A Thinking Woman’s Blog - I started as a PUMA, then went Guerilla…now I am trying compassion

If we take away anything from what happened to female candidates and feminism in 2008, let it be this:

We now know the reality of our situation.

A brief recap, in case you were asleep or so pro-Obama that you went into LaLa land to Become One with the Messiah and live with the Unicorns and fairies called Hope and Change, and thus missed reality as it unfolded:

1. Three women who entered presidential politics last year got absolutely pummeled by the forces of misogyny and hatred.

2. MSNBC became Misogyny Central, while Fox became the only place one could get unbiased coverage of the female candidates.

3. NARAL and NOW became ghosts of their former pro-woman and pro-feminism selves. They decided to not endorse a woman who has embodied feminist ideals since the 60’s, and instead endorsed a male candidate with a non-existent record on reproductive rights.

4. It was ok to call female presidential candidates words like cunt, bitch, shrill, ditz, and other monikers, while male candidates got called out-of-touch, old, or opportunistic.

5. Liberals proved to be just as, if not more intolerant, than their arch-enemies, those bad neocon people who live in the flyover states. Liberals were just as enthusiastic as those women-hating conservatives in shredding female candidates. Liberals wore “Sarah Palin is a cunt” t-shirts at her rallies. Liberals said Clinton was too powerful, too scary to be a candidate. Liberals who loved Obama couldn’t pay one second of attention to a black female candidate in Cynthia McKinney. Liberals became the new misogynists. Liberal Biden called Palin ‘good-looking’, something that we thought the good ol’ Rethug boys in backwater places like Louisiana would do. Educated liberals who are enlightened through Ivy League education and coastal-urban living snarled openly at the female candidates running in the election, and called anyone supporting a female candidate over the Precious a racist, dried-up vagina. Liberals out-achieved the neocons in terms of intolerance and oppression of their own ranks. And the people that received the most hatred from liberals were the group they supposedly stood for and championed: women.

6. Liberal evisceration of Clinton was so alarming that Republican women in power came out in public to say that Palin would not be subject to such treatment. Republican women are used to having their concerns checked at the door, but they decided to try to protect one of their own rather than subject her to the liberal hatred that had rabidly torn Clinton to pieces. I might point out that it was Clinton’s own Democratic liberals that were the most vicious. The famed Republican campaign machine never even got cranked up on poor Clinton because her own people were so busy doing her in. That same machine attempted to defend Palin, but was helpless as McCain tied their hands against using hate attacks - they couldn’t risk putting one out there, and having their candidate distance himself from it. Of course, Republican protectionist strategies were helpless in the face of an angry liberal mass that now owned the media, and began reframing Palin in such misogynistic terms that fantasy quickly supplanted reality. Her accomplishments as a governor were supplanted by SNL skit lines that now became her talking points…even though she never said them. Liberals urged Clinton, who they’d just beaten down, and then insisted she get behind the Chosen One, something never done to any other candidate in history, and urged her to catfight Palin. Liberals used to be the proponents of women, the ideology that advanced the causes of women. Liberals had become more woman-hating than any neocon or backwoods redneck they claimed to be superior to.

7. Women were perhaps the most vicious bashers of female candidates of them all. From Maureen Dowd’s harping on Clinton and Palin, to Robin Morgen and Gloria Steinem’s about-face on loving Obama after weakly defending Clinton, to all the third-wave feminists that thought it was so kewl that a hawt black dude was running, and isn’t it enlightened of us to be able to pick him over a woman?

8. John McCain is a true friend to Hillary, and a smart man. I suspect out of friendship to her, and deference to what he saw happen to her, he might have had his own moment of enlightenment. In picking Palin, he went from snoresville in his campaign to closing on Obama…dangerously. Suddenly, with this move, the Republicans seemed more enlightened and concerned about advancing women than….the Democrats. Even though Obama won, we have to remember that 45% of this country voted for McCain, in a year when Republican was equivalent in brand to something like the Ford Pinto - out of date, inefficient, dangerous (remember the exploding gas tank), and decidedly unkewl. Nearly half of the country DIDN’T want Obama. But I digress. McCain picked a woman, and I suspect it was because of Hillary. Call him opportunistic if you wish. But this move impressed me, since the man is not known for being a friend of women. I suspect, at the age of 72, that he might have been a bit woken up, if not shaken, by what went down last year with women.

It was one hell of a year in terms of unmasking everyone, wouldn’t you say?

There is naturally a state of despair among feminists and women as a result. Many saw their hopes for a female president or VP snatched away. Many of us feel feminism is dead. Third waver feminists with their men-loving kewl attitudes delight in beating up women as aggressively as men. Second wave feminists feel all they worked for has been pissed away, like the feminism movement never happened. Former die-hard Democrats found themselves forced to vote Republican because their own party had declared them the enemy. Women turned to their daughters, formerly wildly enthusiastic about our chances, and now utterly defeated and resigned to the fact that it doesn’t matter how good, how smart, how educated, how accomplished you are. If you’re a girl, you’re nothing.

All over the internet, voices call in despair to one another. ‘What happened?’ ‘I thought we were making progress.’ ‘I thought this was our year.’ ‘Now I see there’ll never be a woman as president in my lifetime.’

I don’t want to give up this fight that easily. If we can take away one thing from 2008, it is this: we have now had a flashlight shined over the terrain we are truly standing on. Now we know how misogynistic the country truly is. Before, it was masked. Now, it’s in the open. Now we know the DNC does NOT stand for the rights of women. Now we know that NARAL and NOW are ghost-orgs of their former selves. Now we know that the country’s mood is bros before hos, and we saw it again just recently with the Rihanna-Chris Brown story. ‘She must have done something to deserve that’.

Right.

Ok, good. At least now we know the size of the battlefield we are truly on, who is really against us, and who is really for us. In my mind, all that’s happened is that we have gotten, finally, to the reality of our situation.

