A Deeper Feminism

I will fight to the end for a woman’s right to choose, for equal pay and rights in the workplace. I think we need to go a bit farther in providing families with adequate time off from work to care for a loved one and most of all, I think we need to protect women from rape and domestic violence.

But I don’t think that goes far enough. Last night I was reading We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For by Alice Walker and she told this story about the Swa people of the Amazon:

They tell us that in their society men and women are considered equal but very different. Man, they say, has a destructive nature: it is his job therefore to cut down trees when firewood or canoes are needed. His job also to hunt down and kill animals when there  is need for more protein. His job to make war, when that becomes a necessity. The woman’s nature is thought to be nurturing and conserving. Therefore, her role is to care for the home and garden, the domesticated animals and the children. She inspires the men. But perhaps her most important duty is to tell the men when to stop.

It is the woman who says: Stop. We have enough firewood and canoes, don’t cut down any more trees. Stop. We have enough meat; don’t kill any more animals. Stop. This war is stupid and using up too many of our resources. Stop. Perkins says that when the Swa are brought to this culture they observe that it is almost completely masculine. That the men have cut down so many trees and built so many excessively tall buildings that the forest itself is dying; they have built roads without end and killed animals without number. When, ask the Swa, are the women going to say Stop?

Indeed. When are the women, and the Feminie within women and men, going to say Stop?

I don’t use this to idealize the Swa culture. I’m happy that in ours, gender roles have become a bit more fluid. But I agree with the Swa when they say our culture has become almost completely masculine. And its not just Republicans. Look at how the NYT portrayed the Democratic Party victory in 2006:

The passage from Walker’s book reminded me of the work of Riane Eisler, who is best known for The Chalice and the Blade. In this book Eisler posits that we are living in a “dominator” (blade) society since the end of the Neolotic agrarian age and that prior to that time, archeology shows a more “partnership” (chalice) model for most cultures.

Original chalice cultures worshiped the goddess and celebrated birth as the central symbolic demonstration of their spirituality. For the blade cultures, “the central mythical image… is no longer the birth of the young god. It is his crucifixion and death.” She says,

The underlying problem is not men as a sex. The root of the problem lies in a social system in which the power of the blade is idealized – in which both men and women are taught to equate true masculinity with violence and dominance and to see men who do not conform to this ideal as too soft or effeminate.

Eisler also draws on the research of psychologist David Winter, who in looking at historical patterns was able to demonstrate that “more repressive attitudes toward women are predictors of periods of aggressive warfare.” She sounds her ultimate warning this way,

For be they religious or secular, modern or ancient, Eastern or Western, the basic commonality of totalitarian leaders and would-be leaders is their faith in the power of the lethal Blade as the instrument of our deliverance. A dominator future is therefore, sooner or later, almost certainly also a future of global nuclear war – and the end of all of humanity’s problems and aspirations.

It is indeed time to shout STOP to all this madness. But then what?

Eisler is addressing this with her work captured on the website The Partnership Way. I think she is making a very bold statement that it is in our very personal relationships, where domination and heirarchy are taught early on, that the change needs to happen.

Here’s an excerpt from her writing titled Spare the Rod:

When children experience violence, or observe violence against their mothers, they learn it’s acceptable- even moral-to use force to impose one’s will on others. Indeed, the only way they can make sense of violence coming from those who are supposed to love them is that it must be moral.

Terrorism and chronic warfare are responses to life in societies in which the only perceived choices are dominating or being dominated. These violent responses are characteristic of cultures where this view of relations is learned early on through traditions of coercion, abuse, and violence in parentchild and gender relations.

It’s not coincidental that throughout history the most violently despotic and warlike societies have been those in which violence, or the threat of violence, is used to maintain domination of parent over child and man over woman. It’s not coincidental that the 9/11 terrorists came from cultures where women and children are terrorized into submission. Nor is it coincidental that Afghanistan under the Taliban in many ways resembled the European Middle Ages- when witchburnings, public drawings and quarterings, despotic rulers, brutal violence against children, and male violence against women were considered moral and normal. Neither is it coincidental that, in the U.S. today, those pushing “crusades” against “evil enemies” oppose equal rights for women and advocate harshly punitive childrearing.

I belive that it is in taking on these issues that we can take feminism to a deeper level; by shouting STOP to all the madness and begin talking about how we can change the lessons many of us learn too early about domination and violence into lessons of partnership and caring.