I climbed trees and rode my bike and roller skated on sidewalks for hours on end when I was a child. As an adult, I have always been physically strong without having to work at it. Nor have I had to think much about my health. I have been able to trust my body to do pretty much everything I wanted it to do. I am also fiercely independent. And I don’t always like to be touched because my body is extremely sensitive to other people’s energies.
On the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete I was always the first one in and out of the caves and usually the first or one of the first up and down the mountains too. This changed when I injured my knee a few years ago in one of the caves and then six months later re-injured it in a fall on my front steps. I was told not to stress my knee by the pharmacist, and as a consequence stopped walking and doing yoga. I began to lose my physical strength. Continue reading “Asking for Help by Carol P. Christ”
Betty Friedan interviewed the unhappy housewives, their human potential unfulfilled by a lack of vocation outside the home. I wonder if her claim was just a premise of the lawn being more manicured on the other side. The book received criticism by reviewers asking who was really oppressed and what perspectives were ignored. I’ve been on a few lawns, and I am here to confirm there is no true green grass anywhere. Mostly it’s either covered with the blood of women who die in the Global South because of the poor working conditions that pay them too little to support their families or laced with pesticides for profit or sheets of concrete to the dismay of our feet. I suppose there might green grass somewhere, but it costs more than some of us can afford, meaning a woman would have to earn more than what is only enough to rent a room in someone else’s house, an apartment of her own being too expensive much less any sort of fund for a cabin in the woods. 
Last week while responding to a comment on my blog, I suddenly remembered a series of incidents in which men I did not know exposed themselves to me in public places. The first time occurred at a park around dusk during an outing with a group of girls. I was about 11, I may have wandered away from the group, or I may have been with others. What I remember is seeing a man with his pants down sitting on a park bench, possibly the first time I ever saw an adult man’s penis. I told or we told, but the man was not reported by the adults. Fast forward to the beautiful gardens of the Palace Schoenbrunn in Vienna where I was confronted by a penis while lost in thought when I was 19. I ran, but said nothing. In my 20s at the early showing of movies in New York City men would sit next to me and jerk off into paper bags. 
Some of the most brutal weapons ever used against me were crafted and wielded by my own hands, forged in grief and self-loathing out of the words of others. In my better moments, I recognize that while another’s frustration with me frequently may be justified, any cruel words towards me never are, and are more a reflection of their speakers’ relationship with themselves than of any facts about me.
I was at a dinner party for twelve lovingly prepared by two ex-pat friends, when the subject of Woody Allen’s most recent film came up. I don’t remember which one of them it was, because, as I said at the time, “I vowed never to see a Woody Allen film again as my response to the way he treats women in his films and in his personal life.” I was immediately challenged by–it seemed to me at the time–everyone else at the table.
Feminism and Religion 