The stories and legends handed down from the Nootka women of Vancouver Island are more poignant, more relevant than ever. Listening, learning, doing and engaging in serious resistance as women of strength may make a difference to the destruction of earth. There is a lot of work to be done.
The Warrior Women
“In the time before the strangers came, women were fighters same as men, and got the same trainin’. Not all members of the women’s warrior society were members of the secret society of women, but all the members of the warrior society. A woman warrior recognized the face of the enemy and was prepared to do whatever was necessary to defeat it.”
“Sometimes the women warriors would meet without the men, to sit in a circle and talk women talk, and if a woman had somethin’ botherin’ her, or puzzlin’ her, or scarin’ her, or makin’ her feel uneasy, she’d say what it was. She could take all the time she needed to talk about it, but it was expected she’d put some of her own time into findin’ the words and not talk in circles, endlessly, takin’ up everyone else’s time.”
“Then the other women in the circle who had maybe had somethin’ the same happen in their lives would talk about it, and what they’d done, or hadn’t done, or should have done, and sometimes out of it would come an answer for the sister with the problems. And even if not, sometimes, it was enough to just have been heard and given love”.
“It was expected that besides just talkin’ about what was botherin’ you, you’d do something about it. Usually it’s better to do almost anythin’ than let things continue if they’re botherin’ you. But sometimes the best thing you can do is nothin’. Sometimes you have to wait for the right Time before you can do”.
“A woman would come to the circle as often as she needed, but the circle wasn’t there to encourage a woman only to talk about her problems. The first three times you came with the same story, the woman would listen and try to help. But if you showed up a fourth time, and it was the same old tired thing, the others in the circle would just get up and move and re-form the circle somewhere else. They didn’t say the problem wasn’t important, they just said, by movin’, that it was your problem and it was time you did somethin’ about it, you’d taken up all the time in other people’s lives as was goin’ to be given to you, and it was time to stop talkin’ and do somethin’.
A woman might not know what was botherin’ her. And it was fine to go to the circle, or even to ask to have one formed, and just sit with women, and listen and maybe get strength from smiles and cuddles and just bein’ with women you knew loved you”.
“A warrior woman had to be able to recognize the face of the enemy or she couldn’t be a warrior woman. [. . .] A person who couldn’t control her bad moods or temper would lose her headband until she learned control because ragin’ around at nothin’ is wastin’ energy needed against the enemy.”
The Face Of Old Woman.
“We must reach out to our sisters, all of our sisters, and ask them to share their truth with us, offer to share our truth with them. And we can only trust that this gift, from woman to woman, be treated with love and respect, in a way opposite from the way the evil treated the other things this island had. Rivers are filthy that used to be clean. Mountains are naked that used to be covered with trees.
The ocean is fighting for her life and there are no fish where there used to be millions, and this is the work of cold evil. The last treasure we have, the secrets of the matriarchy, can be shared and honoured by women, and be proof there is another way, a better way, and some of us remember it.”
Green Flame on Matriarchy with Heide Goettner-Abendroth
This episode of the Green Flame comes to you from Germany. We interview Heide Goettner-Abendroth, philosopher and researcher on culture and society, focused on matriarchal studies.
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.
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Featured Image: Women in 1919 Revolution in Egypt via Flickr
5. Deep Green Resistance means repair of human cultures
That repair must, in the words of Andrea Dworkin, be based on “one absolute standard of human dignity.” That starts in a fierce loyalty to everyone’s physical boundaries and sexual integrity. It continues with food, shelter, and health care, and the firm knowledge that our basic needs are secure. And it opens out into a democracy where all people get an equal say in the decisions that affect them. That includes economic as well as political decisions. There’s no point in civic democracy if the economy is hierarchical and the rich can rule through wealth.
People need a say in their material culture and their basic sustenance.
For most of our time on this planet, we had that. Even after the rise of civilization, there were many social, legal, and religious strictures that protected people and society from the accumulation of wealth. There exists an abundance of ideas on how to transform our communities away from domination and accumulation and toward justice and human rights. We don’t lack analysis or plans; the only thing missing is the decision to see them through.
We also need that new story that so many of the Transitioners prioritize. It’s important to recognize first that not everyone has lost their original story. There are indigenous peoples still holding on to theirs. According to Barbara Alice Mann,
The contrast between western patriarchal and Iroquoian matriarchal thought could not be more clear.… I do not think it is possible to examine the real impetus behind mother-right unless we walk boldly up to the spiritual underpinnings of its systems. By the same token, we cannot free ourselves of the serious damage of patriarchy, unless we appreciate where matriarchy’s spiritual allegiances lie.
