In this excerpt from her book Matriarchal Societies, Heide Goettner-Abendroth describes her journey to the shrine of Kali, which is at the meeting place of two streams. Heide’s writing brings to life the sacredness of both nature and women.
When they talk about her at all, Europeans describe the cult of Kali, India’s ancient great goddess, as being extremely bloody. It was apparent to me at the sanctuary of Dashkin Kali how many misinterpretations and western prejudices were tied up in this opinion. The narrow mountain road took me up the hill: below me the Katmandu Valley opened up in all it’s exotic beauty.
In the grey dawn, unimaginably high, blindingly white peaks of the Himalayas rose up behind the circle of mountains. Gradually it became apparent that the valley is shaped like a scallop shell, symbol of the fertile, creative goddess. And right there, set into the hills where the Bagmati River breaks through the Southern narrow mountains and leaves the Katmandu Valley behind, is the sacred place of Dakshin Kali. It lies hidden; only at the end of the road rounded, inwardly folded mountain, overgrown with the most luxurious green, was visible as a bright contrast against the dry, yellow-brown of the surrounding landscape. Even though it was dry season, two overflowing streams rushed down over this concave mountain, flowing together, V-shaped, into a small ravine. Not only in the nature religion of the Khasi, but all over India, the junction of two rivers is considered a sacred place, embodying the lap of Mother Earth from whom flow the endless waters of life.
The shrine of Dakshin Kali is markedly different from the Hindu temples and Buddhist stupas, in that it has kept, even today, the form of an old natural sancuary: a small, open place in the triangle where the two streams meet; shady, cool, and full of secrets in the green twilight of the gorge. I had to climb down to the goddess instead of climbing up to an imposing structure. There is no sacred building here; nothing keep nature out. Rather, the temple is the gorge itself. The site is marked by a low wall, and decorated with an arch over which a gilded yoni symbol hangs like a large drop of water, symbol of the uterus and female power. Covering the ground are clean black and white times, inset with a large six pointed star. This star, depicting two conjoined triangles, stands for the polarities whose powers create the cosmos.
A golden canopy, held up by four upwardly slanting golden snakes placed precisely in the four compass directions, stretches over this open air temple. Here again the snakes, the sacred “nagas” symbolize water, seen as the pure blood of the earth, and they symbolize the fertility that comes from the water, as well as divine female energies. The power of the depth, the transformation of life into death and death into life, is understood as “shakti”, or energy of the goddess Kali, whose small sculpture is at the knee-high back wall. A priest sat before her, bowed in deep prayer.
In this episode of the Green Flame Lierre Keith Speaks on Biden Executive Order
In this timely episode of the Green Flame Jennifer Murnan interviews Lierre Keith regarding a new development in the war on women. That development is Biden’s executive order on “gender identity” signed the day of his inauguration, and it will eviscerate Women’s Rights.
Lierre Keith is the founder of the Women’s Liberation Front, WoLF founder and board member, a radical feminist for over 40 years and is the author of 6 books.
Here’s an excerpt from today’s episode:
[9:24]
…so what Biden has done, has said, taking this Bostock decision instead of sex, we’re now going to have gender identity so every place in the law that was protecting women as a group, as a class based on our biology, now they’re going to instead look at that through the eyes of “gender identity” and they can’t define gender identity, it’s not in this executive order, there’s literally no definition. The few states that have tried to have definitions, I mean, in New Jersey it’s like “gender identity is a gender related identity” and I’m not making that up, it’s completely circular and this is because it’s complete nonsense. I know we all keep using the emperor’s new clothes as our big metaphor but I don’t have a better one, it’s just complete nonsense, it means nothing. Yeah, “a circle is a thing we call a circle,” great! Does not tell you what a circle is! And the most ridiculous thing is that we all know what a man is and what a woman is, this isn’t actually up for debate. We have been a sexually dimorphic 500 million years on this planet, we’ve had sexual reproduction, there’s just men and there’s women, this is actually not very complicated, they have made it complicated, it is not complicated, we all know who can bear the babies and who doesn’t. For the whole history of patriarchy, they’ve never had a problem figuring out who the women were: was going to be sold as a child bride, was going to have her genitals mutilated, was gonna have her feet pound, wasn’t allowed to vote, I mean, in 1976 when my mother divorced my father she couldn’t get a credit card in her name, she couldn’t get a bank account, didn’t happen to my father! We all know who that happened to and why we have a feminist movement. Anyway, so Bostock has now come to fruition, we saw this in the ruling, anybody can read it all, this information is public and that’s what they said, that gender identity was essentially a discreet group of people and they deserve protection and we’re just going to go with it, again, never defined it because it’s not definable, it’s simply an internal feeling and it has nothing to do with physical reality. So this executive order, the federal anti-discrimination statutes that cover sex discrimination, now have to provide the same, let’s say, they’re going to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity, this involves all the Federal Civil Rights offices across the country which are now going to have to enforce this. This is where you used to go if you felt like there was workplace discrimination or something that was one of the legal remedies that you had, so women aren’t going to have that remedy anymore, men will.
