Category: Feminism

Help, My Daughter Got a Bunch of Princess Stuff for Christmas! by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Every year, I see multiple pleas from concerned mothers (rarely fathers, because (straight) fathers rarely take on emotional labor of child rearing) wondering what to do about the pile of pink plastic that just came into their home. It’s such a scary pile. It whispers, “come here, little girl… let go of your individuality, your power, your freedom. Join me in the glamour and popularity of gendered subordinate dehumanized servitude… everybody’s doing it… first one’s free….” Mothers (well, the ones who pay attention) look at that pile and see a desolate road ahead of princess girls who grow into teens that think they need to look like pornified sex kittens, who grow into young adults that think it’s ok for men to treat them like sex objects, and on into a bleak dystopian future of internalized misogyny.

I can’t promise that I’ve come up with a magic formula to prevent all that. After all, our girls are met with a barrage, a deluge, of toxic messages luring them down that path in every movie, TV show, magazine, billboard, and media around them. Even female meteorologists can’t just wear suits or have short hair or look plump. And none of my strategies will work if family members are modeling that females should try to please the “male gaze.” So I am not offering a magic bullet. All the same, here is how I handled the Pink Plastic Menace – as usual, a joint effort with my sister Tallessyn Grenfell-Lee.

Continue reading “Help, My Daughter Got a Bunch of Princess Stuff for Christmas! by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Eulogy for My Father by Natalie Weaver

Fourteen years ago, I was pregnant with William Valentine.  I had no idea what to expect.  I knew only that I was in a body, and it was pregnant.  Things happened to me, to my body, that seemed extrinsic to my person, so much so that for most of those forty weeks, I felt as though the doctor’s office was having the baby, and I was a mere observer.  But, when the time came to deliver the baby, I realized it was my body that was trying to make passage for another’s.  The particularities of myself and the baby’s self seemed to fade away into something more vital and primordial in the process of the transmission of life.  After a safe delivery, I felt a deep and curious gratitude that was beyond the gratitude I had for my child or for our health.  This strange gratitude was born of the passage I had been so fortunate to experience, that is, this novel yet ancient, essential yet unparalleled dimension of human being-ness.  I had given live birth, and I was grateful to know what that was like.  In that experience, I was more connected to my human brothers and sisters than I had ever been before, including to this new baby, who I knew in my deepest self was more fundamentally a brother human than even he was my own child.  I knew that in this transmission, I had helped a fellow traveler, and that transmitting life was simple even while it was giant in scope.  The experience was and would always be about walking with each other, from the cradle to the grave, in our vulnerability, in our fragility, in our humility, and in that walk, to find our strength, our dignity, and our luminescence, as persons, as creatures that think and speak and love.  To have been a party to another’s coming to be, this was an occasion of the greatest gratitude I had known.

In accompanying my father in this final stage of his life during these challenging and difficult months as he journeyed toward his death, I felt that same vital and primordial passage of being that I had in giving birth.  While it was not my body that this time labored and worked, I was party to his experience.  I witnessed his courage and another kind of transmission of life.  For, I saw a man go from self-concern to other-concern; from hope of getting well to hope to of making things better for others; I witnessed a man move from verbal complaint to silent focus; and I heard his relocation of worry for himself to concern for me because he knew I was hurting as I was watching him, mostly powerless to do anything but sit next to him. I saw a man graduate from a regular man to an elder and then to naked spirt in God’s care, and I was honored to be one of his midwives on that journey.  In his final hours, he became full of grace, and he fulfilled the trajectory of becoming the father and man he always intended to be.  It was an honor to behold, and I am grateful.

Continue reading “Eulogy for My Father by Natalie Weaver”

Seeking Happiness, According to Paulo Coelho by Elisabeth Schilling

Lately I’ve been reading a few Paulo Coelho books. I won’t say they are beyond feminist criticism, but it’s not what I’m going to focus on this post; but as always, feel free to say in the comments why/if you find them problematic. I expect and welcome it because it might be another layer of this conversation that I don’t have time or am not yet emotionally ready for myself.

What I want to focus on is the solution the author seems to advance in each of his books, at least those I’ve read, to our perpetual unhappiness despite the evidence that everything is fine, better than might otherwise be.

Adultery: I never finished this one, actually. I had to take it back to the library the last time I had to leave Ireland, but I’m sure I will find it again and read the rest of it soon. So I can’t say what the ending revealed, but what sticks in my mind was the predicament of the main character. She, from her perspective, had it all: wealth, an interesting career she liked, an attractive husband who was attentive and kind, a family, health. This was why she was so confused that she was unhappy. This is the premise of many of his books: the person who doesn’t know why they are unhappy. Also, the observation that no one is really happy.

Continue reading “Seeking Happiness, According to Paulo Coelho by Elisabeth Schilling”

The Lost Is Found by Carol P. Christ

Since I wrote “Claiming the Power to Choose to Our Lovers” and “Choosing to End Love” in the spring, my beloved and I came back together and parted again, not once, but twice.  At the end of the summer, believing our separation to be final, I decided to drop a miniature copy of the Minoan bee pendant, symbol of my desire to “let go of a beautiful dream,” into a crevice in the Skoteino Cave while on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete.