The Iroquois are unapologetic about the fact that spirit informs and undergirds all our social, economic, and governmental structures. Every council of any honor begins with thanksgiving, that is, an energy-out broadcast, to make way for the energy in-gathering required by the One Good Mind of Consensus. When a council fails, people just assume that the faithkeeper who opened it did a poor job in the thanksgiving department. In a thanksgiving address, all the spirits of Blood and Breath (or Earth and Sky) are properly gathered and acknowledged, with the ultimate acknowledgment being that the One Good Mind of Consensus requires the active participation of not just an elite but everyone in the community. This is a foundational insight of all matriarchies.
She describes a culture where “things happen by consultation, not by fiat,” based on a spiritual understanding of everyone’s participation in the cosmos rather than the “paranoid isolation” brought on by the temper tantrums of a sociopathic God. This is the difference between cultures of matriarchy and patriarchy, egalitarianism and domination, participation and power.
Such stories need to be told, but more, they need to be instituted. All the stories in the world will do no good if they end with the telling.
One institution that deserves serious consideration is a true people’s militia. Right now in the United States only the right wing is organizing itself into an armed force. In 2009, antigovernment militias, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement,” grew threefold, from forty-two to 127. We should be putting weapons in the hands of people who believe in human rights and who are sworn to protect them, not in those of people who feel threatened because we have a black president.
If jack-booted, racist, and increasingly paranoid thugs coalesce into an organized movement with its eye on political power, we don’t need to relive Germany in 1936 to know where it may end, especially as energy descent and economic decline continue. Contemporaneous with a people’s militia would be training in both the theory and practice of mass civil disobedience to reject illegitimate government or a coup if that comes to pass. Gene Sharp’s Civilian-Based Defense explains how this technique works with successful examples from history. His book is a curriculum that should be added to Transition Towns and other descent preparation initiatives.
But if the people with the worst values are the ones with the guns and the training, we may be very sorry. This is a dilemma with which progressives and radicals should be grappling. A large and honorable proportion of the left believes in nonviolence, a belief that for many reaches a spiritual calling. But societies through history and currently around the globe have degenerated into petty tyrannies with competing atrocities. Personal faith in the innate goodness of human beings is not enough of a deterrent or shield for me.
A true people’s militia would be sworn to uphold human rights, including women’s rights. The horrors of history include male sexual sadism on a mass scale. Women are afraid of men with guns for good reason. But rape is not inevitable. It’s a behavior that springs from specific social norms, norms that a culture of resistance can and must confront and counteract, whether or not we have a people’s militia. We need a zero tolerance policy for abuse, especially sexual abuse.
Military organizations, like any other culture, can promote rape or stop it. Throughout history, soldiers, especially mercenary soldiers, have often been granted the “right” to rape and plunder as part of their payment. Other militaries have taken strong stands against rape. Writes Jean Bethke Elshtain, “The Israeli army … are scrupulous in prohibiting their soldiers to rape. The British and United States armies, as well, have not been armies to whom rape was routinely ‘permitted,’ with officers looking the other way, although British and American soldiers have committed ‘opportunistic’ rapes. Even in the Vietnam War, where incidents of rape, torture and massacre emerged, raping was sporadic and opportunistic rather than routine.” The history of military atrocities against civilians is a history; it’s not universal, and it’s not inevitable. Elshtain continues,
“War is not a freeform unleashing of violence; rather, fighting is constrained by considerations of war aims, strategies and permissible tactics. Were war simply an unbridled release of violence, wars would be even more destructive than they are.”
Western nations, over hundreds of years, assembled an unwritten code of conduct for militaries, known as the “customary law of war,” which tried to limit the suffering of soldiers and to safeguard civilians. This was eventually codified into the Hague Convention Number IV of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949. These attempted to limit looting and property destruction and to protect noncombatants. The Uniform Code of Military Justice is very clear that rape is unacceptable, and even gets the finer points of how “consent” with an armed assailant is a pretty meaningless concept. Elshtain also notes that “[the] maximum punishment for rape is death. Thus, interestingly, rape is a capital offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, by contrast to most civilian legal codes.
Getting the command structure to take rape and human rights abuses seriously is, of course, the next step. As Elshtain points out, “It is difficult to bring offenders to trial unless the leaders of the military forces are themselves determined to ferret out and punish tormentors of civilian populations. Needless to say, if the strategy is itself one of tormenting civilians, rapists are not going to be called before a bar of justice.”
It will be up to the founders and the officers of new communities to set the norms and to make those norms feminist from the beginning. The following would go a long way toward helping create a true people’s militia, and not just another organization of armed thugs to “trample the grass”—the women and girls who so often suffer when men fight for power.
Female officers. Women must be in positions of authority from the beginning, and their authority needs absolute respect from male officers.
