MEN SHOULD NEVER, EVER, EVER BE LEFT ALONE WITH CHILDREN. I repeat MEN ARE DANGEROUS. REALLY FUCKING DANGEROUS. DO NOT LEAVE MEN WITH CHILDREN.

MEN

ARE

****DANGEROUS****

Gary beat his wife Karen. A lot. Karen left him many times but he refuses to let her take the children, Jack, 7, Maddie, 5 and Bon, 18 months. So she was forced to go back to him. Karen leaves him again after being bashed. Gary is left alone with the three kids. The situation is known to DoCS. DoCS do shit all. Gary puts all the children in the car and gasses them and himself.

Karen Bell survives her children. I haven’t an idea how awful this would be for her. Her three children will never grow up. And their mother is left alone, with the scars of abuse and the pain of the loss of her children.

A 69 year old man took an axe and slaughtered his wife, a 52 year old woman and their two grandchildren, a seven year old boy and a 5 year old girl. Their mother, a local police officer, was also attacked but she survived, running to the neighbours for help.

This woman also survives her children and her mother. I just can’t imagine what it would be like to know that your father, whom had been entrusted with your childrens’ care, had done something like this. How unimaginably awful.

Both of these horrific acts of violence occurred in New South Wales. The state in which I live. I can’t linked to any stories because the way these events are being reported sickens me. There is some good feminist commentary here.

Almost every week when I read the paper there are stories about men slaughtering women and children in this country which is supposedly free and egalitarian. This country which is supposedly safe. Where in the world is it safe to be a woman or child? Not Australia. Not here.

Men are dangerous here.

It is not safe here.

Men are not safe to be around. Men are dangerous.

Stay away from men. Do not leave your children with men.

Men are dangerous.

In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker

Really fantastic book. Definite recommendation. I love Walker’s writing.

Moment of Desire: Sex and Sensuality by Australian Feminist Writers edited by Susan Hawthorne and Jenny Pausacker

Not a big fan of this though I do think it was/is a good idea. The writing isn’t all that great and the short stories don’t make much sense to me. Haven’t been able to finish it.

Hope Bay by Nicole Pluss

I really loved this book. Beautifully written. About a girl called Possum and her friendship with an older woman who feeds dolphins. Definite ecofeminist philosophy underpins the feeling and depth of the book.

Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange

I wish Ntozake Shange was easier to get hold of. I desperately want to read more of her work. I really enjoyed this book. Centres meaningfully on relationships between women and girls. Skillful writing. Took me back to the days when I lived in a crowded household.

Surpassing the Love of Men by Lillian Faderman

Hah! I love this book. Lillian Faderman rocks!!! An indepth look at the rich history of love between women.

Zami: Towards a New Spelling of my Name by Audre Lorde

It is written by Audre Lorde, the greatest poet ever, need I say more?

Spider Woman’s Granddaughters edited by Paula Gunn Allen

This book is gorgeous. Worth reading for the Introduction alone. Paula Gunn Allen was an incredible woman.

The Naming (also published as The Gift) by Alison Croggon

These three books are part of the Pellinor series. They are a fantasy series, heavily influenced by Lord of the Rings but with less misogyny. I really like the lead female character and there are lots of black and multiracial characters and lots of strong, powerful women. The lead female character is multiracial. BUT there is some disturbing father-figure/daughter-figure romanciness implied in the second book which is gross and disgusting. I’m hoping that things don’t get worse in the fourth book which is coming out this year.

The Stone Key by Isobelle Carmody

The fifth book of the Obernewtyn Series. It is really good. I read it in less than two days and it is a BIG book!

The 14th Carnival of the Radical feminists was at Maggie’s Meta Watershed.

The 15th Carnival of the Radical Feminists was at Rage Against the Manchine.

And I’m doing the 16th Carnival. Contribute posts women!!! I’m having lots of fun putting the carnival together and my eyes are sore!!!

I entered a Poetry Slam last night for the first time. It was part of the Winter Magic Festival which is held in Katoomba every year. I performed this one  slightly modified as it had to be squished into 2 minutes. It was very scary. I have sung in public before but somehow it was scarier just talking. But it went ok. I didn’t stuff up too badly. And it was really fun. I think I’ll be doing it again.

Of course I didn’t win, not even close. But I didn’t expect to. I knew I would be performing to a misogynist and racist audience so it didn’t surprise me in the least that the two winners were white and male. And the runner up was… yep, you guessed it, a white, male misogynist.

But there were quite a few women in the audience who approached me afterwards who said that they really liked my work and praised my performance. One women even whispered furtively, “You should have won.” If I had been free to speak, if I had have spoken freely, I would have replied, “Sister, I know the rules of men’s games, you can only win while wearing white skin and having a dick between your legs whilst babbling goobledegook.” I didn’t reach the age of 26 without learning that my skin and my sex were liabilities when playing games in the malestream. My commitment to women’s liberation and women’s centredness is even less acceptable.

