Yes, despair no longer reigns, even though I'm still plenty P.O.'d. Just sent off another e-mail in support of single-payer health care to the whole gamut: the Prez, my Senators, my Congress critter (as Jim Hightower so endearingly calls them -- mine is a rabid right-winger, thanks to Republican gerrymandering of my state which deprives our heavily Democratic city of a rep who is in tune with our beliefs), and more. So, still plugging away. Nor do I intend to desist.
Like Rachel Maddow (nice to do something just like my idol), who has missed two days' work due to a bug, I have been awfully sick for the past four days and am just crawling out from under my rock. A long-standing but not too debilitating (and, unfortunately, constantly repeating) illness was joined by, as my doctor put it Monday morning, an "opportunistic virus" that rocketed me to 102 degrees plus of fever for much of the weekend, complete with chills, sweats, aches -- bleah. Fortunately it burned itself out in less than 48 hours, but it left me very wiped out and the infection has now decided to enter the "cough your lungs out" phase, which means it's coming to an end but after twenty minutes of non-stop coughing, you feel like YOU are coming to an end. And that unhappy circumstance recurs about once every hour and a half, with smaller coughing jags interspersed.
Nonetheless, here I am at my favorite cafe getting ready for a real writing stint on the book, first one in three days plus. So I bid you a fond farewell for now, hope you (anyone who may be reading this) are also plugging away at your representatives at all levels in support of decent, humane, moral and, to top it all off, cheaper health care for all Americans. I haven't given up hope yet. Hail and farewell to Senator Ted Kennedy, whom we will sorely miss on this front, and let us hope his memory will not be dishonored by a patchwork of euphemistic nonsense that does nothing to curb insurance, health care and pharmaceutical corporations' greed or really fix this broken mess that bankrupts you for getting ill if you're not a multi-millionaire. I just read in our local paper that a long-time acquaintance, who has Parkinson's disease, is in danger of being wiped out financially by the cost of her medication alone. This woman has fought for women's rights and other good causes staunchly her whole life long and may now be reduced to abject poverty just because her body has thrown her a whammy. Which is, by any decent standard, plain old WRONG.
Which leaves me to consider: what if my 48-hour bug had been a harbinger of something long-term or permanent? What if I weren't a heterosexual married to someone with a secure job that offers a halfway decent health plan? What if this had been the beginning of not only a terrifying descent into helplessness, but an equally if not more terrifying descent into penury?
Provides me with some real motivation to keep writing, calling and fuming.
More soon from
Sully
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Still Angry
Hello readers, if any --
Haven't cooled off much in the past five days. A nasty ear infection hasn't exactly bettered my mood, and the collective wimpiness of our President and the Democrats is enough to remind me viscerally why I quit the Democratic Party so long ago! If this health care mess turns out to be more window-dressing behind pretty words, I will be more than tempted to barf on the steps of the Capitol, and I certainly will never again be suckered into working for any Democratic Presidential candidate. My finite resources and energy will be put into changing our utterly corrupt political system, instead.
As an object contrast, let me mention that my partner's father in Germany had to go into the hospital very unexpectedly three days ago. If you're not familiar with his situation, he's been on dialysis for 18 of the last 20 years (for two years, he had a transplanted kidney, but then the same virus that destroyed his own kidneys destroyed that one as well). Now, at 78, he is very frail, with osteoporosis as a result of the dialysis (he has broken both hips), but still able to walk and sometimes drive his car.
He suddenly developed a very high fever. Here's the German health system at work. His primary doctor, who lives nearby, came immediately when he was called on the phone and had the patient sent to the emergency room. Within a very short time they were in surgery. It turned out my father-in-law's appendix burst and had infected part of his intestines! He's going to stay in the hospital for quite a few days because his team of doctors know that his wife has a serious heart condition and cannot care for him when he needs lifting, etc.
My father-in-law paid into the German health care system all through his working life and now, as a retiree, continues to pay what we Americans would consider relatively high taxes. But in return, he and his wife and children don't have to worry about going bankrupt or losing the family home due to the costs of 18 years of dialysis and multiple surgeries for broken hips, carpal tunnel, cataracts, appendicitis, and more. Oh, I forgot his wife' s multiple stents and her scheduled open-heart surgery. And the large amount of prescription medication they have to take. Their four children were also able to attend excellent universities (one M.B.A., one medical doctor, one insurance broker, one professor) without having to pay any tuition (only living costs) in Germany. Their tax dollars have really worked for them. Their kids are all self-supporting, and they themselves, though not terribly well-off, are doing O.K. financially.
Contrast the peace of mind with which my in-laws can face surgery with the fear and worry of most Americans, who don't just have to deal with their apprehension about the procedure they're about to undergo, but also have to be terrified of the bills they'll have to pay! I absolutely cannot understand how anyone can think the U.S. system is anything but terminally dysfunctional. The worst thing, to me, is the knee-jerk, know-nothing, spiteful attitude of some who are out there ranting against health care reform: "I have to pay for my plan so nobody should get anything for free!"
Get this straight, people -- you are paying A LOT MORE for the uninsured now than you would under a well-implemented public option. Medicare works -- or it would if the Congress would stop looting its trust fund to pay for their pork -- and so would expanded Medicare, i.e. a single-payer plan. That's all "single-payer" is: Medicare for more people.
Here's the situation: we as a nation are not going to refuse people emergency care in order to cut costs -- we may not give them enough care, or the care they actually need, but they will get SOME kind of care. So all of us who pay taxes are paying local, state and federal taxes to support emergency services. If folks don't have health insurance because they can't afford it, they don't go to the doctor or a hospital until they have no choice, for fear of the expense. And it's much more expensive to have to intervene when someone is acutely ill than it is to give people regular preventive care, like annual check-ups or nutritional advice.
Now, I'm the first to agree that "health care reform" without a public option that cuts out the middle-man costs (the insurance industry's profit -- ugh, for-profit basic health care is SO grotesque and patently immoral) and provides real competition for the "health care industry," "reform" without a guarantee of regular preventive care, and "reform" without requiring some minimal level of cooperation and responsibility on the part of individuals, doesn't make sense. Of course, we can't expect the poor to avoid obesity when across the board, non-nutritious crud costs far less than really GOOD food, and really good food requires more shopping and preparation time as well as more bucks. But if we don't steer in that direction, our country will continue to be saddled with the staggering costs of avoidable chronic illness: some types of diabetes and heart disease leap to mind.
This is probably the last time in my useful lifetime that the United States of America has the chance to become a member of the community of truly civilized nations. If it's done right, it will actually save us all money, and it will remove a huge burden of fear. It will free small business owners from having to face a terrible choice, going out of business or cutting health insurance for loyal long-term employees. It will let the terminally ill concentrate on making the most of the time they have left, without having to dread the financial burden they will bequeathe to their families. It will liberate the many "health care serfs" who are now forced to go on working at jobs they hate, often under totally exploitative conditions, because if they quit, they will lose the health insurance they, their children, their spouse, or their parents need. It will take away a lot of obscene profit from giant insurance companies that have bled all of us to the bone for an unconscionably long time.
Let's do it. Get on the Internet, pick up the phone, take out a piece of paper, sacrifice some stamps and some time. Write your representatives, write anyone whose campaign you gave money to last year or this year. Don't hold back -- tell them you will not tolerate being cheated again. Tell them you will never give them another penny, and even if you can vote for them, you won't. Tell them what this monstrous for-profit non-system of "health care" of ours has done to you, your family members, your friends and neighbors. And give money to that handful of real public servants like Bernie Sanders, the independent Senator from Vermont, who is working 24/7 for the public option.
FIGHT.
If you don't fight, you have only yourselves to blame.
Haven't cooled off much in the past five days. A nasty ear infection hasn't exactly bettered my mood, and the collective wimpiness of our President and the Democrats is enough to remind me viscerally why I quit the Democratic Party so long ago! If this health care mess turns out to be more window-dressing behind pretty words, I will be more than tempted to barf on the steps of the Capitol, and I certainly will never again be suckered into working for any Democratic Presidential candidate. My finite resources and energy will be put into changing our utterly corrupt political system, instead.
As an object contrast, let me mention that my partner's father in Germany had to go into the hospital very unexpectedly three days ago. If you're not familiar with his situation, he's been on dialysis for 18 of the last 20 years (for two years, he had a transplanted kidney, but then the same virus that destroyed his own kidneys destroyed that one as well). Now, at 78, he is very frail, with osteoporosis as a result of the dialysis (he has broken both hips), but still able to walk and sometimes drive his car.
He suddenly developed a very high fever. Here's the German health system at work. His primary doctor, who lives nearby, came immediately when he was called on the phone and had the patient sent to the emergency room. Within a very short time they were in surgery. It turned out my father-in-law's appendix burst and had infected part of his intestines! He's going to stay in the hospital for quite a few days because his team of doctors know that his wife has a serious heart condition and cannot care for him when he needs lifting, etc.
My father-in-law paid into the German health care system all through his working life and now, as a retiree, continues to pay what we Americans would consider relatively high taxes. But in return, he and his wife and children don't have to worry about going bankrupt or losing the family home due to the costs of 18 years of dialysis and multiple surgeries for broken hips, carpal tunnel, cataracts, appendicitis, and more. Oh, I forgot his wife' s multiple stents and her scheduled open-heart surgery. And the large amount of prescription medication they have to take. Their four children were also able to attend excellent universities (one M.B.A., one medical doctor, one insurance broker, one professor) without having to pay any tuition (only living costs) in Germany. Their tax dollars have really worked for them. Their kids are all self-supporting, and they themselves, though not terribly well-off, are doing O.K. financially.
Contrast the peace of mind with which my in-laws can face surgery with the fear and worry of most Americans, who don't just have to deal with their apprehension about the procedure they're about to undergo, but also have to be terrified of the bills they'll have to pay! I absolutely cannot understand how anyone can think the U.S. system is anything but terminally dysfunctional. The worst thing, to me, is the knee-jerk, know-nothing, spiteful attitude of some who are out there ranting against health care reform: "I have to pay for my plan so nobody should get anything for free!"
Get this straight, people -- you are paying A LOT MORE for the uninsured now than you would under a well-implemented public option. Medicare works -- or it would if the Congress would stop looting its trust fund to pay for their pork -- and so would expanded Medicare, i.e. a single-payer plan. That's all "single-payer" is: Medicare for more people.
Here's the situation: we as a nation are not going to refuse people emergency care in order to cut costs -- we may not give them enough care, or the care they actually need, but they will get SOME kind of care. So all of us who pay taxes are paying local, state and federal taxes to support emergency services. If folks don't have health insurance because they can't afford it, they don't go to the doctor or a hospital until they have no choice, for fear of the expense. And it's much more expensive to have to intervene when someone is acutely ill than it is to give people regular preventive care, like annual check-ups or nutritional advice.
Now, I'm the first to agree that "health care reform" without a public option that cuts out the middle-man costs (the insurance industry's profit -- ugh, for-profit basic health care is SO grotesque and patently immoral) and provides real competition for the "health care industry," "reform" without a guarantee of regular preventive care, and "reform" without requiring some minimal level of cooperation and responsibility on the part of individuals, doesn't make sense. Of course, we can't expect the poor to avoid obesity when across the board, non-nutritious crud costs far less than really GOOD food, and really good food requires more shopping and preparation time as well as more bucks. But if we don't steer in that direction, our country will continue to be saddled with the staggering costs of avoidable chronic illness: some types of diabetes and heart disease leap to mind.
This is probably the last time in my useful lifetime that the United States of America has the chance to become a member of the community of truly civilized nations. If it's done right, it will actually save us all money, and it will remove a huge burden of fear. It will free small business owners from having to face a terrible choice, going out of business or cutting health insurance for loyal long-term employees. It will let the terminally ill concentrate on making the most of the time they have left, without having to dread the financial burden they will bequeathe to their families. It will liberate the many "health care serfs" who are now forced to go on working at jobs they hate, often under totally exploitative conditions, because if they quit, they will lose the health insurance they, their children, their spouse, or their parents need. It will take away a lot of obscene profit from giant insurance companies that have bled all of us to the bone for an unconscionably long time.
Let's do it. Get on the Internet, pick up the phone, take out a piece of paper, sacrifice some stamps and some time. Write your representatives, write anyone whose campaign you gave money to last year or this year. Don't hold back -- tell them you will not tolerate being cheated again. Tell them you will never give them another penny, and even if you can vote for them, you won't. Tell them what this monstrous for-profit non-system of "health care" of ours has done to you, your family members, your friends and neighbors. And give money to that handful of real public servants like Bernie Sanders, the independent Senator from Vermont, who is working 24/7 for the public option.
FIGHT.
If you don't fight, you have only yourselves to blame.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Stunned and Disgusted
Well, this is a new low. It seems to me and my spouse as though health care reform is being derailed AGAIN. Our government doesn't have the spine to stand up to a poisonous coalition of misled, hysterical screamers and cynical big-money corporations (insurance, pharmaceuticals, HMOs, you name it). Of course, our political system as it presently operates is with very few exceptions a cat-house where money talks and BS walks.
It's exhausting, frustrating and infuriating. Everyone with any common sense knows that if we don't have a public option, i.e. any real competition for the insurance companies, they will go on colluding, price-fixing and cherry-picking those they insure (that is, using "pre-existing conditions" to make sure they don't end up with seriously ill people on their rosters). The costs of care will keep skyrocketing and this country will continue to be the Dickensian mess it presently is, inspiring mockery and pity in the more civilized world, where citizens have a right not to be bankrupted simply by getting sick.
I've been sending lots of snail-mail and e-mail to politicians I supported financially in the past, chastising the Blue-Dog Democrats (read: Republicans, and not even Republicans-lite) and trying to put some spine in the supposedly real Democrats, but of course my checkbook isn't as fat as the health care industries'. No-one seems to be listening, no-one has any balls, no-one is standing up for justice and to put an end to the outrageous, appalling non-system presently tormenting this country. I'm so fed up, so red-hot angry, I'd think it a relief to run amok.
If I have to stand by and watch the Obama administration, which I worked hard to get into office, pretend we're getting "health care reform" while basically leaving things just as they were, I will vomit, and I will make a point of vomiting on someone who shares responsibility for this terrible failure.
I've learned a dreadful thing: that this country is so bought and sold, so totally owned by the big corporations, that there probably is no hope for justice or even plain old common sense to prevail. And putting all my energy into a third party, as I've done in the past, will do no good at all if the entire election system continues to revolve around nothing but the no longer so almighty dollar.
I'm over fifty years old and look at this mess. Women still don't have a firm guarantee of the same civil rights as men (no Equal Rights Amendment). We have to go on forever fighting the tacitly tolerated domestic terrorists (the anti-choicers) to preserve a shadow of abortion rights, trying to make sure that the lives of girls and women aren't derailed because of unplanned pregnancies. If biology can be used to keep women down, it doesn't seem to matter that unwanted children are a recipe for long-term social disaster.
Speaking of social disasters, homophobia and racism still run rampant. This country is so desperately immature and willfully unthinking that many of its denizens remain obsessed with trying to make every couple look like Ken and Barbie, instead of realizing that full legal protection for stable unions, same-sex or opposite-sex, is good for everyone. And let's not even get into the fact that arduous legal struggles were necessary to so much as allow veterans' graves to be marked with the symbol of their Pagan beliefs. Ironically, for us straight white folks, the way to instantly and viscerally find out what discrimination is all about is to be up front about not being Christian. Of course, being a woman, I did already have some idea of what it's like to be considered automatically inferior. But I'm the first to admit that the flak I've faced, though real, doesn't measure up to what people of color or lesbians and gays have to endure.
Well, I'm sure I won't feel this desperate forever, but right now the idea of spending the rest of my days overwhelmed by the stupid, the bigoted, the corrupt and the venal is bloody unattractive, and the feeling of disillusionment about this president and government is bitter indeed, though part of me always expected it. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the corporations continue to find ways to divide and conquer and manipulate the comparatively poor to get out there and make their own situation constantly worse by indulging their knee-jerk prejudices rather than being aware of what would really serve their interests.
Ugh.
It's exhausting, frustrating and infuriating. Everyone with any common sense knows that if we don't have a public option, i.e. any real competition for the insurance companies, they will go on colluding, price-fixing and cherry-picking those they insure (that is, using "pre-existing conditions" to make sure they don't end up with seriously ill people on their rosters). The costs of care will keep skyrocketing and this country will continue to be the Dickensian mess it presently is, inspiring mockery and pity in the more civilized world, where citizens have a right not to be bankrupted simply by getting sick.
I've been sending lots of snail-mail and e-mail to politicians I supported financially in the past, chastising the Blue-Dog Democrats (read: Republicans, and not even Republicans-lite) and trying to put some spine in the supposedly real Democrats, but of course my checkbook isn't as fat as the health care industries'. No-one seems to be listening, no-one has any balls, no-one is standing up for justice and to put an end to the outrageous, appalling non-system presently tormenting this country. I'm so fed up, so red-hot angry, I'd think it a relief to run amok.
If I have to stand by and watch the Obama administration, which I worked hard to get into office, pretend we're getting "health care reform" while basically leaving things just as they were, I will vomit, and I will make a point of vomiting on someone who shares responsibility for this terrible failure.
I've learned a dreadful thing: that this country is so bought and sold, so totally owned by the big corporations, that there probably is no hope for justice or even plain old common sense to prevail. And putting all my energy into a third party, as I've done in the past, will do no good at all if the entire election system continues to revolve around nothing but the no longer so almighty dollar.
I'm over fifty years old and look at this mess. Women still don't have a firm guarantee of the same civil rights as men (no Equal Rights Amendment). We have to go on forever fighting the tacitly tolerated domestic terrorists (the anti-choicers) to preserve a shadow of abortion rights, trying to make sure that the lives of girls and women aren't derailed because of unplanned pregnancies. If biology can be used to keep women down, it doesn't seem to matter that unwanted children are a recipe for long-term social disaster.
Speaking of social disasters, homophobia and racism still run rampant. This country is so desperately immature and willfully unthinking that many of its denizens remain obsessed with trying to make every couple look like Ken and Barbie, instead of realizing that full legal protection for stable unions, same-sex or opposite-sex, is good for everyone. And let's not even get into the fact that arduous legal struggles were necessary to so much as allow veterans' graves to be marked with the symbol of their Pagan beliefs. Ironically, for us straight white folks, the way to instantly and viscerally find out what discrimination is all about is to be up front about not being Christian. Of course, being a woman, I did already have some idea of what it's like to be considered automatically inferior. But I'm the first to admit that the flak I've faced, though real, doesn't measure up to what people of color or lesbians and gays have to endure.
