Category: history

The Role of Patriarchal Religion in the Global Oppression of Women and Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine

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Feminist Forum March 26th 11-1 PST on Zoom

Go to our YouTube channel in order to watch the video.

Role of Patriarchal Religion in the Global Oppression of Women Resource List

Have you ever wondered why women have become so devalued and debased that we are degraded routinely as pornographic images, driven into prostitution, sold as property, coerced into child marriages, our bodies violated and mutilated, our right to bodily sovereignty and self-determination threatened or non-existent?  Has it always been this way?  Is prostitution “the oldest profession”?  Have we always been told we must be pure and virginal while men are allowed sexual license and even excused for rape?  Or have we been systematically groomed to be subservient and obedient, taught that our only choice is between Madonna or whore, that we are to blame for the “fall from grace”, intimidated and silenced by belief systems that teach us we are inferior, and punished severely when we defy these messages?

Most people believe that there has always been patriarchy, that women have always been treated like sex objects and chattel, blamed for men’s violent behavior, disrespected, dispossessed, disregarded, and treated like lesser humans unworthy of equality since the dawn of time.  This is not the case.  Once there was a Goddess, and things were different.

Join us for an examination of the role patriarchal religion has played, and continues to play, in the subjugation and oppression of the female sex.  As the U.S. veers toward becoming more and more a patriarchal theocracy, it is time that we gather our courage and finally look this beast in the eye.  And it is high time for women to reclaim our birthright:  the Mother Goddess. 

Featured speakers:

Max Dashu: 

Max Dashu founded the Suppressed Histories Archives in 1970 to research women’s heritages in the global cultural record and make them visible. She uses images to teach about matricultures, ceremony, medicine women, witches, female rebels and untamable women, as well as patriarchy, conquest, and systems of domination. She is the author of Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, a forthcoming book on women in Hellenic mythography and patriarchy, and two videos: Women’s Power in Global Perspective, and Woman Shaman: the Ancients. Her current course is Matricultural Eyes via Teachable. See more at Suppressed Histories Photo Essays

Ava Park:

Ava cares about only one thing: nourishing the primal power of Woman to guide the world to goodness. Ava is the founder of The Museum of Woman, revealing the hidden history of Woman from the Paleolithic to the present through the stories and statues of Goddesses, Queens and Wisewomen; the founder of The Goddess Temple of Orange County, the women’s spiritual circle of The Museum of Woman; and the author of The Queen Teachings for Women with Ava, © helping women access their Four Powers of Woman, © Maiden, Mother, Queen and Wisewoman, with emphasis on the Powers of the Queen Archetype, the most denied, dismissed and demonized of the female archetypes. When the Queen shows up in Woman, patriarchy melts.  Enjoy her inspiring YouTube videos on her channels: Museum of Woman, Goddess Temple of Orange County and Queen Coach.

Nina Paley:    Nina Paley is the creator of the award-winning animated musical feature films Sita Sings the Blues and Seder-Masochism.  Seder-Masochism is a film loosely following a traditional Passover Seder and events from the Book of Exodus, retold by Moses, Aharon, the Angel of Death, Jesus, and the director’s own father. But there’s another side to this story: that of the Goddess, humankind’s original deity. Seder-Masochism resurrects the Great Mother in a tragic struggle against the forces of Patriarchy.  She also has written a book, The Seder Masochism: A Haggadah and Anti-Haggadah.  Her newest project is Apocalypse Animated, illustrating the Book of Revelation.

Ms. Paley has been deplatformed, banned, and blacklisted for saying penises are male.

Carol A. Bouldin, LMFT

Carol has worked in the mental health field with individuals, groups, and families in a variety of settings including inpatient, outpatient, corrections, substance abuse, and private practice, specializing in women abused as children. She is a longtime feminist and utilizes a feminist therapy approach in her work with women, and she has authored the Declaration of, by, and for Women. Carol has done research on Christian orthodoxy, attitudes towards women, shame, and rightwing authoritarianism, and is interested in the psychological impact of patriarchal religion on women and girls.

