I will not claim to speak for all Goddess feminists, and of course there are many strands of Goddess feminism that I disagree with (just as I disagree with many strands of feminism); that’s why I am not a Dianic Wiccan, for example. I will also be focusing primarily on Western society, since that’s the one that I know best. But I want to try to explain, to the best of my ability, why my spirituality and my feminism are inextricably linked, and why my feminism is sacred to me.
Edited to Add: I've also linked to a number of general feminist resources at the end of this post.
Why Goddess Feminism?
Most of the major religions throughout history have held women to be the lesser sex. In Ancient Greece, it was said that if you were bad during this life, you would later be reborn as perhaps a dog, or a rock, or worst of all, a woman. Christianity holds that women are the reason why evil exists in the world, because Eve tempted a man into original sin. There are still many places in the world where menstruating women are forbidden from living under the same roof as the rest of her family. Even Daoism, which nominally states that the male and female principle are equal, still equates femininity with being submissive and being subject to the authority of men. The vast majority of the major organized religions do not permit women to assume positions of spiritual authority. I really could go on all day, but I won’t, for the sake of space.
IsisRising describes how women have been viewed in Western culture:
Yet there have always also been women who have not been satisfied with accepting religions that denigrate women and their bodies as inferior, polluted, and sinful; there have always been women who have constantly sought to create and find the divinity and power in womanhood. The symbols that were available to them in patriarchal religions were few and far between, usually not equal in power to male deities, and rarely perfect, but many women saw great power in them anyways. For example, in Ancient Greek myths, Hera may have been a jealous shrew, constantly humiliated by her husband’s many exploits and bastard children, yet she nevertheless had a strong following of women, because she was also the goddess of the sanctity of marriage -- a symbol of feminine power who shared the concerns of women. In China, where Daoism and Buddhism was primarily populated with male deities and Buddhas, Guanyin, the Goddess of Compassion, was widely beloved and had many cults in her name. With Christianity, many women found great power and comfort in Sophia, the feminine aspect of the Holy Trinity.Western patriarchal culture has denigrated the female body mercilessly: if it is not the epitome of temptation and carnal lust as alleged in the Eve myth, it’s dirty and unclean as a result of blood associated with menstruation and childbirth. It’s also associated with nature, earth and dirt, the lowest forms of creation in the patriarchal hierarchy. The female body is also subject to the whims of male standards of beauty: sometimes slim, sometimes voluptuous; sometimes maidenly but, please, never old. [1]
More recently, feminist religious thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s began to question the image of God the Father and everything that it stood for. In Carol Christ’s groundbreaking essay, “Why Women Need the Goddess”, she writes:
I will also note that this dovetailed with other concurrent movements at the time, such as counterculture and environmentalism. Especially with regards to the latter, some spiritual feminists saw environmental degradation and the oppression of women to be linked as arising from the same patriarchal impulse -- to dominate, subjugate, and exploit. At the same time God gave man dominion over his wife, God also gave man the right to do as he pleased with the Earth:Religions centered on the worship of a male God create "moods" and "motivations" that keep women in a state of psychological dependence on men and male authority, while at the same legitimating the political and social authority of fathers and sons in the institutions of society. Religious symbol systems focused around exclusively male images of divinity create the impression that female power can never be fully legitimate or wholly beneficent. This message need never be explicitly stated (as, for example, it is in the story of Eve) for its effect to be felt. A woman completely ignorant of the myths of female evil in biblical religion nonetheless acknowledges the anomaly of female power when she prays exclusively to a male God. She may see herself as like God (created in the image of God) only by denying her own sexual identity and affirming God's transcendence of sexual identity. But she can never have the experience that is freely available to every man and boy in her culture, of having her full sexual identity affirmed as being in the image and likeness of God. [2]