Winning and losing are male concepts. The idea the poetry can be well serviced by competition is completely alien to me. Poetry is spiritual, poetry is erotic, poetry is connection. But the reality is that I did win last night. I made connections with other women poets. Real women who wrote with feeling about earth and sky and women’s power. Our voices shone strongly to each other. We connected and we won.

On a personal level, I faced my fear of performance and I proved to myself that it is entirely possible for me to get up on stage and not make a complete fool of myself. I didn’t go completely blank, like I thought I would, I didn’t stumble over ever single line, I didnt trip over when I walked onto the stage. In short, I won. I conquered my own doubts and self-hatred, two of women’s biggest and most fatal stumbling blocks.

I came away from the night with a feeling of elation. The night confirmed for me just how lacking in music and poetry men really are. They have no feeling for the beauty and depth of language, the subtlety of rhythm, the complexity of the personal and political. Dissenter and I couldn’t help but laugh at the clumbsiness of what men call poetry.

The way the competition was judged was the MC (a Black or possibly mixed racial man, the only other person of colour performing) threw five markers out into the audience. Whoever caught the marker became a judge. Fair right? One of the markers went to a highschool girl (pretty cool I thought), another to a woman who was a birdwatching guide, another hit an elderly woman, her husband picked up the marker and when he tried to give her the marker the woman refused to take it, retired gentleman becomes the next judge, the fourth marker was caught by a woman, her friend’s husband quickly snatched the marker from her, so sexist IT dude became a judge and the last was thrown to a male tree lopper. Three men, one woman, one girl.

I have to wonder how different the judging would have been if the women had held tight to those markers. The wrap up of the night was like some sick joke. The two male winners, the male MC and the TWO WOMEN WHO HAD ORGANISED THE WHOLE EVENT stood on stage to be congratulated. So women are the ones that do the hard yards and organise the events, men are the ones that win, introduce and control the proceedings of the event.

Ngh, I need to organise some women only performance nights. Men’s performance bores me to tears. Even though one of the women’s performances was horrible classist, misogynist and possibly racist, she didn’t hold a candle to the misogyny and homophobia of some of the men. And the audience was laughing and enjoying the misogynist and homophobic ‘poetry’.  The most woman-hating poem was voted runner up. Erch.

But I really do have to do it more often. It was great to meet other women performers, women who wrote Mother Earth/Goddess poetry no less. Pretty bloody awesome methinks.

I am organising a memorial for Jyoti Mehta and Ujalla Dinesh, the mother and daughter whose bodies were dumped like so much garbage at the bottom of Echo Point.

I live very close to Echo Point. It is the home of the Three Sisters. An ancient, sacred site of female power. Jyoti Mehta was 38, the mother of Ujalla, who was only nine. She moved to Australia to marry Sanjay Mehta, a man whom she had met on the internet.

Jyoti had approached the Jessie Street Domestic Violence Service in January saying that her husband was verbally abusive and had threatened to kill her. On May the 5th she and her daughter were dead, both victims of pervasive male terrorism.

Her husband put the bodies of Jyoti and Ujalla in the trunk of his car then drove the family to Echo Point. While the other children went for a walk, Sanjay dumped the bodies of the woman and girl over the cliff. He reported them missing, saying that their passports and $100 was missing too. Trying to imply that they had gone away.

I want the deaths of these women to be remembered, marked. I will be holding a memorial for this woman and her daughter on Saturday the 7th of June at 3:00 at the lookout at Echo Point.

Bill Henson, and most of Australia’s ‘artistic’ community, thinks that it is ‘artistic’ to take naked, sexualised pictures of children. It isn’t. From the Bravehearts petition to the Prime Minister:

We are appalled by the level of support given to Henson in light of the police seizure of his photographs, which has been issued primarily by people defending the rights and freedoms of artists at the expense of the rights and freedoms of children. There is no denying that art has an important role in society. But artists, like every other adult, have a responsibility to protect children from exploitation. The artistic pursuit of personal emotion, curiosity or expression cannot be sanctioned where this pursuit violates existing human rights and betrays the same laws by which the rest of society lives.

The sexualisation of children and young people for the alleged purpose of art - or any other purpose - is counterproductive to the best interests of child protection. It plays directly into the hands of those who want to liberate children and young people from the laws which protect them.

Sign the Petition against Bill Henson’s child pornography.

What I noticed about his photographs is the fact that all of his models are white. They are pimple-free with glossy hair. The female children sometimes wear make-up. The male and female children are photographed together in sexualised senarios. None of the children are fat, none of the children are happy or playing. They are often photographed in a studio with no or few clothes on, few props and dark lighting. The female children have long hair, the male children have short hair.