Role of Patriarchal Religion in the Global Oppression of Women Resource List

Happy Women’s Equality Day

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Keep this handy next time someone claims that 2nd wave feminists had no race consciousness and didn’t care about children.  The graphic attached was an ad that ran in the Village Voice regarding the first Women’s Equality Day march and rally– which was called as a strike– and where 50,000 marched down 5th Ave in NYC.  Another of the ads said, “Don’t iron while the strike is hot.”

In 1971 Bella Abzug, Congresswoman from NYC, introduced the following resolution into Congress and it was passed:

Joint Resolution of Congress, 1971 Designating August 26 of each year as Women’s Equality Day

WHEREAS, the women of the United States have been treated as second-class citizens and have not been entitled the full rights and privileges, public or private, legal or institutional, which are available to male citizens of the United States;

and WHEREAS, the women of the United States have united to assure that these rights and privileges are available to all citizens equally regardless of sex;

and WHEREAS, the women of the United States have designated August 26, the anniversary date of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment, as symbol of the continued fight for equal rights;

and WHEREAS, the women of United States are to be commended and supported in their organizations and activities,

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that August 26th of each year is designated as Women’s Equality Day, and the President is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation annually in commemoration of that day in 1920, on which the women of America were first given the right to vote, and that day in 1970, on which a nationwide demonstration for women’s rights took place.

When Women’s Liberationists Could Imagine Fighting Violence Against Women Without Relying on the Prison System

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The new book, All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing and the Feminist Fight to End Violence ““is a history of activism by, for, and about incarcerated domestic violence survivors, criminalized rape resisters, and dissident women prisoners in the 1970s and early 1980s.”

How Feminists Resisted Prisons and Policing in the 1970s

“Anticarceral feminist politics grew in the cracks of prison walls and at the interfaces between numerous social movements, including those for racial and economic justice, prisoners’ and psychiatric patients’ rights, and gender and sexual liberation. Through the process of building coalitions that transected these social justice struggles, the activists at the center of this study produced a broad and layered understanding of ‘violence against women’ that encompassed the structural violence of social inequalities, the violence of state institutions and agents, and interpersonal forms of violence, including rape, battering, and sexual coercion. This expansive analysis directly clashed with the “tough-on-crime” ethos of the 1970s and the mainstream women’s movement’s increasing embrace of criminalization as a frontline solution to interpersonal violence.”

All Our Trials shows how the focus on the lives of marginalized women demonstrated that incarceration was a source of further harm rather than justice and safety.  The book is well worth a read.

Redstockings Manifesto 50 Years Old Today

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by Kathy Scarbrough

Today, July 7, 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the NYC area radical feminist group Redstockings (www.redstockings.org).  The Redstockings manifesto of 1969 (click here for pdf) announced the aim of the group was to defeat male supremacy and purposefully echoed the language and organization of the Communist Manifesto, published more than a century earlier.  Redstockings called for a feminist revolution that would include a much needed economic revolution but also include a social revolution that would overthrow oppressions based on sex and race.  At first the male Left made fun of women’s liberation, then over the years the Left seemed to accept some feminist theory. However, segments of the Left today cling stubbornly to certain anti-woman and anti-feminist positions.  Therefore, it is good to come across papers within the Marxist community that defend feminism.

Zachary George Najarian-Najafi is a male radical who has read important feminist writings and connected them with classic writings on socialism in a three part series of articles called “Misogyny is Revisionism” published in Medium.com.  In this short series he debunks what he calls the “three insidious big lies that threaten the revolutionary and emancipatory foundation of the Marxist project.” These lies are, 1) Transwomen are women (on-the-lefts-woman-problem) 2) sex work is work (the-masque-of-the-red-pimp) and 3) feminism is bourgeois (in-defense-of-feminism). Najarian-Najafi writes clearly and without a lot of jargon yet seems well schooled in Marxism and cites many of the most famous theoreticians, both female as well as male. Each piece about a 10 to 15 minute read and well worth the time.

What better way to mark the 50th anniversary of Redstockings than by deepening one’s understanding of the connection between women’s liberation and socialism.