The Green Flame is a Deep Green Resistance podcast offering revolutionary analysis, skill sharing, and inspiration for the movement to save the planet by any means necessary. Our hosts are Max Wilbert and Jennifer Murnan.
Across the internet, women have been expressing relief at the end of the Trump era.
Even Canadians are posting moving images of Kamala Harris and Jill Biden in outfits representing progress. No true feminist would wear a black suit and red tie, after all. What America needs now is jewel tones.
I’m hard pressed to understand what trauma Canadians have endured watching an egomaniac tweet himself into internet jail… If anything, it provided dedicated progressive posters with four years of conversation starters. Now what will you meme about?
Either way, I’m just glad all this division and polarization will finally come to an end.
Canadians and Americans alike will have to band together to find something new to distract themselves with. Maybe this time it will be mass surveillance and the end of free speech? OR. Or. Wait no I have a good one. An end to women’s sport and sex-based protections?
The first thing U.S. President Joe Biden did, the day after his inauguration, was to sign 15 executive orders, including rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and reversing a policy that blocks U.S. funding for programs overseas linked to abortion. Not bad. He also implemented a mask mandate on federal property, as well as on buses, planes, and trains.
But Biden’s courageous “100 Days Masking Challenge” (ooooh fun! It’s like a game!) wasn’t the only decision allowing us to collectively breathe a hot sigh of relief. He also signed an executive order to implement certain aspects of the Equality Act, which sounds like a great thing, unless you are a woman who, in 2021, hoped for equality under the law. Sorry, Karen. Equality is not for you. Put your mask back on.
The order ensures “that federal anti-discrimination statutes that cover sex discrimination prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity” and bypasses the tedious legislative process normally required to pass legislation.
But hey, we’re talking about equality, you guys.
And who would vote against that! As far as I’m aware, democracy just means other people get to decide what’s good for you. People who vote against ungood things are fascists.
Lest you had been fooled into believing an “Equality Act” was, at least in part, about combatting sex-based discrimination, seeing as women are the half of the population who spent the last 100 years fighting for equal rights under the law, we are reminded that our status as “woman” only matters if you are the kind of woman who is a man.
The original Equality Act introduced in 1974 by Bella Abzug did in fact seek to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex (as well as sexual orientation and marriage status) but as we all now know, thanks to Twitter’s fact checkers, humans have surpassed sex. We are now a mass of amorphous theys whose rights are determined by the kind of porn we prefer. The Equality Act of 1974 did not go on to become legislation, and has been reintroduced in various forms over the years, bringing us to modern times, where equality is still needed, just not for chicks.
Today, the important thing, in terms of ensuring equality, is that mediocre male athletes be permitted to compete against girls and women, lest they have to live with their male-based mediocrity. As such, this “Equality Act” ensures that individuals cannot be discriminated on the basis of their “gender identity,” which sounds nice because no one should be discriminated against, but in this case we’re using the term “discrimination” to defend the rights of men to claim they are female and be treated as such.
You might ask why men would wish to be treated as “female.”
Well, for starters, to ensure they are not denied access to abortion should they become pregnant with delusion. But there are a few other good reasons, too. One of which being that, should these men find themselves charged with sexual assault, they can avoid being stuck in prison with a bunch of violent dudes. Fair enough. No one wants that. Problem is that, as “women,” these men now have the right to be imprisoned in women’s facilities, meaning female inmates are now subject to the male violence no one wants anything to do with. Seems unfair, right? Too bad, Karen! That’s equality!
The really important thing this Equality Act does, though, is to level the playing field for males who aren’t good enough athletes to compete against other male athletes. It is more fair for them to compete against women who are, due to their biology, not as strong or as fast as male athletes. Indeed, women’s bodies are different than male bodies, but we’re no longer allowed to talk about why that is, because material reality is not very polite, and impoliteness kills.
Men can now not only legally access women’s facilities — including washrooms, locker rooms, and dressing rooms — but as “women,” they can also win sport competitions, races, scholarships, and accolades previously reserved for girls and women, which they fully deserve, because the hardest thing about being a woman is being male.