Once you see the reality of a thing, you can deal with it.

What we have to do now is realize no party stands for us as women. No organization truly backs us.

The movement at hand is to start claiming power for women, regardless of party. Sign up for classes on how to run. Start taking office. And when you get there, call out misogyny when you see it. So what if they won’t listen. When our voices get loud enough and generate enough mass and heat, they will.

Write the blogs, write the papers, give the lectures, run for office, and infiltrate as women, en masse, at every societal level. Follow the words of Sojourner Truth - if women want more rights than they’ve got, then why don’t they just take them instead of just be talking about it.

We must seize our rights, and own them for ourselves. If we have to march, write scads of emails calling out every misogynist on tv and the internet, then that’s what we do. If we have to take office en masse, then that’s what we do. We have to become impervious to the feelings of those who were formerly ‘friends’, now turned ‘frienemies’, and push ahead for what we want regardless of their howls of indignation.

It is time for the tidal wave of feminism to strike. No more with waiting in line, waiting our turn, or thinking that people were with us because they nodded their heads, but refused to actually do anything, and turned on us when we tried to claim the presidency. We shan’t be getting in line with their agendas like good little girls any longer, thank you.

It’s time to Do Something.

I feel like I woke up from a bad dream sometimes.

I dropped my mentoree off at his high school this morning, and I see hordes of girls looking like they’re trying to compete for sluttiest outfit of the year. One girl had on a tube top, with no bra. Another had on a low cut shirt with boobs nearly hanging out. Another had on shorts so short I could practically tell if she was wearing a tampon.

My counselor friend at another high school called me to help with a gender intervention program. Seems a lot of young girls have been turning up in dance class with black eyes. Worse, they think this is ok, or normal, because hey, at least they have boyfriends, and we all know that’s the important thing.

The news media is still bashing Palin with a blatant misogynistic bent. Oh God, who cares what Bristol Palin is up to, or what her ex-boyfriend / baby daddy thinks? I feel like I got caught in an eerie Britney rerun saga here.

Do a search on ‘feminism’ on YouTube and all you get is hordes of videos made by men damning feminism and feminists.

What happened? Did feminism ever really happen? Was it all a convoluted dream?

I decided to write my doctoral thesis on what happened last year to women in presidential politics. I titled it (working title, anyway): the State of Feminine Archetypes in US Presidential Politics: The Bitch (Clinton), the Cunt (Palin), and the Invisible Unseen (McKinney). When I tell people I am doing this, they think it’s harsh, but then they say, ‘who was McKinney? I never even heard of her.’

Bingo. The nation was in love with the idea of a black man running for president, especially when he has been recast as God the Precious One. But a black woman, with braids and everything?

Cue the crickets….

It feels like there never was a feminism movement. It feels like we’ve actually gone backwards.

Someone pinch me. Wake me up.

Please.

This may seem long overdue, and I should have thought this through a long time ago. But lately I am coming to the conclusion that I have opened my inner circle far too wide, and not everybody belongs in there.

My ex-husband is a good man, though very suspicious. In his book, you are an enemy or person that means him no good until you prove otherwise. To get him to trust you, your credit must be good, you must demonstrate good behavior for a year or more, be a card-carrying liberal, and you might even need a letter from your mother, or preferably, God, to show him that you are indeed a worthy candidate of his trust.

As you can imagine, he invites no one into his home. He locks everything, especially his wallet and heart, and he tends to view any approachers through a narrow eye, lest they confirm his suspicions and be worthy of his scorn.

I thought this a bit over-reactive at the time, but when I contrast it to my own approach, I am beginning to see the wisdom in his. In my world, all are welcome. I am equally tolerant of Republicans, Democracts, religious and aetheists, any class of person, and any color. I open myself and my mind freely to any who turn up.

The problem with my approach is that I now have hordes of friends, but not all friends are good friends, nor are they necessarily as giving as me. I am learning, as I look about my circle of friends, that there are sort of three categories emerging:

1. Might be a friend….might be a frienemy: this category of people turn up, love to chat with me, hang out, drink my wine, get my energy….but I don’t think I can really trust them, nor could I depend on them should I need a favor or helping hand. Worse, I suspect they actually don’t like me very much, in the end, and might even be using me.

2. Lovely to drink a glass of wine with, or have dinner, but don’t count on these in an emergency. This group may be in my circle for years, and may come to look like really good friends. But again, it’s more of a social thing, and they’re not really going to be there for you in times of need.

3. Friendship Gold: Call When You Need Bailing out of Jail. Not that this has ever happened to me, but if you really want to test who your real friends are, then ask yourself how many people in your circle would answer your call in the middle of the night. How many would help you move? How many would loan you money? Not that friendship is all about these things…it’s not. But it IS about knowing who’s there for you, and who isn’t.

My issue is that I tend to obfuscate all these into the last category. I behave as though they are all number 3’s, and I am there, ready to die on a sword for my friends. I am learning that there are a load of #1’s in my circle, and those I need to keep at arm’s length. There are quite a few #2’s there as well. They’re nice people, lovely people, but you know few, if any, will graduate to #3’s. I have only 3 number 1’s, and one is even my ex-husband. I had 10 people help me move, so that is more dependable people than even I thought I had. But only a few are really THERE for you in this life.

People like me tend to have caretaker’s disease. We tend to others. We take care of them. We treat them like best friends, and include them into our little families. But not everyone is worthy of, nor appreciates or wants, this kind of treatment.

Recently, I have realized someone I thought was a true best friend is actually talking behind my back. I felt this person was ready to be my business partner, but I extended trust and credit far too early. I had an ex-boyfriend turned friend that I asked to help me out with a favor. He humiliated me publicly, and seemed to take delight in being cruel to me. He was always a number 1 kind of person - a frienemy at best. But I treated him like he was part of my inner circle.