Some spiritual feminists were interested in reforming their birth religions to be more woman-friendly, by invoking Sophia, or by advocating for women to be religious leaders. However, there are also some spiritual feminists who decided that there was no choice but to abandon those religions altogether, either because sexism was too deeply ingrained in those religions to root out fully, or because they had been too hurt by those religions to ever go back. Christ declares in her book, Rebirth of the Goddess:Spiritual-ecofeminists see a link between the commonly held Judeo-Christian belief that God gave humans dominion over the earth and the degradation of the earth's ecosystems. According to the general principles of ecofeminism, women are inextricably linked to nature, and therefore, debasement of the earth is considered to be synonymous with debasement of women. By allowing--and even encouraging--subjugation of the earth, Judaism and Christianity sanction subjugation of women as well. [3]
Right around this time, Paganism was also coming into being. Gerald Gardner, in particular, had popularized a religion which invoked a Goddess along with a God, where High Priestess were leaders in their community as well as High Priests, that described the many phases of women’s life (Maiden, Mother, and Crone) as worthy of veneration, and women and men worshipped together as equals. Naturally, spiritual feminism and Paganism cross-pollinated and intertwined. Since then, many feminists have explicitly identified as Pagan (myself included), and Paganism has been strongly influenced by feminism in turn, with its ground-breaking images of the Goddess as a symbol of women’s power and divinity.While I had hoped to find in God a father who would love and accept my female self, it seemed that “he”, like my father and most of my professors, liked boys better. I decided that unless we could call God Mother as well as Father, Daughter as well as Son, women and girls would never be valued. [4]
Breaking Down Dualisms
At the core of sexism that spiritual feminists are trying to fight is something called gender essentialism, which is the belief that gender is a group of inherent differences between women and men. For example, Constance Wise lists a small set of these dualisms [5]:
Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog! explains that essentialism is:
the belief that there are uniquely feminine and uniquely masculine essences which exist independently of cultural conditioning. Both actual (minor) and alleged (major) differences between the sexes have been used to justify inequities and constraints which harm women emotionally, financially and physically ... Biological determinism is one form of essentialism which has been used to argue for male superiority for all of recorded history: that men are naturally stronger, smarter, more rational and more trustworthy and thus are entitled to rule both politically and domestically. [6]
I am sure you can think of many more dualisms, such as “Women are bad at science and men are good at science”, or “Women belong in the kitchen and men belong at work.” You probably have at least some experience with how these stereotypes and associations can be incredibly harmful. This might be a “Well, duh” type of thing, but spiritual feminists believe these dualisms are very deeply ingrained into our psychology and we need to do a lot of work to break out of them.
So many feminists are trying to break down those dualisms, often through the creation of new symbols and stories. For example, with my science example, we tell the stories of Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace to prove that women can be brilliant scientists; in this way, we encourage young girls that it’s possible to become scientists themselves. Or we replace the image of Princess Peach, always in need of rescue, with Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor.
But one potential danger of this project is that while it is indeed necessary to prove that women are capable of things that have traditionally been associated with men (e.g. being a Fortune 500 CEO, an action hero, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, or a President), we run the risk of continuing to glorify the things traditionally associated with men while rejecting the traditionally feminine things as unnecessary or lesser than. I would argue that things like emotions and interdependence are equally as important as logic and independence -- we could really use more empathetic leadership who are sensitive to the plight of oppressed peoples and the environment, for example.
However, the way to do that is NOT to simply say that now everything traditionally feminine (e.g. emotions, nature, interdependence) are now better everything traditionally masculine (e.g. reason, culture, independence), that from now on we will only honor women who are devoted to their children and we will shame women who work outside the the home. We would simply be recreating dualisms but flipping which side is “good” and “bad”, when we need something totally different altogether.
I also don’t find the whole “separate but equal and complimentary roles” idea to be adequate. For example, there is the common idea that women are the homemakers and nurturers and men are the breadwinners -- different roles, but equally important in a healthy home. I find it inadequate because ultimately we are still falling into dualisms, limiting the possibilities of what we can do with stereotypes (men can be nurturing, women can be breadwinners).
