In my attempts to prepare for my talk at WOW, I have continued my study on women and our history. Yesterday, as I sat at my breakfast table reading on of my latest books The Creation of Feminist Consciousness by Gerda Lerner, I was deeply moved beyond words.
Why? For this reason:
I am COMPLETELY ignorant of most…no of ALL that I am reading about women and their contributions to our world. I am completely humbled by the fact that I have taken for granted my own education and ability to even be able to sit here, think through all the things I have come to realize this last year through my own studies and questioning, and to then produce works of art from my own mind and hand. I am now realizing just how far our society has come in just 100 years….how far women have had to come from for me to be able to be where I am today.
I realize that I often would continued to perpetuate the Feminine Wound just a few short years ago when I would say that I was born 50 years too late…that I wished I had been born back in the early 1900s for that was when women could be women and men treated women as such.
“OMG, really Holli? Is this really what you thought? Do you have any clue how far women have come in just 50 years?”
I wish I could say all the words that are going through my head. And just to be clear at all my readers – I am not some angry self-righteous feminist looking to vent thousand of years of anger at men. No, I am just very humbled and very sad to be just now reading about a past that reflects me. Up until the last 4 months, I never even really thought about history and not knowing about the women in history. I NEVER even realized how one sided history is…how subjective it is…how it has been used and is being used to continue to suppress people in invisible ways to us even to this day.
But yes I do have a LOT of anger…but my anger is at the System. The System of Hierarchy. Yes, this is often labeled Patriarchy because men have been at the forefront…but as I read, think, analyze and look around me…we are ALL the victims of this System. We are ALL the pawns of this System…men as well. Our children especially. Women have turned on themselves and each other under this System.
I’ve often heard it said that churches, businesses, corporations, etc. do not hurt people…that people hurt people. I actually think this is skewed teaching. I think these institutions take on a life of their own within our midst and we don’t even realize it. We become cheerleaders for these institutions without even realizing it. We then become slaves to the institutions…to the System (family system, business system, cultural system, societal system) and before we know it the System and keeping it in homeostasis is more important than the people within the System.
Jesus saw this and he tried desperately to wake the System up to what it was doing to people. He died with his efforts of trying to wake up the people in the System…His followers followed suit, and so did many others…until this present age when we have crucified Christ in order to maintain a System that enslaves us all….
I am completely humbled and moved beyond words…