I think reviewing your circle of friends, and figuring out who really belongs there, and who doesn’t, is a worthwhile exercise that should be repeated often. People make mistakes, and don’t deserve damning for it, but it’s very useful to know exactly who the little cast of characters in your life play are, and what their motivations for being there might be.

And remember, not everybody makes the True Friends cut.

Update: In my last blog entry, I wrote about how I tried to practice my random acts of loving kindness towards men I have issues with: I invited my ex-lover to dinner with me, his son, and my daughter.

He declined. I am guessing this wasn’t a specific enough act of kindness, since it was to be part of a group.

So I decided to put a little something on the line. I made chocolate brownies. He loves chocolate, loves cakes, sweets, deserts…so I thought I’d hit hiim in the sweet spot, so to speak.

I worked up the nerve to take them to his place. No one was home, and he didn’t answer my call. So I left them in the living room, as he leaves a side door open.

I am trying very very hard not to be attached to the outcome.

I pulled a card for myself today, out of a psychological deck I have, and it was ‘the shadow’. That yucky needy place we seem to get to in relationships, when we feel tested, insecure, and misunderstood… well that’s our shadow. My front is the strong, fearless, determined, got-it-all-together woman. But apparently, I have a fear place and when my insecurities get triggered, I go there. A lot of us do that, it’s not new. The trick is to learn how that gets triggered, and then develop a different response.

When I am stressed in a relationship, when my insecurities are triggered, I make the pre-emptive strike. I get pissed over some slight, and make a Herculean jump to the assumption that the man doesn’t want a relationship with me. I therefore go ahead and take up my sword, cut his head off, hand it to him, and wipe my hands of the relationship.

Done. There.
And the guy’s crime? Well, he might have just been trying to tell me that he’d prefer it if I cleaned up the cat hair before he comes over.
It’s hard to stand in the fear place in relationships and NOT do the shadow thing. But maybe that’s just what we need to do. Feel the fear, stand there, and not freak out. So hard!
There’s this line from the play “A Raisin in The Sun’:

“It’s easy to love ‘em when things are going great. It’s when they’re down, when they’re acting bad, when you hate ‘em the most…that’s when you got to love ‘em the most.”
I am trying to do that now.

This is really hard for me. I feel rather like a cripple trying to run a race with weights strapped to my ankles.

The phone rang after I got home - I was out walking dogs. Lots of dogs.

It was his son. Thanks for the bread.

Er, it was brownies, and it is specifically for dad. Please tell him that from me.

Don’t be attached to the outcome.

So easy to type, so hard to do….

I met with my young women’s studies student last night. He wants to meet 3 times a week, get us back to our old friendship schedule. I resisted. This is a course that takes 2 hours each Wednesday night. It’s like having a baby - it takes the time it takes. You can’t speed it up, no matter how much you want to try.

Though he is 15, he is reading the college level materials I am giving him, and doing well intellectually. That is, he can read the material and get the gist of it.

But as for understanding, we are not there yet.

He is eager to get the friendship back, and I suspect that there is a bit of a crush going on here. I need to be careful with his feelings.

I have also become aware that he’s using me as a replacement figure for his estranged mother. I realize I will accomplish nothing here if I don’t help him move to work on that relationship. I too have sought ‘other-mother’ figures to replace my mother, since we had a hostile relationship. The funny thing about life is that in attempting to escape your problems with one person, you often trade them for new ones that will ultimately bring you full circle back to the original person you have the issue with. My ‘other-mothers’ were good to me, supportive, kind, but I could not ease the pain in my heart from estrangement with my mom. Worse, I felt stuck somehow, unable to progress emotionally. Finally, I started confronting her, and my issues with her. She confronted me too! We both had a lot of anger trapped in there. I won’t say that it was all rainbows and happiness - it took a couple of years, and where we got to was a gentle acceptance of the way each of us is, and we stopped trying to change that in the other. She quit trying to turn me into a skinny supermodel. I quit trying to turn her into an intellectual.

Now we get on quite well, and we have a close relationship.

Back to the boy: I suspect that I haven’t got the full story yet, but what I’ve been able to assemble from him, the dad, and the mom is something like this: terrible divorce and fallout disrupts boy’s family home. Dad immediately hooks up with young girl he’s been cheating on the mom with. Mom goes out to find The Relationship, and lands a guy. They move in together. He has 2 daughters. She has 3 kids. In a frantic hurry to reconstruct A Decent Family Life, she tells kids they must love their new sisters and stepfather. Boy is 12. He doesn’t like new potential stepfather, or the way his mom is acting. Little sister (9) is a drama queen. She has a bruise on her arm. One day, he’s wrestling with her, and the bruise gets affected. Little sister howls with the intensity that only serious drama queens can muster. Mom, ever in a frantic rush to normalcy, overreacts, and smacks boy in face.

He decides he will never go there again. Terminates her custody arrangement.

Dad, of course, supports this. Any chance to make mom the villain is fine by him.

Ironically, now the same son is an albatross around dad’s neck because son is clingy, only having one parent to rely on, and that parent seems to catch on fire on a regular basis, leading to more insecurity. Both align against the mom - she’s always Bad. The two youngest children (now 11 and 12) are exchanged back and forth like pawns. Dad loves to be indulgent with the children - why do they need clean clothes, regular meals, showers, or decent housing? These things aren’t important. Mom reacts to this with getting ever more practical. It’s a polarity war, with each side escalating against the other. The more indulgent he is, the more she become practical, enforcing, and strict. The stricter and more practical she is, the wilder and more indulgent he gets.

You can probably guess what effect this has on the kids.

The older son has a lot of jealousy towards his younger siblings because dad spoils them rotten when they come around. Dad is pretty hard on him, feeling he is at the age nearing manhood, needs toughening up, all that.

