer to ourselves as womankind, since women comprise the majority of the race and since every one of us began as female in the womb. Why don’t we? I’ll come back to that later.

Both “rationalists” and religionists see the Earth as a thing that can be conquered, manipulated or controlled. Some picture an old man with a white beard deciding to make himself a world, fashioning a man from mud and a women from his rib. Others think “god” is a delusion and that we walk on dead rocks among senseless plants and dumb animals, while only we are blessed with the ability to reason. Many experience the world but are not of the world. This is not only incorrect, it is not logical. Logically, we cannot exist apart from Nature because we are a part of Nature. There is nothing rational in believing that humans stand apart from the rest of existence.

Our ideation of existing separately is a combination of hubris and ignorance that causes us to tune out our own experiences with the living and sentient life forms around us. In "Native Intelligence", pp. 28 - 32, anthropologist Jeremy Narby, calling himself a “diplomat between systems of knowledge,**” advocates incorporating the knowledge of indigenous people into our world view. The article cites studies that show mold can navigate a maze to find oatmeal; that bees are capable of abstract thought with a brain the size of a pinhead; that plants process information about the world around them the same way the neurons in our brains function; and that there’s a plant called the dodder vine that knows which sources in its surroundings are the most nutritious and a stilt palm in the Amazon that very slowly “walks” about, following the sunlight by extending roots into the light and letting the ones in shade die off, effectively moving it from place to place. In anthropology, the belief that plants and animals have consciousness or intelligence is called “animism.” The Japanese, we are told, call it chi-sei, “the capacity to know.” A shaman might call it magick (with a “k”); a scientist, superstition; I call it Goddess, or the more recognizable Gaia, using the latter when referring specifically to our own planetary ecosystem as a living entity. Call it what you want - it all leads to the same conclusion. Universal connection within one whole entity. When we cut her up into genders, countries, sects and sides we damage Her and our experience is poorer for it.

Narby wants us to know that everything is alive and everything is connected. This is not a new concept to my readers or the Goddess movement at large, but it is radically different from the consensus reality of the West. He and some biologist colleagues even participated in ayahuasca ceremonies which yielded new information in their fields for each of them. He stops just short of realizing that the world is a living (parthenogenetic ergo female) being. Nature is our living Mother who gave birth to us in Her womb, the ocean, through a process called evolution. That process is repeated in the development of a fetus in the womb. She’s alive. She’s conscious. We are interconnected parts of Her living body.

Paul Hawken gets closer in “The Instinct to Save the Planet,” pp. 39-45, wherein he understands that humans have acted like a cancer in the body of Earth and he perceives a growing, multi-faceted “movement” which he cannot name, but which he likens to the Earth’s immune system fighting back through this loose but growing web of between 1 and 2 million grass roots activist organizations. He identifies three roots of the system: “environmental activism, social justice initiatives and indigenous cultures’ resistance to globalization.” He doesn’t address the ties most of these groups have to the feminist movement, let alone acknowledge that Gaia, in true homeopathic form, is healing what Al Gore calls Her “fever” by using “like to cure like” - humans run amok have created Her illness, and something in the undercurrent of humanity is spurring people all over the globe to take healing action in a way that is unprecedented in our history.

This process is being facilitated by the growth of the information matrix described in "The Power of Many", pp. 34 - 38, which talks about the self-organizing tendencies being harnessed by various organizations and web entities. We have a natural drive to share, to help each other, and to make things better. That drive is being expressed in new ways on the web as well as social and political events which are beginning to abandon hierarchical structure and linear formats. The drive for justice, the defense of nature, the abandonment of hierarchy, growth from the bottom up instead of power directed downward are all essential facets of the Goddess Movement, and the awareness and connectedness that Hawken and Narby are crusading for are succinctly described as Goddess Consciousness. Hawken states that there is no ideology that encompasses all facets of the movement he has noticed or “heal all the wounds of this world”; I propose that there is one that he either doesn’t know or hasn’t seriously considered, and it is Goddess.

Have you felt uneasy with the way I punctuate sentences, specifically in terms of capitalization? Does is seem odd to give Earth gender? Does it seem strange to say Goddess and god? Feminists in the 70s addressed the gender inequities in language but they failed to take it into the realm of religion. It’s time to challenge the assumed preference given to “god/Yaweh/Jehovah/Allah” in all of our printed matter. It’s time to recognize that these are in fact one deity and one only, whose scripture declares him to be jealous of others.