Well, I'm sure I won't feel this desperate forever, but right now the idea of spending the rest of my days overwhelmed by the stupid, the bigoted, the corrupt and the venal is bloody unattractive, and the feeling of disillusionment about this president and government is bitter indeed, though part of me always expected it. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the corporations continue to find ways to divide and conquer and manipulate the comparatively poor to get out there and make their own situation constantly worse by indulging their knee-jerk prejudices rather than being aware of what would really serve their interests.
Ugh.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Bastion of Civilized Values
Hello readers, if any --
No apologies for the long "radio silence." I was on the road from May 21 to July 20, pretty much non-stop. Up the East Coast in my Smart car (a really fun ride, 980 miles in one day!), three days at my college reunion (including a stint as the most out-of-shape duffer in a racing four with coxswain, my hands shredded after 6 miles at the oar), four and a half weeks traveling around China, then a drive back down the East Coast (with three suitcases, two small bags, two carry bags, a cooler, 13 rolls of wrapping paper and a few more miscellaneous items, plus myself, successfully stowed in my Smart car such that I could still see out the rear-view mirror, a miracle), and then after a few days' respite another two days in airplanes so I could be in Lisbon, Portugal with my beloved to help him celebrate a big birthday. (He had just finished a conference there.)
I'm also cranking madly away at my book manuscript, which I must complete by October 6. That's when I hit the road again, to visit my in-laws, chauffeur my mother around Germany to see her family and friends, and then, only a day after my return home, to go to Disney (yes, I know, but it's fun for kids) with two 10-year-old girls. It's a tradition for us to take our goddess-kids to the Magic Kingdom when they turn 10, if their parents don't take them there first. After these two, there's only one more to go, three years from now.
I had to pipe up at least briefly, however, in response to the current brouhaha, which is in my opinion only peripherally about health care. The gross and cynical way in which the Republicans and the corporate interests are conniving to use frightened, uninformed, and hysterical people to disrupt public debate and try to bring down any attempt to make health care available to all Americans is beyond disgusting. This is where we who are not susceptible to being buffaloed have to stand up and create what is referred to in one of my favorite books, "Murder at the MLA," as a Bastion of Civilized Values. I don't care how busy you are. Turn on your TV and make yourself watch Rachel Maddow (9 p.m., MSNBC, Mon to Fri) or Keith Olbermann (8 p.m., MSNBC, Mon to Fri). You'll find it's not a penance, especially, in my opinion, Rachel, who totally rocks. Read a newspaper, online if not in print. This will tell you what's going on and who the chief sleazebags are. Then get on the Internet or write a piece of snail-mail to your own Congressperson and Senators, letting them know that you support the public option and health care reform and you intend not to vote for anyone who doesn't. I also exhort you to contact at least one of the so-called "blue dog" Democrats, who are playing repugnant footsie with the Republicans and the corporate profit-grubbers on this issue, and make it clear that you know who they are and you are revolted by their selling out of their constituents for the almighty lobbyist dollar.
I just did so in the case of Claire McCaskill, who I'm sorry to say I gave money to for her 2008 campaign. Blanche Lincoln of Nebraska is another case in point. Women who are putting the health care industries' (insurers, nursing homes, for-profit hospitals, etc.) dollars before the welfare of American citizens. Ugh. As though the men weren't bad enough.
Anyway, if we don't stand up and make ourselves heard now, we will be stuck with this disgrace, this shameful mess of a health care "system" (it's not a system, it's a maze) for the rest of at least my natural life. While the rest of the industrialized world manages to provide good, sensible care to all their citizens, we would go on letting millions of children go without regular medical checkups, letting family after family go bankrupt because of catastrophic illness. I remember all too well watching a dear friend die of brain cancer, unable to focus on spending what little time she had left with her family because she was worrying about the debts she would be leaving them. This is awful, reprehensible, and beneath us and it has to stop. IMMEDIATELY. Health care for profit is something we all know in our guts is morally wrong. It's the absolute contrary of a caring community, a society that is healthy in every way that counts.
ENOUGH. Fight!
No apologies for the long "radio silence." I was on the road from May 21 to July 20, pretty much non-stop. Up the East Coast in my Smart car (a really fun ride, 980 miles in one day!), three days at my college reunion (including a stint as the most out-of-shape duffer in a racing four with coxswain, my hands shredded after 6 miles at the oar), four and a half weeks traveling around China, then a drive back down the East Coast (with three suitcases, two small bags, two carry bags, a cooler, 13 rolls of wrapping paper and a few more miscellaneous items, plus myself, successfully stowed in my Smart car such that I could still see out the rear-view mirror, a miracle), and then after a few days' respite another two days in airplanes so I could be in Lisbon, Portugal with my beloved to help him celebrate a big birthday. (He had just finished a conference there.)
I'm also cranking madly away at my book manuscript, which I must complete by October 6. That's when I hit the road again, to visit my in-laws, chauffeur my mother around Germany to see her family and friends, and then, only a day after my return home, to go to Disney (yes, I know, but it's fun for kids) with two 10-year-old girls. It's a tradition for us to take our goddess-kids to the Magic Kingdom when they turn 10, if their parents don't take them there first. After these two, there's only one more to go, three years from now.
I had to pipe up at least briefly, however, in response to the current brouhaha, which is in my opinion only peripherally about health care. The gross and cynical way in which the Republicans and the corporate interests are conniving to use frightened, uninformed, and hysterical people to disrupt public debate and try to bring down any attempt to make health care available to all Americans is beyond disgusting. This is where we who are not susceptible to being buffaloed have to stand up and create what is referred to in one of my favorite books, "Murder at the MLA," as a Bastion of Civilized Values. I don't care how busy you are. Turn on your TV and make yourself watch Rachel Maddow (9 p.m., MSNBC, Mon to Fri) or Keith Olbermann (8 p.m., MSNBC, Mon to Fri). You'll find it's not a penance, especially, in my opinion, Rachel, who totally rocks. Read a newspaper, online if not in print. This will tell you what's going on and who the chief sleazebags are. Then get on the Internet or write a piece of snail-mail to your own Congressperson and Senators, letting them know that you support the public option and health care reform and you intend not to vote for anyone who doesn't. I also exhort you to contact at least one of the so-called "blue dog" Democrats, who are playing repugnant footsie with the Republicans and the corporate profit-grubbers on this issue, and make it clear that you know who they are and you are revolted by their selling out of their constituents for the almighty lobbyist dollar.
I just did so in the case of Claire McCaskill, who I'm sorry to say I gave money to for her 2008 campaign. Blanche Lincoln of Nebraska is another case in point. Women who are putting the health care industries' (insurers, nursing homes, for-profit hospitals, etc.) dollars before the welfare of American citizens. Ugh. As though the men weren't bad enough.
Anyway, if we don't stand up and make ourselves heard now, we will be stuck with this disgrace, this shameful mess of a health care "system" (it's not a system, it's a maze) for the rest of at least my natural life. While the rest of the industrialized world manages to provide good, sensible care to all their citizens, we would go on letting millions of children go without regular medical checkups, letting family after family go bankrupt because of catastrophic illness. I remember all too well watching a dear friend die of brain cancer, unable to focus on spending what little time she had left with her family because she was worrying about the debts she would be leaving them. This is awful, reprehensible, and beneath us and it has to stop. IMMEDIATELY. Health care for profit is something we all know in our guts is morally wrong. It's the absolute contrary of a caring community, a society that is healthy in every way that counts.
ENOUGH. Fight!
Friday, May 1, 2009
Sully in One-derland
It's a very odd thing when your partner has to go away for a long period of time and you're deprived of all the usual benefits: company, a sounding board, someone whose schedule, willy-nilly, helps determine yours. My partner of more than 22 years is literally on the other side of the globe, and it's taken a week to find a not yet totally acceptable interim rhythm. Work is getting done, but not as organizedly as I would like, and the lack of his breathing in our king bed is very bad for my night's rest. Even sleeping pills lose their effectiveness sometime during the night, and every house noise seems doubly ominous. A cat fight outside the house at about 6 a.m. today was almost a relief, as I could immediately identify the sounds of feline disagreement and stop worrying about them.
Beltane as a temporary single is a particularly odd experience. I quite joyfully cleaned and re-decorated my altar yesterday, on May Eve, burning some amber resin (with opened window so the fire alarm wouldn't put the kibosh on the festivity). But it's disorienting to have no-one with whom to share a chalice of pomegranate wine, or to spoil with some May Day treat, caloric or otherwise.
Still, self-discipline is not exactly foreign to me, so it's stay on the wagon in terms of starches, sugars and alcohol (one glass of wine a day, max), and keep plugging away at the long list of things to be accomplished before my beloved's return. This will be the longest time we've been apart since we married, nonetheless, it will pass quickly, these intervals always do. It's up to me to make the most and best of it, so that we join each other again from strength as well as in mutual want and need. That's the message I take from Beltane this year. Ground yourself, re-create yourself, because you are always a unique "one" in partnership as well as part of two, and if either partner loses themselves, the union is weakened, becomes uneven, lopsided.
"Tine Bealtaine!", everyone, to quote the Celtic. And if you've never heard the track of that name by the Pagan band Omnia, I highly recommend you remedy that oversight!
Beltane as a temporary single is a particularly odd experience. I quite joyfully cleaned and re-decorated my altar yesterday, on May Eve, burning some amber resin (with opened window so the fire alarm wouldn't put the kibosh on the festivity). But it's disorienting to have no-one with whom to share a chalice of pomegranate wine, or to spoil with some May Day treat, caloric or otherwise.
Still, self-discipline is not exactly foreign to me, so it's stay on the wagon in terms of starches, sugars and alcohol (one glass of wine a day, max), and keep plugging away at the long list of things to be accomplished before my beloved's return. This will be the longest time we've been apart since we married, nonetheless, it will pass quickly, these intervals always do. It's up to me to make the most and best of it, so that we join each other again from strength as well as in mutual want and need. That's the message I take from Beltane this year. Ground yourself, re-create yourself, because you are always a unique "one" in partnership as well as part of two, and if either partner loses themselves, the union is weakened, becomes uneven, lopsided.
"Tine Bealtaine!", everyone, to quote the Celtic. And if you've never heard the track of that name by the Pagan band Omnia, I highly recommend you remedy that oversight!
Monday, April 6, 2009
Not-So-Great Expectations
It's a Catch-22, in my opinion. A vast number of unreflected bigots out there believe that gays and lesbians are immoral simply because they are gay or lesbian. Where does this hugely wrong idea come from? I would argue that it's an inextricable aspect of patriarchy, which we still live in, somewhat diluted though it is.
Patriarchy in its undiluted form, which remains the basis of our social order, insists on rigidly separate gender roles which are meant to underscore its fundamental(ist) concept, male superiority. Everything is set up in neat (and oversimplified) dualisms. Every characteristic a person possesses is labeled "masculine" or "feminine," and these characteristics are traditionally presented as overdetermined "opposites." "Rational" versus "irrational," "strong" versus "gentle," "aggressive" versus "submissive," and so on and so forth ad nauseam. And for every one of this infinite series of dyads, the one labeled "female" or "feminine" is seen as inherently inferior to the one labeled "male" or "masculine," even if the consequences of either "masculine" or "feminine" concepts running amok, unleavened, are quite obviously destructive to the entire society. And even though it's quite obvious to any person with common sense that everybody has traits of both kinds, as well as others that don't fit neatly under either rubric.
Rigid policing of gender roles starts at birth, as many a classic experiment has shown. Boy babies are identified with the color blue (true blue), girl babies with the color pink (soft, gentle, unthreatening). Instead of being dressed in practical, unisex baby clothes, colors for boys and girls remain, on the whole, quite gendered. You'll hardly ever see a boy baby in any item of clothing featuring a floral print, and very few girl babies will be decked out in overalls embroidered with trucks and earth movers. You'll see more of the latter than the former, because for a girl to be a tomboy means she's aspiring to the higher order, while gods forbid a boy embrace anything "girly," be a "sissy"! People play more actively and roughly with boy babies while girls are coddled and cuddled and carefully kept away from harm (and a lot of learning experiences). Boys are stifled emotionally very early on, while girls' emotions are sometimes overdeveloped by constant indulgence. Names, colors, how we're treated -- we're pushed to embody one or the other gender role or gender type from Day One.
I feel for gay and lesbian kids. Even if they're lucky enough to have parents who don't think homosexuality is intrinsically wrong, they're surrounded by a society pervaded by homophobia. Long before we're old enough to be able to critically analyze the ideas with which we're bombarded, we're overwhelmed by a tide of prejudice and stereotypes. Elementary school kids -- sometimes even kindergarten or playschool kids -- already know that if you're called "fag," it isn't a compliment. They know it's a swear-word long before they have any idea what it means.
Children are shaped by what is expected of them. This is basic psychology. And our society, on the whole, tells gay and lesbian kids that they are abnormal, wrong, sick, perverted, pretty much doomed. At its most "positive," it makes them feel that they have to fit into a set of gay and lesbian stereotypes: gay men are all supposed to be sissy, lesbians are all supposed to be butch. In other words, if you're a gay man, you're supposed to tend toward the "female" stereotype, while lesbians are supposed to resemble the "male" one. No room for full development of one's true individual characteristics, whether you happen to be gay or straight. But for homosexual youth, the added, huge burden of being assumed to be morally inferior. And this not-so-great expectation is reinforced by ongoing, massive legal discrimination.
It's so incredibly obvious to me that separate can never be equal. "Allowing" gay or lesbian couples "civil unions" isn't a generous gesture, it's a means for the condescending majority to reinforce the idea that their partnerships are at best less than marriages. What presumption! We in the United States are raised with the notion that our country is the best, in every way. Right. The truth of the matter is that a goodly number of industrialized Western nations, including our neighbor to the north, Canada, are light-years ahead of us in terms of eliminating legalized bigotry against gays and lesbians. In much of Canada, gays and lesbians have been able to marry for years. They can also marry in Spain, home of the Spanish Inquisition! And even Britain, from which we inherited much of our knee-jerk homophobia, has dropped any form of "gay ban" in its armed forces. I had to laugh when I read that an American reporter covering a story about "gay integration" in the Dutch army -- Holland is another nation that's way ahead of us on this score -- asked some Dutch soldiers if they weren't concerned about having to share a tent with their openly gay captain. "Sure," they answered. "He snores!"
Sometimes I get very frustrated with my beloved country. There's so much blinkered religious dogma, unconsidered, self-righteous bigotry, an apparent total unwillingness to stop wasting energy on labeling, segregating and hurting people because of how and whom they love. Just think what we could do if we had all the energy at our disposal that's now being squandered on policing gender boundaries, trying to enact legislation that actually worsens legalized discrimination. Why do people think they should be able to force anyone "different" to live a lie, either depriving them of rights or making what limited rights they do have (or their ability to keep their job, live in their home, etc.) contingent on how well they pretend to be someone they're not? It's exactly as Harry Truman (not a past U.S. president I entirely love, but a man with a lot of good sense) said about racial discrimination: "For every black man you want to keep in the gutter, there'll have to be a white man in the gutter to keep him there." We need to wake up and realize that as long as our society continues to prescribe second-class status for gays and lesbians, and preach hate at them, the whole of the society will remain much less than it could be. Time to stop judging by sexual preference or orientation, and start setting our sights on the goal of making ourselves better individuals and making our country the truly great place it might become.
Patriarchy in its undiluted form, which remains the basis of our social order, insists on rigidly separate gender roles which are meant to underscore its fundamental(ist) concept, male superiority. Everything is set up in neat (and oversimplified) dualisms. Every characteristic a person possesses is labeled "masculine" or "feminine," and these characteristics are traditionally presented as overdetermined "opposites." "Rational" versus "irrational," "strong" versus "gentle," "aggressive" versus "submissive," and so on and so forth ad nauseam. And for every one of this infinite series of dyads, the one labeled "female" or "feminine" is seen as inherently inferior to the one labeled "male" or "masculine," even if the consequences of either "masculine" or "feminine" concepts running amok, unleavened, are quite obviously destructive to the entire society. And even though it's quite obvious to any person with common sense that everybody has traits of both kinds, as well as others that don't fit neatly under either rubric.
Rigid policing of gender roles starts at birth, as many a classic experiment has shown. Boy babies are identified with the color blue (true blue), girl babies with the color pink (soft, gentle, unthreatening). Instead of being dressed in practical, unisex baby clothes, colors for boys and girls remain, on the whole, quite gendered. You'll hardly ever see a boy baby in any item of clothing featuring a floral print, and very few girl babies will be decked out in overalls embroidered with trucks and earth movers. You'll see more of the latter than the former, because for a girl to be a tomboy means she's aspiring to the higher order, while gods forbid a boy embrace anything "girly," be a "sissy"! People play more actively and roughly with boy babies while girls are coddled and cuddled and carefully kept away from harm (and a lot of learning experiences). Boys are stifled emotionally very early on, while girls' emotions are sometimes overdeveloped by constant indulgence. Names, colors, how we're treated -- we're pushed to embody one or the other gender role or gender type from Day One.
I feel for gay and lesbian kids. Even if they're lucky enough to have parents who don't think homosexuality is intrinsically wrong, they're surrounded by a society pervaded by homophobia. Long before we're old enough to be able to critically analyze the ideas with which we're bombarded, we're overwhelmed by a tide of prejudice and stereotypes. Elementary school kids -- sometimes even kindergarten or playschool kids -- already know that if you're called "fag," it isn't a compliment. They know it's a swear-word long before they have any idea what it means.
Children are shaped by what is expected of them. This is basic psychology. And our society, on the whole, tells gay and lesbian kids that they are abnormal, wrong, sick, perverted, pretty much doomed. At its most "positive," it makes them feel that they have to fit into a set of gay and lesbian stereotypes: gay men are all supposed to be sissy, lesbians are all supposed to be butch. In other words, if you're a gay man, you're supposed to tend toward the "female" stereotype, while lesbians are supposed to resemble the "male" one. No room for full development of one's true individual characteristics, whether you happen to be gay or straight. But for homosexual youth, the added, huge burden of being assumed to be morally inferior. And this not-so-great expectation is reinforced by ongoing, massive legal discrimination.