I sought out an intellectual relationship with this oldest son because I sensed a spark there, a genius looking for an outlet. I enjoy mentoring him, and he enjoys being my surrogate son. He is terribly jealous of other young boys that are my neighbors. He worries they will become surrogate sons too. He also sweats potential boyfriends I might be dating, and is even a little jealous of the rekindled friendship his dad and I had been cultivating as of late.

But I made a mistake here, and I see it. I have let my relationship with the son supercede that with the father. After dad and I broke up, the son wanted to continue the friendship. So I agreed to that. But now I have come to see that the dad was in love with me, and that by having this friendship with the son, I have created a triangle between us, and a rivalry between them.

Ugh.

Why can’t these things ever be easy?????

Worse, dad is a bit tender-hearted and romantic, though he hides that very well. He’s had troubles with women and learned in relationships that to be sweet and romantic is to get pain, so he’s covered that tender heart up with a big snarly bad boy player facade. Love ‘em and leave ‘em. The son is also big-hearted, different than dad, but no less intense.

What to do here?

When the son told his dad that he was going to undertake a women’s studies course under my tutelage to get the friendship back, his dad laughed and said, ’so she got you down on your knees and cut your nuts off.’

But when I went to pick up the son for our first session, there was a gift to me from dad (through the son) of beach glass - blue - very rare - a whole bag of it, from an estate he’d cleared (his business). The dad knows I collect beach glass, and that the ones I am always trying to find are the blue ones.

I sense a tender heart trying to come out here.

I have to be so careful now because I have spent a lot of time putting up a lot of swords against men. I failed my test to not say anything negative to a man for one week. Unfortunately, I failed that test with this same tender-hearted man. It was silly, really - he asked me to drop off his daughter, and then wasn’t there when I went to do so. He’d buggered off down the street for ice cream with his sons. I was fuming. I hate being poorly stage-managed. I was also ill with a bad cold, overtired, and really had no business having his daughter over for sleepover.

So when he turned up, I erupted.

I wasn’t just mad. I didn’t just say, hey, why did you tell me to be here, and then disappear?

I yelled at him. I yelled at the old him, the player, the inconsiderate jerk.

He blamed it on the oldest son, my protege. Said that since I’d talked with him on the phone, it was all the son’s fault. This is ridiculous because the dad was the one giving the instructions, telling the son to tell me to meet them and when.

So dad is trying to stir up some shit between the son and me.

Why?

That night, I had a dream. I was in a small northern town, and it wasn’t doing well. It had a HUGE Saks Fifth Avenue - it had been the center piece of town. But it failed, was gone now, boarded up, and the town had never recovered. An older man who lived in the town was explaining this to me. I heard his voice, but never saw his face. Then the dream shifted: I was in a room with three guns suspended in mid-air, all pointing in different directions. For some reason, no one was holding them. I realized that I was moving in some kind of hyper-fast forward speed. I couldn’t see the shooters, but I knew the guns were going to fire, at least one. I realized they were in ultra slow-motion, and that I could move so fast that I would be able to react before they could point at me and fire. Maybe I could even take the bullets out before they fired. Then they started to turn, each of them, and I felt afraid - how would I be able to outmaneuver three guns????

When I woke up, I realized what the dream was all about.

The Saks is the dad, my ex-lover. I see him as a man who was once magnanamous, emotionally wealthy, giving, and large-hearted. I’ve never known him this way, except in rare snippets, but I am given to understand from the son that this is how he was. The Saks is a material representation of what I saw as his emotional wealth. It’s empty now, boarded over, and the town has never recovered. The town is his family, his children, and the women that have been in his life, including me. And the old man talking to me is an animus-figure, a wise man.

The three guns? Well, those would be me, of course. That’s why there were no shooters. Those guns are fired from my mind. They are defenses concocted against me ever loving men, being open to men, being vulnerable to men. When my ex-lover was late in retrieving his daughter, I decided he’d resumed his jerk ways, and I made a pre-emptive strike. I jumped, grabbed the gun, fired it for him, and then screamed at him for it. I assumed he was late to treat me poorly, again, to be inconsiderate of me.

It was five minutes.

Hardly on the scale of say, murder, or something truly heinous.

I over-reacted because he stepped on an old ouchy, put there by him, and by men who came before him.

I talked with the son about the dream. He wants to be a lawyer when he grows up, but he’s got an amazing knack for psychology, especially soul psychology, which I suspect will come in handy in his career.

I think the son would very much like me to see his father in a different light, and make a go of it with him. He’s trying to line me up as his stepmother, I suppose, but oh, here there be dragons.

Sigh.

I know I need to work on my problems with men.

So since I failed last week’s exercise of not saying anything negative to the men in my life that drive me the most crazy, I have to work harder on this week’s exercise:

In addition to saying nothing negative, practice daily random acts of kindness towards those you probably would prefer to ignore.

The boy has the same assignment, with his sister and mother. He screamed in protest - he passed last week’s test, even though his sister provoked him hard. She even asked him, ‘why are you being so nice to me?’

I did my first random act last night. I invited dad to dinner when I picked up the son for his lesson. I also invited dad to the lesson (I knew he’d say no).

He declined.

Now I have to think up the next random act….

On a follow-up note regarding the struggles I am having with a boy I have been mentoring, who let me down profoundly, this is what I decided to do:

Though I wanted to walk away, drop him on the floor, and end the friendship, I decided not to. He is estranged from his mother, as she was cruel to him, and hurt him. He walked away from her to live permanently with his father. He struggles mightily with his sister, a 12 year old girl like the one he kissed that night in my house, and later shamed for her conduct. I am recognizing he has issues presently with women, and as his dad is a womanizer, this is likely to continue to worsen.

If I terminated the friendship, I would be teaching him that to love women, to have women in your life that you care for, is dangerous. When you love them, they will reject you for mistakes, and hurt you. This is not what I want to teach. It will only harden his heart.

But he can’t just come back into my inner circle. That’s also teaching the wrong lesson, that you can get away with these things, and his only mistake was getting caught.

