The proposals were to eliminate equal education, forbid intermingling of the sexes in sports or schools, require marriage and motherhood taught as proper careers for girls, deny federal funding to schools using textbooks which portray women in non-traditional roles, repeal federal laws protecting women from abusive husbands, ban federal aid for women seeking abortion counseling or divorce, and a tax incentive if married women stayed home and had babies. Other proposals followed over the next few years: a complete ban on abortion, censorship of birth control information for the unmarried, revocation of the Equal Pay Act and defeat of ERA.26
Men of this New Right movement called the anti-woman campaign only a “fringe issue” when seen against the larger background of cutting big government and defense. But they knew full well that “the secret to victory, whether in court or in congress, has been to control the definition of these terms.” So they set about “relabeling the terms of debate” and by “switching the lines of power through a sort of semantic reversal, they might pull off a coup by euphemism.”27
With this new linguistic strategy in place, a campaign was launched using it. Opposition to women’s reproductive rights was now called “pro-life.” Opposition to sexual freedom was now termed “pro-chastity.” Hostility toward women in the work force was labeled “pro-motherhood.” The regressive, repressive stance against women’s rights generally was now called “pro-family.” And then these zealots attacked every single federal program that offered assistance to women and children.28
Reagan was the first president to oppose the ERA and to back an amendment banning abortion and some types of birth control.29 The battle over reproductive rights, a woman’s right to choice and her self-sovereignty reveals the most radical of the New Right members.
It has been forgotten or overlooked in this discussion that in “1800 abortion was legal in every state and public opinion on it was largely neutral. It was only after the mid-century rise of the women’s rights movement that abortion became a battleground.”30 By the end of the 1800’s, legislators, the AMA, and clergymen had all participated vigorously in moral campaigns against women’s right to reproductive freedom with the result that abortion was banned but so was birth control distribution, leaving women with the dilemma of seeking illegal abortions or having unwanted pregnancies.
After the decision to make abortion legal what Faludi calls the “antiabortion warriors” resorted to violence, bombing and burning clinics, murdering doctors, attacking both clinic workers and clients, stalking physicians and staging nasty sit-in demonstrations. But the 1976 Hyde amendment blocked federal funding for abortion, and in 1991 the Supreme Court, now largely Republican appointees, “allowed the government to prohibit federally funded clinics from even speaking about abortion when counseling pregnant women.”31
Yet reproductive freedom has always been the most popular topic in all the successive feminist agendas since Margaret Sanger launched the birth control movement which cut across both class and racial lines. “All of women’s aspirations whether for education, work, or any form of self-determination – ultimately rest on their ability to decide whether and when to bear children.”32
While the New Right has been outspoken about their agenda which is to dismantle government services for women, children, the poor and the elderly, including social security and medicare, calling it by the misnomer of compassionate conservatism, women as the majority need to be equally outspoken in advocacy of what is required for economic equity, self-sovereignty over reproduction and political freedom, and appropriate government services in a democracy for those most vulnerable. Finally all voices need to be raised in the service of peace and for that accomplishment, being self-sovereign is the foundation.
But there is a more profound shift needing to take place. It is the understanding that violence is not the inherent condition of humanity. People are not born violent. Life circumstances and the experience of abuse make that behavior their first choice in retaliation against oppression.
Swiss psychologist Alice Miller writing on the root causes of violence in her book For Your Own Good, warns against blindly following the patriarchal father figure into peril.
… when a man comes along and talks like one’s own father and acts like him, even adults will forget their democratic rights or will not make use of them. They will submit to this man, they will acclaim him, allow themselves to be manipulated by him, and put their trust in him, finally surrendering totally to him without even being aware of their enflavement. One is not normally aware of something that is a continuation of one’s own childhood. For those who become as dependent on someone as they once were as small children on their parents, there is no escape.33
Alice Miller was making reference to the phenomenal rise of Hitler and the totalitarian system of the Third Reich in Europe before the Second World War in the last century, but it could also be applicable to current political and social circumstances in the United States.