It's so incredibly obvious to me that separate can never be equal. "Allowing" gay or lesbian couples "civil unions" isn't a generous gesture, it's a means for the condescending majority to reinforce the idea that their partnerships are at best less than marriages. What presumption! We in the United States are raised with the notion that our country is the best, in every way. Right. The truth of the matter is that a goodly number of industrialized Western nations, including our neighbor to the north, Canada, are light-years ahead of us in terms of eliminating legalized bigotry against gays and lesbians. In much of Canada, gays and lesbians have been able to marry for years. They can also marry in Spain, home of the Spanish Inquisition! And even Britain, from which we inherited much of our knee-jerk homophobia, has dropped any form of "gay ban" in its armed forces. I had to laugh when I read that an American reporter covering a story about "gay integration" in the Dutch army -- Holland is another nation that's way ahead of us on this score -- asked some Dutch soldiers if they weren't concerned about having to share a tent with their openly gay captain. "Sure," they answered. "He snores!"
Sometimes I get very frustrated with my beloved country. There's so much blinkered religious dogma, unconsidered, self-righteous bigotry, an apparent total unwillingness to stop wasting energy on labeling, segregating and hurting people because of how and whom they love. Just think what we could do if we had all the energy at our disposal that's now being squandered on policing gender boundaries, trying to enact legislation that actually worsens legalized discrimination. Why do people think they should be able to force anyone "different" to live a lie, either depriving them of rights or making what limited rights they do have (or their ability to keep their job, live in their home, etc.) contingent on how well they pretend to be someone they're not? It's exactly as Harry Truman (not a past U.S. president I entirely love, but a man with a lot of good sense) said about racial discrimination: "For every black man you want to keep in the gutter, there'll have to be a white man in the gutter to keep him there." We need to wake up and realize that as long as our society continues to prescribe second-class status for gays and lesbians, and preach hate at them, the whole of the society will remain much less than it could be. Time to stop judging by sexual preference or orientation, and start setting our sights on the goal of making ourselves better individuals and making our country the truly great place it might become.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
What Difference Does It Make?
Well, posts will be few and far between, it seems. But the topic of the last one remains very pertinent, since yesterday saw the courts of the state of Iowa OK same-sex marriage. I always thought Iowa had more than its share of common sense, and it's nice to have that confirmed. One of my favorite people in the world grew up in Iowa, though I fear her very fervent Catholicism may put her on the other side of this issue (she may well surprise me though, she has before!).
Anyway, I'm still with Keith Olbermann in his famous Special Comment on the horrific Proposition 8 in California last year (see "What Is It To You?" post, November 2008). What difference does it make to anyone if someone else chooses to be happy in a different way? If two people are responsible and respectful and faithful to each other, who cares if they are of different genders or not? How does the same-sex marriage of two people damage the heterosexual marriage of two others who don't even know them? Why do we need to gin up tons of energy and create tons of bad feeling on this issue?
I've read the whole bible and Jesus said nothing at all about gays (let alone lesbians). The few repudiations or condemnations of homosexual behavior in the Old Testament seem to focus on temple prostitution, which was part of the religions of some of the Jews' pagan neighbors. The men of Sodom who threaten to gang-rape Lot's guests in one incident are out to show their disrespect for and power over the "strangers," and are condemned for violating the laws of hospitality in general. (When Lot offers to send out his virgin daughters to be raped instead, no one seems to think that is out of line, either!) And the quote that all the bigots harp on, about men not being allowed to "lie with" other men as they do with women, is in my opinion the contribution of a writer freaked out about (a) the idea that a man, in patriarchy, is being "used" like women are "supposed to be" used and (b) the very notion of non-procreative sex, i.e. sex that can't result in a baby.
Well, we are, I hope, in a declining patriarchy where sex is no longer exclusively a sphere in which we re-enact patriarchal power relations (i.e., men on top). We are also on a planet which is over-populated to a critical extent, and should be grateful when people of whatever sexual persuasion express their sexuality without abetting the population explosion!
I remain true to my previously stated opinion that sexual preference does not determine character. There is nothing intrinsically immoral or dirty or shameful about feeling attracted to someone of your own gender. It's immoral to cheat someone, anyone, whom you supposedly love, it's immoral to lie to them or put them at risk, it's immoral to treat them irresponsibly, disrespectfully and cruelly. But what's most immoral, plain downright wrong, is discriminating against people on the basis of whom they love, preventing them from enjoying full civil rights and all the legal and financial protections and safeguards of marriage. I will stand by that until I die.
Anyway, I'm still with Keith Olbermann in his famous Special Comment on the horrific Proposition 8 in California last year (see "What Is It To You?" post, November 2008). What difference does it make to anyone if someone else chooses to be happy in a different way? If two people are responsible and respectful and faithful to each other, who cares if they are of different genders or not? How does the same-sex marriage of two people damage the heterosexual marriage of two others who don't even know them? Why do we need to gin up tons of energy and create tons of bad feeling on this issue?
I've read the whole bible and Jesus said nothing at all about gays (let alone lesbians). The few repudiations or condemnations of homosexual behavior in the Old Testament seem to focus on temple prostitution, which was part of the religions of some of the Jews' pagan neighbors. The men of Sodom who threaten to gang-rape Lot's guests in one incident are out to show their disrespect for and power over the "strangers," and are condemned for violating the laws of hospitality in general. (When Lot offers to send out his virgin daughters to be raped instead, no one seems to think that is out of line, either!) And the quote that all the bigots harp on, about men not being allowed to "lie with" other men as they do with women, is in my opinion the contribution of a writer freaked out about (a) the idea that a man, in patriarchy, is being "used" like women are "supposed to be" used and (b) the very notion of non-procreative sex, i.e. sex that can't result in a baby.
Well, we are, I hope, in a declining patriarchy where sex is no longer exclusively a sphere in which we re-enact patriarchal power relations (i.e., men on top). We are also on a planet which is over-populated to a critical extent, and should be grateful when people of whatever sexual persuasion express their sexuality without abetting the population explosion!
I remain true to my previously stated opinion that sexual preference does not determine character. There is nothing intrinsically immoral or dirty or shameful about feeling attracted to someone of your own gender. It's immoral to cheat someone, anyone, whom you supposedly love, it's immoral to lie to them or put them at risk, it's immoral to treat them irresponsibly, disrespectfully and cruelly. But what's most immoral, plain downright wrong, is discriminating against people on the basis of whom they love, preventing them from enjoying full civil rights and all the legal and financial protections and safeguards of marriage. I will stand by that until I die.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
A Victory for Common Sense
Well, it's more than two weeks since my last post, and I have good news. Two days ago, voters in my city (I, alas, live outside the city limits so I couldn't vote) rejected a nasty anti-GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) city charter amendment, 58% to 42%. Too close a margin by my lights, but at least injustice did not prevail.
I did a little door to door persuasive canvassing against this measure, but not as much as I would have liked to do. My hip has been bothering me off and on since last summer, and it went out again a few weeks ago, rendering long walking impossible. So I did what was still within my purview: I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper against "Charter Amendment One," and my spouse and I gave money to the PAC opposing the ugly attempt at depriving up to 10% of the city's population of their civil rights protections.
But let me tell you what bothers me the most about this whole incident. The folks who cooked up the hateful measure tried to use fear tactics to stampede middle-of-the-road voters into joining with right-wing "religious" (I don't consider bigotry compatible with real religion) forces to enshrine discrimination against the GLBT community. Their argument: that when the City Commission added the word "transgender" to the language guaranteeing civil rights protections to gays, lesbians and bisexuals, they were somehow making it legal for men in general to go into women's restrooms. They claimed this put women and girls -- there was a lot of talk about the safety of children -- at risk.
First of all, it's already illegal for predators to peep at, stalk or attack women and girls, in restrooms or anywhere else. Second, a transgendered person who is transitioning or has had surgery to become a woman is very unlikely to be a sexual predator targeting other women. And what do women in restrooms have to fear from bisexuals, gay men or lesbians? And how does depriving this whole diverse population of their civil rights make women's restrooms safer? The whole "argument" is not only ludicrous, it's insulting.
But the real root of it is the grotesque but unfortunately widespread notion that somehow, anyone whose sexual preference isn't "normal," i.e. heterosexual/"straight", is intrinsically immoral. This has never made any sense to me. In my by now considerable experience, whether someone is a good person or not has nothing to do with their sexual preference. It has everything to do with their notions of honesty, honor, responsibility, self-discipline and self-respect. And my gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered friends have at least as much character as I do.
More on this subject in my next post.
I did a little door to door persuasive canvassing against this measure, but not as much as I would have liked to do. My hip has been bothering me off and on since last summer, and it went out again a few weeks ago, rendering long walking impossible. So I did what was still within my purview: I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper against "Charter Amendment One," and my spouse and I gave money to the PAC opposing the ugly attempt at depriving up to 10% of the city's population of their civil rights protections.
But let me tell you what bothers me the most about this whole incident. The folks who cooked up the hateful measure tried to use fear tactics to stampede middle-of-the-road voters into joining with right-wing "religious" (I don't consider bigotry compatible with real religion) forces to enshrine discrimination against the GLBT community. Their argument: that when the City Commission added the word "transgender" to the language guaranteeing civil rights protections to gays, lesbians and bisexuals, they were somehow making it legal for men in general to go into women's restrooms. They claimed this put women and girls -- there was a lot of talk about the safety of children -- at risk.
First of all, it's already illegal for predators to peep at, stalk or attack women and girls, in restrooms or anywhere else. Second, a transgendered person who is transitioning or has had surgery to become a woman is very unlikely to be a sexual predator targeting other women. And what do women in restrooms have to fear from bisexuals, gay men or lesbians? And how does depriving this whole diverse population of their civil rights make women's restrooms safer? The whole "argument" is not only ludicrous, it's insulting.
But the real root of it is the grotesque but unfortunately widespread notion that somehow, anyone whose sexual preference isn't "normal," i.e. heterosexual/"straight", is intrinsically immoral. This has never made any sense to me. In my by now considerable experience, whether someone is a good person or not has nothing to do with their sexual preference. It has everything to do with their notions of honesty, honor, responsibility, self-discipline and self-respect. And my gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered friends have at least as much character as I do.
More on this subject in my next post.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Back At Last: Some Thoughts on the Hiatus
I'm back. It's been a long hiatus, ever since January 19th. What got me all tied up? Life. Taxes (mine, my spouse's, and my mother's: all done now, happily). Dealing with the fall-out from the dramatic break-down of the economy. Trying to gear up for another challenging year despite very low energy. Which remains sub-prime, to make a bad pun.
But I've been doing a lot of thinking. Funny how deadlines on things you don't care for (like taxes) get the mental juices flowing on just about every other topic. You'd rather be (fill in the blank) and you manage long mental "escape routes" even as you slog your way through column after column of (mostly depressing) figures.
Two things caught my eye these past few days. One: the tabloid headlines about singer Rihanna going back to her abusive boyfriend even after he hit her so hard that apparently her injuries require surgical repair. Two: an almost generic article in the local paper about the ongoing problem of deadbeat dads (it's obfuscatory to say deadbeat "parents," fathers (if you can call them that) hugely outnumber mothers in the category of people who refuse to pay anything to support their children).
Well, that got me to thinking. Why do these patterns persist? Why are we still submerged in a wave of wife- and girlfriend-beating, and another of men who refuse to live up to their responsibilities after they collaborate in putting children into the world?
There's a one-word answer to both: patriarchy. Now, it needs to be elaborated a little. We live in what is still an overwhelmingly patriarchal society, where the majority of men, whether they realize it or not, are accustomed to being the primary focus of attention within their intimate circle. Women are, so goes the party line, supposed to be independent entities, to have a career and so forth, but the bottom line remains that if a woman is in a relationship, her environment is still pervaded with subtle and not-so-subtle pressures and expectations to put the relationship first, while men are expected to put their jobs first (with the woman, if there's one in the picture, tagging along behind).
In most relationships involving a man and a woman, the man, consciously or unconsciously, expects the woman to revolve around him. If he's particularly insecure, anxious or controlling, or all of the above, then any sign, real or perceived, that he's not the center of her world, that she's not willing to sacrifice or subordinate her job, best interests, hobbies, friends, family, even her kids so that she's at his constant beck and call, can result in mental or physical abuse meant to re-establish what he considers the "right order" of things. Even the best of men in this society have imbibed the notion that they and their needs should always be primary. Even a woman in an otherwise largely egalitarian relationship finds herself apologizing for behavior the man does not feel driven to apologize for, and praises her partner lavishly for doing things he takes for granted when she does them.
I don't care how ideal your partnership situation is, if there are a man and a woman involved, the woman is almost certainly accommodating the man a lot more than he accommodates her. I married when I was nearly 30, not a pliable young girl, and my spouse is not a patriarch, but nonetheless I'm the one who moves hundreds or thousands of miles when his job changes, not vice versa. I'm the one who had to create a new social circle every time this happened, while he could dedicate himself to his work. Because I was trained to create and manage a home and followed my default mode instead of standing up on my hind legs and hollering, I -- a woman who hates housework and home-tending -- have ended up responsible for a big house, a yard, a pool, and pretty much all the accompanying paraphernalia.
Before my eyes is the object lesson as to what I don't want for my future. My mother, widowed for more than a decade, is in her mid-seventies. She always found home-making rewarding and loves her garden, but now she finds herself stuck using the vast majority of her dwindling energy to maintain a complex much like the one I live in, only bigger! She's unable to face the mammoth job of dissolving this complex and the emotional upheaval of relocation -- I don't blame her a bit, it's a monster -- which means she'll likely stay there until she dies, and leave me to deal with it all. That, I admit, is not something to which I look forward.
So I'm mustering up my energies and laying the groundwork for downsizing and disposing of lots of loved and unloved junk in an orderly and ruthless fashion before I turn 60, which gives me less than ten years. And I'm going to do it. Because I want to be able to lock the door on a condo and hit the road when I so desire. Because I never was much of a gardener and don't want to stay home all winter to make sure the tender plants are covered every time there's a freeze. Because it's a pain to make the arrangements (and pay the bills) for the maintenance of a tiny private pool that hardly anyone ever uses. And so on.
But mostly because, between having to deal with all the responsibilities and distractions loaded on the average hausfrau, plus a lot of the kind of jobs my father did in my parents' marriage (like the taxes and overseeing the investments (not a fun task at present)), and also managing pretty much the entire social context for myself and my spouse (plan events, make sure relatives and friends get birthday presents and cards, and so forth) plus keeping a weather eye on my mother and his parents, "my work" (like this blog! and my book project) shows precious little progress. Which is very frustrating, and not something I intend to tolerate for much longer. Or I'll end up a resentful, boiling, nasty rhymes-with-snitch.
Life is short. In patriarchy, it's hard even for women with the privilege of higher education and some means to make sure it's what they want, as well as what those around them want.
The struggle continues.
But I've been doing a lot of thinking. Funny how deadlines on things you don't care for (like taxes) get the mental juices flowing on just about every other topic. You'd rather be (fill in the blank) and you manage long mental "escape routes" even as you slog your way through column after column of (mostly depressing) figures.
Two things caught my eye these past few days. One: the tabloid headlines about singer Rihanna going back to her abusive boyfriend even after he hit her so hard that apparently her injuries require surgical repair. Two: an almost generic article in the local paper about the ongoing problem of deadbeat dads (it's obfuscatory to say deadbeat "parents," fathers (if you can call them that) hugely outnumber mothers in the category of people who refuse to pay anything to support their children).
Well, that got me to thinking. Why do these patterns persist? Why are we still submerged in a wave of wife- and girlfriend-beating, and another of men who refuse to live up to their responsibilities after they collaborate in putting children into the world?
There's a one-word answer to both: patriarchy. Now, it needs to be elaborated a little. We live in what is still an overwhelmingly patriarchal society, where the majority of men, whether they realize it or not, are accustomed to being the primary focus of attention within their intimate circle. Women are, so goes the party line, supposed to be independent entities, to have a career and so forth, but the bottom line remains that if a woman is in a relationship, her environment is still pervaded with subtle and not-so-subtle pressures and expectations to put the relationship first, while men are expected to put their jobs first (with the woman, if there's one in the picture, tagging along behind).
In most relationships involving a man and a woman, the man, consciously or unconsciously, expects the woman to revolve around him. If he's particularly insecure, anxious or controlling, or all of the above, then any sign, real or perceived, that he's not the center of her world, that she's not willing to sacrifice or subordinate her job, best interests, hobbies, friends, family, even her kids so that she's at his constant beck and call, can result in mental or physical abuse meant to re-establish what he considers the "right order" of things. Even the best of men in this society have imbibed the notion that they and their needs should always be primary. Even a woman in an otherwise largely egalitarian relationship finds herself apologizing for behavior the man does not feel driven to apologize for, and praises her partner lavishly for doing things he takes for granted when she does them.
I don't care how ideal your partnership situation is, if there are a man and a woman involved, the woman is almost certainly accommodating the man a lot more than he accommodates her. I married when I was nearly 30, not a pliable young girl, and my spouse is not a patriarch, but nonetheless I'm the one who moves hundreds or thousands of miles when his job changes, not vice versa. I'm the one who had to create a new social circle every time this happened, while he could dedicate himself to his work. Because I was trained to create and manage a home and followed my default mode instead of standing up on my hind legs and hollering, I -- a woman who hates housework and home-tending -- have ended up responsible for a big house, a yard, a pool, and pretty much all the accompanying paraphernalia.
Before my eyes is the object lesson as to what I don't want for my future. My mother, widowed for more than a decade, is in her mid-seventies. She always found home-making rewarding and loves her garden, but now she finds herself stuck using the vast majority of her dwindling energy to maintain a complex much like the one I live in, only bigger! She's unable to face the mammoth job of dissolving this complex and the emotional upheaval of relocation -- I don't blame her a bit, it's a monster -- which means she'll likely stay there until she dies, and leave me to deal with it all. That, I admit, is not something to which I look forward.
So I'm mustering up my energies and laying the groundwork for downsizing and disposing of lots of loved and unloved junk in an orderly and ruthless fashion before I turn 60, which gives me less than ten years. And I'm going to do it. Because I want to be able to lock the door on a condo and hit the road when I so desire. Because I never was much of a gardener and don't want to stay home all winter to make sure the tender plants are covered every time there's a freeze. Because it's a pain to make the arrangements (and pay the bills) for the maintenance of a tiny private pool that hardly anyone ever uses. And so on.
But mostly because, between having to deal with all the responsibilities and distractions loaded on the average hausfrau, plus a lot of the kind of jobs my father did in my parents' marriage (like the taxes and overseeing the investments (not a fun task at present)), and also managing pretty much the entire social context for myself and my spouse (plan events, make sure relatives and friends get birthday presents and cards, and so forth) plus keeping a weather eye on my mother and his parents, "my work" (like this blog! and my book project) shows precious little progress. Which is very frustrating, and not something I intend to tolerate for much longer. Or I'll end up a resentful, boiling, nasty rhymes-with-snitch.