What we need to do is to break down the dualisms altogether; that people of all genders are capable of all of those these traits*. Strong, weak, independent, dependent, nurturing, distant, kind, mean, smart, stupid, selfish, altruistic, introverted, extroverted, loving, hateful, emotional, logical -- we have all been these things at one time or another.
That’s why I find the Triple Goddess to be such a powerful metaphor -- because it represents a great diversity in the experiences in the lives of women and the roles that women can play. We can use the conscious creation of symbols to imagine all the possibilities of what it can mean to be a woman.
That’s what the Goddess means to me.
What the Goddess is to Me
Many women continue to be inspired and find power and divinity by being able to relate to the many goddesses of ancient times (“Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna”, as the chant goes). I personally relate the most to the Goddess (although I do on occasion work with Persephone and Guanyin).
As best as I can explain my own beliefs and experience, the world is complex and alive, comprised of all the intertwining, interconnected relationships between everything from subatomic particles to trees to people to microbes to galaxies, throughout all of time and space. In the way that our bodies have consciousness or spirit, so too does the world. We are a part of this greater consciousness, and it is a part of us. It can feel what we feel, know what we know, but it is not omnipotent or omniscient. As Carol Christ describes it, it is “intelligent, embodied love” [4] that suffuses the whole world and everything in it. It is the soul of the universe. Far from being the distant, removed, dispassionate God the Father, this is:
I choose to call this intelligent, embodied love the Goddess; not because this divinity inherently is gendered female, necessarily butthe most relational of all relational individuals, the most feeling of all feeling individuals, and the most loving of all loving individuals. Such a divinity is defined by relationship to the world, and its relationship to the world is best understood as love and understanding, encompassed in Hartshorne’s notion of “divine sympathy” (or empathy) for the world. [7]
1) as a political choice to value certain things (such as compassion and nurturing) that have historically, like women, been devalued;
2) because God already has a lot of baggage in the word that I feel are harmful and contrary to my values and ethics (I personally feel that the concept of God has been irrevocably tainted by the vengeful tyrant of Christian mythos)
3) because I feel as though I can only have a relationship with this divinity if I can see in it a woman like myself. (in Ntozake Shange’s play, a woman sings, “i found god in myself / and i loved her / i loved her fiercely”, which is a quote that I can relate to)
Of the choice to call her the Goddess, Starhawk writes:
Carol Christ writes of the Goddess:The Goddess, the whole, of course, has no genitalia … but I prefer the female-gendered word for a number of reasons. One is simply that, at this time in history, I think we still subconsciously perceive a word of neutral-gender as male. Goddess breaks our expectations and reminds us that we are talking about something different than the patriarchal Godfather. [8]
.The symbol of Goddess aids the process of naming and reclaiming the female body and its cycles and processes. In the ancient world and among modern women, the Goddess symbol represents the birth, death, and rebirth processes of the natural and human worlds. The female body is viewed as the direct incarnation of waxing and waning, life and death cycles in the universe. This is sometimes expressed through the symbolic connection between the twenty-eight-day cycles of menstruation and the twenty-eight-day cycles of the moon. Moreover, the Goddess is celebrated in the triple aspect of youth, maturity, and age, or maiden, mother, and crone. The potentiality of the young girl is celebrated in the nymph or maiden aspect of the Goddess. The Goddess as mother is sometimes depicted giving birth, and giving birth is viewed as a symbol for all the creative, life-giving powers of the universe." The life-giving powers of the Goddess in her creative aspect are not limited to physical birth, for the Goddess is also seen as the creator of all the arts of civilization, including healing, writing, and the giving of just law. Women in the middle of life who are not physical mothers may give birth to poems, songs, and books, or nurture other women, men, and children. They too are incarnations of the Goddess in her creative, life-giving aspect. At the end of life, women incarnate the crone aspect of the Goddess. The wise old woman, the woman who knows from experience what life is about, the woman whose closeness to her own death gives her a distance and perspective on the problems of life, is celebrated as the third aspect of the Goddess. Thus, women learn to value youth, creativity, and wisdom in themselves and other women …
[The Goddess is the] positive, joyful affirmation of the female body and its cycles and acceptance of aging and death as well as life [2]
Although I do not visualize the Goddess to be a single person, I experience the Goddess every day in the form of love, life, and everything around me. I can feel the interconnected whole, sometimes called the Web of Life, that is the body of the Goddess, and I can feel myself in her, and she in me.
