The Epstein Files Prove Just How Right Carol Christ Had Been, part 2 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Part 1 was posted March 1st. You can read it here. The definition that Carol refers to as well as a link to her original article can be found there as well. Her words are in italics.

It has long seemed to me that patriarchy cannot be separated from war and the kings who take power in the wake of war.  Many years ago I was stunned by Merlin Stone’s allegation that in matrilineal societies there are no illegitimate children, because all children have mothers. Lately, I have been trying to figure out why the Roman Catholic and other churches and the American Republican party are so strongly opposed to women’s right to control our own bodies and are trying to prevent access to birth control and abortion. In the above definition of patriarchy  . . . I bring all of these lines of thought together in a definition which describes the origins of patriarchy and the interconnections between patriarchy, the control of female sexuality, private property, violence, war, conquest, rape in war, and slavery. 

Here Carol lays it all out. I, too, have wondered why the Church, why conservative politicians are so obsessed with women’s bodies and reproductive systems. No wonder abortion, in fact all of the healthcare of women is so on the political radar. Taking away the agency of women when they become pregnant is dehumanizing, reduces women to incubators. And that doesn’t even go into the fear of treating women for any health issues when they are pregnant. Take the tragic case of Tierra Walker who died in Texas, pregnant and facing growing health problems. She had a 14year old son and after weeks of severe distress attempted to get an abortion. She was unable to do due to the strict anti-abortion laws in Texas as she went to doctor after doctor. Here is what they told her: “But the doctor, her family said, told her what many other medical providers would say in the weeks that followed: There was no emergency; nothing was wrong with her pregnancy, only her health.” Its as if there was a cabal to diminish the value of women’s lives that even the doctors, who know better, participate in. And that is the templated of patriarchy. True that the doctors are threatened with loss of license and 10 years imprisonment begin. But when they spout the “party” line, they not only risk their patients, they deepen the already ingrained belief that women and our bodies are without worth.

My only qualm with this paragraph of Carol’s is that she doesn’t explicitly mention rape in slavery.  Private property in a patriarchal system includes human beings who can be used as the owner deems. Women’s bodies. Black bodies. Indigenous Bodies. All currency.

A recent case highlights this and as horrendous as it is, it is probably the mildest of the patriarchal obsessions with humans as currency. This is the case of 65-year-old grandma from Britain, Karen Newman who had a valid tourist visa when traveling to the US but her husband’s had expired, apparently inadvertently. They were turned away as they were trying to leave the US to go to Canada. As they turned around his visa had expired. They were both arrested, shackled and transported. She was held for 40 days in prison with no recourse. Her “guilt” in this was by association since her visa was valid. She had not broken any laws, even inadvertently. When she asked why this was happening, she was told the following, “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain, the guards told me that,” Karen said. Meanwhile while ICE and the private prison systems they use were profiting off of her, she had to sleep on prison floors during her incarceration. She is now warning people not to come to the US. I don’t blame her.

I love Carol’s highlighting of Merlin Stone’s point about illegitimate children.  Can you imagine a precious newborn child being considered “illegitimate” in a goddess-based culture?  Think about that, a human being in patriarchal systems can be illegitimate. And the concept was unquestioned truth for hundreds maybe thousands of years.  Even Carol (nor I) questioned the concept until Merlin Stone made her point that we are all children of a mother/The Mother.

There is a direct line between this belief system and the trope we see so often whereby undocumented immigrants are labeled “illegal aliens.” In fact when reading the news, I can always tell a person’s politics by what terminology they use for immigrants. Illegal, illegitimate, same cloth. A weaponization of words.

To call any person “illegal” and “alien” is double dehumanization

The Epstein files have made this process all too clear. The nexus of power needs to dehumanize others in order to control, sexuality, work output, wealth sources even to the pinnacles of political power where all these elements come together to enforce and create even more oppressive systems to keep themselves in power in a never-ending loop that grows harder and harder to break. With these details we can begin to see it all laid out in front of us in real time.

It has long seemed to me that patriarchy cannot be separated from war and the kings who take power in the wake of war.

And then what happens when people are dehumanized, children are illegitimate, the death of pregnant women is greeted with a shrug, people lose due process rights, and sex trafficking is allowed to flourish under the radar? The process of girls being trafficked is a test lab for circumventing moral and legal safeguards which in turn gives rise to rings of corruption that over time concentrates money and power in the hands of a few. Such money and power allow for the purchase of almost unlimited and unimaginable weaponry. It also allows them to hire (read “pay off”) people to enact whatever it is they imagine they want.

And what do they want? More sex (of the power-over type), more power, more money. And how do they get this? War.

As Carol writes in her definition of patriarchy (from part 1): men who are heroes of war are told to kill men, and are permitted to rape women, to seize land and treasures, to exploit resources, and to own or otherwise dominate conquered people.

Bodies without worth are easy to sacrifice as cannon fodder. Bodies without worth are easier to kill.

And then there is the oft quoted adage: “The first casualty of War is Truth.” And lo and behold we are now finding the concentration of ownership in the hands of the billionaire war-mongers who spout the party line. They are doing their best to control the narrative. And the narrative is that war is good, the US is heroic, and the administration can do no wrong. As I write this, there is small angst over the US servicemembers killed. Barely a word from the administration other than a shrug, a callous mention of more deaths to come and a call for revenge promising ever more escalation and more deaths. The President seems more invested in his ballroom drapes. And there is barely anything discussed about the people in Iran and other places being killed including, and especially, the children who died when their school was bombed.

Carol points to the direct line from the idea that children can be “illegitimate” to the permission structure for war. And that direct line goes through the bodies of the women who carry the children that are so reviled. All become the currency of patriarchy.

As I was finishing up this post I received an email from Parliament of World Religions calling for the recognition of our “shared humanity.” I muse: “Shared humanity” cannot exist in a patriarchal system. Therein lies the tragedy.