1. If I am aware of the Goddess herstory, do I think that women were innocent victims of the patriarchy's brutal aggression? Do I think that women must rise in anger to protest this injustice and to reclaim what was forcibly taken away from them? Do I perpetuate a tension between a victim and oppressor in my attitudes toward protecting myself against the potential threat of those who are more powerful?
First, I loathe with every fibre of my being the term 'herstory' and other associated made up names designed to market feminine empowerment as the superior way of viewing the world. If you absolutely must attribute gender power to the words, use history and heritage. Actually, if you must do that, please just stay away from me until you've matured and can hold a meaningful conversation without finding an invisible threat in a word. I was going to say until you ripen and fall off the tree, but I am trying to be nice today. It may not work as my head is about doing me in at the moment. I am not afraid of the word history and do not feel threatened when someone uses it in my hearing. However, I'd be reasonably cautious around the words 'I will kill you' if they were uttered in my presence. See the difference?
Secondly, I'm not at all sure that I believe in the concept of 'innocent victims' in a major cultural shift. This question, to me, is at once very simple and too broad to discuss in absolutes. I'm not even sure that human cultural development is about matriarchy versus patriarchy, so much as it is about evolving and devolving mental attitudes toward interacting with our environment. In many ways, the past can be viewed as a growing organic creature. The idylls of childhood when cooperation and empathy are discovered and valued, then brash adolescence when everyone else is wrong, stupid, and invincibility is not an illusion but a mental absolute. Then comes the realisation that maybe we aren't as invincible as we thought and maybe, just maybe we better think about things again. I think that we are, for the most part, in the 'maybe we need to think about things' stage and that is why we are seeing a re-emergence of older ideas and principles. We're not content to hang out at the mall any longer and are beginning to enjoy browsing through the library to find knowledge that we can live and work with, and that we can pass along to those who will follow us.
Do I perpetuate a tension between victim and oppressor? Oh hells no. I refuse to participate in the culture of fear and mass hysteria. Dear gods, that is one of the single biggest issues that would get me frothing at the mouth about the past eight years under the Shrub administration. I refuse to duck and cower at shadows on the wall, especially if those crying wolf about those shadows want me to trust them to do my critical thinking for me. I will protest that. I will scream and kick and refuse to be dragged down that path. Will I go out and knee-cap some male for his gender due to perceived past injustice done to women with the blessings of the Patriarch bogey man? No. But if that same male [or female to be honest] tried to hurt me or mine, it's a fair bet that anger and violence would then occur.
To reclaim our sanity doesn't begin with a radical swing to the opposite polar extreme. There is a good reason why all the mystery traditions teach the value of the middle way. Yes, women have been the victims of atrocities in the past. But so have men, and we cannot heal and move forward if we allow ourselves to forget that.
The rising place of awakened feminine currents in all aspects of our world should not be given prominence over the wounded male current. We need to heal that wound so that the male can once more value the life-affirming qualities of the natural masculine current. Father Time and Mother Nature, the Green Man and the Lady of the Wood... they have always been present and point the way to wholeness to those who will listen. Those of us who have been listening and living this balance, well, it falls to us to show others how this can be done and we cannot teach with a fist closed in anger.
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