Life is short. In patriarchy, it's hard even for women with the privilege of higher education and some means to make sure it's what they want, as well as what those around them want.
The struggle continues.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sage-ing the White House
Finally another sign of life from the overloaded Pagan Pundit. Between the looming advent of tax time, house guests, and assorted challenges I won't detail here, I haven't been able to think of anything but my book manuscript, continuing house repairs, and being a supportive spouse. But, just in the nick of time, I want to pass on something I heard on the Rachel Maddow Show (9 p.m., MSNBC, Monday through Friday) a few days ago.
One of her guests, comedian Kate Clinton, spread the word that she, a rabbi and a shaman, and whoever else wants to join them, will be gathering at 6 p.m. tonight at Dupont Circle in Washington D.C., which is as close as security precautions will allow them to get to the White House, to burn sage and other cleansing herbs and do a cleaning and banishing on all the bad intentions, bad vibes, bad actions and bad ju-ju dumped upon our nation these past eight years.
There's no way I can get to D.C., but I intend to be out in my yard at 6 p.m. Eastern time burning whatever my intuition tells me to burn and doing a banishing and cleansing ritual of my own. Probably walking counter-clockwise around the house, at least! For the few, the enduring, the proud who follow my blog, may I suggest you do the same, either at 6 p.m. Eastern time or at whatever time suits your schedules before the inauguration of President Obama (doesn't that sound great?) at 11:56 a.m. tomorrow, January 20th.
Of course, the key is not only to smudge and cleanse for all we're worth, but to rally our best energies to do our part, each where and when we can, to turn this country around and move it toward its greatest potential, not its worst. I think it's possible.
One of her guests, comedian Kate Clinton, spread the word that she, a rabbi and a shaman, and whoever else wants to join them, will be gathering at 6 p.m. tonight at Dupont Circle in Washington D.C., which is as close as security precautions will allow them to get to the White House, to burn sage and other cleansing herbs and do a cleaning and banishing on all the bad intentions, bad vibes, bad actions and bad ju-ju dumped upon our nation these past eight years.
There's no way I can get to D.C., but I intend to be out in my yard at 6 p.m. Eastern time burning whatever my intuition tells me to burn and doing a banishing and cleansing ritual of my own. Probably walking counter-clockwise around the house, at least! For the few, the enduring, the proud who follow my blog, may I suggest you do the same, either at 6 p.m. Eastern time or at whatever time suits your schedules before the inauguration of President Obama (doesn't that sound great?) at 11:56 a.m. tomorrow, January 20th.
Of course, the key is not only to smudge and cleanse for all we're worth, but to rally our best energies to do our part, each where and when we can, to turn this country around and move it toward its greatest potential, not its worst. I think it's possible.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
The Baltic Bee God -- and Goddess
Some unexpected free time for a quick post. I did a lightning Internet search and discovered that the Baltic region, and specifically Lithuania, have a tradition of tall, hollowed-out tree stumps carved into the likeness of a grotesque, bearded man and lidded with a thatch roof, with an opening in the mouth through which bees can access a hive within (and a door in the back for the beekeepers to extract the honey). The grotesques honor the bee god Babilas, a Pan-like figure associated with fertility.
There is also a Baltic bee Goddess, Austeja or Austheia. Information on her can be found in the most recent issue of The Beltane Papers (Late Summer 2008 edition, in an article by Goddess historian Patricia Monaghan), at thebeegoddess.com, and in Miriam Dexter Robbins' book The Living Goddesses. The name Austeja appears to blend the word for "weaving" and the word for "flying." (Just an aside: the Sanskrit word "Babila" means "swift." An obscure link between the two bee deities?)
A fascinating beekeeper's museum some 60 kilometers north of Vilnius in Lithuania features a number of Babilas beehives. Open from May to October in Aukstatija National Park, near the town of Ignalina, this museum celebrates an annual Honey Festival in August (which is also the month of Austeja's old feast day). The bee is a symbol of friendship in Lithuanian culture and the term "biciulis," derived from their word for bee, is an affectionate form of address for another person. When bee colonies became over-large and part of a parent hive's population "hived off" to another location, moving from one farm to the next, it established a ritual kinship between the two farm families, "biciulyste" or bee-kinship.
The museum's website is www.muziejai.lt/ignalina/biciu_mus.en.htm
More if I can find it!
There is also a Baltic bee Goddess, Austeja or Austheia. Information on her can be found in the most recent issue of The Beltane Papers (Late Summer 2008 edition, in an article by Goddess historian Patricia Monaghan), at thebeegoddess.com, and in Miriam Dexter Robbins' book The Living Goddesses. The name Austeja appears to blend the word for "weaving" and the word for "flying." (Just an aside: the Sanskrit word "Babila" means "swift." An obscure link between the two bee deities?)
A fascinating beekeeper's museum some 60 kilometers north of Vilnius in Lithuania features a number of Babilas beehives. Open from May to October in Aukstatija National Park, near the town of Ignalina, this museum celebrates an annual Honey Festival in August (which is also the month of Austeja's old feast day). The bee is a symbol of friendship in Lithuanian culture and the term "biciulis," derived from their word for bee, is an affectionate form of address for another person. When bee colonies became over-large and part of a parent hive's population "hived off" to another location, moving from one farm to the next, it established a ritual kinship between the two farm families, "biciulyste" or bee-kinship.
The museum's website is www.muziejai.lt/ignalina/biciu_mus.en.htm
More if I can find it!
Baltic Candles
Back in the U.S. since December 28th, but despite warm weather, snowed under in work of various kinds. We hosted a dozen people for New Year's Eve, then had the painter/carpenter in for more touch-up work on the house, and now I have house guests for a week. But I did want to convey some moments from the Frankfurt Sacred Night Market (Weihnachtsmarkt).
The weather was none too clement, mizzling rain and accompanying cold, but the three of us: my spouse, his brother and I: sallied forth in good humor nonetheless. The brightly lit booths illuminated the night, and the curtains of chilly precipitation. Two carousels were in full operation, with cheerful tunes and happy ranks of riders. And our mood was soon lifted further by hot mugs of Gluehwein (mulled wine)!
What really lifted my spirits most were the many craft booths. Almost no mass-produced Chinese or equivalent throw-away stuff. Gloves, wooden ornaments and toys, artwork, sculpture, blown glass -- even a booth heavy with witch dolls, dressed in cloaks of many colors, full of glitter, with knowing eyes.
We hadn't managed to get there until almost 7 p.m. and everything closed down at 9, so we hurried along, stopping again for what we thought would be egg nog but what turned out to be a hot egg drink (fortunately just as potently laced with alcohol), and then again for sausages grilled on the spot, and then again for Belgian fries with curry sauce. Yum!
Just as things were starting to shut down, I spotted a small booth selling honey and hand-made candles. Sometimes my gut instinct tells me exactly where to go. I left the men and started talking to the couple, who were from East Prussia.
East Prussia and the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) are one region where their long-time adherence to the Old Religion i.e. Paganism is concerned. In parts of this geographical area, Paganism persisted well into the 19th century, and in some families it never really vanished. I studied the candles and found several I was immediately drawn to, particularly one honoring the queen bee. But then I spotted a particular image:
A head, as archaic as those on Easter Island, which had obviously been carved out of a monumental tree stump, a wood and perhaps thatch "hat" on its head. The man of the forest, the Green Man. With bees crawling from the base toward his mouth.
The couple explained that these carvings are still made in rural East Prussia. The carved tree stump contains the bee hive, and is believed to protect the farmstead.
We managed to discover a second one in the booth. I bought them both, wrapped them carefully, and brought them safely back here, where they sit on my altar.
One of those magical incidents that make a trip instantly memorable, Goddess-blessed. I'll do a little more research on this figure and share anything I find with you!
The weather was none too clement, mizzling rain and accompanying cold, but the three of us: my spouse, his brother and I: sallied forth in good humor nonetheless. The brightly lit booths illuminated the night, and the curtains of chilly precipitation. Two carousels were in full operation, with cheerful tunes and happy ranks of riders. And our mood was soon lifted further by hot mugs of Gluehwein (mulled wine)!
What really lifted my spirits most were the many craft booths. Almost no mass-produced Chinese or equivalent throw-away stuff. Gloves, wooden ornaments and toys, artwork, sculpture, blown glass -- even a booth heavy with witch dolls, dressed in cloaks of many colors, full of glitter, with knowing eyes.
We hadn't managed to get there until almost 7 p.m. and everything closed down at 9, so we hurried along, stopping again for what we thought would be egg nog but what turned out to be a hot egg drink (fortunately just as potently laced with alcohol), and then again for sausages grilled on the spot, and then again for Belgian fries with curry sauce. Yum!
Just as things were starting to shut down, I spotted a small booth selling honey and hand-made candles. Sometimes my gut instinct tells me exactly where to go. I left the men and started talking to the couple, who were from East Prussia.
East Prussia and the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) are one region where their long-time adherence to the Old Religion i.e. Paganism is concerned. In parts of this geographical area, Paganism persisted well into the 19th century, and in some families it never really vanished. I studied the candles and found several I was immediately drawn to, particularly one honoring the queen bee. But then I spotted a particular image:
A head, as archaic as those on Easter Island, which had obviously been carved out of a monumental tree stump, a wood and perhaps thatch "hat" on its head. The man of the forest, the Green Man. With bees crawling from the base toward his mouth.
The couple explained that these carvings are still made in rural East Prussia. The carved tree stump contains the bee hive, and is believed to protect the farmstead.
We managed to discover a second one in the booth. I bought them both, wrapped them carefully, and brought them safely back here, where they sit on my altar.
One of those magical incidents that make a trip instantly memorable, Goddess-blessed. I'll do a little more research on this figure and share anything I find with you!
Friday, December 19, 2008
On Holiday(s)
Here I am, three thousand miles away from home -- if my latest address is home, which I sometimes doubt -- in grey weather, cold too, trying to get the time change behind me and start soaking up the holiday spirit. The spouse and I are sitting in the hotel lobby, both working away on our computers. In a little while I'll get myself in gear and head off to do some errands.
So this is "holiday time." The candelabra in the breakfast room all contain 7 "candles" -- is that just to distinguish themselves from Hanukkah lights or because 7 simply comes out as the most symmetrical and elegant number of light elements? In any case, the real candle on the breakfast table, surrounded by evergreen branches and gilded pinecones, is "ecumenical" in that its appeal pre-dates Christianity by quite a space of time.
Yule, like the summer solstice, is above all a festival of light and fire. When I was packing on Monday, I dug out my velvet ritual bag (which I've had for about 15 years now -- red, with a symbol that combines the pentacle and the sign for female (or the planet Venus. Not that I think "men are from Mars, women are from..." -- facile and over-generalizing, always a dangerous combination). There were two considerations: weight of the luggage and what was most appropriate to the season. Yule, a fire festival. So I put in my tiny brass burner, two little cones of Yule incense from one of my favorite providers, and incense matches in frankincense, sandalwood, and bayberry to honor the time (and patchouli just because I like it). Compass and bloodstone pendulum. Tiny travel candle (in a tin). And that's it.
The colors for Yule are just as pre-Christian as the candle/taper/light and the evergreens. Red and green: red for fire, green for growth and manifestation. Fire to keep us warm, sun-fire to invite the sun closer again, green as a sign of our hope and belief that new shoots, new leaves, new crops will once more come in time.
Tomorrow we're going to the "sacred night market" -- the Christmas market, but I just gave you the literal translation of the German word for it, "Weihnachtsmarkt." I look forward to the spiced wine, the traditional holiday edibles like "Lebkuchen" ("the cake of life"), and the many beautiful, and even the tacky, things that will be offered for sale at the myriad outdoor stalls. Northern Europeans are hardy folk, neither the buyers nor the sellers jib at spending long hours in near-freezing temperatures to seek or purvey the perfect holiday gift, treat or decor. More when we return!
So this is "holiday time." The candelabra in the breakfast room all contain 7 "candles" -- is that just to distinguish themselves from Hanukkah lights or because 7 simply comes out as the most symmetrical and elegant number of light elements? In any case, the real candle on the breakfast table, surrounded by evergreen branches and gilded pinecones, is "ecumenical" in that its appeal pre-dates Christianity by quite a space of time.
Yule, like the summer solstice, is above all a festival of light and fire. When I was packing on Monday, I dug out my velvet ritual bag (which I've had for about 15 years now -- red, with a symbol that combines the pentacle and the sign for female (or the planet Venus. Not that I think "men are from Mars, women are from..." -- facile and over-generalizing, always a dangerous combination). There were two considerations: weight of the luggage and what was most appropriate to the season. Yule, a fire festival. So I put in my tiny brass burner, two little cones of Yule incense from one of my favorite providers, and incense matches in frankincense, sandalwood, and bayberry to honor the time (and patchouli just because I like it). Compass and bloodstone pendulum. Tiny travel candle (in a tin). And that's it.
The colors for Yule are just as pre-Christian as the candle/taper/light and the evergreens. Red and green: red for fire, green for growth and manifestation. Fire to keep us warm, sun-fire to invite the sun closer again, green as a sign of our hope and belief that new shoots, new leaves, new crops will once more come in time.
Tomorrow we're going to the "sacred night market" -- the Christmas market, but I just gave you the literal translation of the German word for it, "Weihnachtsmarkt." I look forward to the spiced wine, the traditional holiday edibles like "Lebkuchen" ("the cake of life"), and the many beautiful, and even the tacky, things that will be offered for sale at the myriad outdoor stalls. Northern Europeans are hardy folk, neither the buyers nor the sellers jib at spending long hours in near-freezing temperatures to seek or purvey the perfect holiday gift, treat or decor. More when we return!
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Go Gators!
Yes, odd and possibly reprehensible as it may seem, I do love to watch American football. Never got a chance to play it, though I've played quite a few other team sports. But I grew up watching football (and baseball, and basketball) with my Dad, a true fanatic, not just a fan. And somehow life is not complete without occasionally plopping my butt down in front of a TV and screaming my lungs out for the team of my choice (complete with animadversions on bad refereeing and commentary on questionable coaching decisions). Obnoxious of me, I know.
So it filled my heart with glee that the University of Florida defeated Alabama in the Southeastern Conference Championship game in Atlanta yesterday. The majority of football "scholars" thought the Crimson Tide (i.e. Alabama) would roll over the Gators (i.e. Florida), but I always believed the Gators could win. Which does not mean I watched the game live. If I have a superstition, it's that if I watch a team I really care about play in real time, they're likely to lose. I kept well away from temptation by going to my favorite cafe, which doesn't have a TV set. But I admit I checked on the score when I thought the game must be over, and found the Gators were winning. Just as well I didn't watch, though, since as late as the end of the third quarter Alabama was ahead and seemed to be pulling away, so my blood pressure would have been sky-high and the volume of my yelling considerable! I know my faults.
I watched this morning, however, when the game was repeated on the Sunshine Channel, and slurped up every precious minute while continuing to deal with holiday preparations, in this case wrapping and packaging. The last parcels that have to be mailed will be taken to the post office tomorrow and Tuesday. My lists of tasks to be completed remain four sheets of legal paper long, and I object, as I always do, to the hustle and bustle imposed upon us by the felt obligation to sustain commercially dictated Yuletide jollity throughout the month of December. And that's nothing compared to the suffering of the poor salespeople and cashiers in department stores and supermarkets, who are subjected to holiday Muzak starting long before Thanksgiving!
Anyway, this Gator fan is a happy clam. I'm sorry that one team has to lose for another to win. Alabama had a perfect season going into the game, and now has to deal with the bitter taste of not winning the conference title and being denied a shot at the national championship. But there's always next year, and Alabama is deep in talent, they'll be in the thick of the hunt again, as, I think, will the Gators. Now I can relax until the Gators' bowl game, which I assume will be the BCS Championship in Miami on January 8th. And I promise not to bore you with football again until at least then!
So it filled my heart with glee that the University of Florida defeated Alabama in the Southeastern Conference Championship game in Atlanta yesterday. The majority of football "scholars" thought the Crimson Tide (i.e. Alabama) would roll over the Gators (i.e. Florida), but I always believed the Gators could win. Which does not mean I watched the game live. If I have a superstition, it's that if I watch a team I really care about play in real time, they're likely to lose. I kept well away from temptation by going to my favorite cafe, which doesn't have a TV set. But I admit I checked on the score when I thought the game must be over, and found the Gators were winning. Just as well I didn't watch, though, since as late as the end of the third quarter Alabama was ahead and seemed to be pulling away, so my blood pressure would have been sky-high and the volume of my yelling considerable! I know my faults.
I watched this morning, however, when the game was repeated on the Sunshine Channel, and slurped up every precious minute while continuing to deal with holiday preparations, in this case wrapping and packaging. The last parcels that have to be mailed will be taken to the post office tomorrow and Tuesday. My lists of tasks to be completed remain four sheets of legal paper long, and I object, as I always do, to the hustle and bustle imposed upon us by the felt obligation to sustain commercially dictated Yuletide jollity throughout the month of December. And that's nothing compared to the suffering of the poor salespeople and cashiers in department stores and supermarkets, who are subjected to holiday Muzak starting long before Thanksgiving!
Anyway, this Gator fan is a happy clam. I'm sorry that one team has to lose for another to win. Alabama had a perfect season going into the game, and now has to deal with the bitter taste of not winning the conference title and being denied a shot at the national championship. But there's always next year, and Alabama is deep in talent, they'll be in the thick of the hunt again, as, I think, will the Gators. Now I can relax until the Gators' bowl game, which I assume will be the BCS Championship in Miami on January 8th. And I promise not to bore you with football again until at least then!
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Responsibility, Change, and Character
So, it's December 6th and I haven't posted in four days. The holiday preparations continue to rev into ramming speed, and I suspect posts will be fewer and farther between until after the New Year. But I wanted to touch upon a subject I've already mentioned and develop it a bit, in preparation for more concentrated treatment when life becomes a bit less harried (ha, ha).
One of Barack Obama's most attractive, to me, themes during the recent presidential campaign was the concept that the restoration of American liberties and freedoms must go hand in hand with a general re-shouldering of individual and social responsibilities. "We are the change we've been waiting for" is not a new slogan, but remains a true one. Jim Hightower's most recent monthly newsletter (Dec. 2008, Vol. 10, No. 12: if you're a political progressive and don't read the Hightower Lowdown, look into it) takes up this message:
"If last month’s sweeping vote for change is to come to fruition, We the People must be the ones who nurture it. We can’t just crank back in our La-Z-Boys and say, “We did our job – now Barack can do the heavy lifting for us.” We tried this laid-back approach after Clinton won in 1992 – with unpleasant and unprogressive results.
