This morning I luckily read Sara's blog, Pagan Godspell, before I went to work. She writes about feminism, International Womens Day, and blogging against sexism. All day I thought about this, and about how I am devoted to no longer focusing on what I am against, but what I am for. How nice to see, when I went to the site on Blogging Against Sexism, that they had this point covered. I could be against sexism, or for women's liberation, wimmin's liberation, or gender liberation!!!!!
Today, being International Women's Day, I am taking a stand FOR women's liberation. I'm also for women being able to spell that anyway they want, taking men completely out, and I certainly am for gender liberation as well. But today, women's liberation takes precedence. I am for it. Completely.
I remember vividly the moment I picked up at sixteen the book "Sisterhood is Powerful". I remember the thrill as I read it. I remember my teacher's looks of horror as I would quote from it. I remember my friend Jean having an illegal abortion. I remember the day abortion became legal.
As a freshman in college, soon after a friend of mine was raped and murdered, I helped form a rape crisis team, one of many forming across the nation and world. I was lucky to be part of the second wave of feminism, and it has shaped who I am and the the life I have led. I came of age in the time of consciousness raising groups, of women telling the truth about their lifes for the first time. I remember being in a group and talking for the first time about being sexually abused as a child. I remember the many stories women told for the first time, thanks to feminism.
Today, as I spent each hour engaging with clients, I had this in the back of my mind. I came to psychotherapy thru feminism, believing at the time that feminism WAS therapy. I came to the Craft thru feminism, by grieving and searching for something other than a skygod and finding the moon, the tides, the beauty of the earth and Gaia herself. More than anything, I am a feminist.
Happy International Women's Day. We've been telling the truth about our lives now for several decades. But. We still make up, along with children, the bulk of the poor. Eating disorders are at an all time high, and girls feel enormous pressure to fit into one very tiny skinny mold.
Today, I blog for Women's Liberation. May we keep telling the truth about our lives, and may abortion stay safe and legal. So mote it be.
5 comments:
Meanwhile, here in the lands of the Primeval Mother, we've almost forgotten Her.
It grieves me greatly to live in a society which has one of the highest rates of violence against women and children, when we started out as the original Mother venerators.
Perhaps the way forward is to become vocal about what we stand for, rather than what it is we hate.
I must go away and think about this.
Thank you, Deborah.
LOve,
Terri in JOburg
I, too, came to the Craft through feminism.
i am a feminist.
We need to say it.
All these years later, so little change. And yet, to what else could we have dedicated our lives?
The movie playing in my own head points out how much has changed since I was a teenager and Doris Day was our heroine. Two years later it was all about Gloria Steinem. My mother was always a tortured feminist, believing the ideas but unable to walk the talk in her marriage.
In one generation much has changed. Things are much better for us than they were. Pure equality is somewhat off into the distance, not just for us. But in the spirit of your post, Deborah, I celebrate all the wonderful changes that have ocurred.
Bravo!
You are a wonderful writer and you put things so well. I have been thinking these things over for a while - I am the mother of two boys - and I want to raise them in the world that I, as a woman, want. Blessings.
I spent some of International Women's Day, fully aware that is was IWD, working with family, others and myself at Marin Services for Women. Seemed appropriate.
I, too, came to Craft through feminism. Only there really were a few more books out there in those days than just the goddess-feminist ones. Not many, and most of them neither good writing nor useful. Back in the days of Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman and other such books that no longer hold up to fair-minded, clear-eyed critical scrutiny.
That fact doesn't diminish their importance to the overall movement. The very fact that we now have more 'hard' knowledge is testament to the growing seriousness with which our religion(s) is now being viewed.
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