feminist blogs

A disapproving commenter says:

I see you consider the fetus to not be a human. At what point do you believe it becomes human? Is the partial birth at 9 months considered not human? Frankly I find this hideous! As for me: I believe that the mother does have a reasonable choice. But there comes a time when the child can sustain life outside the mothers womb and be fine...it is at that point that I would consider it not okay to abort, a purely selfish choice, GIVE IT AWAY, don't throw it away.

I'm bumping her comment up because I want to talk about what makes a human being. A lot o people want to take the magical view that a fertilized egg is human and has rights. That's very romantic, but it's just an opinion. In nature, fetuses and embryos are produced in much higher numbers than are intended to survive.Nature doesn't expect every zygote to reach personhood.

Even Judeo-Christian tradition doesn't attribute human status to the unborn. "Ensoulment" was believed to take place at the babies first breath outside the womb. The religious fervor around the issue of Choice has no basis in scripture. It's the opinion of a Pope, and frankly, I haven't seen a pope yet that made the lives of women a priority. Until I do, I recognize no authority for them to influence women's lives. The Protestant objections to choice are purely superstition. Again, there's nothing in the bible that forbids or discourages abortion.

From The Skeptic's Annotated Bible:

What the Bible says about Abortion

Abortion is not murder. A fetus is not considered a human life.

If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life. -- Exodus 21:22-23

The Bible places no value on fetuses or infants less than one month old.

And if it be from a month old even unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estimation shall be three shekels of silver. -- Leviticus 27:6

Fetuses and infants less than one month old are not considered persons.

Number the children of Levi after the house of their fathers, by their families: every male from a month old and upward shalt thou number them. And Moses numbered them according to the word of the LORD. -- Numbers 3:15-16

God sometimes approves of killing fetuses.

And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? ... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. -- Numbers 31:15-17

(Some of the non-virgin women must have been pregnant. They would have been killed along with their unborn fetuses.)

Give them, O LORD: what wilt thou give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. -- Hosea 9:14
Yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay even the beloved fruit of their womb. -- Hosea 9:16
Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up. -- Hosea 13:16

God sometimes kills newborn babies to punish their parents.

Because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die. -- 2 Samuel 12:14

God sometimes causes abortions by cursing unfaithful wives.

The priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell. And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the woman shall say, Amen, amen. ...
And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed. -- Numbers 5:21-21, 27-28

God's law sometimes requires the execution (by burning to death) of pregnant women.

Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt. -- Genesis 38:24

The Abrahamic deity doesn't give a damn about babies - the only goal is to control women's sexuality by the most brutal means imaginable so that a clear line of patrilineal inheritance can be assured. Now that we've dispensed with the patriarchal nonsense, let's look at science.

When do we consider a person dead, or at the point where we can legally consider ending their life if they are on life support? When brain activity has ceased. I therefore consider a functional brain to be necessary to define a living human. Such a brain doesn't exist in a fetus of less than 5 months, and most states don't allow abortions this late in the term except in cases where the mother's life is threatened. When push comes to shove, the actual life of a living mother MUST take precedence over theoretical life. We can argue whether we define an unborn child as having rights or not, but the mother most certainly has rights, and those must prevail.

Our culture is not oriented to support mothers and children. A woman with an unplanned pregnancy may have no income, no safety net, no child care, no escape from an abusive partner, no way to work and sustain a child. Women in a culture that is designed to control and subjugate them need options, and abortion needs to be one of those options.

It would be great if people always used birth control and birth control always worked. It would be great if a woman could devote 9 months of her life to creating a child to give away without disrupting her own life. I'd love it if every pregnant woman became so by choice, with no violence involved or poverty looming. In my perfect world, every child would be considered a gift and would be wanted and loved. That's not the state of our civilization, however, so our options in an unwanted pregnancy might be imperfect as well.

Women who are raped have no conscious or fair choice. Women dependent on an abusive partner may also have no fair choice. A woman who may, or WILL, die in child birth has no choice if she is to survive. An uwanted child can be born with health problems and or emotional damage inflicted on it because the mother is under stress during the pregnancy. These kids often have attachment disorders that prevent them from bonding with anyone, including adoptive parents. Life isn't ideal or fair.

Ultimately, the greatest burden and responsibility is that of the pregnant woman. Her rights must come first. Her choice must be hers and hers alone. As a civilization, we need to recognize that a woman is an autonomous being, with the right to control her own person, and no man, no government of men, and no "god" invented by men has any business telling her what she can and cannot do with her womb. Any coercion in this respect is a form of rape, and slavery, and these have no place in a democratic society of free citizens.

THEAGENESIS: The Birth of the Goddess



Oberon Zell-Ravenheart is the original "guy who gets it." Would that all men were as wise as he.

