A Challenge from Me to You...

We can make the world shake... try it, and comment.  Let's have a real dialog.

Feminism in a Text Message Culture

Sitting in a cafe drinking a cup of dark roast with a fresh oxblood Moleskine notebook, I am a journal junkie, and a retractable pencil.  Creation for me, is an extension of myself, it's  personal, I must bleed on to the page and once I achieve that emotive place only then can I place it in the impersonal computer for the function of edit, grammar, and fact checking.  I delve into the depths of Feminism in today's culture.  Immediately I am distracted, what I thought had gone by the wayside... the spoken of, but rarely seen, phenomena of two young women, sitting together.  Tables peppered through the coffee shop,  topped with double non-fat soy mocha lattes manicured finger nails, and boutique clothes.  Bringing to mind an episode of “Sex and the City”, a bit cliché, yet hopeful for this cynical thirty eight year old woman.  A cockeyed picture of my youth... manicures, boutique couture, and $5.oo coffees replaced jump boots, purple patent vinyl pants with matching hair, 75 cent dark roast, cigarettes, and not a stick of deodorant between us.  Although, I notice rather than chatter and impassioned raised voices, I hear clicking, tapping, tweeting, beeping, and giggling.  But not a word spoken between these young women.  As their lattes became cold and curdled, they were enraptured in their phones.  Sitting across from one another texting on their Blackberrys, iPhones, Androids, etc. to anonymous parties, young men undoubtedly from the blushing, giggling, and squealing on the other end of their endless clicking, tapping, tweeting, and beeping apparati. 

Us at that age, were  unwashed, hyper-involved, hopelessly dressed, and poor.  Gathered at grungy couched, smoke filled, independently owned coffee shops(before the behemoths ate most of the local failed musician turned coffee house proprietor)to argue over politics, to organize a protest to protest a protest and the like.  Them, the clean, sanitized, mindless technological automatons, safely texting their “best friend” to inform her that;  "she acted like drunken dirty slut, who had embarrassed her at the “cute guy's”.  Oh, and by the way, do everyone a favor and get a fucking wax if she's going to show it all over someone's apartment".  That tirade and infraction will be forgiven by ten o'clock that night because nobody cared, not even the young woman being text messaged such hateful and abusive language, from a "sister", a person called "friend".

Thus the fundamental “element” of our culture of today, NO ONE TALKS!  No one writes, no one reads books-the paper kind, and most importantly no one relates, no one bonds.  Women sit across from each other as props, (god forbid you go someplace alone) not as a catalyst for political change with the free and frank exchanges of views spoken with other like minded women, hell, even unlike minded women.  Communication of this age, this culture, has been reduced to: wt r u doing later:-), @ Stbuks w KT <3, Hook up @ 6;-)... and on and on.

I have a twenty year old son who hasn't spoken to me on the phone, freely,  since he got one.  You can call him thirteen times in a row and no answer, text him and you get and instantaneous reply in some kind of mutant short hand that takes Cherokee code breakers to decipher.  This immanently brought me to my opinion of the reason for the state of disconnect with feminism and the younger generation. 

These young women, teenagers, and girls all with cell phones and computers have no essential relation to not only the world around them, but to the other women around them.  There is nothing elemental in this Text Message Culture.  The elemental I refer to, is the experience of natural human relation, the free flowing deeply primal essence of physically and emotionally bonding with other people.  Missing this essential and vital piece of emotive social growth is creating a society of young people without the desire to make a change, endeavor to relate, and a obvious detachment to humanity.

That being said, this technological progress has also managed to course into the vein of society as a whole.  All age groups are being infected with this “technology torpor”.  To my shock and dismay, I have found my mother has been “communicating” with friends via email for at least three years now.  She told me that that ninety percent of the women she fought side by side with in the early years have succumbed to the apathetic allure of email over emoting.  I was flabbergasted, my mother has always been my hero.  My mother was, is, and always will be a feminist activist.  As a second wave feminist, my mother was involved in the lawsuits that became the “Pregnancy Discrimination Act” of 1978, I happened to be involved(I claim feminism via in utero).  A call to arms in forming the Michigan Teachers Union, in which my grandfather a chief Union steward for the UAW supported and cajoled the UAW to become involved in it's development.  People calling our home with death threats against my mother.  I remember being small walking or should I say riding(stroller) picket lines with signs.  My mother fought, and it all started with groups of women talking and relating to their feelings of being left behind, demoralized by objectification in the workplace, and so much more.  So imagine my surprise when my mother compliantly went into the good night without so much as a picket or a poster, but what choice did she have when all of her friends were lost in cyberspace.