Our ancient maternal ancestors had evolved a system of governance which created peace over generations. They equated fairness and equity with peaceful behavior and achieved it. Undoubtedly it was not utopia, but it was a system which valued peaceful coexistence and cultural development over despotism, war and subjugation. It was a system which underscored the values of life over death, of fairness over vulture capitalism and of sacred sexuality over mindless sexism for both women and men. Over thousands of years these women walked us a path, left us a sacred duty, presented us with a critical choice: We can reconstitute the energy, and with that understanding reenergize the power they knew to connect ourselves once again with the truth of WomanSpirit which will save our precious Gaia, the great Mother Earth, from destruction. She is our real home and all we have. We must once again put our physical connection and our trust in the power of Gaia.
All the rest is fear-based and a desperate attempt to hold onto empty vestiges of long-gone power. It has not worked, it cannot work, it will not work. Two thousand years of a futile, vicious experiment hurling humanity down a doomed path have proved that without a shadow of a doubt. What we witness now are the last gasps of a fallen predator, fatally wounded and unwilling to admit to the severity of its condition. But cornered beasts are the most dangerous of all, and so the world must beware.
Way beyond the calls for equal pay, self-sovereignty, choice, political, legal and educational equality, as woman we each need to search our souls, grieve the enormity of what has befallen us, then find new ways to step outside the shame, to channel the outrage into outlets for progress. We need to cease identification with our oppressors so that we may lift up other women and learn the powerful word that means “no.” No, I will not buy what is made with the equivalent of female slave labor; No, I will not support any business or organization or religious body which permits abuse, violence, or the barbarism of vulture capitalism to prevail against anyone; No, I will not personally tolerate, nor remain silent about, the repression of women. These two thousand years are over, and I will stand steadfastly against them ever returning because if I do not, how can I expect anyone else to protect me if I decline to remember the reason all those women died?
And then we collectively need to ask Where are the memorials? When are the days of recollection? Who is calling for reparation? Where are the ceremonies during which the names of the dead are read aloud for the young daughters and the old women and those bearing infants to hear? Who is being newly required to apologize, to make reparation, to repent of the wrongdoing?
We must no longer willingly go forward in this silence and we must never forget.
None of us are free until all of us are free. No woman is completely self-sovereign until all the daughters are similarly empowered. And, what does being self-sovereign mean? It means being able to value womanhood, to see oneself as a woman first, followed by ethnicity or religious preference. It means being able to work for equal pay, be represented in elected government offices according to our majority, not minority stat
us. It means that every woman is able to choose without coercion when and how many children she wishes to produce. It means health and education on the basis of inclusiveness. And worldwide it means eradication of African/Moslem clitorectomy, Asian sex slave trade, Indian dowries, Shira-law death penalties for women who are victims of oppression. All these practices are presupposed on systems which perpetuate the concept of male ownership of women.
The perpetuation of restrictions on information about family planning are designed to make the woman perpetually subject to pregnancy, unable to sustain a job and dependent on either men or government, as well as becoming the baby machine for war mongers. Clitorectomy has no other purpose than to prevent women from experiencing sexual pleasure.
The attempt to control women by policies legislated or moralized through the male voice have now created an imbalance in huge population masses throughout India and China through female infanticide. Throughout India, the excessive demands by fathers of the groom for endless amounts of dower money from the families of the bride sometimes result in murder. Therefore, female children are seen as a prohibitive drain on the family and are intentionally prevented from being born. In China it has been the “one child” policy that was originally intended to prevent periods of famine through excessive population growth but which now creates a negative social construct. In both China and India the shortages of marriageable women is severe. Thousands of men are unable to find a wife in their own country and importation of women is common. It harkens back to the days of the European feudal system, a period of great unrest created by roving bands of men without normal access to women, and was followed by the Inquisition.
