Reflections Of A Good Nazi

[poliphilo]

It's only a hundred years or so since men in the West stopped regarding women as property.

Of course I'm talking Law here. In private lots of men still do regard women as property. We've learned to be shocked by slavery, by genocide, but the overwhelming horror of a set-up where one sex dominates and abuses the other hasn't quite hit us yet. We're recovering, we're in denial. The thing is too huge and we're all pretty much incriminated.

So when we sail into third world countries and beat them up for not being like us, we tend not to put women's rights very high on our agenda. Damn it all, you will have a democracy! But the burkha, female circumcision, forced marriage, the denial of education to women- these are all cultural phenomena and maybe it would be a little racist and imperialistic to criticise.

Where women are concerned all men are nazis. Some of us, perhaps, are good nazis.

Comments

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's a classic. Black folk are irredeemable because their roots are tainted by matriarchy. And he's still in the senate.

I'm still pagan, and I'm a feminist. I once bought into all the same books--I smiled ruefully when I saw you talk about The Sword and the Chalice. It's disillusioning to see the bias at work. But just because wild speculations were treated as fact doesn't mean they don't come from somewhere, and there have been matrifocal societies all throughout history. Some, like Jewish culture, are still matrilinear.

As with everything, the truth is somewhere between "women are evil and have never been anything but" and "women are the true rulers and men stole everything from them."

It's strange, though, that we seem to feel we need a pre-historical precedent in order to be powerful now. As if, if it never happened before, it can never happen...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm a feminist and if you twisted my arm up my back I'd probably admit to being a pagan still. After all one of the beauties of Paganism is that you're not committed to any set of doctrinal beliefs.

Your final point is bang on target. Why are we so mistrustful of the New that we have to insist on it being of immeasurable antiquity?

If it's right it's right- and why should it matter what great-great-great-great-grandmother did?

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Of course, I can answer my own question.

Men's argument for the oppression of women has always been that we are "naturally" inferior and servile. To disprove this, we look for foremothers to destroy that arrogant presumption by those who do not even share our nature.

In fact, if pressed, I think most men would still say women are naturally fitted to be mothers and caretakers and helpmeets, and not even see how little that differs from Aristotle's conviction that we exist to serve.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can see that.

And I suppose that's why I felt so badly let down when it was pointed out to me that the Chalice and the Blade was fantasy. I had built a belief system on these foundations and they had been shown to be incapable of bearing the load.

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Keep an eye on the author names--anything markedly new age pseudonymish is usually crap.

But you and I did the dippy pagans one better--in our disappointment we went out and got real knowledge. It's up to us to interpret that knowledge as a good, and not a consolation prize.