At this point it becomes necessary to define Divinity:

Divinity is the highest level of aware consciousness accessible to each living being, manifesting itself in the self-actualization of that being. Thus we can truly say, "All that groks is God" (Heinlein; Stranger in a Strange Land). Divinity is a cat being fully feline, grass being grassy, and people being fully human. Collective Divinity emerges when a number of people (a culture or society) share enough values, beliefs and aspects of a common life-style that they conceptualize a tribal God or Goddess, which takes on the character (and the gender) of the dominant elements of that culture. Thus the masculine God of the Western Monotheists (Jews, Christians, Moslems) may be seen to have arisen out of the values, ideals and principles of a nomadic, patriarchal culture - the ancient Hebrews. Matrifocal agrarian cultures, on the other hand, personified their values of fertility, sensuality, peace and the arts in the conceptualization of Goddesses. As small tribes coalesced into states and nations, their Gods and Goddesses battled for supremacy through their respective devotees. In some circumstances, various tribal divinities were joined peaceably (often through marriage) into a polytheistic pantheon, being ranked in status as their followers' respective influences determined. In other circumstances, one particularly fanatic tribe was able to completely dominate others and eliminate their own deities, elevating its God to the status of a solitary ruler over all creation, and enforcing His worship upon the people, usually upon pain of death. However, no matter to what rank a single tribal deity may be exalted by its followers, it still could be no other than a tribal divinity, existing only as an embodiment of the values of that tribe. "Gods are only as strong as those who believe in them think they are" (Alley Oop). When the planetary consciousness of Gaea awakens, She too will be Divinity - but on an entirely new level: the emergent deity Carlton Berenda postulates in The New Genesis. Indeed, even though yet unawakened, the slumbering subconscious [and dreaming?] mind of Gaea is experienced intuitively by us all, and has been referred to instinctively by us as Mother Earth, Mother Nature - The Goddess for whom She is well named. Indeed, this intuitive conceptualization of feminine gender for our planetary Divinity is scientifically valid, for biologically unisexual organisms (such as amoebae or hydra) are always considered female; in the act of reproduction they are referred to as mothers and their offspring as daughters.

[Note: I came later to the conclusion that Gaea may have indeed achieved consciousness in more ancient times, and that she was actually "knocked unconscious" by the worldwide cataclysms and attendant destruction of Her worshippers which ended the Bronze Age and ushered in the Age of Iron around 1500 BCE. This hypothesis is more fully developed in my 1977 research paper, "Cataclysm and Consciousness - From the Golden Age to the Age of Iron." [OZ, 1988]]

Thus we find that "God" is in reality Goddess, and that our ancient Pagan ancestors had an intuitive understanding of what we are now able to prove scientifically. Thus also we expose the logical absurdity of a concept of cosmic Divinity in the masculine gender. These few pages, however, have only been the briefest of introductions to the implications of a discovery so vast that its impact on the world's thinking will ultimately surpass the impact of the discovery of the Heliocentric structure of the solar system. This is the discovery that the entire Biosphere of the Earth comprises a single living Organism.[emphasis mine]

So, is the Divine Mother sleeping? Unconscious? Dreaming? More like having a nightmare. No one can say when She will awake, but my money says 12/21/2012* - 12.21.12, the one that was divided in two, the two we are about to see as one again, realizing the one and the two are the same. We can make sure this happens by spreading the word about the Goddess to everyone we can.

I just read a manuscript by my friend Athana that has filled me with hope. She took her natural gift as a story teller, and applied it to a book that describes the ancient Matriarchy, in glorious detail, with meticulous research and sets forth her goal of getting us back to the Goddess by 2035. It can't happen soon enough to suit me. I say we get that book on the shelves ASAP, and pray to our Mother that many more follow from many men and women who "get it," too.

*Thanks, Medusa! ;-)

OK, I'm going to throw this out here and see if anyone is interested. I have an idea for a Sci-Fi series or movie, but I don't have the patience to write it. If anyone out there is into writing SF, or has experience writing for TV, and wants to do this, get in touch with me. I'll consult if you like, but you can take it an run with it as long as I get credit for the idea.

The idea is to follow the history of the Bible from a sort of "Chariot of the Gods"/ Book of Enoch perspective : Yahweh is a captain of a ship of people called the Annunaki, angels are crew members, Jesus is one of them, and there are competing ships or races that become pantheons of other cultures - Isis leads one ship, her lover Osiris is murdered, etc. Moses is talking to a hologram, the ark of the convenant is a radio transmitter that allows the humans to communicate with the ship at great distances, Ezekial is taken aboard a ship he describes a a wheel, etc. We see the story from the perspective of the Annunaki, who are observing and interacting with primitive humans. Some, like Yahweh, intend to establish themselves as deities in the minds of the humans; others, like Isis and Jesus, are trying to help civilization develop along peaceful lines.

There are places on line you can read more about the Annunaki. The twist is to take the audience into the stories from the Annunaki perspective, rather than the perspective of the "patriarchs" that we get in the bible. The Annunaki would be more like modern humans watching a more primitive race, interacting with them and maybe even doing genetic experiments on them.

Speculative non-fiction books have been written about these ideas, but no one has put it into a dramatic format yet, though some series like the original Battlestar Galactica have hinted at it.

Any takers?