An example of Henson’s ‘art’:

Quite a while ago and older lesbian sister said that she was not a feminist and it got me thinking. She said that ‘Feminism’ was a word that she viewed with suspicion, that it felt to her as though the word ‘feminist’ was coming from the universities, that grassroots wimmin were women’s liberationists, that ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’ were words that did not gel with her when she first encountered them.

Back in the 1970’s there was this incredible, world-altering, mind-altering phenomenon. It was called the Women’s Liberation Movement. The women who participated in this movement were not feminists, they were women’s libbers. They were radical women, they were angry women. They were pissed off, dykey, frigid, man-hating, hairy, militant and they were loud. They were low-class wimmin, they were Black, Native and migrant wimmin, they were wimmin with disabilities, they were wimmin that men have tried to erase from HIStory. But I remember them and I honour them. They are the women whose footsteps I follow. They are the women whom I owe for my own existence.

So this was meant to be a post about why I am no longer calling myself a Feminist and how I am now a Women’s Libber. It is my thoughts on Debs’ post combined with my feelings after listening to SheCodes, Attorneymom, Professor Tracy and Tami on The Queen’s Council Podcast. I think Heart had a hand in it. Oh, and I suppose I should also credit the many, many Athena’s who have linked to my Joss Whedon posts too.

I’m not sure why the rational essay I was writing in my head turned into this. But it did so… read on if you dare.

***

And now, as I come to remembering mySelf and the Goddess. As the full moon rises anew, drawing the night sky, the stars and the dark mother calls. I know who I am.

I have never wanted to be Zeus or Dionysus. I do not follow the destructive path of Yahweh or Jesus. I hate the trinityfathersonholyspirit forged on the broken, twisted memory of the Triple Goddess: Crone, Mother, Maiden. I know who I am. I remember.

I know who she is. That Dark Mother. She is me, she is all women. Re-membering. Knowing. Be-ing. Be-coming. And her name was never ‘Feminist’.

This candyfloss feminism. White, narrow, male-stream, patriarchy-pleasing, dance to Dionysus’s beguiling music, bow to the thunder of Zeus almighty. I know who she is too. Athena. Athena. Woman without self. Woman dis-membered. Woman without memory.

I know her anger. She who. Loves her God the Father. Whether his name is Jesus, Daddy, Husband. Whether his name is Joss Whedon, Che Guevara, Zeus Almighty, Henry Jenkins. I know her hate. It is connected to my own. That mirror that shows up herself and her sisters. We will never be measure to man. Woman. Hate. Woman. Athena, I love you still. Though I bleed from the wounds you are forced to inflict on me. Athena. You are not The Dark Mother.

Shall I name, She whose eyes pierce through solid darkness? She who clears the mind of fog and confusion. She who walks in Darkness. The skin of her, wearing the night sky, woman and earth. Earth and sky. I can believe.

That woman. Her name. Is Afrekete, Kali, Hecate. Her name is Metis, Spider-Woman, Mother Eingana.

My name is feminist no longer. I walk as a woman, just a woman, hand in hand with the Dark Mother. We walk together, as women, towards liberation.

I do not seek equality with those who wouldst rape. I do not seek equality to those who would plunder for the sake of pleasure, laugh at destruction. I do not seek equality with those that would murder, buy women as sex, wank to women’s dis-memberment, take pleasure from the destruction of Our Dark Mother.

I do not seek equality with killers, with those who hate my kind, my grandmother’s skin, my mother’s rage. If I name myself, if I am named, feminist, I am not whole. I must deny. That Dark part of me. I must deny/hide/pretendpretend… She does not exist. I do not exist.

But I am woman. I am whole AS I AM. I am equal TO MYSELF. I am hand in hand with Darkness. Manifesting goddess. Hecate of the Underworld, Kali of Chaos, Spider-Woman, who weaves the Earth, Afrekete, the Unruly, Eingana, the Serpent mother, life and death. Who are you Athena? Why do you seek equality with those who hate you? Why do you seek equality with him that harms? When you are Goddess, when Our Dark Mother calls, why do you seek comfort from Dionysus? How do you answer Zeus Almighty, when he calls?

And in your ignorance, you turn away from She, who knows that there is elementary power in a closed fist and Elemental Power in and open palm. And in your ignorance you seek what you cannot afford to gain. There is no beauty in the places that you seek fulfillment. He. Man. He does not love you the way that She can.

Feminist can be your name Athena. I want another name. I want a name that bleeds her guts for women. I want a name that bares her teeth for women. I want a name that does my rage justice. I want a name that re-members our ancient mother.

MySelf.

Goddess.

Women’s Liberation.