If this is happening to our predecessors, imagine how lost the majority of us are.  I was raised the way of the warrior spirit, taught the value of community, and thus fought the computer, at home, until 2007.  I have a television set connected to a receiver that is accessorized with a DVD player, a VCR, a dual cassette player, and a record player, however not a cable box or satellite dish to be found.  Growing up, it was reading, playing games, playing music, listening to music, create, write, daydream... and daydream big, but most of all DO!!  Most of the people I know think I'm stuck in the land before time, I prefer to think of it as the land of real time.  Not fast forward, instant gratification, take life for granted time.  Which brings us to the Fundamentals of Our Survival in a Text Message Culture.

Women were once the most revered and powerful entities on the planet.  We were worshiped as Venus', the goddess of fertility.  Our ability to create life and our ability to come together as a communal tribal counsel and “run” villages, create marketable goods that bartered with other tribes to keep everything stocked and orderly.  We were not only goddesses, but counsel and community.  We, as women, also revered one another as sacred sisters.  We raised each others children, taught each each other weaving, pottery, and other skills and passed them down to our younger generations.  The advent of organized religion were scared of the power women had over “government” and the reverence that was had for our abilities to not just create life , but to see the grays in a world that men saw only as black and white.  Hunt, fuck, and fight, then off into the good night for months at a time. 

Something had to be done to render us powerless and harmless to men in government.  They could not wage wars when we didn't meet with the minds of men.  Thus, organized religion put us in our place.  We were to cover our faces, look down when walking, not talk to men, unless of course our husband permitted it, as we were now property that was to submit not without question, the end of our counsels and community.  We began the downward spiral into “evil” and “dirty” creatures.  Cast off to exile during menstruation because what was the essence of creation became the “vile sin” we were to suffer for our role as temptress leading man into temptation.  When women dared to gather together, for in our core we were from the beginning meant to commune, and would inevitably succumb to our elemental desire to experience the kindred spirit only another woman can offer, we were covens.  Witches, that were unholy and casting spells upon people creating illness and strife.  To end with torture and death by burning.  Or branded as whores and made to live the life of a scarlet woman.
During those primitive times, the violence was a show for all to see.  Today it is hidden by the media, dumbed down by government language, sanitized for mass consumption and fed to us like baby food through our computers, iPhones, and television sets.

However, the only reason WE as women can own iPhones of our own, computers, televisions, and apartments to live in complacency, is our predecessors.  The 1st wave feminists and a big war started the ongoing fight for our true and solid places as heads of government and community leaders and the idea that one day the ignorance and fear that branded us as “less than” will wash away with the return of the hurricane of free and frank exchanges of ideas in government and at coffee shops. 

Link to A Wealth of Feminist History...

http://www.marxists.org/archive/index.htm

At the top left of the page it gives you topics, select Feminists.  There is a plethora of articles about Suffragettes and Feminists.  It is worth your time to read these articles...it's a wealth of invaluable information.  Remember, we learn from our history, if we don't know our history we don't know our direction.

I Want To Know, When Was the Last Time You...