You will notice in all of this that the Goddess is not God the Father with a simple gender swap (“Yahweh in drag”), or simply empowering women to be greater or better than men:
In my understanding, we are not trying to substitute the tyrannical God for a tyrannical Goddess, but asking for something completely different (again, breaking dualisms). We are asking for a whole new way of thinking that rejects “power over” (the hierarchical domination and oppression characteristic of Western society) for “power within” and “power with”, a radically egalitarian society in which all are respected and loved.Thealogy [the study of the Goddess] does not (or should not) propose the automatic empowerment of simply happening to be female. In thealogy, power arises from the ecological labour of restoring human connectedness with the whole cosmos in the Goddess. The spiritual feminist has not deified arbitrarily her ‘essential femininity’ or her biology. She uses her biology as a metaphor for a number of material and spiritual transformations because the feminist sacred is absolutely, and by its own logic, egalitarian. [9]
Spiritual Feminist Ethics
Like our spiritual paths in general, we all have to think critically and decide on what ethical code to accept and reject. Unlike God the Father, the Goddess does not simply hand down a code of ethics to follow unquestioningly (Thou Shalt … Thou Shalt Not …). In my own practice, I acknowledge life is complicated, and there are no absolutes. Therefore, rather than following a set of rules, I follow a set of ethical touchstones that acknowledge my place in the Web of Life. Carol Christ (my favorite spiritual writer, if you haven’t noticed yet) says:
I especially like the last one; although it is vague, by this she means to do your best to heal the injuries done to our world and everyone in it, including cruelty, hate, and selfish destruction.We must ask whether Goddess religion can offer us any guidance as we attempt to live its vision in our world. In my life, I have discovered nine touchstones that can help to translate the mythos from a principle or a commandment … It does not derive from a source outside ourselves, but rather is discovered within the web of life … These nine touchstones of the ethics of Goddess religion are:
1. Nurture life.
2. Walk in love and beauty.
3. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.
4. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.
5. Take only what you need.
6. Think of the consequences of your actions for seven generations.
7. Approach the taking of life with great restraint.
8. Practice great generosity.
9. Repair the web [of life]. [4]
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory
I am not super well-versed in the archaeological and anthropological evidence for and against it, so I will be brief on this subject.