"If you think your job is done, look who’s waiting for Obama in Washington: a swarm of Wall Street bankers, the war machine, 13,000 corporate lobbyists, naysaying Republican Congress critters, right-wing yackety-yackers, weak-kneed Democrats, the conformist media, and other powerful forces of business-as-usual politics. These insiders intend to shape his presidency in their image.
"We have to be the counterforce, pushing insistently, vociferously, and persistently from the outside. Who’s “we”? You and me – determined citizens, working through our personal networks, public-interest organizations, progressive media, the netroots nation, unions, community groups, and other connections to grassroots activism.
"Obama was the candidate of change, but he’ll be the president of change ONLY if we buck him up and back him up. We must stand up and speak out on every move the insiders make; we must propose and push progressive ideas and ideals; and we must certainly expose and vigorously oppose any capitulations he will be pressured to make to the corporate powers.
"If his presidency is to be worthy of the enormous effort that so many put into it, worthy of the deep potential of this political moment in American history, you and I have to be on the alert and in the face of power...
"From the start, I’ve felt that the most significant thing about the Obama phenomenon was not Obama, but the phenomenon – the fact that millions of ordinary Americans (especially young people) were not merely enthusiastic but were engaged, organizing and mobilizing, taking possession of their democracy, and doing the grunt work that is the essence of self-government.
"People really do want change – not as a political buzzword, but as a fundamental matter of national direction and policy. In fact, for some time, folks have been shouting: CHANGE! Get our troops and America’s reputation out of Iraq. Provide good health care for all. Rein in greedheaded CEOs and corporate lobbyists. End “tinkle down” economics. Re-invest in America’s infrastructure. Rebuild middle-class opportunities. Deal with global climate change. End the use of torture. Get serious about green energy. Restore our stolen liberties. Stop polluters. And, generally, reinstate the Common Good as America’s governing ethic.
"As Obama himself often said on the campaign trail, he is not the change. We are. By electing him, we opened the White House door to the possibility of change. Now we must see it through."
This kind of collective effort is part of what I, personally, mean when I talk of social responsibility. Effecting political change by continuing to work, noodge, speak out, demand and protest. Individual responsibility includes doing so in an honest, researched, thought-through and consistent fashion.
Which takes me back to the issue of gay and lesbian civil rights. Like much of the rest of America, I've seen "Proposition 8: The Musical," which I think is a brilliant piece of agit-prop. If by some chance you haven't encountered this three-minute tour de force, check it out on YouTube. Touching back upon the December 2008 Hightower Lowdown, which disappointed me by not addressing the horrific anti-gay legislation that was passed in four states even as Obama was elected, it did trash James Dobson and his Focus on the Family Christian-right organization for publishing an apocalyptic anti-Obama brochure right before the election. Written from the perspective of a shell-shocked "Christian" chronicling the abominations of four years of the Obama administration in the year 2012, one of its many fear-mongering prophecies was that a liberalized Supreme Court would force schools to teach first-graders that homosexuality is good.
Well, that set me to thinking. Of course the Dobson brochure is despicable, and largely ludicrous. But somehow it made something very clear to me. I think homosexuality, in and of itself, isn't good and isn't bad. It just is. Just like heterosexuality, in and of itself, isn't good or bad, it just is. Some of us are 100% homosexual, some of us are 100% heterosexual, and some of us fall somewhere inbetween. I've come to believe that each individual's possible spectrum of sexual preferences is almost as hard-wired as hair and eye color. Which means legislating discrimination against gays and lesbians is about as sensible as legislating discrimination against blond-haired or green-eyed people. Whether someone is gay, or blond, or green-eyed does not determine whether or not that individual is a decent person.
The only factor that may affect the character of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people is a societal one, the still far too commonly parrotted lie that anyone who isn't easily classifiable as "straight" is somehow "less moral" than "the rest of us." If as you grow up you realize that you are homosexual, or attracted to either gender, or don't fit with the sex characteristics with which you were born, you can't escape being bombarded by the societal expectation that you will be a "lesser" or "bad" person. Since expectations do shape us up to a point, those who aren't vanilla/straight have a harder row to hoe -- they have to fight against a whole set of external and internalized expectations of failure (much like people of color or women in general) on top of all the common vicissitudes and adversities.
Nonetheless, a large part of every identifiable population -- whether it's white straight women, gays, African-Americans, or transgenders -- consists of plain old good people. People who are honest with their friends, loyal to their partners and children, responsible about their duties to themselves, their families, their community, their employers or employees. Whatever the difficulties we face, we are capable of demonstrating good character. The capacity to live as a responsible human being is not affected by our sexual preference or orientation. Unfortunately, the capacity to participate equally in the benefits offered by our society still is.
One of Barack Obama's most attractive, to me, themes during the recent presidential campaign was the concept that the restoration of American liberties and freedoms must go hand in hand with a general re-shouldering of individual and social responsibilities. "We are the change we've been waiting for" is not a new slogan, but remains a true one. Jim Hightower's most recent monthly newsletter (Dec. 2008, Vol. 10, No. 12: if you're a political progressive and don't read the Hightower Lowdown, look into it) takes up this message:
"If last month’s sweeping vote for change is to come to fruition, We the People must be the ones who nurture it. We can’t just crank back in our La-Z-Boys and say, “We did our job – now Barack can do the heavy lifting for us.” We tried this laid-back approach after Clinton won in 1992 – with unpleasant and unprogressive results.
"If you think your job is done, look who’s waiting for Obama in Washington: a swarm of Wall Street bankers, the war machine, 13,000 corporate lobbyists, naysaying Republican Congress critters, right-wing yackety-yackers, weak-kneed Democrats, the conformist media, and other powerful forces of business-as-usual politics. These insiders intend to shape his presidency in their image.
"We have to be the counterforce, pushing insistently, vociferously, and persistently from the outside. Who’s “we”? You and me – determined citizens, working through our personal networks, public-interest organizations, progressive media, the netroots nation, unions, community groups, and other connections to grassroots activism.
"Obama was the candidate of change, but he’ll be the president of change ONLY if we buck him up and back him up. We must stand up and speak out on every move the insiders make; we must propose and push progressive ideas and ideals; and we must certainly expose and vigorously oppose any capitulations he will be pressured to make to the corporate powers.
"If his presidency is to be worthy of the enormous effort that so many put into it, worthy of the deep potential of this political moment in American history, you and I have to be on the alert and in the face of power...
"From the start, I’ve felt that the most significant thing about the Obama phenomenon was not Obama, but the phenomenon – the fact that millions of ordinary Americans (especially young people) were not merely enthusiastic but were engaged, organizing and mobilizing, taking possession of their democracy, and doing the grunt work that is the essence of self-government.
"People really do want change – not as a political buzzword, but as a fundamental matter of national direction and policy. In fact, for some time, folks have been shouting: CHANGE! Get our troops and America’s reputation out of Iraq. Provide good health care for all. Rein in greedheaded CEOs and corporate lobbyists. End “tinkle down” economics. Re-invest in America’s infrastructure. Rebuild middle-class opportunities. Deal with global climate change. End the use of torture. Get serious about green energy. Restore our stolen liberties. Stop polluters. And, generally, reinstate the Common Good as America’s governing ethic.
"As Obama himself often said on the campaign trail, he is not the change. We are. By electing him, we opened the White House door to the possibility of change. Now we must see it through."
This kind of collective effort is part of what I, personally, mean when I talk of social responsibility. Effecting political change by continuing to work, noodge, speak out, demand and protest. Individual responsibility includes doing so in an honest, researched, thought-through and consistent fashion.
Which takes me back to the issue of gay and lesbian civil rights. Like much of the rest of America, I've seen "Proposition 8: The Musical," which I think is a brilliant piece of agit-prop. If by some chance you haven't encountered this three-minute tour de force, check it out on YouTube. Touching back upon the December 2008 Hightower Lowdown, which disappointed me by not addressing the horrific anti-gay legislation that was passed in four states even as Obama was elected, it did trash James Dobson and his Focus on the Family Christian-right organization for publishing an apocalyptic anti-Obama brochure right before the election. Written from the perspective of a shell-shocked "Christian" chronicling the abominations of four years of the Obama administration in the year 2012, one of its many fear-mongering prophecies was that a liberalized Supreme Court would force schools to teach first-graders that homosexuality is good.
Well, that set me to thinking. Of course the Dobson brochure is despicable, and largely ludicrous. But somehow it made something very clear to me. I think homosexuality, in and of itself, isn't good and isn't bad. It just is. Just like heterosexuality, in and of itself, isn't good or bad, it just is. Some of us are 100% homosexual, some of us are 100% heterosexual, and some of us fall somewhere inbetween. I've come to believe that each individual's possible spectrum of sexual preferences is almost as hard-wired as hair and eye color. Which means legislating discrimination against gays and lesbians is about as sensible as legislating discrimination against blond-haired or green-eyed people. Whether someone is gay, or blond, or green-eyed does not determine whether or not that individual is a decent person.
The only factor that may affect the character of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people is a societal one, the still far too commonly parrotted lie that anyone who isn't easily classifiable as "straight" is somehow "less moral" than "the rest of us." If as you grow up you realize that you are homosexual, or attracted to either gender, or don't fit with the sex characteristics with which you were born, you can't escape being bombarded by the societal expectation that you will be a "lesser" or "bad" person. Since expectations do shape us up to a point, those who aren't vanilla/straight have a harder row to hoe -- they have to fight against a whole set of external and internalized expectations of failure (much like people of color or women in general) on top of all the common vicissitudes and adversities.
Nonetheless, a large part of every identifiable population -- whether it's white straight women, gays, African-Americans, or transgenders -- consists of plain old good people. People who are honest with their friends, loyal to their partners and children, responsible about their duties to themselves, their families, their community, their employers or employees. Whatever the difficulties we face, we are capable of demonstrating good character. The capacity to live as a responsible human being is not affected by our sexual preference or orientation. Unfortunately, the capacity to participate equally in the benefits offered by our society still is.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Yuletide Thoughts
It's December 2nd, and holiday preparations here are already in full swing. I am happy to report that I've made two batches of mulled wine and my gift procurement is just about completed, which leaves a lot of wrapping, mailing and delivery in my future. We have many of what I like to refer to as Goddess-children, some too grown up to be "gifted" but still due a hand-written and heart-felt missive, and others in the under-21 "actually need stuff" category. Since we usually send presents to the siblings of these kids as well, that's a lot to remember and take care of in a timely fashion. What good is a gift if it doesn't make it to its destination in time to be waiting under the tree?
But for me, the central holiday of the "holiday season" is the Winter Solstice, when I tend to do ritual with like-minded friends or as a solitary; then my spouse and I, both with European roots, go on to celebrate on "Holy Night," the German Weihnachten, December 24th. So I thought it might be fun to share some information about the abundant Pagan DNA of the winter holidays!
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the North Pole tilts farthest away from the sun during Earth's annual journey around it on December 21st or 22nd, making that the shortest daytime in Europe and North America. The sun appears to stand still at a low point in the sky. Our Pagan European ancestors mostly believed that the sun traveled around the Earth, and to them it looked as though the sun was moving away from the Earth, and their rituals were about keeping the sun, and thus all of life, from leaving their world forever. They might have been wrong about which planet revolved around which other one, but the image they associated with this time of year, the wheel, is apt: and the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian terms for "wheel," hweol and jul, are the origins of the term "Yule." At Winter Solstice the wheel turns, Earth ends the half of its annual journey that brings shorter days and begins the half that brings longer ones.
In Northern European Yule rituals in pre-Christian times, Solstice dancers danced in a circle in the deosil, or sun-wise, direction, what we call clockwise. They used sword-blades or staves to form a six-pointed star, a sun shape, asking the sun to turn back, come closer. Another common custom, still observed in parts of Scandinavia, the Celtic and Baltic countries and Russia, was to build a huge bonfire, or a chain of bonfires stretching from one hilltop to another - meant to attract the sun by showing it its own likeness. When the days grew noticeably longer, around December 24th or 25th, people relaxed and began to look forward to another spring and summer. Decorating our homes with lights at Yuletide makes perfectly good Pagan sense.
When Christianity arrived in Europe, the Christian authorities found it impossible to suppress the traditional Winter Solstice celebrations across Europe and the Middle East, all about light and new life. The Egyptians honored Isis and her birthing of their Sun God Horus; the Germanic peoples caled the night of Dec. 24 modranikht or Mother Night, the night their Great Goddess gave birth to Her son, one of the many forms of the Green Man or Harvest God who becomes the Goddess's consort in the spring and dies at the time of harvest, to be reborn again each Yule. The Persians, and many converts to their beliefs throughout the Roman Empire, celebrated the birth of Mithras, their God of Light, on Dec. 25th, shouting "Sol Invictus!" (Unconquered Sun!) Romans celebrated the Saturnalia, the twelve-day festival of Saturn and Ops, exchanging gifts, visiting friends and family, dancing, feasting, & temporarily reversing social roles: masters served slaves, for example.
Some of these customs and dates sound familiar, and they should. Astronomers and historians are pretty sure that the historical Jesus was born in the spring of the year 6 of the Christian Era, when the planets we now call Mars, Jupiter and Saturn came close together and likely formed what we now call the Star of Bethlehem. But during the first few hundred years of Christianity, Christians celebrated Jesus's birthday according to their local beliefs: on January 1st, January 6th, March 29th, April 20th or 21st, May 20th, or September 29th. It wasn't until the fourth century of the Christian Era that Pope Julius I ended the discussion by simply declaring that Jesus's birthday was on Dec. 25th. The Catholic Church's objective in declaring December 25th the official birthday was to pre-empt and push aside all the Pagan holidays that clustered around the Winter Solstice.
A Pope could get away with changing Jesus's birthday by decree, but it turned out there was no getting away from the Pagan customs that saturate Yule. One of these was the display of evergreens, symbols of ever-returning life. The Celts performed a Winter Solstice ritual that was a staged combat or dance pitting the Holly King, symbolic Lord of Winter and shorter days, against an Ivy King or Queen. Evergreen ivy often grows on oak trees, ancient symbols of summer. The eventual victory of the Ivy in the combat or dance heralded that longer days and warmer seasons on their way.
For many centuries evergreen trees (pine or fir) were brought into Northern European homes and temples at Yule, lit with candles, topped with a sun symbol, and decorated with ornaments made of straw, nuts and other foods to ask for a good harvest next year. The Yule Tree never went out of fashion with the Germans and Scandinavians, who still call it the Weihnachtsbaum or "Holy Night Tree." It came back to the British Isles in the Victorian Era (mid-1800s) and quickly spread to North America. The preference for a tree is rooted (bad pun) in the common Western cultural concept of a "World Tree" or "Tree of Life." The Christians renamed the Yule or Holy Night Tree, calling it the "Christmas Tree," and the sun at the top became a "Star of Bethlehem."
Wreaths also date from Pagan times and symbolize the constantly repeating wheel of the year, the unbroken circle of life. They are traditionally made of evergreens and often include bay laurel, sacred to the Greco-Roman sun god Apollo. Fruit and nuts decorated the wreaths; in wealthy homes, these were sometimes gilded, to invoke the sun and prosperity.
One Pagan decoration with a long history in Northern Europe and especially the British Isles had to wait eons before the Christian authorities let it reappear in homes and finally even in some churches. Mistletoe, the sacred plant of the Celtic Druids, grew on the equally sacred oak trees. It was held to be particularly holy because it bloomed sun-yellow very late in the year, and stayed covered in abundant berries when fruit was sparse. Druid priests cut it ritually with golden sickles, letting it fall from the trees to be caught by the people, not with their hands but in the folds of their clothing. The Druids then blessed the mistletoe and it was hung over the entrances of people's homes to ward off evil. Anyone who entered a house and passed under the mistletoe was greeted with a kiss of friendship: that's where our "kissing under the mistletoe" comes from.
The Yule Log tradition is linked to the Solstice fires. In Scandinavia and Britain, until quite recent times, the Yule Log was a sturdy tree trunk that had fallen without being cut down, for to cut a tree down would anger the fairies. The log was supposed to be big enough to burn throughout Yule, which in Britain meant for thirteen days. Yes, the good old Pagan 13: there are 13 moons (or menstrual periods) in a year! If you count them up, the so-called "Twelve Days of Christmas" are really twelve Holy Nights dividing 13 days, December 25th to January 6th. You can even make it fourteen days by adding the Germanic Holy Night on December 24th! A small piece of the previous year's Yule Log was always preserved and used to light the current one, a symbol of continuity. One survival of the Yule Log are the log-shaped cakes or Buches de Noel still baked or bought by many households for the holidays.
You may well have heard in old carols or elsewhere about the Boar's Head; there's a British holiday custom of ceremonially serving one at Yule or Christmas. This is an ongoing tribute to Freya, Scandinavian Goddess of love and war, to whom pigs are sacred. It's rooted in the fact that a large part of Britain was invaded and settled by Scandinavians during the first millennium of the Christian era. Christmas pudding, another British custom, known in the U.S. largely because of the novels of Charles Dickens, is another definite solar symbol: decorated with holly, round, made with fruit and nuts, and set afire before it is eaten!
An omnipresent symbol of the winter holidays in our times is Santa Claus. His name is a corruption of Saint Nicholas, who was a long-ago Christian bishop in what is now Turkey. Santa has little to do with Saint Nicholas, but he's more than just a commercial figure trying to get us to spend too much. He continues the gift-giving tradition of the Saturnalia, and his colors, interestingly, are the white, red and black of the Triple Goddess.
The European Santa Claus sometimes still wears a bishop's mitre and vestments and carries a bishop's staff. But he's accompanied by a strange dark figure, whom the Germans call Knecht Ruprecht, the servant Ruprecht. This "servant" actually represents the elves and fairies the old Pagans across Europe thought abounded at Yuletide; he also stands for the Dark or Green Man, the symbol of the Earth's eternal fertility. He's the one who's said to deal out punishments to the children who've been bad in the past year: lumps of coal and switches. But he also hands out gifts for his "master."
This idea of rewards and punishments being handed out at Yuletide is of ancient lineage. Before Christianity arrived in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, the Scandinavians believed that Odin, chief God of the Norse pantheon, rode out among humans at Yule for that purpose. Odin rode Sleipnir or "Never Sleeps," a horse with eight legs. Interestingly, our Santa Claus rides in a sleigh drawn by eight reindeer. The number 8 may well refer back to Sleipnir, while the reindeer is a symbol of the Hornèd God, one of the earliest shapes given to male deities in Europe.