In October, Biden promised us he would enact the Equality Act during his first 100 days as President.
He is a Good Guy (which is why you voted for him, right?) and Good Guys keep their promises. So, he is following through. None of this was a surprise, and now we can all celebrate this brave new world, free from the burden of independent thought.
Personally, I’m just relieved Americans no longer have a crazy guy as president! Imagine if the leader of your country believed that males could become female through pronouncement, then enacted legislation on that basis! LOL.
This article was originally published on Feminist Current: Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010 and has published work in numerous national and international publications, including The Spectator, Unherd, TheCBC, New Stateman, Vice, Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, and more. Meghan completed a Masters degree in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and lives in Vancouver, B.C. with her dog.
Editors note: The sketch by Monty Python really nails it:
The system is fucked-up. If you are reading this, you probably know this already. You’re here because you know how fucked-up the system is. You know that it is based on the oppression of humans, nonhumans and the entire planet. You know that we need to fight this system, that we need to resist it with all we have. You may already be doing that anyway. I’m going to share some of the ways that I have resisted.
Resistance requires courage.
Resistance means standing up for what is right. It requires the willingness to go against an enemy so powerful that defeat seems inevitable. Sometimes, it may even require standing up to your loved ones. The majority of human beings, including our loved ones and even ourselves, are indoctrinated into this human supremacist, male supremacist, white supremacist culture that hates life. Anyone who dares to go against this culture is likely to be attacked on many levels, emotionally, socially, financially, or even physically. I’m sure many of us have faced this. I’ve faced such attacks for refusing to go along with mindless consumerism, for providing a radical view among non-political groups, and for refusing to conform to the dominant narrative. I have been coaxed, harassed, or threatened into submission. Regrettably, a few of these attacks have been successful. They serve to remind us how powerful the dominant system is, and how much of courage it requires to stand up against it.
Resistance means being prepared.
The system does not serve anyone. It is inherently flawed. Usually, these flaws are covered up by conveniences such as 24-hour electricity, hot water flowing out of a faucet, or the ability to instantly connect with anyone. The genocide and slavery that continues to go into making all this possible is well hidden. However, there are times when the injustices of the system become apparent, times when inherent flaws cannot be hidden anymore. The failure of the global supply chain during the initial parts of the lockdown is one example.
Everyday examples include extreme cases of violence against a person of an oppressed group, especially when the violence cannot be deemed to serve anyone. These incidences open up discussion about systemic flaws, and may lead to structural changes, for better or worse. Resistance means being prepared to notice and utilise such situations, to highlight the flaws within the system, and to direct the momentum for positive changes.
Resistance should also be strategic.
It means considering the best and the most effective means to achieve one’s goals. We are up against a system that has far more resources and more power at its disposal. We cannot be prodigal on our use of time and energy. Sometimes, this means backing off from a fight. It is not possible to win every argument, every legal case, every fight against the system. Effective resistance requires us to identify the fights that are worth spending our limited time and energy on.
Resistance comes in different forms.
Regardless of the nuances in our political ideologies, or the differences in our life situations, there are many ways to resist the system. For me, fighting for my right to planned parenthood is a form of resistance. For a woman who has submitted to patriarchy all her life, fighting against her family’s pressures to abort her daughter is resistance. Every form of resistance against this culture should be welcomed.
I believe Derrick Jensen could not be any clearer when he says:
“The good thing about everything being so fucked up is that no matter where you look there is great work to be done.”
Salonika is an organizer at DGR Asia Pacific and is based in Nepal. She believes that the needs of the natural world should trump the needs of the industrial civilization.
In this article, Robert Jensen shares a straight-forward view of Cancel Culture and how critique of a political position is not necessarily directed to mock the people who hold it but rather an invitation to become accountable to one’s obligation to participate in democratic dialogue.
In the current squabble on the liberal/progressive/left side of the fence over so-called “cancel culture,” in which one open letter in favor of freedom of expression led to a rebuttal open letter in favor of a different approach to freedom of expression, I can offer a report on the experience of being canceled.
Several times over the past few years I’ve been asked to speak by university or community groups, only to see those events canceled by organizers after someone complained that I am “transphobic.” At a couple of events that drew complaints but were not canceled, including one in a church, critics tried to disrupt my talk. None of the events was actually a talk on transgender issues. The complaint was that I should not be allowed to speak in progressive settings — about other feminist issues, the ecological crises, or anything else — because what I’ve written about the ideology of the transgender movement is said to be bigoted. A local radical bookstore that denounced me publicly went so far as to no longer carry my books, which I had given them free copies of for years.