Also not something I wish to teach.

I held the tension of these opposing thoughts in the hope that a middle way through would emerge.

And so one did.

I met with him, and discussed my issues with him. I am not even angry about the fact that he accepted her advances, that he kissed her, though he was in charge, in power, and I had specifically asked them both not to go there. Kids are going to want to experiment - I can’t damn them for that. My issue is that the girl did this out of a yucky place of low self-esteem. She wanted attention and affection. He doesn’t respect her for what she did, so she didn’t get what she wanted at all. There is no relationship on offer. He lied to me about it, tried to get my daughter to help him cover it up, and then blamed the girl when he got caught. THIS is my issue.

He is not welcome back in my house, I told him. He is not welcome to be with my daughter and me, as a kind of foster son, any longer. He has hurt this little tribe of women.

Amends must be made.

What are they? I’ll do anything, he said.

You must apologize to the girl, to her mother, to my daughter.

OK. Why?

Because you failed to protect the girl. Kissing wasn’t wrong. Using was.

The girl’s mother is enraged because he blamed and shamed her daughter, though he was an equal participant. You must apologize for that. And you must be honest with the girl that you weren’t attracted, aren’t offering a relationship, and don’t respect her now. The crime wasn’t the kiss. The crime was in allowing the girl to do something that dishonored herself, and choosing to participate in that.

Any human being can approach another from shame, from low self-esteem, from a place where they are going to endanger themselves by acting poorly, seeking love, but actually offering sex.

The choice is up to you as to whether you participate in such things.

You can always choose a different path.

And what about our relationship, he asked? How can I get that back?

The path is hard. You must sign up for a 3 month intensive women’s studies course with me. You will read feminist, womanist, and gender studies authors. We will meet once a week at the library to discuss this. You want to be a lawyer - learn to research, to think through issues, and to make arguments if you don’t agree.

It’s ok if I don’t agree with what these authors say? he asks.

Of course. I don’t even agree with everything they write. This is the process of critical thinking- a valuable skill for you to learn. And you will learn to practice it while studying women’s history, women’s thinking, and women’s studies.

And there will be assignments. From the film Fireproof, I got another brain storm. Why not have him do a weekly practice to help him change his behavior to women? This is a boy that hates his mother, denigrates her and his sister, and calls men cunts on a regular basis.

By practicing to be a different way on a daily basis, his thinking and his behaviors will likely change. This will supplement the readings with a practice that over time, develops a different perspective on women.

Today’s assignment (sent to him via email):

These assignments are to be taken very seriously. You can discuss them during our sessions, or write to me about them in email, or even call me once a week or so to discuss them, and the experiences you are having in trying to carry them out.

These will often feel like personal trials to you, but they will help you grow, and this can only be for your good.

You must commit completely to each of the assignments. Since they are only worked during the course, it’s not much of a commitment. You can do it. But if you really work these, they will likely change your perspective considerably.

Remember that what we are doing here is learning to love. I do not mean emotional feeling romantic love. That’s passion. I am not going to teach you passion. Love is something different than passion. Love is consistent compassion in action. Over the next few weeks, you will come to a new understanding of what that means in daily practice.

Assignment 1:
Today, tomorrow, and the weekend: during any interaction you have with females, whether your sister, mother, or anyone else, refrain from saying anything negative to them or about them. This will be hard, because they will test you, try to get you to erupt or explode. They will annoy you, push your buttons, and try old tricks that work to get you to lose your cool.

Do not walk into this trap. Instead, hold your tongue, and in your mind, send them a blessing instead. It can be something simple, just say “I send you a blessing.” Count to 10, walk away, do whatever is needed. But do not let them goad you into anger, or saying hurtful things.

This will require a lot of strength on your part.

We will discuss this in our session Wednesday.

*****************

He wants to know if he completes the course, can he be my friend again?

I respond, ‘as an enlightened male, properly initiated into this tribe, you will be welcome in my inner circle. But not until then.’

He signed up.

Let’s see what happens.

I am working on feminism. I want to make it sexy, accessible, men-friendly, because when both men and women are enlightened, the world is a better place. I don’t want to hate men, I really don’t. I want to honor them.

But sometimes, they make it hard.

I made a mistake. I big one. I mentored a 15 year old boy, the son of an ex-lover. The boy wanted the relationship with me, which I find odd, given his usual role is to run off dad’s girlfriends. Dad took care of running me off by playing at being the player, which I now see is a self-defense mechanism against getting hurt in relationships.

The son wanted more and more contact, and I began helping him get into private school, coaching him in the high school debate, where he trounced a 4 year veteran senior. His subject? McCain’s tax policy during the presidential election. Yawn. But he did well, bringing a lot of drama to it, and making a great case.

I was proud of him.

I had to go out and he offered to watch my daughter, who is 11.

He had babysat her before, and done a fine job, calling me to ask if she could have a peanut butter sandwich, what time exactly did she need to be in bed, and other concerns.

I trusted him. He wanted to be my adoptive son, and I felt he fit well with us. Dad’s financial and living situation is shaky, so it may well be this child is doing well to look out for himself. He might have to stay with me a while.

My daughter had a friend over. There are some people that one hates to see make an entrance into a beloved daughter’s life. One is the bad boyfriend. The one she gets goo goo eyes for, the one with too many tattoos, too many scars, who looks like he crawled out of a gutter. Or he might present as the one who is dressed nice, but has a look in his eyes that you know means pain for your beloved daughter. She hasn’t turned up with him yet.

But she’s only 11…

The second person one dreads meeting is the bad girlfriend. She wears slutty clothes, is too fast, makes too many coy moves to the boys, and gets your daughter down that road. You hate to see her. She strikes fear into your heart as a mother because you know she intends to drag your daughter into the dirt with her.

This was the girl that was staying over at our house.