So the familiar image of Santa in his sleigh refers to elves, to Odin, and to the Hornèd God! No wonder some US fundamentalist Christians claim that Santa is an anagram of Satan! All kidding aside, there's no devil, but quite a bit of the old Pagan Yuletide spirit in Santa Claus.
For example, did you ever wonder where we get the Christmas custom of hanging stockings over our fireplaces for Santa to fill with gifts after he climbs down our chimneys? Yep, it's Pagan. It links Santa to the solar Yule-fire which ought to be burning on Yuletide hearths and associates him, like the Hornèd God, with fertility. Filling empty stockings with gifts is a crop fertility charm, like a ripe grain-ear replacing the hollow straw left on the threshing-floor after harvest.
But even though I've gotten reasonably fond of Santa, I resent his complete take-over of Yule in the US. He's popular in Europe, too, but there his work is done by December 6th. Children carefully leaves pair of shoes outside their bedroom doors on the night of December 5th, filled with hay for Saint Nick's horse, and on the morning of the 6th they find the shoes filled with nuts and oranges and little gifts: a ritual very similar to our Christmas stockings. After that, the European Saint Nicholas's work is done. The gift-givers and Yuletide spirits who rule most of the holiday season in Europe were, and are, female.
In Sweden there's Lucia. Early in the morning on Dec. 13th, which the Swedes call "Little Yule," the oldest daughter in each house puts on a white robe and a crown of whortleberry branches and lit candles. She goes from bedroom to bedroom, waking her parents and her sisters and brothers and bringing them coffee and delicious round saffron-flavored cakes known as Lussekatter, or Lucia cats. During the day there are Lucia parades, with Lucia maidens and Star Boys, young men wearing white robes and tall "wizard" hats, the symbols of wisdom, decorated with golden stars or suns. Lucia means "light." Though the day supposedly celebrates a gorily martyred Christian saint, it's easy to read between the lines. Lucia Day is another Solstice ritual, and the Lussekatter, those round sun-colored cakes, point once again to Freya, the bright Goddess, who drove about in a chariot drawn by cats.
In Germany, the big Christmas gifts, as opposed to the small tokens left by Saint Nicholas, come courtesy of a small female angel who rides a tiny deer (another invocation of the reindeer spirit). She's called Christkindl, the Christ Child, but she's definitely not the Baby Jesus. In German homes, the tree is set up and decorated on December 24th in a locked living room, and the children are not allowed to see it until after dark. It's believed that it's the Christkindl who leaves the children's gifts and rings her silver bell, the signal that they may finally come in and see the tree! When they do, a window is open a crack: the Christkindl has just flown away on her magic deer, sometimes leaving a lock of angel-hair in the window-latch as "proof."
The Christkindl has ancient roots. Before Christianity, the one who traveled from one German home to another at Yule was Berchta, the Crone Goddess of weaving and spinning. Berchta took the souls of all children who died young into her care. She made her Yuletide rounds accompanied by a throng of child ghosts and a host of elves and fairies. She expected to find pancakes set out to feed her and her followers, just like Santa expects milk and cookies! Berchta could be harsh, punishing laziness and stinginess with plagues and destruction: but she was also very generous in rewarding hard work and kindness. Long before Saint Nicholas, she left gifts not in everyday shoes but in slipper-shaped cakes that had been baked specially in the hope that she would fill them. Someone very good at spinning and weaving might even find her spindle turned into solid gold. Gold? Spinning? We're back to the sun and its dance around the earth!
In Russia it's Kolyada, an elf-maiden in a sleigh, who brings the Yuletide gifts. And Italy has stuck to the ancient image of the female gift-giver too. Befana, an old woman always shown with a broom & dressed in many of the traditional accouterments of a witch, throws her presents down the chimneys (a recurring theme!) of Italian homes the night before January 6th. The Catholic Church explains her presence by saying that the Three Kings or Wise Men stopped at her door on their way to see the Christ Child but she refused to go with them when they invited her to come along, saying she had to finish sweeping the floor first. Befana's gift-giving is supposedly tied to her trying to catch up to the Wise Men and see the baby Jesus: she gives gifts to all children in the hope that she'll somehow leave one at Jesus's house. But she's closely related to Berchta, and explicitly witch-like, flying through the air on a broomstick to distribute her bounty.
Our New Year's Eve falls right in the middle of the Anglo-Saxon "Twelve" (really Thirteen) Days of Yuletide, now subsumed in Christmas. In much of Europe, pigs on New Year's Eve were and are thought to bring good luck, and no wonder, since they're sacred to many Goddesses: Norse Freya, of course, and Celtic Cerridwen and Greek Demeter, just to name a few. Another customary bringer of good fortune is the chimney sweep. He, or in some cases she, is the most recent incarnation of Yuletide deity: associated with the chimney, that is, the solar fire, and also disguised in the black uniform complete with top hat (another version of the high hat of wisdom) and a layer of soot. Disguises have been part of Yuletide from its ancient beginnings, as in the ritual dance of the Holly and Ivy and the role-playing and role-exchange of the Roman Saturnalia.
In ancient Britain, Wales and Scotland, the mummers or mimers performed and still perform at this time of year, as well as during Carnival, at May Day and at harvest time. They often dance a traditional Morris Dance: "Morris" is a corruption of the word "Moorish," a term medieval England used for all things non-Christian. One figure common at Yuletide is the Hoden or Hobby Horse. The word "Hoden" probably derives from the name Woden or Odin, taking us back to the chief god of the Scandinavians and Germans, and the Hoden or Hobby Horse harks back to the solar, eight-legged, sleepless steed sacred to Odin. "Hoden" is also German for testicles; the hobby horse is a fertility charm. In the depths of winter, the ritual chasing of young women and men by the Hobby Horse to mark them with tar or soot, the black color of earth and fertility, is often part of mumming.
Yuletide mumming isn't confined to British Isles. Disguises made of greenery, rags and fur, and elaborate masks, surface throughout Europe. Mumming and "guising," or disguising, and other evocations of the Green Man/Hornèd God, begin at Yuletide and erupt again at Carnival in February.
The US has its own versions of the mumming tradition. In Philadelphia, New Year's Eve brings the Mummers' Parade, a typically American combination of British and German traditions. A German-heritage Mummer moved to Mobile, Alabama in the early 1800s and started the celebration of Carnival or "Mardi Gras" there. It quickly spread to other southern cities: the most famous Mardi Gras is of course that celebrated in New Orleans, a flamboyant blend of French, African, English, Caribbean and German elements.
Fireworks just after midnight, at the very beginning of New Year's Day, are a common modern substitute for the Yule bonfire in much of central Europe; it's a custom now catching on in the US as well. And in Scandinavia, and the US in Minnesota and other states with lots of inhabitants of Scandinavian descent, burning the Yule or Christmas trees on the "last day of Christmas," January 6th, is their substitute for the old Yule Log or Yule bonfire.
Hope you've had fun discovering the origins of many of our "Christmas" customs! I wish you Good Yule!
But for me, the central holiday of the "holiday season" is the Winter Solstice, when I tend to do ritual with like-minded friends or as a solitary; then my spouse and I, both with European roots, go on to celebrate on "Holy Night," the German Weihnachten, December 24th. So I thought it might be fun to share some information about the abundant Pagan DNA of the winter holidays!
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the North Pole tilts farthest away from the sun during Earth's annual journey around it on December 21st or 22nd, making that the shortest daytime in Europe and North America. The sun appears to stand still at a low point in the sky. Our Pagan European ancestors mostly believed that the sun traveled around the Earth, and to them it looked as though the sun was moving away from the Earth, and their rituals were about keeping the sun, and thus all of life, from leaving their world forever. They might have been wrong about which planet revolved around which other one, but the image they associated with this time of year, the wheel, is apt: and the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian terms for "wheel," hweol and jul, are the origins of the term "Yule." At Winter Solstice the wheel turns, Earth ends the half of its annual journey that brings shorter days and begins the half that brings longer ones.
In Northern European Yule rituals in pre-Christian times, Solstice dancers danced in a circle in the deosil, or sun-wise, direction, what we call clockwise. They used sword-blades or staves to form a six-pointed star, a sun shape, asking the sun to turn back, come closer. Another common custom, still observed in parts of Scandinavia, the Celtic and Baltic countries and Russia, was to build a huge bonfire, or a chain of bonfires stretching from one hilltop to another - meant to attract the sun by showing it its own likeness. When the days grew noticeably longer, around December 24th or 25th, people relaxed and began to look forward to another spring and summer. Decorating our homes with lights at Yuletide makes perfectly good Pagan sense.
When Christianity arrived in Europe, the Christian authorities found it impossible to suppress the traditional Winter Solstice celebrations across Europe and the Middle East, all about light and new life. The Egyptians honored Isis and her birthing of their Sun God Horus; the Germanic peoples caled the night of Dec. 24 modranikht or Mother Night, the night their Great Goddess gave birth to Her son, one of the many forms of the Green Man or Harvest God who becomes the Goddess's consort in the spring and dies at the time of harvest, to be reborn again each Yule. The Persians, and many converts to their beliefs throughout the Roman Empire, celebrated the birth of Mithras, their God of Light, on Dec. 25th, shouting "Sol Invictus!" (Unconquered Sun!) Romans celebrated the Saturnalia, the twelve-day festival of Saturn and Ops, exchanging gifts, visiting friends and family, dancing, feasting, & temporarily reversing social roles: masters served slaves, for example.
Some of these customs and dates sound familiar, and they should. Astronomers and historians are pretty sure that the historical Jesus was born in the spring of the year 6 of the Christian Era, when the planets we now call Mars, Jupiter and Saturn came close together and likely formed what we now call the Star of Bethlehem. But during the first few hundred years of Christianity, Christians celebrated Jesus's birthday according to their local beliefs: on January 1st, January 6th, March 29th, April 20th or 21st, May 20th, or September 29th. It wasn't until the fourth century of the Christian Era that Pope Julius I ended the discussion by simply declaring that Jesus's birthday was on Dec. 25th. The Catholic Church's objective in declaring December 25th the official birthday was to pre-empt and push aside all the Pagan holidays that clustered around the Winter Solstice.
A Pope could get away with changing Jesus's birthday by decree, but it turned out there was no getting away from the Pagan customs that saturate Yule. One of these was the display of evergreens, symbols of ever-returning life. The Celts performed a Winter Solstice ritual that was a staged combat or dance pitting the Holly King, symbolic Lord of Winter and shorter days, against an Ivy King or Queen. Evergreen ivy often grows on oak trees, ancient symbols of summer. The eventual victory of the Ivy in the combat or dance heralded that longer days and warmer seasons on their way.
For many centuries evergreen trees (pine or fir) were brought into Northern European homes and temples at Yule, lit with candles, topped with a sun symbol, and decorated with ornaments made of straw, nuts and other foods to ask for a good harvest next year. The Yule Tree never went out of fashion with the Germans and Scandinavians, who still call it the Weihnachtsbaum or "Holy Night Tree." It came back to the British Isles in the Victorian Era (mid-1800s) and quickly spread to North America. The preference for a tree is rooted (bad pun) in the common Western cultural concept of a "World Tree" or "Tree of Life." The Christians renamed the Yule or Holy Night Tree, calling it the "Christmas Tree," and the sun at the top became a "Star of Bethlehem."
Wreaths also date from Pagan times and symbolize the constantly repeating wheel of the year, the unbroken circle of life. They are traditionally made of evergreens and often include bay laurel, sacred to the Greco-Roman sun god Apollo. Fruit and nuts decorated the wreaths; in wealthy homes, these were sometimes gilded, to invoke the sun and prosperity.
One Pagan decoration with a long history in Northern Europe and especially the British Isles had to wait eons before the Christian authorities let it reappear in homes and finally even in some churches. Mistletoe, the sacred plant of the Celtic Druids, grew on the equally sacred oak trees. It was held to be particularly holy because it bloomed sun-yellow very late in the year, and stayed covered in abundant berries when fruit was sparse. Druid priests cut it ritually with golden sickles, letting it fall from the trees to be caught by the people, not with their hands but in the folds of their clothing. The Druids then blessed the mistletoe and it was hung over the entrances of people's homes to ward off evil. Anyone who entered a house and passed under the mistletoe was greeted with a kiss of friendship: that's where our "kissing under the mistletoe" comes from.
The Yule Log tradition is linked to the Solstice fires. In Scandinavia and Britain, until quite recent times, the Yule Log was a sturdy tree trunk that had fallen without being cut down, for to cut a tree down would anger the fairies. The log was supposed to be big enough to burn throughout Yule, which in Britain meant for thirteen days. Yes, the good old Pagan 13: there are 13 moons (or menstrual periods) in a year! If you count them up, the so-called "Twelve Days of Christmas" are really twelve Holy Nights dividing 13 days, December 25th to January 6th. You can even make it fourteen days by adding the Germanic Holy Night on December 24th! A small piece of the previous year's Yule Log was always preserved and used to light the current one, a symbol of continuity. One survival of the Yule Log are the log-shaped cakes or Buches de Noel still baked or bought by many households for the holidays.
You may well have heard in old carols or elsewhere about the Boar's Head; there's a British holiday custom of ceremonially serving one at Yule or Christmas. This is an ongoing tribute to Freya, Scandinavian Goddess of love and war, to whom pigs are sacred. It's rooted in the fact that a large part of Britain was invaded and settled by Scandinavians during the first millennium of the Christian era. Christmas pudding, another British custom, known in the U.S. largely because of the novels of Charles Dickens, is another definite solar symbol: decorated with holly, round, made with fruit and nuts, and set afire before it is eaten!
An omnipresent symbol of the winter holidays in our times is Santa Claus. His name is a corruption of Saint Nicholas, who was a long-ago Christian bishop in what is now Turkey. Santa has little to do with Saint Nicholas, but he's more than just a commercial figure trying to get us to spend too much. He continues the gift-giving tradition of the Saturnalia, and his colors, interestingly, are the white, red and black of the Triple Goddess.
The European Santa Claus sometimes still wears a bishop's mitre and vestments and carries a bishop's staff. But he's accompanied by a strange dark figure, whom the Germans call Knecht Ruprecht, the servant Ruprecht. This "servant" actually represents the elves and fairies the old Pagans across Europe thought abounded at Yuletide; he also stands for the Dark or Green Man, the symbol of the Earth's eternal fertility. He's the one who's said to deal out punishments to the children who've been bad in the past year: lumps of coal and switches. But he also hands out gifts for his "master."
This idea of rewards and punishments being handed out at Yuletide is of ancient lineage. Before Christianity arrived in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, the Scandinavians believed that Odin, chief God of the Norse pantheon, rode out among humans at Yule for that purpose. Odin rode Sleipnir or "Never Sleeps," a horse with eight legs. Interestingly, our Santa Claus rides in a sleigh drawn by eight reindeer. The number 8 may well refer back to Sleipnir, while the reindeer is a symbol of the Hornèd God, one of the earliest shapes given to male deities in Europe.
So the familiar image of Santa in his sleigh refers to elves, to Odin, and to the Hornèd God! No wonder some US fundamentalist Christians claim that Santa is an anagram of Satan! All kidding aside, there's no devil, but quite a bit of the old Pagan Yuletide spirit in Santa Claus.
For example, did you ever wonder where we get the Christmas custom of hanging stockings over our fireplaces for Santa to fill with gifts after he climbs down our chimneys? Yep, it's Pagan. It links Santa to the solar Yule-fire which ought to be burning on Yuletide hearths and associates him, like the Hornèd God, with fertility. Filling empty stockings with gifts is a crop fertility charm, like a ripe grain-ear replacing the hollow straw left on the threshing-floor after harvest.
But even though I've gotten reasonably fond of Santa, I resent his complete take-over of Yule in the US. He's popular in Europe, too, but there his work is done by December 6th. Children carefully leaves pair of shoes outside their bedroom doors on the night of December 5th, filled with hay for Saint Nick's horse, and on the morning of the 6th they find the shoes filled with nuts and oranges and little gifts: a ritual very similar to our Christmas stockings. After that, the European Saint Nicholas's work is done. The gift-givers and Yuletide spirits who rule most of the holiday season in Europe were, and are, female.
In Sweden there's Lucia. Early in the morning on Dec. 13th, which the Swedes call "Little Yule," the oldest daughter in each house puts on a white robe and a crown of whortleberry branches and lit candles. She goes from bedroom to bedroom, waking her parents and her sisters and brothers and bringing them coffee and delicious round saffron-flavored cakes known as Lussekatter, or Lucia cats. During the day there are Lucia parades, with Lucia maidens and Star Boys, young men wearing white robes and tall "wizard" hats, the symbols of wisdom, decorated with golden stars or suns. Lucia means "light." Though the day supposedly celebrates a gorily martyred Christian saint, it's easy to read between the lines. Lucia Day is another Solstice ritual, and the Lussekatter, those round sun-colored cakes, point once again to Freya, the bright Goddess, who drove about in a chariot drawn by cats.
In Germany, the big Christmas gifts, as opposed to the small tokens left by Saint Nicholas, come courtesy of a small female angel who rides a tiny deer (another invocation of the reindeer spirit). She's called Christkindl, the Christ Child, but she's definitely not the Baby Jesus. In German homes, the tree is set up and decorated on December 24th in a locked living room, and the children are not allowed to see it until after dark. It's believed that it's the Christkindl who leaves the children's gifts and rings her silver bell, the signal that they may finally come in and see the tree! When they do, a window is open a crack: the Christkindl has just flown away on her magic deer, sometimes leaving a lock of angel-hair in the window-latch as "proof."
The Christkindl has ancient roots. Before Christianity, the one who traveled from one German home to another at Yule was Berchta, the Crone Goddess of weaving and spinning. Berchta took the souls of all children who died young into her care. She made her Yuletide rounds accompanied by a throng of child ghosts and a host of elves and fairies. She expected to find pancakes set out to feed her and her followers, just like Santa expects milk and cookies! Berchta could be harsh, punishing laziness and stinginess with plagues and destruction: but she was also very generous in rewarding hard work and kindness. Long before Saint Nicholas, she left gifts not in everyday shoes but in slipper-shaped cakes that had been baked specially in the hope that she would fill them. Someone very good at spinning and weaving might even find her spindle turned into solid gold. Gold? Spinning? We're back to the sun and its dance around the earth!
In Russia it's Kolyada, an elf-maiden in a sleigh, who brings the Yuletide gifts. And Italy has stuck to the ancient image of the female gift-giver too. Befana, an old woman always shown with a broom & dressed in many of the traditional accouterments of a witch, throws her presents down the chimneys (a recurring theme!) of Italian homes the night before January 6th. The Catholic Church explains her presence by saying that the Three Kings or Wise Men stopped at her door on their way to see the Christ Child but she refused to go with them when they invited her to come along, saying she had to finish sweeping the floor first. Befana's gift-giving is supposedly tied to her trying to catch up to the Wise Men and see the baby Jesus: she gives gifts to all children in the hope that she'll somehow leave one at Jesus's house. But she's closely related to Berchta, and explicitly witch-like, flying through the air on a broomstick to distribute her bounty.