...sat with a girlfriend and talked about politics, religion, rebellion, action, activism, maybe even your vagina, and nothing about men?  Think about that young women, my generation women(Gen X- looking at coming closer to 40), any women... I mean really think about that. I know that I adore my neighbor and her two daughters 6 and 8, they are potential "Bitch Queens".  
Oh, you ask yourselves... who does this bitch think she is?  Hmmm, why do WE use that word that men slap our faces with to degrade us by calling us dogs?  You see, I believe in what "Bitch Magazine", one of the best grassroots feminist zines in the country...but I digress ,  I will get back to that later.  A "Bitch Queen" is a woman that knows what she is, what she wants, where her value lies... and it's not on her back.  It's a woman that has taken that word back and used it to empower herself.  I am striving to be a "Bitch Queen" myself... I just have to get over that; men always end up in my conversations with other women.  No, I don't want to be a man hater... they have their place in my life, I even love one...because he's as flawed as me but is striving to evolve.  He would never call me names, he doesn't belittle my sex as a female he celebrates it.  You see what I mean now ladies... they end up in the conversation at all times.  Why?  We are intelligent, evolved women, we take action, we participate in activism, and do what we need to do, to get the truth out to other sleeping women.  So, why do they end up in the conversation every time?  There is so much to talk about, so much that needs to be discussed, a plan made to open a dialog between us and the next younger generation that need our knowledge and our love of self... to help them become "Bitch Queens".  Not second rate, unsure, clingy, follow the heard young women, but 1st rate royalty.  They need to know that are Queens, perfect in their creation no matter what body size, facial dynamics, type of hair, teeth... not what the mass media, run by men want us to be.  Junkie skinny, long shiny(airbrushed hair), full lips, perfect teeth, large breasts... and balance it all on really high heels.  Yet, WE the 3rd wave are still finding that at coffee men are always a topic and sadly the longest topic discussed.
"Bitch Queen" isn't my only goal, far from it... we are really in trouble with our movement.  I want to change the status quo... I want to go back to our roots, I want to relearn all that was taught and passed on to me by my mother, the 1st and the 2nd wave, the feminists that CHANGED the world and shook up the masses.  I want to go back and relearn all about the beginnings.  Because if we don't know our history, how can we hope to do anything but blog and complain, then when we gather our topic tapers down to the flickering candle of our love lives, lack of, or whatever the case may be... that also applies to our lesbian sisters who invariably do the same thing...
Yes, we do need to talk to our closest friends about problems in the relationship, or our poor choices, or our desire to have a partner.  I don't deny that, that is an important aspect of our lives.  But, why when we have the chance to go back to our roots and discuss what our predecessors did to get out the word and shake up the masses and MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN, do we use that time to talk about our relationship problems?  There is a time and a place for everything. I want to be a "Bitch Queen", a liberator of other women here and abroad, and I want us to review the ERA, make the needed revisions to help another targeted minority(which is bringing us quickly into a communist, police state - finishing off what the Patriot Act started), and all they want is the same treatment extended to every one of our relatives or maybe even ourselves, in becoming American citizens.  I want to be enough(know that I have done everything I can, and continue on new territory whenever any injustice pops up), and I want to educate the upcoming 4th wave or there won't be one.  Let's start reading, let's go back to our roots...read!  I read  "To be Young was Very Heaven"...about the suffragette movement, pre-WWI, it tells us what to do, and also what not to do so that we don't divide, to learn from their mistakes and build a strong 3rd wave movement so that we can pass on a legacy as my mother did and I'm sure some of your mothers did as well.  Let's build a community, a solidarity stronger than the women who came before us.  We have all the tools we need in books written by women in the time of the suffragette, in the time of the 2nd wave, let's read them and learn and create a solidarity that the world has never seen.  Let us use the technology we have to band together and talk about how we can MAKE OUR MARK and pass it on to the next generation so that there will be a 4th wave that has been born of the effort of our work to bond the tears in the structure of feminism as it stands today.
Lets learn to put our phones away and not text at the table when we talk, lets make groups that go over the literature of our predecessors and brain storm over how to mend the weak spots that divided both the 1st and 2nd wave without ending up talking about our love lives, let us commune using the technology at our disposal to create plans to push through the issues that were never succeeded before, let us come up with a way to condense our information and agendas and take it out to the streets, to the Internet, to and support, the grassroots publications that tell the truth without having to dumb down the information because of the publishers and the advertisers.
See how much there is to talk about other than men/our love lives, when we are lucky enough to have a group of women together!  We can save our love lives for phone conversations with our best friends.
1.)  "To Be Young Was Very Heaven - Women in New York Before the First World War"
Sandra L. Adickes
2.)http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/woman_suffrage/woman_suffrage.html
3.) http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/women/highlights.html
4.) "Women Who Dare: Women of the Suffrage Movement"
By Evelyn Sinclair and Janice E. Ruth
5.)  "With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman's Right to Vote"
by Ann Bausum
6.)  "Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists"
By Jean H. Baker
7.)  "Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States"
By Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick
8.)  "Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869"
By Ellen Carol Dubois
9.)  http://bitchmagazine.org/
There's a start... women let's utilize the time we have and make a statement, our love lives are a part of what happens when we become true women by doing the work we were commissioned to do.  And then we can make the turn into "Bitch Queens".  We will really have the lives we want, and everyone everyone deserves, if we don't rest on our laurels. The rest will fall into place naturally, because we will have built a structure that  we and the 4th wave can smoothly lay out an action plan when something new comes down the pipe, as it will surely always do, and we can watch them find the weaknesses in our solution... smile and be proud.