If I were, in fact, a bigot, these cancellations would be easy to understand. I have never invited a bigot to speak in a class I taught or at an event I helped organize. I have invited people to speak who held some political views with which I did not agree (after all, if I only invited people who agreed with me on everything, I would be bored and lonely), but I have no interest in giving bigots a public platform.
The curious thing about these canceled/disrupted events is that no one ever pointed to anything I have written or said in public that is, in fact, bigoted. If transphobia is the fear or hatred of people who identify as transgender, nothing I have written or said is transphobic. Most of my critics simply assert that because I support the radical feminist critique of transgender ideology, I am by definition a bigot and transphobe.
For the Sake of Clarity
Let me be clear: I’m not whining or asking for sympathy. I am a white man and a retired university professor with a stable income and a network of friends and comrades who offer support. I continue to do political and intellectual work I find rewarding and can find places to publish my work. While I don’t enjoy being insulted, these verbal attacks don’t have much effect on my life. I’m not concerned about myself but about the progressive community’s capacity for critical thinking and respectful debate.
In that spirit, here is my contribution to that debate on transgenderism and the value of open discussion:
One of the basic points that feminists — along with many other writers — have made is that biological sex categories are real and exist outside of any particular cultural understanding of those categories. The terms “male” and “female” refer to those biological sex categories, while social norms about “masculinity” and “femininity” reflect how any particular society expects males and females to behave. That may seem obvious to many readers, but in some progressive and feminist circles it’s routine for people to say that those sex categories themselves are a “social construction.” I have been told that because I assert that biological sex categories are immutable, I am transphobic.
Is that claim defensible? Are sex categories a social construction?
About Reproduction & Respiration
Let’s think about reproduction. Some creatures reproduce asexually, through such processes as fission and budding, and some animals lay eggs. Most mammals, including all humans, reproduce sexually through the combination of a sperm and an egg (the two types of gamete cells) that leads to live birth.
Now, let’s think about respiration. Most aquatic creatures (whales and dolphins, which are mammals, are an exception) take in oxygen through gills. Mammals, including all humans, get oxygen by taking air into our lungs.
These descriptions of creatures’ reproduction and respiration are the result of a social process we call science, but they are not social constructions. We describe the world with human language, but what we describe doesn’t change just because we might change the language we use.
The term “social construction” implies that a reality can change through social processes. An example is marriage. What is a marriage? That depends on how a particular society constructs the concept. Change the definition — to include same-sex couples, for example — and the reality of who can get married changes.
Cannot Be Changed by Human Action
But again, at the risk of seeming simplistic, these descriptions of reproduction and respiration systems cannot be changed by human action. We cannot socially construct ourselves into reproducing asexually or by laying eggs instead of reproducing sexually through fertilization of egg by sperm, any more than we could socially construct ourselves into breathing through gills instead of lungs.
When it comes to respiration, no one suggests that “lung-based respiration is a social construction.” If someone made such a claim most of us would say, “I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense to me.” Yet when it comes to reproduction, some people argue that “biological sex is a social construction,” which makes no more sense than claiming respiration is a social construction.
To be clear: Humans do create cultural meaning about sex differences. Humans who have a genetic makeup to produce sperm (males) and humans who have a genetic makeup to produce eggs (females) are treated differently in a variety of ways that go beyond roles in reproduction. [Note: A small percentage of the human population is born “intersex,” a term to mark those who do not fit clearly into male/female categories in terms of reproductive systems, secondary sexual characteristics, and chromosomal structure. But the existence of intersex people does not change the realities of sexual reproduction, and they are not a third sex.]
The Radical Change
In the struggle for women’s liberation, feminists in the 1970s began to use the term “gender” to describe the social construction of meaning around the differences in biological sex. When men would say, “Women are just not suited for political leadership,” for example, feminists would point out that this was not a biological fact to be accepted but a cultural norm to be resisted.
To state the obvious: Biological sex categories exist outside of human action. Social gender categories are a product of human action.
This observation leads to reasonable questions, which are not bigoted or transphobic: When those in the transgender movement assert that “trans women are women,” what do they mean? If they mean that a male human can somehow transform into a female human, the claim is incoherent because humans cannot change biological sex categories. If they mean that a male human can feel uncomfortable in the social gender category of “man” and prefer to live in a society’s gender category of “woman,” that is easy to understand. But it begs a question: Is the problem that one is assigned to the wrong category? Or is the problem that society has imposed gender categories that are rigid, repressive, and reactionary on everyone? And if the problem is in society’s gender categories, then is not the solution to analyze the system of patriarchy — institutionalized male dominance — that generates those rigid categories? Should we not seek to dismantle that system? Radical feminists argue for such a radical change in society.