Our New Year's Eve falls right in the middle of the Anglo-Saxon "Twelve" (really Thirteen) Days of Yuletide, now subsumed in Christmas. In much of Europe, pigs on New Year's Eve were and are thought to bring good luck, and no wonder, since they're sacred to many Goddesses: Norse Freya, of course, and Celtic Cerridwen and Greek Demeter, just to name a few. Another customary bringer of good fortune is the chimney sweep. He, or in some cases she, is the most recent incarnation of Yuletide deity: associated with the chimney, that is, the solar fire, and also disguised in the black uniform complete with top hat (another version of the high hat of wisdom) and a layer of soot. Disguises have been part of Yuletide from its ancient beginnings, as in the ritual dance of the Holly and Ivy and the role-playing and role-exchange of the Roman Saturnalia.
In ancient Britain, Wales and Scotland, the mummers or mimers performed and still perform at this time of year, as well as during Carnival, at May Day and at harvest time. They often dance a traditional Morris Dance: "Morris" is a corruption of the word "Moorish," a term medieval England used for all things non-Christian. One figure common at Yuletide is the Hoden or Hobby Horse. The word "Hoden" probably derives from the name Woden or Odin, taking us back to the chief god of the Scandinavians and Germans, and the Hoden or Hobby Horse harks back to the solar, eight-legged, sleepless steed sacred to Odin. "Hoden" is also German for testicles; the hobby horse is a fertility charm. In the depths of winter, the ritual chasing of young women and men by the Hobby Horse to mark them with tar or soot, the black color of earth and fertility, is often part of mumming.
Yuletide mumming isn't confined to British Isles. Disguises made of greenery, rags and fur, and elaborate masks, surface throughout Europe. Mumming and "guising," or disguising, and other evocations of the Green Man/Hornèd God, begin at Yuletide and erupt again at Carnival in February.
The US has its own versions of the mumming tradition. In Philadelphia, New Year's Eve brings the Mummers' Parade, a typically American combination of British and German traditions. A German-heritage Mummer moved to Mobile, Alabama in the early 1800s and started the celebration of Carnival or "Mardi Gras" there. It quickly spread to other southern cities: the most famous Mardi Gras is of course that celebrated in New Orleans, a flamboyant blend of French, African, English, Caribbean and German elements.
Fireworks just after midnight, at the very beginning of New Year's Day, are a common modern substitute for the Yule bonfire in much of central Europe; it's a custom now catching on in the US as well. And in Scandinavia, and the US in Minnesota and other states with lots of inhabitants of Scandinavian descent, burning the Yule or Christmas trees on the "last day of Christmas," January 6th, is their substitute for the old Yule Log or Yule bonfire.
Hope you've had fun discovering the origins of many of our "Christmas" customs! I wish you Good Yule!
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Patriarchy and Dualism: Anti-Liberty, Anti-Life
This is an excerpt from a presentation I made a few years ago at a national conference:
Patriarchy literally means “the rule of the fathers,” and its core concept is the idea that all men are born superior to all women. As Shulamith Firestone put it in her classic book, The Dialectic of Sex, this sexual class system, which in its purest form demands the literal enslavement of women and girls [see Nicholas Kristof's editorial in today's (11/30/08) New York Times on the prevalence of throwing acid in women's faces to punish them and keep them down in Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc., if you think female slavery is over], serves as the model for all other systems of oppression, such as racism and homophobia.
The key mode of patriarchy is domination. Scholar Riane Eisler has named patriarchy “dominator culture.” Dominator culture can conceive of power in only one form, as “Power Over” others. Every imaginable relationship, including that between parent and child, and that between lovers or spouses, is defined in terms of dominance and submission. Someone has to be “on top,” and someone else has to be “on the bottom.”
To make it easier to achieve this, dominator culture is saturated with dualism, a mode of thinking we are taught from the cradle. Dualism insists that everything boils down to an either/or choice – that you can never have your cake and eat it too. There are only two acceptable or possible answers to any given question, and these two answers are literally poles apart: polarized. They’re opposites. One answer is labeled entirely right and good, and the other is seen as entirely wrong and bad. Needless to say, dualism makes for gross over-simplifications and generalizations, and twists and distorts everything it touches. With a little bit of imagination, in most instances one can perceive a much broader spectrum of choices, and often more than a single option could be embraced. But that wouldn’t fit with the system of “tops” and “bottoms,” where one thing must always be “better” than another.
Patriarchal religions are used to justify and preach this system, and to legitimize the persecution and often extermination of those who resist it, both inside and outside a given culture. For the first two thousand years or so of patriarchy, these religions featured both Gods and Goddesses, but the “top god” in patriarchal religion was always male. The Goddesses were defined as wives, sisters, mothers, love interests or daughters of the male gods, to make sure that ordinary women didn’t get any ideas about freeing themselves from being defined as the possessions of men. For some patriarchs this didn’t go far enough, so about three thousand years ago they started to preach that there was only one god: male, of course. Eventually, several different religions of this type: male monotheism: developed. My friend the feminist art historian calls it “mono-male-theism.” However you prefer to arrange the syllables, the term proclaims: “Just For Men.”
Patriarchy has been with us in the West – Europe and North America – for only about 5,000 years, give or take half a millennium or so. Human beings have existed for much longer than that: hundreds of thousands of years. Patriarchy entered a Europe where many other cultures already existed, cultures that operated with a very different kind of mind-set. These were what Riane Eisler calls “partnership societies.” Partnership societies were quite cooperative and evolved, with high levels of creative sophistication. Their social structures were generally matrilineal – that is, children traced their descent through their mother back to her mother and so forth. These cultures were comparatively non-violent: they did not “focus on the power to inflict pain and kill, but the power to give life and pleasure.”[i] Their religions centered around a Goddess. The earliest European and Middle Eastern images of the Divine Female are up to 400,000 years old.
These partnership cultures were not in the dark about how babies are conceived: they were aware of both the male and the female role in reproduction. Partnership spirituality usually thought of “the divine in both female and male form,” but “the male deities were not associated with thunderbolts or weapons (like Jehovah or Zeus)” and they were, at most, equal to the Goddesses. In partnership cultures, “masculinity was not synonymous with domination and conquest.”[ii]
Patriarchy is a recent human invention. Despite what its religions preach, it is not natural, it is not inevitable, and it has never been “the only thing that’s out there.” There are alternatives to it, and all human-made systems can be changed. In the relatively brief span of its existence, patriarchy has already gone just about the whole way toward proving itself unviable. This comes easily to dominator culture because it is fundamentally “anti-life,” so anti-life that it has made uncounted life-forms extinct and now threatens even the survival of the human species.
Dominator religions preach the unlimited exploitation of our planet Earth, proclaiming that the world was created for “man” to use, and use up if he so chooses, since some otherworldly Heaven or Paradise is his “real home.” Their expectation is that “mankind” will end by causing global disaster, that human beings are incapable of self-control and common sense. In my local paper in May 2002, one Mike Hosey, a Christian, confidently stated:
“Christianity, in general, believes the world to be a lost and dying place in need of salvation; a place where people need to put their faith in God, and not in themselves.”[iii]
I totally disagree with this view of the world and of humanity, and I believe there is real reason for hope. As Riane Eisler points out, in the West, over the past 300 years and more, a historical continuum has developed that is moving us away from absolute dominator culture.[iv] In the 17th and 18th centuries, the “divinely ordained” rule of kings and emperors over their “subjects” was challenged and largely overthrown. The early feminist movement in the 19th century chipped away at the control of men over women and children, while the abolitionist movement and pacifist movement challenged the entrenched traditions of the enslavement of one race by another, and the use of force by one nation to control another. In the past 100-plus years, civil rights, organized labor, anti-colonial, women’s liberation, indigenous people’s rights, and gay rights movements have arisen to oppose further aspects of domination. A relatively new and very important movement is now taking a stand against domination and violence in intimate relationships: rape, battering, child abuse and incest. Putting an end to intimate violence is central to moving toward a partnership society.
There is no mistaking that this “shift toward partnership has been fiercely resisted every step of the way.”[v] But if you look at the overall trend, we have moved a long distance away from all-out domination and toward partnership in a relatively short time. We are presently in a backlash phase, what Eisler calls a “periodic regression toward the dominator model.”[vi] Yet the irony of globalization is that the world has become so small that people cannot really avoid the knowledge of our mutual world-wide interdependence. We are being forced out of the denial that is typical of dominator culture by phenomena we cannot ignore, such as global warming. The world’s systems of domination are only able to escalate these problems, and as a result it is becoming inescapably obvious that these systems are counter-productive.
[i] Eisler, The Power of Partnership, p. 189
[ii] Eisler, p. 189
[iii] Mike Hosey, in an editorial on the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic church, The Gainesville Sun, May 20, 2002.
[iv] Eisler, pp. 94-95.
[v] Eisler, p. 95.
[vi] Eisler, p. 95.
Patriarchy literally means “the rule of the fathers,” and its core concept is the idea that all men are born superior to all women. As Shulamith Firestone put it in her classic book, The Dialectic of Sex, this sexual class system, which in its purest form demands the literal enslavement of women and girls [see Nicholas Kristof's editorial in today's (11/30/08) New York Times on the prevalence of throwing acid in women's faces to punish them and keep them down in Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc., if you think female slavery is over], serves as the model for all other systems of oppression, such as racism and homophobia.
The key mode of patriarchy is domination. Scholar Riane Eisler has named patriarchy “dominator culture.” Dominator culture can conceive of power in only one form, as “Power Over” others. Every imaginable relationship, including that between parent and child, and that between lovers or spouses, is defined in terms of dominance and submission. Someone has to be “on top,” and someone else has to be “on the bottom.”
To make it easier to achieve this, dominator culture is saturated with dualism, a mode of thinking we are taught from the cradle. Dualism insists that everything boils down to an either/or choice – that you can never have your cake and eat it too. There are only two acceptable or possible answers to any given question, and these two answers are literally poles apart: polarized. They’re opposites. One answer is labeled entirely right and good, and the other is seen as entirely wrong and bad. Needless to say, dualism makes for gross over-simplifications and generalizations, and twists and distorts everything it touches. With a little bit of imagination, in most instances one can perceive a much broader spectrum of choices, and often more than a single option could be embraced. But that wouldn’t fit with the system of “tops” and “bottoms,” where one thing must always be “better” than another.
Patriarchal religions are used to justify and preach this system, and to legitimize the persecution and often extermination of those who resist it, both inside and outside a given culture. For the first two thousand years or so of patriarchy, these religions featured both Gods and Goddesses, but the “top god” in patriarchal religion was always male. The Goddesses were defined as wives, sisters, mothers, love interests or daughters of the male gods, to make sure that ordinary women didn’t get any ideas about freeing themselves from being defined as the possessions of men. For some patriarchs this didn’t go far enough, so about three thousand years ago they started to preach that there was only one god: male, of course. Eventually, several different religions of this type: male monotheism: developed. My friend the feminist art historian calls it “mono-male-theism.” However you prefer to arrange the syllables, the term proclaims: “Just For Men.”
Patriarchy has been with us in the West – Europe and North America – for only about 5,000 years, give or take half a millennium or so. Human beings have existed for much longer than that: hundreds of thousands of years. Patriarchy entered a Europe where many other cultures already existed, cultures that operated with a very different kind of mind-set. These were what Riane Eisler calls “partnership societies.” Partnership societies were quite cooperative and evolved, with high levels of creative sophistication. Their social structures were generally matrilineal – that is, children traced their descent through their mother back to her mother and so forth. These cultures were comparatively non-violent: they did not “focus on the power to inflict pain and kill, but the power to give life and pleasure.”[i] Their religions centered around a Goddess. The earliest European and Middle Eastern images of the Divine Female are up to 400,000 years old.
These partnership cultures were not in the dark about how babies are conceived: they were aware of both the male and the female role in reproduction. Partnership spirituality usually thought of “the divine in both female and male form,” but “the male deities were not associated with thunderbolts or weapons (like Jehovah or Zeus)” and they were, at most, equal to the Goddesses. In partnership cultures, “masculinity was not synonymous with domination and conquest.”[ii]
Patriarchy is a recent human invention. Despite what its religions preach, it is not natural, it is not inevitable, and it has never been “the only thing that’s out there.” There are alternatives to it, and all human-made systems can be changed. In the relatively brief span of its existence, patriarchy has already gone just about the whole way toward proving itself unviable. This comes easily to dominator culture because it is fundamentally “anti-life,” so anti-life that it has made uncounted life-forms extinct and now threatens even the survival of the human species.
Dominator religions preach the unlimited exploitation of our planet Earth, proclaiming that the world was created for “man” to use, and use up if he so chooses, since some otherworldly Heaven or Paradise is his “real home.” Their expectation is that “mankind” will end by causing global disaster, that human beings are incapable of self-control and common sense. In my local paper in May 2002, one Mike Hosey, a Christian, confidently stated:
“Christianity, in general, believes the world to be a lost and dying place in need of salvation; a place where people need to put their faith in God, and not in themselves.”[iii]
I totally disagree with this view of the world and of humanity, and I believe there is real reason for hope. As Riane Eisler points out, in the West, over the past 300 years and more, a historical continuum has developed that is moving us away from absolute dominator culture.[iv] In the 17th and 18th centuries, the “divinely ordained” rule of kings and emperors over their “subjects” was challenged and largely overthrown. The early feminist movement in the 19th century chipped away at the control of men over women and children, while the abolitionist movement and pacifist movement challenged the entrenched traditions of the enslavement of one race by another, and the use of force by one nation to control another. In the past 100-plus years, civil rights, organized labor, anti-colonial, women’s liberation, indigenous people’s rights, and gay rights movements have arisen to oppose further aspects of domination. A relatively new and very important movement is now taking a stand against domination and violence in intimate relationships: rape, battering, child abuse and incest. Putting an end to intimate violence is central to moving toward a partnership society.
There is no mistaking that this “shift toward partnership has been fiercely resisted every step of the way.”[v] But if you look at the overall trend, we have moved a long distance away from all-out domination and toward partnership in a relatively short time. We are presently in a backlash phase, what Eisler calls a “periodic regression toward the dominator model.”[vi] Yet the irony of globalization is that the world has become so small that people cannot really avoid the knowledge of our mutual world-wide interdependence. We are being forced out of the denial that is typical of dominator culture by phenomena we cannot ignore, such as global warming. The world’s systems of domination are only able to escalate these problems, and as a result it is becoming inescapably obvious that these systems are counter-productive.
[i] Eisler, The Power of Partnership, p. 189
[ii] Eisler, p. 189
[iii] Mike Hosey, in an editorial on the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic church, The Gainesville Sun, May 20, 2002.
[iv] Eisler, pp. 94-95.
[v] Eisler, p. 95.
[vi] Eisler, p. 95.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
On Marriage, continued
Something just struck me. I wrote in an earlier post about my objections to women taking their husbands' names upon marriage. Well, in one way this connects with my problems with societal homophobia. I believe that people are capable of remembering two or even more family names in connection with a single family unit, but many of them just aren't familiar with the concept and therefore bridle at it, or would rather be mentally lazy and slap the same label on both spouses and their kids. And many, whether consciously or subconsciously, subscribe to the idea that a woman should "be subsumed into" her husband upon marriage, as is the will of patriarchy.
Now, gay and lesbian couples are (blessedly, in my opinion -- they're a breath of fresh air within the New York Times Sunday Styles wedding announcements, see earlier post) very likely to include two or more names in their family unit. So maybe gay and lesbian couples are in somewhat of the same boat with heterosexual couples who retain two names instead of shoehorning both partners in under one name. Many folks claim they "can't handle it" when the truth often is, they don't want to handle it. They're using nomenclature as a means of social compulsion, to make straight women who want to maintain their independence, and gays and lesbians, disappear.
Of course it's not as simple as that. Homophobia is still far more socially acceptable than misogyny. Though misogyny remains too socially acceptable on its own account, if a straight woman, and her male partner, are willing to take on the extra work needful to make the world at large recognize the fact that they each have their own surname even though they're married, they can usually get pretty much everyone to go along with it. Some people may be obnoxious about it, and even attack you personally if they feel threatened enough, but if you don't cede ground, all but a handful will back down. Unfortunately, the same is not true for gays and lesbians seeking the plain old right to marry, much less recognition as a married couple. A straight woman who insists on her own name may get guff, but she won't get beaten up or killed. Gays and lesbians who refuse to pretend to be who they're not may actually get beaten up or killed, or lose their jobs, or be denied housing, or lose custody of their children... and a lot of other unpleasant, wrong and dangerous things. Not to mention that they run a very good chance of being abandoned, rejected and/or abused by their very own family members.
This is a strange time. We've managed to go a little ways toward getting past sexism and racism in our political choices, but at the same time, there's this "renaissance" (I would say recidivist slide) of women ostentatiously "taking their husband's names," and, far worse, a spate of benighted anti-gay legislation which has gone so far as to re-write state constitutions to deny the right of marriage to a specific group (on the basis of sexual orientation or preference), and also to deny the option of domestic partnership to heterosexuals who don't want to legally marry. The effect on my state, Florida, is catastrophic. First there's the despicable homophobia and anti-American tenor of the constitutional amendment passed here. And then there are the disastrous consequences for our senior-citizen-heavy population. Many single seniors live together without marriage because marrying means losing a significant part of their already pathetic Social Security benefits. Now they face not being able to register as domestic partners, which means they have no rights if a partner gets sick, no access to a partner's health benefits, etc. etc. Sickening.
Let me be clear on one point. If a woman desperately wants to change her name upon marriage, it's a free country. But the overwhelming trend of women "taking their husbands' names" is an ongoing expression of a pretty clearly discernible, long-standing patriarchal sentiment, which is that women are here to support and enable men (and children), and not to lead lives of their own or have goals of their own. This system has not redounded to the psychological or economic benefit of homemakers, whose vital work I think should be explicitly part of the Gross Domestic Product. Full-time homemakers of either gender should be awarded Social Security in their own right, not as derivatives of their spouses, and ideally, they should be officially allotted a given share of the annual family income, so they never have to beg, cajole or manipulate in order to get their hands on spending money. And don't get me going on so-called "no-fault" divorce, which seems to assume that someone who hasn't held a paid job for years can somehow jump right back into paid work! What very few people realize is that only about 15% of women who divorce are awarded ANY alimony at all, and as for child support, the frequency with which men skip out on paying it is disgusting.
