12:27 PM - 20.10.04
Ghosts - Part Deux
A lot of busyness today dear diary but not a lot accomplished. I started using the zils when I do my stair climbing and it drives the cats wild. They want those noise makers for their own. Add in an attraction to the ankle bracelet too since the male kittens seem obsessed with removing it so that they can hide it away in one of their treasure troves. When my guys were little they used to wrap themselves around my legs when I was working around the house, now I've just exchanged children for kittens it seems.
One of my cousins is working overseas in Asia for the Canadian government. My Aunt sent me her web address so I spent about an hour just looking at all the photos she and her hubby have posted of their travels and adventures since arriving. The most beautiful shots were of the beaches at Phuket and in the Philippines and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, I think. The ones that interested me most though were the ones they took on the border of Thailand near Myanmar and the ones of the archaeological site in Zimbabwe.
There was an exhibit at the Glenbow Museum here last year that featured African culture and history where there was some reference to the "lost city" but not much more information than that - just some photos of the artefacts found, I think. One of the geologists I worked with in one of my assignments had worked in "Zim" and had a few stories to tell, but he was more interested in the geography and geophysics of the area so I didn't get much more information about it from him. Another person I worked with in the Survivors of Torture program had grown up there so he had fascinating stories about the culture of the country but not so much about the history. Maybe more photo essays will give me the information I'd like to have.
Anyway I think I've done as much thinking about some of my ghosts so the rest of the post is the next installment of those musings dear diary. Bear with me ok?
"� Men bad, Women good� about summed up the first wave of feminism in North America and Europe. More specifically � �Men oppressors and abusers; Women victims and chattels�. True? Well yes, for those women - most - who were dominated or crushed by the underbelly of an unchecked and unaccountable patriarchal society. First wave feminists had to define their stand in that way to create the separation necessary to renegotiate the social contract of the time. All definitions and stereotypes up until then were male creations, societal and religious mores � male too. The laws - absolutely and only male determined. Even daily language was dominated by the word "he" in any reference to humans as a collective. Remember women were not even considered persons under the law. When something is not acknowledged within the language of a community it is invisible and therefore unimportant to the mainstream values and decisions made about how a community organizes itself. In Canada there had to be a court case driven by women from my own province, including the involvement of my own great grandmother, to establish that we were indeed human. Odd given that we are the ones who give birth to all males of the species - right. By definition, how can males claim humanness if their mothers are not.
The book �Red Lights on the Prairies� by James Grey, limns a Canadian society at the beginning of the 1900`s where being a prostitute was a better life for a woman than choosing to be a wife � except on Sunday in church. A more recent publication tells of women's "power" in medieval and rennaissance Europe. Again those women who had power were the courtesans and mistresses of powerful men. Women's only vehicle for self determination was through prostituting their bodies. Violence or abuse of the females in our societies was less of a concern than how cattle were treated.
Therefore, for first wave feminists there wasn't even any grounds to initiate discourse until those basic elements of communication were renegotiated to acknowledge that women were human beings too � ones with equal value to men. Tough lines for decades with women being assaulted, jailed and murdered for taking such a scandalous �anti-Christian� stand. Our place was to be submissive said old Saul � excuse me, St. Paul. Well, yes, but Paul wasn`t Christ was he. The Gospels were written and then bastardized by a series of medieval councils intent on having the patriarchal definition of society encoded in the faith system that was imposed on the rest of Europe. The Nag Hammadi and Gnostic gospels � those suppressed or hidden texts that give a more accurate picture of The Carpenter`s teaching � being forbidden/unknown literature for the average citizen until the last few decades.
The term domestic violence and spousal abuse only began to be used in the 1970's in Canadian government documents. The comments from the vested community at that time was that "a man's home was his castle" therefore any attempt to address the violence was in fact "home-wrecking". Uh huh. Unfortunately not much has changed, with most homicides in our city still being those of men killing "their women" - two so far just this month. Extend that scrutiny globally and the statistics are even more distressing. Even on the world court level the rape and torture of women is still debated as not being "real" or of concern because it is done as part of the tactics and provides the spoils of war for the victors. It's in the newspapers almost daily. Then there is the physical treatment of women by institutions such as health care to add in to that mix, as well as that experienced in the workplace.
Women might now be included in the definition of "human being" but still just barely and with just a very tenuous foot in the door if the political debate carried in the recent election campaigns is any indication. If women had truly been defined into the term "human" none of that discussion would even be tolerated. Women are not primarily "breeding stock" for those in power. It shouldn't even have to be said anymore, but the fact that it is illustrates just how fleeting that right is. Take away the West's wealth or power for even a decade and it is likely that the erosion happening now would become complete. The saving grace may come from subtle advances in other totally unexpected parts of the world such as here Elections. The truth likely is that until women are recognized as human wherever they are globally, no female will be truly free of the risk of being dehumanized at the whim or for the convenience of those who feel magically/divinely entitled somehow to have power over them. The whole mythology of natural or divine right in European culture was constructed to support the "divine right of Kings" nonsense that allowed for the creation of the Holy Roman empire and the whole hierarchy that was envisioned to support it. If North Americans reject that premise as they so clearly say they have, then the rest of the conceit is just as invalid and deserves the same fate.
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