Back to my question about Womankind. Why don’t we call ourselves by the logical term? Why is talking about Goddess more uncomfortable than talking about “god?” Why can “god” create a world, but Goddess not BE the Universe and Gaia the planet? What if the Big Bang was actually a primordial orgasm that set life in motion? That discomfort with the Feminine Divine is the political effect of 6,000 years of patriarchy and monotheist brain-washing.

In its quest for power, Western civilization has sacrificed connection - men are divided from women, races from one another, humans are divided from Nature, our minds are divided from our bodies. That brain-washing says that women in power are dirty, evil and dangerous, not to be trusted. The abuse heaped on women like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi has a common origin with the idea that women must be swathed in burkas and the windows of their houses painted black. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are really one religion dedicated to the “god” of Abraham, each frozen at different stages of its development, and the scriptures used by that religion’s many forms have been crafted, reinterpreted, and twisted to keep women out of power and under the control of men, because women equal wealth - children, dowries, unpaid work, sex. It is no accident that the majority of people who live in poverty are women and their children. We are told that this is to be expected. People are naturally greedy, lazy, selfish and violent. War is inevitable. Evil is everywhere. We are told repeatedly that this is a normal condition for humans, and most people have never questioned it because they’ve never known anything else. There is another way, if we are willing to change our minds.

On this we can agree - human beings have been successful as a species because of our innate desire to be helpful to each other, and our ability to make individual sacrifice for the good of the group. There is a societal structure that is inclusive, participatory and just. There is a system that eschews hierarchies and strives for sustainable use of resources and equal distribution of wealth. It is probably the natural order for human beings - familial clans that trace their lineage through the female line, sharing child care and production of food and goods among them all, every member participating in and contributing to the common good of the group. Many matriarchies still exist in many pockets in the world. In the United States, the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Nation has strong matriarchal roots that helped influence the Suffragist Movement. The Mosuo of China retain their matrilineal structure and have no concept of marriage or dominance. New matriarchies are forming in Africa to give women refuge from violence and exploitation. I hope we’ll soon see communities of single or abandoned mothers and their children forming small woman-centered communities with cooperative child care and related services. What if we re-worked abandoned buildings for poor women’s families? Or if a group of families simply chose to form a web of support for each other?

The shift in consciousness that your contributors yearn for us to make so that the numinous movement arising from grass roots around the world can flourish is a return to Goddess Consciousness. Use it as a symbol or a frame or a poetic expression of a scientific concept if you prefer that to religion, but whatever importance you ascribe to it, you will find that it is an extremely pragmatic view. It just works. The Goddess is not “out there” somewhere. She is you, your neighbor, the food that you eat, the air that you breathe. The “god or not” debate perpetuated by Walsch and Dawkins misses the point entirely. It’s not about what importance we put on some ancient scrolls that may be nothing more than the dreams of some hash-smoking nomads. It doesn’t matter if you call it Nature, Magick or Quantum Mechanics - it’s all the same multifaceted field of energy and matter that vibrates in space inhabited by our consciousness, following the same natural laws and forces whether you can name them or calculate them or even know they exist. You don’t have to believe in gravity to fall down, and you don’t need to believe the planet is literally a girl to reap the benefits that would come from acting as if you did.

I participated in a blog carnival called “God or Not” for a while, and learned a valuable lesson. The objections raised by rationalists against “religion” were only true of monotheist religion; none of them considered a monotheast and/or polytheist system at all before rejecting all religion. The religionists were nice, but not terribly good at making an argument; the rationalists were angry and rude, and only a little better at supporting their positions. Eventually, the project failed because the religionists tired of the obnoxious behavior of the rationalists. The same problem affected both sides: Fundamentalism. Humans go through three basic levels of moral development. First, they are driven by reward and punishment - “mommy will spank me if I do that, give me a cookie if I do this.” Then they move into a phase in which they see the world in concrete terms, and look to external authority, whatever that may be, to define morality for them, whether they behave in a moral way or not. As kids, they follow the rules and expect things to be fair; they learn to obey the law (or not) and do what the Bible says (or not) and they don’t question those systems - they simply parrot them or rebel against them, but they don’t challenge their validity, only their own agreement to follow them or not. That is Fundamentalism, and it doesn’t matter what you believe - just how you express your belief. You can take the Bible literally, get your cues from the Taliban or be a staunch defender of science a la Dawkins, but if you assume that your chosen authority is infallible and you cannot imagine that you might be wrong, you are a fundamentalist.