But I digress. Which I do tend to do. To get back to the resistance of the larger society to both "two-name" heterosexual marriage and, far more aggravatedly, gay/lesbian marriage: of course, what both these options do is to undermine the paradigm of patriarchal marriage. They offer models of marriage that go against gender-role assumptions and assume equal partnerships instead of complementarity. A large percentage of our fellow citizens don't want to see, and don't want their children to see, that there are quite a few different ways to do coupledom, including ones which don't necessarily involve hierarchy, dominance/submission, procreation, or the "disappearing" of one partner into another. They want to force everyone into "one-size-fits-all" (it never does) gender roles and marriage molds, ones they find familiar and comforting, ones that don't require individual thought and don't necessitate the taking of individual responsibility or individual stands.
This is intimately connected to our culture's love of dualism, the idea that there are only two answers to any given question, one labeled "right" and one labeled "wrong." Every situation is reduced to an "either-or" choice, with no option labeled "both-and." More on this next time.
Now, gay and lesbian couples are (blessedly, in my opinion -- they're a breath of fresh air within the New York Times Sunday Styles wedding announcements, see earlier post) very likely to include two or more names in their family unit. So maybe gay and lesbian couples are in somewhat of the same boat with heterosexual couples who retain two names instead of shoehorning both partners in under one name. Many folks claim they "can't handle it" when the truth often is, they don't want to handle it. They're using nomenclature as a means of social compulsion, to make straight women who want to maintain their independence, and gays and lesbians, disappear.
Of course it's not as simple as that. Homophobia is still far more socially acceptable than misogyny. Though misogyny remains too socially acceptable on its own account, if a straight woman, and her male partner, are willing to take on the extra work needful to make the world at large recognize the fact that they each have their own surname even though they're married, they can usually get pretty much everyone to go along with it. Some people may be obnoxious about it, and even attack you personally if they feel threatened enough, but if you don't cede ground, all but a handful will back down. Unfortunately, the same is not true for gays and lesbians seeking the plain old right to marry, much less recognition as a married couple. A straight woman who insists on her own name may get guff, but she won't get beaten up or killed. Gays and lesbians who refuse to pretend to be who they're not may actually get beaten up or killed, or lose their jobs, or be denied housing, or lose custody of their children... and a lot of other unpleasant, wrong and dangerous things. Not to mention that they run a very good chance of being abandoned, rejected and/or abused by their very own family members.
This is a strange time. We've managed to go a little ways toward getting past sexism and racism in our political choices, but at the same time, there's this "renaissance" (I would say recidivist slide) of women ostentatiously "taking their husband's names," and, far worse, a spate of benighted anti-gay legislation which has gone so far as to re-write state constitutions to deny the right of marriage to a specific group (on the basis of sexual orientation or preference), and also to deny the option of domestic partnership to heterosexuals who don't want to legally marry. The effect on my state, Florida, is catastrophic. First there's the despicable homophobia and anti-American tenor of the constitutional amendment passed here. And then there are the disastrous consequences for our senior-citizen-heavy population. Many single seniors live together without marriage because marrying means losing a significant part of their already pathetic Social Security benefits. Now they face not being able to register as domestic partners, which means they have no rights if a partner gets sick, no access to a partner's health benefits, etc. etc. Sickening.
Let me be clear on one point. If a woman desperately wants to change her name upon marriage, it's a free country. But the overwhelming trend of women "taking their husbands' names" is an ongoing expression of a pretty clearly discernible, long-standing patriarchal sentiment, which is that women are here to support and enable men (and children), and not to lead lives of their own or have goals of their own. This system has not redounded to the psychological or economic benefit of homemakers, whose vital work I think should be explicitly part of the Gross Domestic Product. Full-time homemakers of either gender should be awarded Social Security in their own right, not as derivatives of their spouses, and ideally, they should be officially allotted a given share of the annual family income, so they never have to beg, cajole or manipulate in order to get their hands on spending money. And don't get me going on so-called "no-fault" divorce, which seems to assume that someone who hasn't held a paid job for years can somehow jump right back into paid work! What very few people realize is that only about 15% of women who divorce are awarded ANY alimony at all, and as for child support, the frequency with which men skip out on paying it is disgusting.
But I digress. Which I do tend to do. To get back to the resistance of the larger society to both "two-name" heterosexual marriage and, far more aggravatedly, gay/lesbian marriage: of course, what both these options do is to undermine the paradigm of patriarchal marriage. They offer models of marriage that go against gender-role assumptions and assume equal partnerships instead of complementarity. A large percentage of our fellow citizens don't want to see, and don't want their children to see, that there are quite a few different ways to do coupledom, including ones which don't necessarily involve hierarchy, dominance/submission, procreation, or the "disappearing" of one partner into another. They want to force everyone into "one-size-fits-all" (it never does) gender roles and marriage molds, ones they find familiar and comforting, ones that don't require individual thought and don't necessitate the taking of individual responsibility or individual stands.
This is intimately connected to our culture's love of dualism, the idea that there are only two answers to any given question, one labeled "right" and one labeled "wrong." Every situation is reduced to an "either-or" choice, with no option labeled "both-and." More on this next time.
Ethics: Some Food for Thought from Robin Wood
Here's an excerpt from "When, Why...If," by Robin Wood:
"When you were small, you were taught a certain world view by your parents, your peers, and the people around you. Your mind was primed then, and ready to accept those things that would enable you to adapt in this society. You eagerly learned the concepts that your parents taught you, and by the time you were two, your basic view of the world was in place.
"As you grew, you learned to fit the things you heard and saw into that basic view of the world. You learned what behavior was acceptable to the people who ruled your life, and what was not. You learned how much latitude there was in the rules, and when 'no' really meant 'no.'
"And you also learned how to work around the rules to get what you thought you wanted.
"If your upbringing had been perfect, you would have perfectly understood the reasoning behind the rules, and you would easily have developed perfect ethics.
"The trouble is that we are all raised by mortals; by people who have problems of their own, who were raised by other people with problems and so on. And the problems tend to get passed down from generation to generation, right along with all the other attitudes and beliefs that your parents so carefully instilled in you.
"You, however, have decided that at least some of those things are not the things that you want to make up the pieces of your world view. That's great! I think that adults need to create their own world views. We are not the same individuals that our parents are, and we are not living on the same planet they were raised on. The world is changing too quickly. Population has probably more than doubled since they were young; societal values are shifting; technology has flown far beyond the science fiction of my own youth, let alone theirs; incurable diseases have cropped up, and forced a change in attitude about a great many things. Future Shock, they called it twenty years ago. But I look at my own kids now, and they aren't the least bit shocky. I think they are depending on the speed of change, counting on it to give them swell new things they barely dreamed of before. Just last night at dinner my youngest told me that 1993 stuff is way out of fashion now. As I write this, it is January 4, 1994! (Not everything, he admitted, but lots of it.)
"And as you create your own world view, and put together the things you need to take this path, you will discover that some of the stuff you learned as a youngster is still valid for you now, that some things no longer apply to the world you find yourself in, and that some things were invalid from the beginning.
"In order for you to become an ethical being, you need to make these decisions and determinations yourself. No one else can do it for you. If you allow someone else to make your ethical decisions, you are giving away your own personal power, and you are not behaving ethically at all. You are behaving obediently. In my opinion, obedience is for children who do not yet have enough experience under their belts to make cause and effect correlations, and therefore can't be expected to make wise ethical decisions. If you are not a child, you should not be obedient. You are the only person living your life, and therefore, you are the only one qualified to make your life decisions.
"Yes, I know that means that you will have to think a great deal.
"I warned you about that... Get used to it.
"It isn't like you have to start from a vacuum.
"Begin with what you were taught as a kid. Chances are that the rules and standards drummed into you had a lot in common with the basic law of the craft, although the reasons for following them were different. You were probably taught the golden rule: 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.' Fine as far as it goes. Good for children. But I think we can do better than that. We can 'Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.'
"I told you in the beginning that this was the hard path, not the easy one. And the farther along you go, the more your own ethics will cause you to think, and then do things that you know are right, even if you don't want to do them.
"... It is my sincere desire that you will realize that rules and reflexive reactions have little place in a world that changes every nanosecond; where every situation is unique, and every individual you deal with is unlike any other. In such a world, each case is a special case, and must be met with a special answer. It is my goal to help you discover how to reach those answers; honestly and non-judgementally, with a heart filled with love, understanding, wisdom and joy.
"I want you to be able to steer your way through your life, and find your heart's desire, without harming anyone.
"I hope that you realize that if you do harm someone, you must make restitution. There is no 'forgiveness' on this path. Your 'sins' are not 'wiped clean' with little or no effort on your part. Here, 'sins' are not part of the question. Here we have only responsibility. You are responsible for your own actions, and only for your own actions. And if you break something with your actions, you are required to attempt to mend it with your actions, as well.
"We all make mistakes, try as we might not to. The trick is to realize that we have, forgive ourselves, do our best to correct our mistake, and go on.
"Sometimes, our ethics will cause us to change our entire lives. This takes great courage....
"When you become ethical, when you begin to see the cause of your actions, when you truly take responsibility for everything you do, the easy way ceases to serve. It no longer works to say 'Mea culpa' and be absolved, because deep inside you know perfectly well that is not enough.
"When you look within, and can find the answers there, you are beginning to arrive.
"When you can shine the bright light of honesty on the dusty corners of your soul, and like what you see, you are well on your way.
"When everything you look at, you look at with love and honesty, with a judgement unclouded by any sort of fear or prejudice, and you can decide clearly and wisely what you should do in each situation as it arises, you are there.
"I, personally, am not there yet.
"But I'm working on it!
"The thinking and reasoning become easier all the time.
"My prejudices are fading.
"But in order for your prejudices to fade, you first have to know what they are.... So examine your prejudices... Cast the bright light of honesty on them until they dissipate like fog in the sun.
"Keep working, and thinking, and trying to be better; and I assure you that you will be.
"Let your appetites and habits rule you, have a pat answer for everything, and your ethics will slip away until you have none left.
"Having ethics is like driving a car. Remember when you first learned to drive? You had to think about all of the mechanics of it, all the time. Hands go here, feet go there. Oh no! I'm turning the wheel too far! Ack! That's too far in the other direction! Where is that brake pedal? I know it has to be here somewhere!
"Then, gradually, you learned how to do it, and it became easier. ... By now, you can probably drive without much trouble. You may even have an 'autopilot' that will take you straight to work without any conscious effort on your part at all.
"But if you don't keep at least some of your mind on the road, you will wind up in a pileup.
"In just the same way, using your mind instead of a set of rules is hard at first. Every question is completely different than anything you have had to think through before. Correlating the cause and effect, and thinking through the ripples may seem almost paralyzing at first. Correcting for an error may result in an over-correction that harms someone else. You may need to find the brakes, and use the old rules for a little while to get your breath back. (If so, go ahead. Most of the ones that don't judge other people are not bad, as far as they go. I just think they don't go very far.)
"As you become more familiar with ethical living, you will find that certain questions follow certain patterns, and that you have thought a lot of this out before. Some things will become reflexive. You don't have to consider whether to use magic to cause someone to fall in love with you, for instance. You will just know that is wrong. The mechanics of having your brain with you at all times will be less and less of a problem. Eventually, you will be able to make rapid judgments for most things, and life will go pretty smoothly.
"But don't make the mistake of letting your mind wander completely away, or you will end up in an ethical pileup.
"Just as in driving, you may have only seconds to make the really important ethical decisions. Emergencies of all kinds are like that. And again as in driving, the more experience you have, the more likely you are to make a good decision in time.
"Without the ability to drive, your freedom would be seriously curtailed. Without the ability to make good ethical choices, your freedom may need to be seriously curtailed.
"So become a good ethical driver!
"Go forth joyfully, with honesty and love and laughter and wisdom and all that good stuff. Steer carefully, enjoy your freedom, and write if you get work!"
"When you were small, you were taught a certain world view by your parents, your peers, and the people around you. Your mind was primed then, and ready to accept those things that would enable you to adapt in this society. You eagerly learned the concepts that your parents taught you, and by the time you were two, your basic view of the world was in place.
"As you grew, you learned to fit the things you heard and saw into that basic view of the world. You learned what behavior was acceptable to the people who ruled your life, and what was not. You learned how much latitude there was in the rules, and when 'no' really meant 'no.'
"And you also learned how to work around the rules to get what you thought you wanted.
"If your upbringing had been perfect, you would have perfectly understood the reasoning behind the rules, and you would easily have developed perfect ethics.
"The trouble is that we are all raised by mortals; by people who have problems of their own, who were raised by other people with problems and so on. And the problems tend to get passed down from generation to generation, right along with all the other attitudes and beliefs that your parents so carefully instilled in you.
"You, however, have decided that at least some of those things are not the things that you want to make up the pieces of your world view. That's great! I think that adults need to create their own world views. We are not the same individuals that our parents are, and we are not living on the same planet they were raised on. The world is changing too quickly. Population has probably more than doubled since they were young; societal values are shifting; technology has flown far beyond the science fiction of my own youth, let alone theirs; incurable diseases have cropped up, and forced a change in attitude about a great many things. Future Shock, they called it twenty years ago. But I look at my own kids now, and they aren't the least bit shocky. I think they are depending on the speed of change, counting on it to give them swell new things they barely dreamed of before. Just last night at dinner my youngest told me that 1993 stuff is way out of fashion now. As I write this, it is January 4, 1994! (Not everything, he admitted, but lots of it.)
"And as you create your own world view, and put together the things you need to take this path, you will discover that some of the stuff you learned as a youngster is still valid for you now, that some things no longer apply to the world you find yourself in, and that some things were invalid from the beginning.
"In order for you to become an ethical being, you need to make these decisions and determinations yourself. No one else can do it for you. If you allow someone else to make your ethical decisions, you are giving away your own personal power, and you are not behaving ethically at all. You are behaving obediently. In my opinion, obedience is for children who do not yet have enough experience under their belts to make cause and effect correlations, and therefore can't be expected to make wise ethical decisions. If you are not a child, you should not be obedient. You are the only person living your life, and therefore, you are the only one qualified to make your life decisions.
"Yes, I know that means that you will have to think a great deal.
"I warned you about that... Get used to it.
"It isn't like you have to start from a vacuum.
"Begin with what you were taught as a kid. Chances are that the rules and standards drummed into you had a lot in common with the basic law of the craft, although the reasons for following them were different. You were probably taught the golden rule: 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.' Fine as far as it goes. Good for children. But I think we can do better than that. We can 'Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.'
"I told you in the beginning that this was the hard path, not the easy one. And the farther along you go, the more your own ethics will cause you to think, and then do things that you know are right, even if you don't want to do them.
"... It is my sincere desire that you will realize that rules and reflexive reactions have little place in a world that changes every nanosecond; where every situation is unique, and every individual you deal with is unlike any other. In such a world, each case is a special case, and must be met with a special answer. It is my goal to help you discover how to reach those answers; honestly and non-judgementally, with a heart filled with love, understanding, wisdom and joy.
"I want you to be able to steer your way through your life, and find your heart's desire, without harming anyone.
"I hope that you realize that if you do harm someone, you must make restitution. There is no 'forgiveness' on this path. Your 'sins' are not 'wiped clean' with little or no effort on your part. Here, 'sins' are not part of the question. Here we have only responsibility. You are responsible for your own actions, and only for your own actions. And if you break something with your actions, you are required to attempt to mend it with your actions, as well.
"We all make mistakes, try as we might not to. The trick is to realize that we have, forgive ourselves, do our best to correct our mistake, and go on.
"Sometimes, our ethics will cause us to change our entire lives. This takes great courage....
"When you become ethical, when you begin to see the cause of your actions, when you truly take responsibility for everything you do, the easy way ceases to serve. It no longer works to say 'Mea culpa' and be absolved, because deep inside you know perfectly well that is not enough.
"When you look within, and can find the answers there, you are beginning to arrive.
"When you can shine the bright light of honesty on the dusty corners of your soul, and like what you see, you are well on your way.
"When everything you look at, you look at with love and honesty, with a judgement unclouded by any sort of fear or prejudice, and you can decide clearly and wisely what you should do in each situation as it arises, you are there.
"I, personally, am not there yet.
"But I'm working on it!
"The thinking and reasoning become easier all the time.
"My prejudices are fading.
"But in order for your prejudices to fade, you first have to know what they are.... So examine your prejudices... Cast the bright light of honesty on them until they dissipate like fog in the sun.
"Keep working, and thinking, and trying to be better; and I assure you that you will be.
"Let your appetites and habits rule you, have a pat answer for everything, and your ethics will slip away until you have none left.
"Having ethics is like driving a car. Remember when you first learned to drive? You had to think about all of the mechanics of it, all the time. Hands go here, feet go there. Oh no! I'm turning the wheel too far! Ack! That's too far in the other direction! Where is that brake pedal? I know it has to be here somewhere!
"Then, gradually, you learned how to do it, and it became easier. ... By now, you can probably drive without much trouble. You may even have an 'autopilot' that will take you straight to work without any conscious effort on your part at all.
"But if you don't keep at least some of your mind on the road, you will wind up in a pileup.
"In just the same way, using your mind instead of a set of rules is hard at first. Every question is completely different than anything you have had to think through before. Correlating the cause and effect, and thinking through the ripples may seem almost paralyzing at first. Correcting for an error may result in an over-correction that harms someone else. You may need to find the brakes, and use the old rules for a little while to get your breath back. (If so, go ahead. Most of the ones that don't judge other people are not bad, as far as they go. I just think they don't go very far.)
"As you become more familiar with ethical living, you will find that certain questions follow certain patterns, and that you have thought a lot of this out before. Some things will become reflexive. You don't have to consider whether to use magic to cause someone to fall in love with you, for instance. You will just know that is wrong. The mechanics of having your brain with you at all times will be less and less of a problem. Eventually, you will be able to make rapid judgments for most things, and life will go pretty smoothly.
"But don't make the mistake of letting your mind wander completely away, or you will end up in an ethical pileup.
"Just as in driving, you may have only seconds to make the really important ethical decisions. Emergencies of all kinds are like that. And again as in driving, the more experience you have, the more likely you are to make a good decision in time.
"Without the ability to drive, your freedom would be seriously curtailed. Without the ability to make good ethical choices, your freedom may need to be seriously curtailed.
"So become a good ethical driver!
"Go forth joyfully, with honesty and love and laughter and wisdom and all that good stuff. Steer carefully, enjoy your freedom, and write if you get work!"
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