Training curriculum that includes feminism, rape awareness, and abuse dynamics, and a code of conduct that emphasizes honorable character in protecting and defending human rights.
Zero tolerance for misogynist slurs, sexual harassment, and assault amongst all members.
Clear policies for reporting infringements and clear consequences.
Background checks to exclude batterers and sex offenders from the militia.
Severe consequences for any abuse of civilians.
A people’s militia could garner widespread support by following a model of community engagement, much as the Black Panthers grew through their free breakfast program. Besides basic activities like weapons training and military maneuvers, the militia could help the surrounding community with the kind of services that are always appreciated: delivering firewood to the elderly or fixing the roof of the grammar school. The idea of a militia will make some people uneasy, and respectful personal and community relationships would help overcome their reticence.
In this article Ben offers the reader a clear rationale regarding the control, oppression and abuse of women as a class by men as a class and a heartfelt plea to end it.
“The power exercised by men, day to day, in life is power that is institutionalised. It is protected by law. It is protected by religion and religious practice. It is protected by universities, which are strongholds of male supremacy. It is protected by a police force. It is protected by those whom Shelley called “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”: the poets, the artists.” Andrea DworkinI Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape
Members of my family have been raped and abused. I know the consequences are devastating, long lasting, across the generations. As someone who wants to be a good brother, son, and uncle I am writing this for all men who do not believe in patriarchy. I am writing for men who do not believe women when they talk about their experiences and how it makes them feel. Patriarchy is the system that objectifies woman. It is the same system that offers woman the choice of either unpaid careers or lower paid and harder working jobs of the workforce. It is the system that tries to blame woman for their own rape and which, in England and Wales, prosecutes less than 2% of rapes.
The fact that men rape in alarmingly high numbers, should be enough to convince you that patriarchy exists, and it is a cruel and disastrous system. Men rape women in alarmingly high numbers. Men also rape children, babies, and other men. How many of you know a rapist? Shockingly, we probably all do. Most of us just do not realise it. Many men have ‘used’ a prostitute. What makes paying someone for intercourse anything other than rape with financial compensation? That means for sure, we all know a rapist.
You may not believe in patriarchy, because it is hidden.
It is in our language. Hidden in plain sight. The word semen comes from the same root as the words sow and seed. Men often talk of planting their seed. Despite the fact that patriarchy prides itself in its rational scientific mind, this is unscientific emotional wish fulfilment, in other words a lie. As Stephen Buhner points out in Plant intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, human semen is biologically more like pollen. So, men are more like butterflies or bees delivering pollen in exchange for the nectar of orgasm and companionship. A woman is not a passive receiver of the seed. She is not earth for man to dominate and neither is Earth.
Patriarchy encourages men to see themselves as farmers dominating and controlling the land as he dominates and controls his woman. His dominance is either resisted or impossible. This leads to the murder of women and the murder of Earth. It is literally happening right now, and men under the direction of radically politicised women can stop it.
If we see ourselves as butterflies or bees, how would we treat women, trees and Earth?
If you do not believe in patriarchy, it’s in the fucking dictionary. Dictionaries are mainly written by dusty old white men, who dwell in small Oxford or Cambridge rooms. So the Oxford dictionary offers words like; bitch, bird, wench and bint for woman. Bint is still a neutral Arabic word for girl or daughter. It has meant whore in English since soldiers brought it back from Egypt. What do you think these soldiers did to girls and daughters, while they were there? The same thing they do wherever they go. The definition for man is longer and the synonyms are human, person, individual, personage, soul.
Bint is an example of pejoration, which is when a word starts with a neutral or positive meaning and devolves into something negative the opposite is amelioration. Buddy and sissy now mean friend and weak or effeminate man. They used to simply mean brother and sister.Master and mistress both used to mean a person in a position of authority. Now to master is a verb that means to gain control of and a mistress remains a noun but now means a sexually promiscuous woman. Can you see a pattern here?
The list of formally neutral female words that have pejorated and male words that have ameliorated is almost endless.
Let us take another one pussy. For four hundred years it was a metaphor for a vagina. Then male, of course, writers started using it to mean tame weak males. Another patriarchal lie. If your penis bled once a month you would run crying to a hospital. Every. Fucking. Time. That is only if it bled, what if it was preceded by intense abdominal pain and unwanted feelings of distress, anger and anxiety?
Even if your mother is not a ‘good’ mother (rare in comparison to the avalanche of bad fathers). Even then she risked her life for yours. She was born with the egg that became you. It was there fully formed with all her other eggs, before she was born while she was still in her own mother’s stomach. She carried it in her, until your father, the butterfly donated his pollen at just the right moment. Your mother went through the discomfort of pregnancy and the body changing life-risking pain of childbirth. Make that mean something. Do not let that birth be so you can spend one single moment of your life denying that patriarchy exists.