I don’t believe in divine intervention, but something happened to stop me. The day before the ritual, the pendant disappeared. It was not in my jewelry case, not in my handbag, not anywhere in my suitcase or my hotel room: it was nowhere to be found. That same day I received a gift of a large jar of honey from a local shopkeeper. In the end, I dropped a sugar-coated almond into the crevice and poured every bit of the honey onto the altar of the cave, asking for transformation and love. Continue reading “The Lost Is Found by Carol P. Christ”

What Gender is God Anyway? by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Adult Daughter (“AD”): Hi Mom, Alex said to tell you “hi.”

Me: That’s nice. How is she?

AD: How are “they?” Alex uses “they,” mom.

Me: Oh right, sorry. I am having some trouble wrapping my head around using “they” and “them.”

AD: Well mom, that is something you’re going to just have to get over.

Using “they” to refer to one person short circuits my long life of grammar training. I found my mind resisting the plural no matter how many times I reminded myself that Alex uses plural pronouns. As I considered my brain’s resistance to “they/them,” I realized that singular gendered pronouns are truly a cultural construct. I went on to muse that maybe Alex was on to something bigger than themselves. I began to think about the Bible, arguably the foundational document of our patriarchal society, and how it uses a plural form while referring to a singular or one God.

Continue reading “What Gender is God Anyway? by Janet Maika’i Rudolph”

A Review of Decembers Past before We Move into the New Year by Marie Cartier

Last month I looked back over six years of postings I have done for FAR. In November,  I noticed that I usually during that month tend to review the year and find something to be grateful for.

I decided this month to follow that up by looking back at the posts I have done for the past six years at this time of year, right before the wheel turns into the New Year. I have the privilege of writing for FAR usually right after Thanksgiving and right after Christmas and before New Year’s. I tend to think of this time as a time of looking forward, and Thanksgiving as a time of looking back.

Continue reading “A Review of Decembers Past before We Move into the New Year by Marie Cartier”

Reindeer Spirit Animal – A Guide Through the Darkness by Judith Shaw

judith shaw photoReindeer have been important to humans since our early days as hunters-gatherers. Found in cave paintings throughout Europe and Asia, reindeer are depicted as soaring through the air, perhaps acting as intermediaries between the human world and the spirit world.

Continue reading “Reindeer Spirit Animal – A Guide Through the Darkness by Judith Shaw”

Moving On by Carol P. Christ

Last year when I was newly in love, I found myself wondering if my boyfriend would ask me to move to Crete to be closer to him. Pondering this possibility, it suddenly dawned on me that I was ready to move on. I had been living in Lesbos for twenty years, and I never expected to leave such a stunning island. I have an incredibly beautiful home that I renovated at great emotional cost. Nonetheless, I had been mildly depressed for a number of years and seriously distressed for three.

I consider myself intelligent and charming and fun to be around. Though I am highly educated and involved in environmental work and politics, I can also talk about the weather, people, and television programs. Despite the diversity of my interests, I find myself isolated in my village.

I have many Greek friends, but we rarely socialize together. Greek men in my village still often go out with each other, leaving their wives at home. The women meet for coffee parties in the winter, but because Greeks are very family oriented, they rarely develop the kinds of close female friendships we cherish in North America.

In the summer when the days are long and lovely, most of the locals are working day and night in the tourist industry. In the winter, they rest and spend time with their families. Since the economic crisis that began in 2009, most Greeks cannot afford to go out on a regular basis. Continue reading “Moving On by Carol P. Christ”

The Santa Goddess from The Goddess Project: Made in Her Image by Colette Numajiri

Frau Holda Poem

Hail to Frau Holda, the beautiful and bright,
Crowned and clothed, all in glistening Winter white.
Ay seeking and searching, She sweeps o’er the land,
Scourge for the slovenly, held firmly in hand.
As Holda fares forth, with Her own Holy Host,
May She deem distaffs full, befitting a Yule boast.
For when all is cleanly, content She shall be,
Thus Her bedding she flaps, with a whirlwind flurry.
Soon crisp snowflakes, come falling feather light,
Cleverly She shakes, cloaking the clutter with white.
‘Til Earth is enclosed, by a fine fluffy down,
A bedecked beauty, in Her sparkling snow gown.
Heed well and hear, when Holda’s housework doth end,
A faint satisfied sigh, for the mess Frau did mend.
© Rhonda Turner

 

Once I became a mother I found the demands as well as my own expectations for holiday gifting, decor and celebrations to be SO taxing that I quickly felt a bit of resentment toward Santa Claus for getting all of the credit. Now I tell my children that Santa Goddess is posing as homekeeping MRS. CLAUSE and that SHE and the elves do all of the work, and that “Santa” is merely their courier. Engulfed in modern society, I don’t think my young children hear me as they still dance with glee at any mention of Santa Claus.

Continue reading “The Santa Goddess from The Goddess Project: Made in Her Image by Colette Numajiri”

Men Just “Know Things” by Esther Nelson

One of my Facebook friends, a young woman academic, recently posed a question, inviting discussion. (I’ve abbreviated her post for the sake of space.)

“What is it about white male liberals that just MUST have me buy [into] their ideas when they diverge from mine? I am struck that over the years, I have had a handful of white male liberals make it a mission to convince me that I am WRONG about Hillary. When I say, listen, the case is closed, she cheer led the Iraq war, I am done, [t]hey just cannot handle it.” Continue reading “Men Just “Know Things” by Esther Nelson”