To admit that you might be wrong is essential to the survival of our world. We are in a situation where most of the world is stuck at the adolescent level that thinks in concrete terms. We can begin to understand abstract concepts in our late teens, but most people never mature to that stage. At the conceptual level, you can consider that your reality is not the only one; that you might be wrong; that some other person/view/culture/religion/political party might be right; that somebody else might know something you don’t; that everyone might be wrong, or we all might be right; or that there is no right or wrong at all. At that stage, you look at available information, and you reach your own conclusions, which may change in time as you continue to learn new things or incorporate new experiences. We are, in a very real sense, having growing pains. Our challenge is to drag the concrete thinkers out of their adolescent black and white world into one of infinite possibilities because you aren't likely to strap a bomb on yourself and go to the market if you realize you might be wrong. That’s an entirely possible process. The irony is that, as Fouad Laroui points out in “The Many Sides of Allah,“ pp. 52 - 59, the majority of fundamentalists are violently defending misconceptions, and really know very little about their own religious doctrine. We need to challenge those misconceptions when they arise, and we do that with dialogue and education.

Goddess can do all of this - She’s good at weaving webs with every kind of connection. She loves learning and wisdom, philosophy and poetry. She holds teaching, nursing, caring for children, the elderly, the sick and the destitute, singing, dancing, art, prayer and sexuality as sacred activities. She’s generous, loves us unconditionally, loves diversity, urges us to care for one another, make the most of what we have, to share, to grow, to prosper and live in harmony as one body. That’s a practical, positive image to work with and it has been with us since the beginning of time.

The state of women in a culture is the state of the culture itself. On the back page of this issue, Greg Mortensen, who educates girls in Taliban country, says “you can drop bombs, hand out condoms, build roads or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated, a society will not change.” A few people make a lot of money by keeping us at war. How will we ever have peace when the people at the negotiating table don’t believe peace is possible? If they’re making money from the war? How will we overcome pollution if people in power profit from it? How would our political discussions, our religious rivalries, our economic goals and environmental awareness change if someone at the table represented the Goddess openly and fearlessly?

If you want a better, more peaceful and humane world, the future is female

Peace,

Morgaine Swann, H.Ps.

**(My word for that is “Witch”)

Impeach07 Campaign Launched

via David Swanson.
(Goddess bless him, he has been a tireless warrior in the fight against this criminal administration.)

The impeachment movement is uniting and expanding. We're joining with many other organizations to launch Impeach07, a coordinated series of actions aimed at impeaching Bush and Cheney through widespread public protest, creative dissent, media activism, education, and lobbying:
http://www.impeach07.org

Bush and Cheney have misled this nation into an aggressive war, spied in open violation of the law, and sanctioned the use of torture -- among numerous other offenses. Newsweek reported in October that a majority of Americans favor impeachment, and in January that 58% said they wished the Bush administration were over. "Only a great popular upheaval," Howard Zinn said recently, "can push both Republicans and Democrats into compliance with the national will."

We need to end one war and prevent another, and impeachment is the way we will do it.

On March 17, the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, Impeach07 will mobilize for a
March on the Pentagon to demand peace and impeachment. Go here to get involved:
http://www.marchonpentagon.org

On March 18-20, Impeach07 will organize local events for peace and impeachment around the country:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/event

Impeach07 is also planning:

A "Make Hip Hop, Not War" bus tour promoting peace and impeachment on March 19 - April 21:
http://www.hiphopcaucus.org

A boycott of major corporations that are profiting from the Bush administration's policies, making a killing off of killing, on April 15- 22:
http://www.wearenotbuyingit.org

And a nationwide day of protest:
Impeachment Day, April 28, 2007:http://www.a28.org

Initial participating organizations represent hundreds of thousands of antiwar, military family, peace, youth and women activists and lawyers. They include: After Downing Street, Backbone Campaign, Center for Constitutional Rights, Citizens Impeachment Commission, CODE PINK Women for Peace, Constitution Summer, Consumers for Peace, Democrats.com, Democracy Rising, Gold Star Families for Peace, Green Party of the United States, Hip Hop Caucus, Impeach the President, ImpeachBush.org, Military Free Zone, National Lawyers Guild, Patriotic Response to Renegade Government, Progressive Democrats of America, Independent Progressive Politics Network, Velvet Revolution, and World Can't Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime.