A few years ago, I read a I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape by the thinker and writer Andrea Dworkin. She asked for men to stop raping woman for just one day. She wanted the “nice” men to use their fabled physical strength to stop the bad ones from raping. Since I read it, I have been wondering how to do this. Violence is not something that comes easily to me, so I am writing this instead. If you are a man, who is physically braver, stronger and more skilful than me, if you want to use your physical prowess for something good, use it to stop rape and rapists.
Forever.
Ben Warner is a long time DGR Guardian in the UK and a teacher.
May I take my place in The Great Family. I offer thanks to your Spirit and accept responsibility for integrating your Story.
It started so long ago I have not strong before concept. I grew up around reckless gun owners and early understood that there was simply no place for them in the world I wanted. Still, lived with single women each with a pistol locked away in a case they never practiced with. One of which, at 23, showed me the jagged, hairless line the bullet had torn around her skull when she’d tried. I remember a lover asking me what I wanted as I cried. How he moved the rifles I was so upset about back into his mother’s house. I just never got used to them; am definitely not used to using them. I didn’t ever understand the want of something so unsportsmanly until I was blessed by Gail Dines through Maya Shlayen through Babyradfem, each a true sister. Then, when the man who tried to get into my car got scared because I made him understand that I was not fucking around, I understood that I wanted something more than my finger to point at him next time. Now there is this gun.
Seriously, so many worse things have happened. Most of them. What was it about this incident that changed everything? Partially, I think it was priming. Education. In isolation, all my rage and sorrow was drowned into silence by the ever wondering. Seeing other women undergo similar abuse en masse made me certain. There was no more confusion about the sadistic self-awareness; no more wondering about how hard it must be for him to be that way; no more patience; no more bullshit. I was in me. And this son of a motherfucker had no rights to me. He could die trying to assert them as I was instantly willing to put the violence where it belongs. Extinction.
To violate is to dishonor, to be irreverent of; at its root: a broken oath.
When I saw my friend violated for the first time, there was a before and an after. It broke me. Me, for whom it started so long ago I have no strong before concept. I saw what it did to her and I missed that part of my friend that was gone now, knowing what was missing for the first time, knowing I had to be strong for and love this new creature in this old skin, knowing that she might not be able to love me as easily or at all, that trust was gone now, nothing personal.
It is unbelievable, what people say about suicide: that it is rage internalized. I bet it was a man who categorized it that way and maybe it’s like that for some of them. What I know of women’s ends are just tired. We have standards. If it doesn’t look like they will ever be met in this life or any, if all the power to resist is stifled with murders and rapes and beatings and beatings and beatings and endless, joyless toil and the shit they think is funny or know they can get away with, it’s no one else’s business when you decide to end it.
Was it internal or external rage that led an uncle to drive recklessly fast in canyon-land pasture shooting at coyotes with his wife and all the grandkids of his parents’ lives at his whim?
I would guess that one tool at the mercy of another, however unsportsmanly, exists like any other, with its own intention and obsolescence built in. Capable of neither rage nor carelessness, it is but a swift finder of ends.
This excerpt is taken from the 1974 book Birth Without Violence by Frederick Leboyer. Leboyer was a French obstetrician opposed to the violence and harm the medical model enacted on women and babies at birth.
In Birth Without Violence, Leboyer describes the violence of birth, offering the babies perspective. He demonstrates how traumatic and distressing medicalized birth can be. He advocates for women’s intuition, for medical professionals listening to women, and for a quiet, loving delivery.
This book could be considered relevant to birth everywhere or perhaps an analogy outlining how all live can be respected, human and non-human — a description of how we can open our eyes to the possibility of living without violence of any kind to our wild earth.
Everything that has been said is so simple that one
feels embarrassed at having dwelt on it at such length.
Perhaps we have lost our taste for simplicity.
Once we’ve understood
the point of this whole story,
why don’t we try?
Well, it takes . . . a lot of courage.
We also need patience and humility.
We must keep in mind that it is the child’s first experience
of life.
As any good teacher knows, there is one sacred right:
the right of the child to experiment and make his own
discoveries.
Yes, patience, humility and silence,
and the awareness that the newcomer is a person we meet
and greet after he has nearly drowned in a storm.
Oh, and of course …
Love.
Without love, the delivery room can be perfect, with the
right lighting, the walls soundproofed, the bath
temperature just right – and the child will
still scream.
If there is still any trace of nervousness, any suppressed
anger within ourselves, the baby will pick it up
immediately.
His judgment is frighteningly acute.
The baby knows everything. All in his own mysterious
way. He catches everything, sees right into our hearts,
knows the colour of our thoughts, and all without language.