These are the kinds of questions I have asked and the kinds of arguments I have made in writing and speaking. If I am wrong, then critics should point out mistakes and inaccuracies in my work. But if this radical feminist analysis is a strong one, then how can an accurate description of biological realities be evidence of bigotry or transphobia?
An Approach, Not An Attack
When I challenge the ideology of the transgender movement from a radical feminist perspective, which is sometimes referred to as “gender-critical” (critical of the way our culture socially constructs gender norms), I am not attacking people who identify as transgender. Instead, I am offering an alternative approach — one rooted in a collective struggle against patriarchal ideologies, institutions, and practices, rather than a medicalized approach rooted in liberal individualism.
That’s why the label “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminism) is inaccurate. Radical feminists don’t exclude people who identify as transgender but rather offer what we believe is a more productive way to deal with the distress that people feel about gender norms that are rigid, repressive, and reactionary. That is not bigotry, but politics. Our arguments are relevant to the ongoing debate about public policies, such as who is granted access to female-only spaces or who can compete in girls’ and women’s sports. They are relevant to concerns about the safety of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions. And radical feminism is grounded in compassion for those who experience gender dysphoria — instead of turning away from reality, we are suggesting ways to cope that we believe to be more productive for everyone.
Now, a final prediction. I expect that some people in the transgender movement will suggest that my reproduction/respiration analogy mocks people who identify as transgender by suggesting that they are ignorant. Let me state clearly: I do not think that. The analogy is offered to point out that an argument relevant to public policy doesn’t hold up. To critique a political position in good faith is not to mock the people who hold it but rather to take seriously one’s obligation to participate in democratic dialogue.
In a cancel culture, people who disagree with me may find it easy to ignore the argument and simply label me a bigot, on the reasoning that because I think the ideology of the transgender movement is open to critique, I obviously am transphobic.
But I want to make one final plea that people not do that, with two questions: If my argument is cogent — and there certainly are good reasons to reach that conclusion — why is it in the interests of anyone — including people who identify as transgender — to ignore such an argument? And how can people determine whether my argument is cogent if it is not part of the public conversation?
Frenchwoman Maïmouna Doucouré, who wrote and directed ‘Cuties’ (English translation), a film which has sparked an online petition calling for it’s removal from Netflix’s streaming platform, has defended her work against the scrutiny it has come under (largely as a result of the way Netflix chose to represent her film), by asserting that we need to not “blame the girls” in these potentially accurate portrayals of their lives and behaviors.
As one of the many who has not seen the film, I have seen the promotional material: a still image from the film and text provided by an unknown individual describing a girl “who becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew“. The children are eleven years old. The young actors are striking poses that are not hard to see as sexually suggestive. New to social media, my burgeoning role as SJW internet troll is shocking to me, mostly in my quick adaptation to this drug. Perusing the pile-on, there were shades of every argument: from people who had seen the film, explaining that it was about the sexploitation of young females; to people who, enraged, called for it to be removed from the streaming platform altogether.
The alarming normalization of sexualizing children has long been evident in Netflix.
Perhaps not so blatantly as now, but children’s, particularly girl’s, sexualization of themselves (by the age of seven according to Dr. Jessica Taylor) is something that has also long existed in this and other modern, civilized cultures and I would argue, needs to be addressed.
As the creatrix of this soft-core child pornography, Doucouré has here deflected the legitimate question about her responsibility as storyteller to the “sex-worker” argument.
No one said anything about blaming the girls.
The argument against pornography is that real people, in this case eleven year old girls, do the things in real life, in front of a camera. In the case of feature films, often exhaustively with rehearsals, memorization and multiple takes [nearly 700 underage girls auditioned for the lead roles]. It is not just a story anymore. It is perpetuation. Psychically, it is normalization, not a challenge, for participants and audience both.
The shame never belonged to the exploited. To have been exploited is a hard thing to admit in a culture that believes that the shame does belong to the exploited. I think that explains much of the drive toward liberal feminism among young women who do not have direct experience with, or on whose livelihood still depends the pay-for-rape industrial spectrum.
I agree that the film should be taken down, but the story will and must be told.
Disappearing unpleasant or untrue or unwanted theories, arguments or stories transforms them from reasoned, hard “No“s back into question marks.
Trinity La Fey is a smith of many crafts, has been a small business creatrix since 2020; published author; appeared in protests since 2003, poetry performances since 2001; officiated public ceremony since 1999; and participated in theatrical performances since she could get people to sit still in front of her.