In essence, the myth of matriarchal prehistory goes:
Again, I can’t speak for the actual historical veracity of this story. There is some truth to the claim that archaeology up until now has been tainted by sexist assumptions that have denied women a larger role in history (such as the recent discovery that most early cave artists were likely women, contrary to prior assumptions that cave artists must have been men). However, to the best of my understanding, there isn’t enough actual evidence to support the idea that pre-historic cultures all originally started as egalitarian, idyllic utopias that were ruined by the rise of the male warrior culture.the popular story about pre-historic matriarchies can generally be characterized in the following way: since the dawn of time, humans lived in relatively peaceful, cooperative groups (some settled, some wandering). People worshipped goddesses (or the Great Goddess), and women were seen as embodying the Goddess’ miraculous powers of birth, fertility, and regeneration. Bloodlines were traced through the mother, and women held high positions in society as priestesses and possibly even political chiefs. Most decisions were made by consensus, and warfare was practically unknown. Men worked alongside women and sometimes formed hunting parties, but left major community decisions up to their better halves. This idyllic life came to a shattering halt sometime around 5000 BCE, when patriarchal, war-like Indo-European invaders rushed in from the Russian steppes and conquered the pacific, woman-centered earlier cultures, who lacked the means to defend themselves. The conquerors imposed their patriarchal male gods and social forms on the matriarchs, and the rest is history (and God) as we know it. [10]
Nevertheless, just because the myth is not literally true, does not mean that it has no purpose:
The way I see it, the myth of matriarchal prehistory is a beautiful and powerful metaphor. By imagining an egalitarian past where women and men lived as equals and in harmony with the earth, we can also imagine how we can achieve the future.All this polarization and oversimplification avoids the real issue, which is not female domination in a reverse of historical female oppression, but the existence of egalitarian human societies: cultures that did not enforce a patriarchal double standard around sexuality, property, public office and space; that did not make females legal minors under the control of fathers, brothers, and husbands, without protection from physical and sexual abuse by same. We know of many societies that did not confine, seclude, veil, or bind female bodies, nor amputate or deform parts of those bodies. We know, as well, that there have been cultures that accorded women public leadership roles and a range of arts and professions, as well as freedom of movement, speech, and rights to make personal decisions. Many have embraced female personifications of the Divine, neither subordinating them to a masculine god, nor debarring masculine deities. [11]
Men, the God, and the Goddess
Again, I can’t speak too much about what the role of men in Goddess religion would be exactly. Truthfully, my forays into Goddess feminism has been a really intensely personal exploration of my own womanhood, which was largely denied to me as a child and as a teen; it’s been about finding the sacred within myself, as a woman. So while I am sure there are men who are Goddess feminists, I don’t know of many (well, I don’t know of many Goddess feminists, period, so there’s that too). Goddess feminism is still happening at a time when in our society at large, women are still not valued as highly as men, so it is understandable that Goddess symbolism has particular healing value for women at this time. (However, that hasn’t stopped me from calling on the Lord and Lady while practicing in my mixed gender coven).
Obviously, mean can and do worship the Goddess, in ever greater numbers. I believe that the ethics of Goddess feminism are valuable to everyone, not just women. Carol Christ writes:
It is true that the reemerging Goddess has been a more powerful symbol for women than for men. But increasing numbers of men are recognizing her power to bring healing in their lives. Many men have never felt comfortable with our culture’s image of male heroes as warriors, conquerors of women and nature … The male body too has its mysteries of generation and regeneration that have been explicitly celebrated in many religions. The Goddess can help bring men back in touch with their physicality, reminding them of their participation in the rhythms of life, death, and rebirth within nature. The images of the Goddess can help men learn to value their own nurturing power.
As the Goddess continues to emerge in our times, I believe that her images will become more varied and will be supplemented by new images of God as male. Men are experimenting with reclaiming images that connect to nature, such as St. Francis of Assisi, the Green Man, the Horned God, the Navajo Twins, several of the Green Gods and heroes, and Iron John. Some of these images are genuinely healing, while others seem to reiterate patriarchy’s antipathy to the female … As men become more involved in childbirth and child care, new images of sacred nurturing fathers can emerge to complement images of birth-giving Goddesses … New images can only emerge as men and culture change. [4]
My Personal Path
Thus far, I have been doing a lot of “book talk” (although I am indeed a bookish person). But I want to take this chance to explain my own path, and how I came to Goddess feminism (this is the much abbreviated history):
Throughout my childhood, my family pressured me to be as un-girl-y as possible. To them, that meant denying anything that had to do with my body -- whether that was paying attention to my body, applying makeup, or so much as thinking about boys. My sole purpose in life was to be a good student, to get straight As, and to get an Ivy League school. I was also emotionally (and possibly physically) abused as child, told that I was worthless and good for nothing if I didn’t win every single prize at my school and have anything less than 100s in all my classes; they controlled everything I did and isolated me from having any friends, saying they were a distraction from schoolwork. My parents also shamed me relentlessly for being slightly overweight, which would later lead to an eating disorder from ages 11-13 as I obsessively denied myself food and hid my body behind baggy T-shirts and too-large jeans. I was constantly depressed throughout my teen years, self-harming and suicidal. I sought to distract myself by seeking affection from men since I couldn’t get any from my parents, which was frequently a flash point for argument and more abuse (if I so much as spoke to a boy, or wear a form-fitting shirt, my father would call me a whore).
