My 2x great-grandparents Nathaniel Searing and Louisa Caroline Martin were pioneers who cleared the land and built a log cabin in Lyons, Michigan in 1840. They were descended from English Puritan Colonial settlers in New England. At least two of my ancestors are recognized by the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolutions. Other members of my family who were Quakers proudly refused to take part in the Revolutionary War.
My great-grandfather James Augustus married a woman of German descent, his daughter Lena Marie married a Swede, and my mother married a man who was German, Irish, and Scottish. As the descendants of Nathaniel Searing and Louisa Caroline Martin moved around the United States and married into the families of newer immigrants, the succeeding generations also lost touch with their history. Our family’s connections to the New England Colonists were not even mentioned at Thanksgiving!
Every year I dread this weekend that honors dead soldiers. Let me make it clear that I have lost relatives to wars – uncles I loved including my first cousin who was killed six weeks after arriving in Vietnam having just graduated from West Point. I grieve too but Patriarchy and Nationalism have brought us to this dark door that we pass through each spring when the rest of nature is celebrating renewal.
We honor the fallen in war even as we indoctrinate our young boys and girls into the next generation of patriarchal power, hatred for the enemy, and war games. All this patriotism indicates that we choose to learn nothing from the past.
A couple of nights ago I watched Bob Dylan performing with others in The Rolling Thunder Revue for the first time. By 1975 the earnest/ peaceful/nature focused folk era was over. Dylan was playing electric/rock and roll and had lost some of his followers. Nixon was president and war was back in the game. The so called ‘hippies’ were outlawed, ridiculed and dismissed as druggies. This generation whose protests ended the war in Vietnam.
War has led to an increase in the number of female-headed households, as many men are killed, go missing, or are forced to migrate. This situation has, more than ever, resulted in a surge in poverty, economic instability, and severe psychological pressure among these women.
In wartime conditions, female heads of household face multifaceted crises. Given that the majority of them are engaged in informal and home-based occupations (such as knitting, tailoring, and food production), the war has dealt a direct blow to their family income by closing marketplaces, disrupting supply chains for raw materials, and reducing the purchasing power of customers.
According to a report by one of the state websites, passengers in a Tehran metro carriage, in response to the street vendors’ advertisements, say they have no money. According to this report, the faces of the female vendors are exhausted. Some of them are over sixty years old and plead with people to buy their goods. (Shafaqna, October 6, 2025)
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.
From the Facebook page of GirlGodBooks
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.
In that moment, she became a woman I connected with on a soul level. What could be more profound than washing and folding the clothing of tiny dead children? What other metaphor could be more vivid for how desperately we need to change the world?
“A tiny pink long-sleeved shirt with a boat neck, for a girl, size 3 months.
A pair of leggings with feet, grey with pink, orange, brown, white, and blue polka-dots, to be worn over diapers.”
I remember sitting inside the Idean cave with our Goddess Pilgrimage group when Carol read, “We Need a God Who Bleeds Now” by Ntozake Shange. I knew the poem well, but hearing Carolina read it so forcefully shook something deep inside me.
While I have had the privilege of having several wonderful female pastors, they were never particularly affirming of my womanhood—or my divinity. They certainly never celebrated my period.
Are violence and domination innate in human nature? We have been told that we are the “naked ape” descended from “apes” who, like the chimpanzees with whom we share 98% of our DNA, were male dominant and violent. Do we, then, have any hope not to be violent and dominant?
This was originally posted Sept 16, 2013. It is sadly pertinent today
“They used chemical weapons, we must do something to stop them.” A justification widely used in support of President Obama’s decision to launch a military strike against Syria.
We fought the Civil War to end slavery and racism. We fought the Second World War to end fascism. Did we end racism? Did we end fascism? Howard Zinn
(Author’s note: I live in Prague, Czech Republic and teach at Charles University.Try as I might, I could not express in prose my thoughts about the violence in the world and particularly the violence here, in Prague, on the 21st of December, especially given the fact that I was a block away from what took place. So, I have written a poeminstead.)
I swim through the slimy waters of patriarchal violence Difficult to express in words the anxieties, the fear, the sadness I feel as I take another stroke
towards
the parshah Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:6), a divinely wrought plague of locusts devouring all in their path.
Breathe, stroke.
Darkness lasting three long days blood smeared on doorposts and lintels the deaths of first-borns, humans and animals alike, the proclamation of a New Year and its festivities to remind us of such nonsensical violence.
The Torah portion for July 15th is the double-portion, Matot-Massei (Bamidbar/Numbers 30:2-36:13). Matot, meaning tribes, runs from Numbers 30:2 to 32:42 and covers vow making as well as what the spoils of war with the Midianites are. Massei, or journeys, is Numbers 33:1 to 36:13 and describes the Israelites journey through the desert after fleeing Egypt and the boundaries of the Promised Land. While Matot-Massei have so much that could be discussed including war, images for the deity, and cities of refuge, this post focuses on their women.
There are three occasions where women are specifically mentioned. The first concerns vows and their atonement when broken. Next, women are discussed as spoils of war. Finally, Matot-Massei describes what to do with inheritance when there are only daughters.
I was listening to a newscast when it was reported that the Ukraine sent missiles into Russia. My initial thought was “it’s about time they took it to the Russians.” The next moment I was horrified at myself. I am a pacifist. I think the proliferation of weapons is one of humankind’s great evils and here I was cheering on an attack. One that could escalate an already nasty war, lead to nuclear weapons use and possibly even a world war. And yet when I look at what is happening in Ukraine, my mind simply can’t comprehend what the people are going through. The trauma of the children cuts particularly deeply. And I can see no sane reason behind the strikes other than rank cruelty.
There it is in a nutshell, what I have come to call the patriarchal dilemma. It’s a no-win situation with no right answer. While life might place us in such positions all on its own, the patriarchal form of this is created by design. It is nasty, it is cruel, and loss of human life and ecological destruction are not glitches but features.
Feminism and Religion 