A
Feminist Herstory
A feminist perspective on the present state of the world.
by Kari Johnson
Ancestral visions Parting the mists
of time I see huge trees growing on hills by the ocean. A dark line appears
on the horizon, growing thicker, coming closer, birds! Soon they fill
the sky casting everything into the flickering darkness of roaring wings.
For hours they pass and disappear over the hills. Up in the headwaters
of a river, silver-red salmon leap sparkling waterfalls on their journey
home. Deep down beneath the water, the earth's veins flow slowly. Air
smells sweet and the land is beautiful, offering up fruits, nuts, roots
and fish to the thankful people. In a few hours their beautifully woven
baskets are full and they go home to weave, invent games with children,
make art and play music. Our ancestors lived like this in a time when
the earth was thickly forested, people knew and moved with the rhythms
of other animals and the seasons. They knew hundreds of edible and medicinal
plants. They lived in plenty, worshipping life and the female power to
create it. Men hadn't yet taken control of women and nature, and I'm sure
if they dreamed of the future we now live in, it would have seemed a nightmare.
Conquest of the Mother As cities grew at the crossroads and where the
rivers poured into the seas, walls came up around them to keep out the
marauders who had horses, harder sharper metal, and worshipped an angry
male war god. When the walls were breached, the conquerors cut the sacred
trees and leveled the temples of the goddess. They killed all but the
young women who they raped and made into slaves who would give birth to
a dominated and broken people. What remained of the old language were
words like artist, healer, potter, weaver, acrobat, and priestess. For
the conquerors had none of these words.
But even into the Middle Ages in Europe, respect for Nature and female
creative powers was still strong. Peasants still worshipped the Goddess
in her many aspects, celebrating the great wheel of the seasons together
in rituals, feasts, and bonfires in the commons. Many villages had medicine
women (witches) who were not only midwives, herbalists, and surgeons,
but often led popular revolts against new taxes and laws of the encroaching
Church-State. Becoming drunk on its new wealth from the African slave
and sugar trades the Church-State reached out for power .Its many centuries
long program of state terrorism continued with the first printed pornography,
the Maleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of the Witches. This book graphically
instructed the man of God in the torturing and killing of women whose
evil was thought to reside in their sexuality. Millions of women's lands
became the church's, and the people's anger was redirected at each other.
Sir Francis Bacon, father of the Scientific Method, was made a clerk of
the interrogation room for witches in 1589. He wrote, "The Earth
should be tied to the rack and tortured for her secrets." And so
She was.
And so in the spirit of this trinity of science church and state Columbus
happened upon the lush green continent of what is now called America.
Finding the people to be beautiful, friendly, and trusting, and the land
incredibly rich, he began the rape and massacre of the native peoples
and the plundering of the land.
Modern Terror So it continues. And who defines reality? Who defines terrorism?
Who decides who is real? The men who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The
men who are dropping bombs on Afghani cities? The men who teach torture
techniques to Central and South American death squads? The men who want
to mine the uranium, cut all the forests, and poison the gene pool forever?
The men who go home and beat their wives and kids? White businessmen define
terrorism as what terrifies them. Feminists define terrorism as what terrifies
people. A recent Register Guard article mentioned that 250 letters containing
white powder and notes from the army of God declaring it to be anthrax
were received by abortion service providers across the country since Sept
11. There was no mention of terrorism. The Emerald ran an article about
" date rape" drugs which male U of O students increasingly use
on women to be able to rape them without the women remembering. If white
businessmen, were being systematically drugged and beaten, it would be
suspected terrorist activity, daily news, and suspects would already have
been found. In Lane County 3 or more women have been killed by their male
partners in the last few months. Are flags at half mast for our dead?
Councils of Women Afghani women, who are the majority of the population
in their land, have endured a long brutal imprisonment by their own men.
Now the US plans to hand the reigns over to another patriarchal group
of men- the Northern Alliance. It seems to me that the women are obviously
the ones who should set up their own government.
What do "women's issues" have to do with this war? What does
domestic violence have to do with terrorism? In the patriarchal reality
every "issue" is separate. Because when we join them all together
we're looking at a different reality.
The writers of the Constitution were greatly influenced by the Iroquois
Confederacy but left out the most important check and balance, the power
of the grandmothers to take away the honor of chiefdom at any time. That
power of the grandmothers is what we are missing now. 5000 years of being
lead in the wrong direction has led us to the edge of extinction. What
would our world be like if grandmothers of color made all the important
decisions?
Recommended Reading:
When God Was A Woman By Merlin Stone
Woman and Nature By Susan Griffin
The Great Cosmic Mother By Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor
Kari
Johnson
kariart.net
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