Gertrude Green and Renate Klein, two Aussie feminists have set up a blog for women who have been hurt by male supremacist medicine, specifically the ‘cervical cancer vaccine’ which has been pushed into all Australian schools, affecting thousands of young girls who are misled into believing that the drug protects them against cervical cancer. My sister, who was 17 at the time, was scared into getting the vaccine, despite my mother’s reservations (my mother, the intuitive knowledgable woman that she is, has a deep distrust of patriarchal medicine and always has). So I asked my sister to write about her experience and have her permission to share her story here.

Dear Gertrude Green and Renate Klein,

I was one of the many Australian girls who received the Gardasil vaccine through my high school. I was 17 at the time and had not been informed properly about all the side effects that could have happened to me. I also did not know that in having the Gardisil shot that I was still not 100% protected from still getting cervical cancer and that I would still need to get Pap smear checks.

When I got my first vaccine, I had just got my shot and we had to sit for 10mins after we got our shot. I went and sat down and this girl in the year below me came and sat down beside me. After a little while a friend of the girl who was sitting by me ran up to one of the ladies who were giving us the injections and yelled, “there’s something wrong with my friend”. I looked over at the girl and she was so pale. Her eyes had rolled back into her head and the head was just rolling around on the chair. The lady who was giving injections immediately got up and pushed all the chairs aside and started first aid on the girl. After that we all got sent outside. I was terrified at what I saw and also that what ever just made that girl have a fit was in me.

When I went for my second injection the girl was there again lining up for it. This time we all had to sit outside to wait for the 10 minutes to pass. After I got it done I went outside, waiting for the time to pass. Some of my friends came out and said that they had let the girl get her injections again and that she had a fit again and had vomited.

Thanks for the information on this blog. I will let my friends know about it and try to spread the word.

Precious

Shocking stuff. I can’t believe that they were shoving this shit into the arms of 13 year old girls. If you know of any women who have received this ‘vaccine’, please direct them to this site so they can tell their own stories. Gardasil: Women Hurt By Medicine

When I first posted my rant on Joss Whedon all those months ago, I only expected it to be read by radical feminists and obviously it was written for radical feminists. I have no problem with the fact that it has received a wider audience than that intended, in fact I think that has been pretty cool. I love that quite a few women have responded positively to what I talked about and that some women are taking on board the tools of analysis that I used in order to pull apart other aspects of Whedon’s work.

See Lindsey’s post over at the Autist’s Corner

And Saranga’s post Joss Whedon and Feminism Part 1

Nice work sisters.

I also enjoyed Jess McCabe’s comments over at the F-Word on the newest Marvel movie Iron Man.

I’ve been interested by the different reactions to the film Iron Man this weekend in the feminist blogosphere. I saw it myself on Friday night, and found it objectionable for a whole host of reasons that the soundtrack could not compensate for, running the full gamet of imperialist fantasy, racism and sexism.

One little example: every scene involving the lead character, Tony Stark, in his jet, which is staffed with women air stewards whose jobs seem to primarily involve being sexually available for him to use and as symbols to project his status, wealth and playboy lifestyle to the viewers. One big example: Stark realises that the arms trade is immoral because of his weapons ending up in the hands of Arab terrorists in caves (wonder who they’re meant to be!) Stark/Iron Man intervenes when the US military can’t because of pesky rules or something (let’s invade someplace! woohoo!); when the US army/he personally is weilding deadly weaponry, that’s OK, because they’re the good guys.

I haven’t seen the movie but being a long time X-Men fan and a Marvel Universe buff, I know intimately the racist, misogynist shit that they produce and have no doubt that her observations are correct.

I also have to thank Davina for drawing my attention to this post by Melymbrosia which is linked to this vid and this post which is absolutely necessary viewing and reading if you are a feminist, anti-racist Buffy fan. It is a fascinating, deep reading of the erasure and colonisation of women of colour, specifically looking at Nikki Wood’s coat, which was stolen by Spike, the history of which was detailed in the episode “Fool for Love”. Really thought-provoking analysis. Go read/watch.

I really think that the fact that women are not allowed to have these conversations means that these conversations are important. The fact that women are continually silenced on these issues means that is important that we continue to speak out. I think that the power that entertainment has in shaping our perception of ourselves and our lives is consistently underestimated. We need to have an understanding of how the things that we love, often as women, and as feminists, can harm us. We need to endevour to understand how and why before we can begin to articulate freedom.

For me creativity is central to my feminism and to feminist resistance. Often I am unable to write directly about the things that I think and feel. I also find it difficult to write about my childhood and my past. So writing creatively, and sometimes painting or dancing, singing etc, is absolutely necessary for tapping into myself, for sorting out my thoughts and feelings, for giving myself a voice. Like Audre Lorde, for me, poetry is not a luxury.

I’ve set up a page with links to all of my creative works that have been published online thus far: Poetry is not a luxury.

In sisterhood and creative resistance,

allecto