Organizations that want to join should write to jacob@a28.org

You won't believe this...

You know that $200 I was worried about? We won $200 dollars on the lottery tonight. Trust the Goddess and she will provide!

I was going to talk about some random stuff the other night but I got off on a Nazi tangent, so let me do that now.

1) Obento- I'm completely obsessed with Bento boxes and accessories. If you aren't familiar with it, it's a sort of art involving packing the perfect lunch. Since it's mostly for kids, there are special cutters for vegetables that make heart, star and flower shapes, there are little bits of plastic grass for decoration, special divider cups of paper, foil or silicone, and little containers that look like bottles or strawberries that hold soy sauce. I'm completely enchanted by the attention to detail that Japanese moms are putting into their children's lunches.

I never did the PB&J-every day thing as a kid. My lunches were cool - tacos, shrimp cocktail, left-over fried chicken, a thermos full of ravioli. Aside from the fact that I HATE the idea of jelly on peanut butter, I always thought the PB&J thing was kind of déclassé, and yes, I would have known that word in the second grade. I was precoscious in most ways, but particularly so in language. I love how the Japanese can take something most people never think about and turn it into an art form.

2) Hikikomori - Japanese language is so fluid and versatile that they seem to have a word for everything. "Hikikomori" means "one who withdraws" and refers to a trend observed in Japanese boys, but that I believe to be far more widespread, where they go in their room and don't come out. Some start as young as 11, and they don't go to school, then they don't go out, and finally don't leave their rooms except for occasional nocturnal foray that often includes a trip to a convenience store to buy a take-out bento. The availability of boxed, ready-to-go dinners has actually increased to accomodate the hikikomori lifestyle.

Anyone who knows me is seeing a striking resemblance to me in that description. Despite the tendency of most articles on the subject to emphasize the Japanese victims of this syndrome, there are people in most industrialized countries who live the same solitary and nocturnal existence. In Japan it is attributed to an inability to cope with the high expectations and extreme competition focused on males in that culture. The numbers show only 20% of hikikomori are girls, though they also believe that the problem is under-reported in females because of different cultural demands placed on them.

I've only found one article so far that acknowledges this problem in Britain and the US, as well as other parts of Europe and Scandanavia, but I expect to see more. I've encountered too many people like me - agoraphobic, dysfunctional, nocturnal because we can't deal with the activity levels of the day. It's not that uncommon - we just aren't talking about it yet. Anything that affects 1-2% of young males is going to affect the economy in Japan. There is apparently no safety net for hikikomori beyond family. They are trying to develop treatment now that will draw them back out into society, but it's too soon to tell if the assisted living-type programs will have a lasting effect or not. What if it's more than a trend? What if it's an adaptation?

What if a certain percent of the population just can't deal with aspects of the 21st century? Maybe some of us are too affected by noise, chemicals in our environments and foods, electromagnetic fields and a thinning atmosphere. There's a tendency for hikikomori to be very bright, extremely sensitive, and creative, though unmotivated and depressed. What if we have to redefine our concept of "work" to allow for people who can't leave the house or keep a "normal" schedule? If society fails to address the problem, we'll see the potential of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people go to waste. What if becoming nocturnal is an adaptation that will be necessary if the ozone layer continues to degrade? More later...

3) Flickr - I'm indulging these obsessions on Flickr and learning about art at the same time. Just from looking at pictures of other people's art work, I've learned new techniques and found new ideas. It's fun to see what other people are doing, and it gives a kind of permission to try new things that I don't often feel. I've been really blocked for a while, and it's got me painting again, which is a joy. I need more joy in my life. It has also brought up questions about ...

4) Misogyny - there are a lot of fine arts being produced by women right now. There's also a lot of crafts and the distinction between the two is blurring. I hope eventually they are considered the same thing. I notice that the women who are into collage and ATC trades refer to their work as "art" rather than "crafts" and I think that's a positive thing. Women have always done the majority of creative work, but it was dismissed for being, of necessity, utilitarian and seen as "less" than art produced by a man with the wherewithall to be a professional artist. If anything, I'd think the art with purpose should have greater value than something that is merely decorative.