I am friends with her mother, a kick-butt Latina woman who is getting her degree in psychology. She has zero support for this, but her determination is seeing her through. She senses her daughter is too fast (11!) and trusts me to mentor her, to help her become a stronger woman.

Bad me. I endangered her daughter, instead.

I let the boy babysit both girls. Of all three of them, I trusted him the most. I once was a fast girl, so I know what girls can do to seduce boys.

Before I left, I explicitly laid out my concerns: no kissing, no touching, no playing with each other, no scary movies, no sexy movies, if you walk the puppy, all three must go. They all agreed.

Off I went.

Two hours later, I got home. Everything was fine. They were watching a movie.

Nothing happened, they assured me.

Drove the boy home.

Took my daughter out to dinner, and she was utterly depressed.

What’s the matter baby? Are you tired?

Mom, I have to tell you something. Please don’t be mad.

Heart stops.

Oh god, what’d she do? What did someone do to her? Lord, let this be something I can deal with.

Ok, tell me.

She revealed that while I was gone, she’d gone off into my bedroom to play on my computer. But she could see into the living room, and saw the bad girlfriend edge down the couch towards the boy, who kept edging away from her, until he ran out of room. Then she saw the bad girlfriend kiss the boy.

Who kissed her back.

Turns out my daughter has a little crush on her foster brother.

Ouch.

And they told me nothing.

Worse, they told her to lie to me, to say nothing about it, don’t rat them out.

She wanted to die, she felt so bad.

I love my child. I praised my child. She acted correctly in this situation. She wanted to tell me before, but the girl stayed all weekend, and hovered over her, threatening to slap my baby’s face if she told.

The only thing my baby could have done better is to text me from her mobile that something bad was going down, come home immediately.

Ok, so now I knew. Time to deal with it. First, I had to talk to the ex-lover about it - this was his son.

I expected him to say, ‘that’s my boy! Too bad he didn’t bang her’. He’s a player, remember. But his response was different. He saw the same three issues I did: the one in charge kissed the girl, betrayed my trust, and tried to get my daughter to lie to me.

He went to go pound on his son. He felt it was his duty as a father.

I admired this, but wondered if he’d wake up to the fact that the son’s observance of dad using women over the years had laid the groundwork for this incident.

I talked to the bad girlfriend’s mother, my friend. She was heartbroken, but didn’t want to blame her daughter. I don’t blame her It’s natural to want to kiss, to experiment, to have these feelings. She was just dismayed they hadn’t been coached to be smarter about it, to make better choices.

And I was thinking to myself, thank god it wasn’t my daughter.

But it could have been.

Then the real shit hit the fan. The ex-lover came back to me to talk through his son’s side of it. There are three characters here, he tells me: The Confessor (my daughter), The Whore (the other little girl), and The Victim (his son). I am a little stunned with this repainting of events. How does the one in charge, the one with the power, turn out to be the victim?

Oh she jumped him. He was helpless to defend himself. We’re lucky he could control himself enough to not do anything worse in the situation.

The boy, confronted by his dad, blamed the girl. Shamed her.

I went from disappointed to enraged.

This is everything I hate about men. This is what I hate about his father. Men kiss you tenderly, whisper sweet words, get you to give them what they want, which you, as a girl / woman willingly do, hoping for love and relationship. Ah, but this is a boy’s game, so the next trick is to then deny they were even there, that there is any ‘relationship’ or feelings here. It’s all on you, girl.

The woman, or girl, feels used, and ashamed.

I hate that shit.

I really do.

Worse, the boy pushed me for contact. After dad confronted him, he realized I knew everything. He begged me. Forgive him. Talk to him. Let him back in to my life.

I know teenagers are selfish, but this takes the cake.

What was I wanting? Some amends, some atonement, an effort to apologize, to tell the four females involved (me, my daughter, the other girl, her mother) that he acted badly and he knew it.

What do you think you did wrong, I asked him in email?

I can’t talk to him yet. I’ll rip his head off.

I kissed her, I lied to you and betrayed your trust, and I tried to get your daughter to lie to you, he says.

Verbatim what the father and I discussed.

He’s learned nothing really. Because it is the blaming of the girl, the shaming of her, he’s participated in the making of a child into a whore. He did this with a girl who has low self-esteem, who wants validation, and is growing sexual too fast because hey, there’s attention to be had down this road. It’s not good attention, but it’s something.

I hate this.

I am trying not to hate him.

It’s very hard. All my wounds from being used and shamed by boys and men are now open and seeping. I thought they were done, healed over.

They were merely festering.

And I have to be careful not to throw this at him with the rage I feel. I have swords in my hand, the kind that issue verbal assaults that might never heal.

I have to talk to him tonight. I’ve put it off for a week, hoping to cool down.

I am in a worse place than I was before. Cooling down didn’t happen. Boiling over with rage happened, instead.

I can forgive him. He made a mistake, and compounded it with more.

He has no character. I can help develop that. He is but 15.

But I have no stomach for it.

I don’t want him in my house, near my daughter, or in my life. He’s too dangerous.

This will hurt him.

I wrote to him:

Since you don’t know how to act with any dignity with females, let me give you a little advice: Sometimes what you do can’t be undone, but you can try to lessen the effects of the karma you’ve created. You can apologize or make amends to those you’ve hurt. You can see what you did and learn from it, forgive yourself, and vow never to do it again. And if those you’ve harmed can’t find it in themselves to forgive you, then you have to learn live with that, and vow never to harm or dishonor another female in your life. You can even work to prevent other males from harming or dishonoring females. This would be the most noble path.

He doesn’t understand any of it.

I don’t know if I can do this thing. My friend thinks this is my ministry, but I am no Christ or Buddha.

I am an angry woman.

We are talking about the making of a boy into a man here.

I need to be in a better emotional place than this before I undertake this task.

First, why is it new? Hasn’t misogyny always been there?