In Eastern Europe a seven billion dollar trade flourishes in human traffic. Centered in Romania, a modern slave market sells teenage girls and exports them for as little as $400 each. These girls are enslaved for life. There are no records as to where they are sent or what happens to them if they survive to maturity. Seven billion dollars, the estimated value of this traffic, has now surpassed the illegal drug trade in Western Europe.
Every time men have sought to control women, to suppress women they have instead created their own psychological torment and then endangered the entire world. The lessons of Herstory must be attended to if we wish a positive outcome for the future.
On a personal note, and in conclusion to the journey we have been on since the beginning of this book, I wish to share with you an experience that came to me several years ago. I was offered the opportunity to be with a Navajo crystal way healer, to have him perform a ceremony. It took place at night, in my home on the Coeur D’Alene reservation, way out in the country. There were two men: one who introduced me and the other who did the praying and the healing. One man built the fire, the other laid out the ceremonial objects. Then we sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire. The healer explained that he had been taught the healing ceremony by his grandmother who had recognized his potential when he was young. He then told me that the Indian people, when addressing each other, used the names for relationship to one another rather than the given names of the person. Therefore, since the person who introduced us was called his uncle, I would be referred to as auntie, out of respect. The ceremony lasted well into the night. The healer prayed in Navajo. It was one of the most powerfully meaningful experiences of my life. Although I could not understand the exact words, the prayer and the healing were profound feelings which permeated my body and touched my spirit.
Toward the conclusion, the healer began speaking in English again. He detailed the information that had been given to him to share with me. Tears welled up in my eyes. I sat very still, allowing it all to envelope me. Then he said: “One of the most powerful forces on earth is the hurricane. I see you riding on the winds of the hurricane, Auntie … and all will be well.”
Notes
PART ONE
1.Gimbutas, Marija: The Civilization of the Goddess, New York, Harper & Row, 1991, preface
2.Gimbutas, pg 49
3.Gimbutas, pg 65
4.Gimbutas, pg 105
5.Gimbutas, pg 122–23
6.Markale, Jean: The Great Goddess, Vermont, Inner Traditions, 1999, pg 172
7.Gimbutas, pg 222
8.see Note 7
9.Gimbutas, pg 236
10.Gimbutas, pg 229
11.Gimbutas, pg 281
12.Gimbutas, pg 289
13.Gimbutas, pg 249
14.Gimbutas, pg 254
15.Gimbutas, pg 256
16.William Eichman, Religion of Catal Huyuk, Pennsylvania State College, Internet Article 2002
17.Gimbutas, Marija: The Language of the Goddess, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1989, pg 210
18.Gimbutas, pg 311
19.Gimbutas, pg 314
20.Gimbutas, pg 316
21.Gimbutas, pg 319
22.see Note 21
23.Gimbutas, pg 343
24.Boucher, Francoise: 20,000 Years of Fashion, New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. pg 26
25.Barber, Elizabeth Wayland: Women’s Work, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1994, pg 128
26.see Note 25
27.Barber, pg 130–31
28.Barber, pg 13
29.Boucher, pg 77
30.Boucher, pg 82
31.Barber, pg 141
32.Boucher, pg 83
33.Boucher, pg 84
34.Boucher, pg 85
35.see Note 34
36.Boucher, pg 86
37.Barber, pg 48–49