Now I'm going to ramble a bit. As with most feminist issues, I think the answer comes from within us. A word like "poetess" or "actress" is often seen as denigrating because it indicates gender, and the assumption is that a feminine gender is "less" - that "suffragette" is somehow a put down and "suffragist" is not because it could apply to either gender. We don't have to buy into patriarchal definitions. Saying "girls" instead of "women" in social circumstances could be taken as a compliment in a youth-obsessed culture, rather than a put-down in an androcentric context. How I hear it depends on my belief about myself. Being called a girl by a man doesn't diminish me because I don't feel diminished. I was never raised to think of myself as less because I'm female, so I don't hear the word that way. A feminist recently railed at me because I wrote about the primacy of the feminine gender in humans. In her mind, she heard a Greek philosopher saying that woman is an incomplete man. In my mind, I hear it meaning that maleness is a later adaptation at best, a birth defect at worst. Same data, different receiver.

Words are certainly important, but I think it's important not to avoid our gender in favor of neutered nouns or pronouns. Virginia Woolf was a damned good writer whether you call her poet or poetess. To bristle at the latter label is to bristle at being female. I like my gender. It's the reaction of the alternate gender that angers me, and that's not so much about genitalia as it is about bigotry.

5) Bigotry - The line between sophistication and cynicism is unclear. On one hand, you can't expect people to know anything other than what they've been taught, and most times it's better to let them go than to challenge their world view if they're old or poorly educated. There's a conflict brewing in my clan about nudity in art. It hasn't come to a head yet, but I've no doubt it will in the next 6 months or so. When dealing with someone of limited education and limiting religious values, it is easy just to let them be who they are and expect no more of them. If it begins to affect the way a teen is introduced to art, do you ignore the uneasiness of the brood, censor the materials you give to the kid, or point out that educated people are not shocked by nudity in art, knowing that the last option will have them calling you an uppity liberal?

To use a political example from the not too distant past, do you tell John Ashcroft that he needs to grow the fuck up, or do you let him hang draperies over the bare breasts of a classical Greek statue. If the statue was in his home, I'd say let it go. When the statue is in the halls of a government building, it embarasses everyone except the simple folk who think the way he does. Personally, I'd like members of my government to have at least the level of sophistication one would find in an 18 year old art student. The fact is that the vast majority of them don't. Our congress, for the most part, can't handle the dialog in an R-rated movie, would be offended by the sexual content of a movie like, say, "Tin Cup," knows nothing about the internet except that it has a lot of porn on it and Liberals make more money with it than Conservatives. I know they all have family money, but it really amazes me that these people get elected.

The real problem for me is when I'm dealing with people who ought to know better. The bigotry among the Progressive community is infuriating. For all their posturing and pontificating, they still only pay attention to white males and a few token females. They don't respect women's writing, they don't care about women's issues, and if they profess any kind of feminism at all, it's an ivory tower sort of "white chick feminism" that you find in Universities and the media. Mommy's problem is not whether to work or stay home. Mommy's problem is how to keep the rats away from baby, and keep a roof over their heads after daddy split. It's not about what to wear in the boardroom, but can she work in a mine without getting raped, and will the boss pay her as much as the men. There's nothing dainty or chic about real feminism - it's down and dirty populism that has to reach out to and deal with the poorest and most neglected members of society.

That's a sensibility I don't see anywhere in the Pop Politics of the Lefty blogosphere. The big boys kowtow to the DLC establishment to the detriment of the masses for whom they are supposed to advocate. The women acknowledged by the clique are pretty much all politics. Mix in anything personal, religious or non-news oriented and you're ignored. There's a strong anti-religion bias on the Left, even on blogs that profess to practice some - usually mainstream - religion. It's the Left's Achilles heel, and so far they've been completely inept at mitigating the damage it does at the polls. You shouldn't have to live in D.C. or on a Coast to be taken seriously. You shouldn't have to ignore spirituality altogether. You shouldn't be expected to sneer at viable candidates like Dennis Kucinich and automatically love Hillary because she has a vagina.

I knew when I started this blog that I would be marginalized. My opinions are extreme and I don't mince words. I'm not a politician and I don't have a boss that censors what I write. And, as I said, you can't really expect people to be something more than what they've been taught to be. At some point, though, you really want to tell people to grow the fuck up, and realize that there are voices not being heard and they are the ones ignoring them. You really want them to open their eyes and see that there are people in colors, genders, faiths, shapes and sizes that aren't up to Hollywood standards who still have something valid to say. You want them to live up to that Progressive label they wear so proudly. The Left would be unstoppable if it embraced its inherent diversity of cultures, religions, ethnicities, genders, and opinions.

We made the sandwiches and we've been patient. It's time to walk the talk.