Of course, but in its present forms, you might not recognize it as such. It currently masquerades as critical thought, op-ed pieces from respected journalists, and in trashing female candidates for office on criteria other than qualifications. Insidiously, it is also the prevailing view that those female candidates need to be more qualified than male counterparts for the same office.

A pervasive new form of misogyny is labelling any blog or site that analyses feminie issues as ‘vaginalogs’. Ah, there’s an instant ‘take you down as a woman’, yes? If you’re writing on feminist, womanist, or humanist lines, you’re simply a vagina.

And this is meant in the most derogatory form. Everyone knows politics is serious stuff. Sports is big bucks. International affairs…well not quite so interesting as, say, celebrity watching. This is why there are few news stories about Darfur against news stories of Madonna’s divorce. Madonna’s visit to Malawi got way more press than…Malawi.

So if these are all ’serious’ topics, (including celebrity watching), and topics on women’s issues, particularly those discussing what happened in this election are ‘vaginalogs’, how can you not see this as anything more than debasement, than misogyny? It’s an instant reduction of anything that might be important to you as a woman having no more relvancy in the world than…tampons.

Wow.

Here’s another one: liberal feminists bashing Sarah Palin for having a baby (or maybe her daughter did), for having a teen daughter who’s pregnant, for being pro-life, for having a husband, for being hot, for not dressing well enough, for then spending too much money to dress well, for not staying at home to care for her special needs child…as though a woman couldn’t POSSIBLY be needed in the world when there’s a child that needs looking after…and doing all this bashing in the name of ‘feminism’….which immediately discounted millions of women, like me, though not a Republican, who has a daughter that needs raising, and a life mission to fulfill that makes heavy demands on my time.

So I am a villain now? And I am 40, pretty good looking, and date?

Oh burn her on the stakes!

Listen, ya’ll, this is ridiculous. Feminist doesn’t only mean academic, liberal, one-child, career woman who wears pantsuits and hates the patriarchy. I know a feminist who pole dances. I’ve met feminists who have children, and are stay-at-home moms. I have met feminists that live with men, and have a lot of sex. Frankly I am getting a little tired of the box that feminism demands I fit into. I don’t buy it.

I am a Woman, and I take account of the space I take up, and the time I take. I am raising a daughter, but I travel to Europe and take her with me, even if it means pulling her out of school. I don’t want to be married, but I do want to have love and romance, and why not? I like my wine and my friends, and I like taking down the attitudes the keep us hemmed in every second I get.

Don’t you?

All right, I digress. Diss Palin on her qualifications if you must, but diss Biden equally - he made more gaffes (Jake Tapper got to 43 or so counted gaffes on his blog, Political Punch). Diss Obama equally. Don’t play the ‘bros before hos’ game, especially not as a woman yourself. Have some respect.

Don’t read Huff Po - they’re a bunch of insane misogynists. Post anything anti-Obama, and identify yourself as a woman, and they’ll come after you with pitchforks.

Don’t watch MSNBC. Matthews needs to be hung in effigy. Oooh, there’s an idea for my next party…

Don’t read the NY Times. They’re not necessarily misogynists - they did endorse Clinton. But they quickly fawned for Obama and never quit being his main PR branch.

DO get out there, and blog, and stand up for yourself, and women everywhere. DO fight back when you are called the c word. DO see misogyny where it occurs, and immediately organize a response. Recently, I saw an ad on a mainstream site with the headline ‘is your vagina tired?’ and showing a depressed youngish women sitting on a bed.

WTF?

Are you kidding me? When men can’t get it up, it’s ED. They don’t call it ‘deflated penis’, or ‘old man’s dick’, or ‘male flacidity’. No, it’s a nice safe ED. But for us, it’s a tired vagina? Not a ‘I’m sick of bad sex and not taking it anymore, thanks?’ Or ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind, and sex ain’t making the top 10′?

No, we must be ‘tired’ because everyone knows women are supposed to do it all. Men need pumps when they flag, or magic pills, the little darlings. They need props. We need mood enhancers because everyone knows we can do it all and just keep on going and going and going…so if we’re ‘tired’, it couldn’t be we’re doing too much. It couldn’t be that we’ve taken on a bit much in trying to live up to the freak-in-the-bed-hard-charging-career-woman-doting-wife-lady-in-public-Martha-Stewart-in-the-kitchen persona that society rams down our throats via magazines and TV. No, that couldn’t be it. We MUST live up to all those things, so when the average woman loses interest in sex from sheer exhaustion, there’s no exhortation to live for yourself, honey. No, there’s a damning ‘your vagina must be tired, so take this pill!’ And get back on the hamster wheel…spinning spinning.

Watch for more examples. Collect them. Publish them. And fight back. For that ad above, I got tons of girlfriends enraged about it, and we wrote hordes of emails to the site administrator about how offensive it was.

The ad got taken down the next day.

Fight the misogyny. See it, call it out, and fight it.

Great video from Stacy - fabulous beginning work to a documentary that shows how the press failed to do its job:

http://www.howobamagotelected.com/

Spread the word, people. This needs to be SEEN.

I argued with people on street corners here that told me Palin wanted to burn books, charged victims for rape kits, and similar nonsense - all of which was debunked by factcheck.org. I was amazed at the mass brainwashing that went down in Obama’s campaign.

But I am also mad at my fellow Americans because they didn’t bother to do the research, debunk the lies, and scream at the media for being in the tank so openly.

However, they clearly didn’t know the media was in the tank. And they didn’t probe much beyond the surface of whatever was posted on Obama’s blog. Often the lies on that blog became the ‘facts’ of mainstream news.

How is that not propaganda?

And I am deeply saddened that the better (wo)man did not win. Clinton, McCain, or Palin would have all been better than the cult figure we ended up with. Get ready for your own Castro, America.

I have changed my blog title recently to ‘an angry, thinking womanist’s blog’. It occurs to me that some background might be a darned good idea. A little ‘get to know me’, if you will.