Eventually, I escaped (i.e. went to college) far away from my hometown. While there, I met a lot of incredible and inspirational women -- students who were strong, smart, and confident in their sexuality, employers who were kind and loving, professors who were brilliant and opened my eyes to feminism. I was healing from my abuse, and developed a healthier relationship with food. Through them, I started seeing myself as a woman and a feminist.
My family had always been atheist, and I had grown up entirely secular. I had never found Christianity appealing, although I grew up in the Bible Belt. Since I was 12 or 13, I was yearning for something to fill the gaping spiritual hole in my life. I briefly flirted with Wicca when I was 12 under the influence of a classmate, I decided it wasn’t for me since I couldn’t reconcile with with my skeptical tendencies (though it did resonate with me in many other ways). In college, however, after finding feminism and becoming quite passionate about issues of reproductive health, sexual assault, sexism, racism, homophobia, social justice, etc., I started reading feminist literature. One book in particular, The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, reignited my desire to explore my spirituality.
This time, I looked for an explicitly feminist spirituality, and the first book I read was Rebirth of the Goddess by Carol Christ (which I have quoted extensively in this post). It felt like I had come home. It was like all the pieces of the puzzle of my life just clicked together at the same time -- being an activist, my feelings about feminism and ethics, my need for spirituality. To find that other women had struggled with self-loathing, body hatred, internalized sexism, political injustice, and they had formed a spirituality that radically affirmed their experiences, their womanhood, their bodies, their power, that offered healing and a vision for a better world through love and joy -- I dived in headfirst and never looked back. Without a doubt, Goddess feminism has made me a better, more compassionate person.
I want to end this monstrously long post with a song that I feel most captures my own personal experience and that amazing healing power of having found the Goddess within me all along. Yes, it’s my favorite song. I’m totally not ashamed!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moSFlvxnbgk
Sources
[1] Isis Rising: Voices from the Underground
[2] ”Why Women Need the Goddess”, by Carol Christ
[3] Spiritual Eco-Feminism
[4] Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality, by Carol Christ (1997)
[5] Hidden Circles in the Web: Feminist Wicca, occult Knowledge, and Process Thought, by Constance Wise (2008)
[6] FAQ: But Men and Women are Born Different! Isn’t That Obvious?, by the blog, Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog!
[7] Two Meanings of Anthropomorphism, by Carol Christ on http://www.WitchesandPagans.com
[8] The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, by Starhawk (1979)
[9] Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality, by Melissa Raphael (1996)
[10] Matriarchy: Fact or Fiction? by the blog Notable Women
[11] A CRITIQUE OF CYNTHIA ELLER'S The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future, by Max Dushu (2000)
Recommended Reading
The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley (1983). This reinvention of the Arthurian legend features Morgan le Fay as the main character and tells the story of a clash of the ancient Pagan religions and the new patriarchal Christianity from the point of view of its many, complex female characters (and throws a wrench into what you thought you knew about the male characters too!). It’s probably responsible for bringing lots of women to Goddess feminism and Paganism (I’m one of them!). There are some aspects of the book which I disagree with (in particular, I feel that the Goddess in this book is a little more similar to “Yahweh in drag” than I would care for), but ultimately it shows a lot of the possibilities of a society where women have great power and follow a Pagan religion.
The Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk (1995). You can find my review of this novel here. A thought-provoking reading of a pagan utopia that is peaceful, egalitarian, democratic, sustainable, and feminist.
Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality, by Carol Christ (1997), which I have already quoted extensively.
She Who Changes, by Carol Christ (2003), which I have reviewed here.
Ariadne’s Thread: A Workbook of Goddess Magic, by Shekhinah Mountainwater (1991), which I have reviewed here.
The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, by Starhawk (1979), considered by many to be an essential “Paganism 101” book.
The Goddess Within: A Guide to the Eternal Myths that Shape Women’s Lives, by Roger and Jennifer Woolsey (1987). An excellent introduction to Goddess psychology and the 6 Goddess archetypes, based off of Greek mythology. You can read my review here.
WoodsPriestess, a blog by a Pagan priestess and her adventures in poetry, nature, and Goddess art.
[url=www.http://worksofliterata.org/]Works of Literata[/url], a blog by an ordained High Priestess and feminist. I want to especially recommend her post, Gender Essentialism has No Place in Wicca, a critique of the dualism in the Lord and the Lady.
* * * * * *
In particular, I want to highlight some new articles that came out in light of the Santa Barbara shootings, which shone a light on the misogyny and true woman-hatred that still exists today. Some thoughtful Pagan writers have reiterated the importance of Goddess symbolism at this time:
Goddesses in Times of Horror, by Jason Pitzl-Water:
That Which You Hate and Try to Destroy is Sacred, by Sarah Sadie:Which returns me to the Goddess, to all goddesses. To deity with a multiplicity of genders and forms. In the face of such horror, is the only sane reaction a radical re-embrace of female divinity? In a time when hate towards women seems at a fever pitch, do we not need to answer with: that which you hate and try to destroy is sacred. That which you try to control is beyond your control. That which you try to define and shame is beyond your definition or judgement.
But the Goddesses are not merely Arthur Rackham or Dante Gabriel Rossetti pasty-face dames trailing their robes in the water, nor are they only the scantily clad, t and a flaunting fantasies of (too many) comic books–and I’m certainly a far cry from those ladies fair. I insist upon myself: female, full, rounded and loud, complicated, desirous, furious, silly or thoughtful, confused or effusive or sexy as hell by turns. I insist on finding language to embody that woman. Me.
EDITED TO ADD: General Feminism 101 Links and Recommended Reading
Hey, are you interested in learning more about feminism in general? I'm linking some basic introductory resources. These are only the tip of the iceberg of the feminist movement, and of course no feminist can speak for all feminists, but I think these are probably some of the most influential and widely known feminist writers and publications among feminists today. If you're one of those people who believe in gender equality but don't consider themselves feminists because of whatever negative stereotype, I'd encourage you to actually read what feminists are saying before you try to make judgements about what feminists are like (in the same way that I would encourage someone who has negative stereotypes against witches and Pagans to actually read what Pagans themselves are saying before making judgements about what Pagans are like).
Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog! FAQ Roundup has a great list of introductory posts explicitly designed to debunk common myths about feminism
Shakesville Feminism 101 - Melissa McEwan is an exceptionally powerful writer, and her blog covers many topics related to feminism
The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women, by Jessica Valenti
Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters, by Jessica Valenti
Feminist Blogs and Publications
Feministing - a group blog that I consider to be reasonably representative of mainstream feminist concerns
Feministe - one of the oldest Feminist blogs
Bitch Magazine - the online arm of one of the best known feminist publications
Shakesville - a feminist blog run by Melissa McEwan and friends
Gradient Lair - a blog about black feminism
Rookie Mag - a blog specifically targeting teenage feminists
Feminist Frequency - a blog dedicated to examining women's representation in popular culture
* * * * * * * * *
If you’re still reading this, thank you for taking the time to read this post. I’d be happy to answer any questions or hear your thoughts and reactions; feel free to chime in below.