38.Boucher, pg 84
39.Barber, pg 116
40.Gimbutas, Civilization, pg 344
41.Artress, Lauren: Walking the Sacred Path, New York, Riverhead Books, 1995, pg 45
42.Artress, pg 47
43.Artress, pg 46–47
44.Gimbutas, Language, pg 345
45.Gimbutas, pg 346
PART TWO
1.Translation by Hugh G. Evan-White, in the Loeb Classic Library, New York, 1914, pg 456
2.DeMeo, James: Saharasia, Oregon, Orgon Biophysical Research Lab, 1998, pg 213
3.DeMeo, pg 215
4.Gimbutas, Language, pg 353
5.Gimbutas, Language, pg 394
6.Gimbutas, Language, pg 352
7.Gimbutas, Language, pg 387
8.Gimbutas, Language, pg 361
9.Gimbutas, Language, pg 391
10.Gimbutas, Language, pg 354
11.Gimbutas, Language, pg 399
12.see Note 11
13.Walker, Barbara, G.: The Women’s Encyclopedia, New York, Harper Collins, 1983, pg 24
14.see Note 13
15.Walker, pg 25
16.Walker, pg 26
17.Walker, pg 27
18.Walker, pg 26
19.see Note 18
20.Kimball, Jeanine Davis: Warrior Women, New York, Warner Books, 2002, pg 11
21.Kimball, pg 12
22.Kimball, pg 11
23.Kimball, pg 13
24.Kimball, pg 29
25.Kimball, pg 46
26.Kimball, pg 48
27.Kimball, pg 48–49
28.Kimball, pg 52
29.see Note 28
30.Kimball, pg 54
31.Kimball, pg 69
32.Kimball, pg 77
33.Kimball, pg 79
34.see Note 33
35.Internet Ancient History Sourcebook, Bodicca
36.Sjoo, Monica & Mor Barbara: The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco, Harper &, Row, 1987, pg 155
37.Sjoo et al, pg 173
38.Internet Source: Women in World History
39.Sjoo et al, pg 39
40.Sjoo et al, pg 171
41.Sjoo et al, pg 172
42.Sjoo et al, pg 173
43.Stone, Merlin: When God Was A Woman, New York, A Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Book, 1978, pg 19
44.Stone, pg 26
45.Achterberg, Jeanne: Woman as Healer, Boston, Shambala, 1990, pg 15
46.Walker, pg 453
47.Walker, pg 454
48.Walker, pg 451
49.Stone, Merlin: Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, Boston, Beacon Press, 1979, pg 200
50.Stone, Mirrors, pg 201
51.Stone, Mirrors, pg 202
52.Stone, Mirrors, pg 204
53.Internet Source: CNN Destinations, 1997
54.Walker, pg 407–08
55.Walker, pg 409
56.Walker, pg 104–06
57.Stone, When God Was a Woman, pg 51
58.see Note 57
59.Walker, pg 218–19
60.Kimball, pg 177
61.Stone, Ancient Mirrors, pg 201
62.Stone, pg 199
63.Kimball, pg 180
64.Kimball, pg 178
65.Law Codes of Mesopotamia, Internet Source: Ancient History Sourcebook
66.Translated by: L.W. King, from Internet Source Ancient History Sourcebook
67.Prof. J.S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal State Fullerton, CA, Internet Ancient History Sourcebook
68.From: Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources (Milwaukee: University Research Extenson Co., 1901), Vol. III: The Roman World, pp. 9–11) Internet Ancient History Sourcebook
69.Prof. J.S. Arkenberg, text modernized, Internet Ancient History Sourcebook
70.Achterberg, pg 14
71.Achterberg, pg 17
72.see Note 71
73.Achterberg, pg 29
74.Achterberg, pg 30
75.see Note 74
76.see Note 74
77.Achterberg, pg 31
78.Achterberg, pg 32–33
79.From: Aristotle, The Politics ξ Economics of Aristotle, Edward English Walford & John Giles, translators, (London: Bell & Sons, 1908) Intern Ancient History Sourcebook
80.Valerie French, Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World, Helios, 1986, pg 69–84
81.Cunningham, Scott: Magical Herbalism, Minnesota, Llewellyn Publications, 1991, pg 185
82.Achterberg, pg 35
83.Achterberg, pg 37
84.Frymer-Kensky, Tikva: In the Wake of the Goddess, Fawcett Columbine, 1999, pg 205
85.Frymer-Kensky, pg 203–05
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