feminist blogs

My Comments:

I'm sorry - I'm gonna ramble a bit.

Hillary's case has at least started the conversation we should have been having all along. I don't think of feminism as an after thought - it's the foundation of all other forms of social justice. There's going to be a building wave because women are learning to use the internet to weave new kinds of webs of power. We communicate better, quicker, no matter where we are or what our resources are. We've never had such unfettered access to such a populist medium.

Women are 54% of the population. Men are less than 46% when you allow for the number of transgender people that lie in the center of the continuum. The state of women and their children is the state of the entire race. No culture can prosper when over half of it's population is hobbled or oppressed, especially when that group has the primary responsibility for raising children. If women are impoverished in any way, then the entire culture becomes so.

All of the social movements have been driven by women - the move for abolition, prohibition, suffrage, civil rights, the labor movement. What are the names we remember for these changes? Harriet Tubman, Carrie Nation, Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Norma Ray. I'm not saying they are exclusively responsible, but the foundations of those movements were built on the backs of women who had simply had enough and took back their own power. If you want to heal racism, feminism has to be a part of it, or it won't work. If you want to build a labor union, you've got to get the women on your side. When you control the next generation, you determine the future.

One generation relaxed and the next generation didn't get it because they were rebelling against the rebellion. We're into a new generation now, and they're sitting at home watching Chris Matthews talk about how shrill Hillary's voice is - and they're pissed. It's about damned time. I'm so happy to see it. I'm not just looking for a wave, I want a tsunami, and I just might get it.

I received the following comment on the Pledge signed by the Goddess community:

What about just paying everyone the same and allowing a sliding scale for everyone. As a person of color and a Male Pagan, I don't believe we will get anywhere if we continue to view everyone as separate. And how about including the God in that pledge. Is the God to be ignored? We as pagans need to close the divided and work as a united front.

First, I didn't write the pledge, I signed it. However, had it mentioned a male deity, I might not have even signed it. First, such an inclusion is unnecessary - "all gods are Goddesses and all Goddesses are one Goddess," so Goddess is an inclusive term, unlike "god" which is exclusive of Goddess and always has been since the advent of patriarchy. If we lived in a matriarchy, I might be more sympathetic to adding a "god" but we don't so I'm not. Why you, a Pagan, would see the Goddess as an image that doesn't include you mystifies me. You should know better.

There are some who signed the pledge who are montheastic, believing in one Goddess and only one Goddess. Some are polytheistic, some are both and see no conflict in that because they understand the inclusive nature of the quote above.

I know there are Pagans who believe in duality. I believe this is a patriarchal contamination of the Craft, brought in by people who are nominally Pagan but bring their patriarchal dichotomies with them. It is a lower form of energy that encourages stagnation and irresolvable conflict. At some point, you have to go the original Source, the 0 before the 1 or the 2, and that Source is Goddess - it has to be, or She couldn't have given birth to existence. Even if I believed in duality, and I don't, I still would insist on focus on the Goddess because we've been through 6,000 years of an unnatural social order and it's going to take a lot of Goddess to "balance out" the damage male gods have done to humanity and our Mother Gaia. If all things were equal, and they aren't, there would still be the fact that nothing in Nature is 50-50 - the female is always the first to evolve and remains the more numerous gender.

I do agree that Pagans need to stick together, but for that to happen you are going to need a clearer picture of the Goddess. She does include you.