Why am I angry? I have been a woman fighting her way up several ladders in corporate America, in academia, and in society. I am angry because this election proved beyond all shadow of a doubt that feminism is dead. It proved that the playing field for women is anything but level. This year, four women on three separate tickets ran for the #1 and #2 positions in our political establishment. They ran, as women, for the chance to run the country. And you know what?

They lost.

Why? Because women have not arrived. The Year of the Woman in Presidential Politics…wasn’t.

I am happy for Obama, and all his fans, really. This is a great breakthrough, a historic moment. But the cost to women in misogyny was terrible. The cost to us in terms of being acknowledged as capable beings was terrible. First HRC, then Sarah P - it was dreadful to watch. Women who’d accomplished great things in office in their own right were completely abused and torn apart on a national stage. And did you ever hear of Cynthia McKinney? Of course not - she ran in a virtual media blackout. The nation was in love with the idea of a black man as president, but not quite so in love with the idea of a black woman.

So yes, I am angry. Very angry.

2. What is a thinking woman? I admit I stole this from Renita J Weems’ blog. She’s amazing - check her out at http://www.somethingwithin.com/blog/. Her blog is for thinking women. I am one. I know many more. Thinking women own their thoughts. They know they are smart. They know they live in a world that is not very friendly to the thinking woman. Ask Sarah Palin. Ask Hillary. They know they’re going to get mud tossed on them. They could sit around and whine about the patriarchy. That’s a choice they have. But instead, the thinking woman chooses to move forward, to inspire, to build coalitions, to motivate other women. The thinking woman is not a superhero. She may get frazzled, worn down, beat up, and counted out. But she has a brain, a solid mind, and she knows how to use it. She knows it is her job TO use it. She knows that no matter how many sucker punches she has to take, she has to get back up and make her voice heard. It is hers, after all, and no one can give it to her. She has to find it for herself, that voice. But once she has found it, no one will ever take it away from her. A thinking woman can read essays or books penned by others, and consider their opinions. But only as an aid to forming her own. She knows what she thinks, and she doesn’t let anyone else tell her what that is.

Thinking women are our greatest gift. Because of that, they are often attacked, and openly, by others who are threatened by the idea of powerful, thinking women who will not be instructed on what to think and when to think it, but insist on having their own thoughts.

Less than a century ago, such women could be and were institutionalized and lobotomized because they were considered so dangerous.

Two centuries ago, they were not allowed to vote, or be considered citizens who could own property. See Heinrick Ibsen’s The Doll House for a great example of what happens to a thinking woman who takes matters into her own hands, and threatens the male establishment.

Three centuries ago, thinking women were burned at the stake as witches. Older, widowed women and women who knew medicinal herbs were especially at risk.

This year, four of them ran for the #1 and #2 spots in the national government on three separate tickets. They didn’t win. But that didn’t stop them from trying. And it didn’t stop millions of us from voting for them. If anything, this year shone a flashlight all over the terrain, and showed us what the landscape really looks like. Guess what? It’s a lot meaner and uglier out there than we thought. It’s a whole lot harder than we thought to get into office. But now we know.

We will not be stopped.

3. What is a womanist? There will be a great many more blogs devoted to this. Again, this is a term borrowed from my (unknown to her) mentor Renita Weems. Feminism is dead. It truly is. Where was NOW when HRC was being crucified with sexism during the primaries?

Dead silent.

Where was NARAL? Oh, endorsing Obama.

What were our women writers in the press doing? Joining the ‘me too’ brigade in throwing mud onto Hillary, and then Sarah.

Feminism is dead. It really is. Let’s give it the funeral it truly deserves.

Besides, feminism these days seems to be a fringe-y movement that’s about abortion and lesbian rights, while not advancing the cause of women to high office. Well, that is not a movement I want to even get involved in. That’s not the feminism that started with the suffragette movement. The feminism we have now is some discombobulated wreck of philosophies that failed utterly to muster women to THE calling of our lifetime: get one of our own into the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States.

I don’t want to be part of any ‘movement’ (and feminism as a movement has all the forward momentum at the moment of a golf tournament on the radio in Mandarin), that doesn’t respond to this calling with guts, determination, and strength.

I am out.

For good.

Having said that, do I think women need to organize, propel themselves forward, fight sexism, fight discrimination, and tear down every last bastion that keeps us back?

You betcha’.

So let’s kill off feminism once and for all, and bring on womanism. I am ready for a movement of sisterhood, solidarity, strength, guts, creativity, and power. I am ready for us to grab some of those booty-shaking 20 year-olds and scream in their faces ‘do you think women DIED for you to be an equal citizen so you could do THIS????”

I want to grab those 14 year-olds blowing boys at parties and smack them into sensibility. True, giving blow jobs is not technically sexual intercourse, but you are GIVING YOURSELF AWAY to a boy, playing by boys’ rules. Stop that!

I want to put Maureen Dowd and Arianna Huffington in stockades and let people throw rotten veggies at them all day, preferably purchased from Whole Foods at exhorbitant prices. How could they let us down by making the snidest, cattiest, meanest remarks against the women who ran for office this year? What were they thinking? That they can play the Boyz’ game of taking down the little woman better than the boyz? GIVE ME A BREAK!

Listen ladies, it’s time the sisters to start doing it for ourselves. I ain’t waiting for some man to help me out. I ain’t waiting for a fair break, an equal shot, or a patronizing ‘helping hand’.

I make my own way, and I always have. That’s what a womanist does. But she never stands idly by when other women are being maligned, attacked, or pulled down into the gutters of sexism. She stands up and uses her voice. She shames networks, news-sites, and writers who engage in sexism. She organizes. She moves. She doesn’t take it lying down.

And she doesn’t let her sisters take it either.

That’s what a womanist is.

Know any? Are you one? Let me hear your VOICE! Send them all here. Let’s start a national movement here.

It’s TIME!