What's a woman gotta do to have everything??

I am currently writing an article for a Women's magazine, an off the chart in your face feminist response to pop culture... cross your fingers they take the pitch and buy it.  While writing this article, I've done a lot of research about 1st, 2nd, and 3rd wave feminism.
We have fought and continue to fight the good fight, however it seems that the 3rd wave is drowning in the ocean of what should be the 4th.  Technology has replaced relationships, social media and media-media has pitted the unwitting younger progeny against one another vying for the eye of the GQ guy.  Telling the younger women of today the story of yesteryear... 
I can't help but wonder, are we going backwards?  Can't a woman of today have it all?  The career, the house/apt/loft/cottage, the dog, the cats, the man or woman and not have to go back to the defined roles of my grandparents in 1913?
I have found that a man doesn't care what I think, and if I answer the million dollar question the wrong way I am cast into the sea of "man hating fem-nazi".  I was having a lovely phone-ship with a guy that seemed to have it all, a business in a profession he loved, a good sense of humor, sarcasm, and the sophistication of obscure references.  Then one Sunday, sitting in my Jeep waiting on my mother to pick up some of my art to take to a shop in another town, I was killing time talking to "Mr. Evolved".  He asked me a question that led to feminism and the ERA and he said it was just semantics and we were all covered and I told him that was propaganda made to lull people into complacency that when it says man in the Constitution it means man... he then asked the $4million dollar question.  If I had the chance to sit down and talk to 2 people any people who would it be.  I prefaced my answer with a too many to say, but at this time in my life it would be Alice Paul and Dorothy Parker.  That was a month ago.
Don't kid yourself, we ain't come a long way baby.

Revisiting Some Old Holiday Discussion

A couple of years ago, I was talking to an acquaintance about Christmas.  We were discussing the insanity of thought as it revolves around the holidays.  We determined, at that point, that red and green stands for blood and money... as he broke into his Christmas rendition of, "It's the most flammable time of the year".  Beautiful, is it not.


Yes I do have my spiritual conceptions that revolve around Christmas, although even if you don't, isn't it supposed to be a season of giving of yourself?  Right?  But look around, it's all about materialism, unreal expectations, the consequent depressions from either not having the money or not having the loved ones to share it with, and it's all mass produced by the machine, the media.  They tell us you are only as good as the Lexus you purchased for your partner with the big red ribbon in the driveway on Christmas morning.  Ummm, I guess that would imply that the rest of us economically challenged individuals and families are huge piles of steaming shit on those beautifully snow covered driveways.  You know why?  Because I can't afford a 1980 poo brown Nova for myself, let alone a Lexus for someone else.  Can you?  And, if you could... would you?  Or, would you do the smart thing and keep that money for something that would increase in value so that someday you will have a cushion instead of a car that depreciates the moment you drive the 20 feet to the driveway of the dealership?


Listen people, you don't need a Lexus, a diamond eternity ring, an iPad, or any of those other things to tell the people in your world how special they are.  Do it everyday.  Make connections with people and nurture them into relationships by the most simple of means.  Call, don't text.  Send an actual Birthday card NO e-CARDS and follow up with a call.  Reach out to the new girl at work and ask her to coffee, then set a day and time and actually do it.  Love is not a word, it's an action.  


If you believe as I believe celebrate the teacher everyday,  if you want to use this one day we are allowed  to talk to him without being name called by the world.... DO IT!  But, remember, it doesn't take money to do that either.  Have a birthday party, make cookies with the people you love, make paper hats, decorate them with sprinkles, sing Christmas songs(badly even), that make you smile.  Tell Jesus just how glad you are that he was born, then turn to those that are crazy enough to love you just as you are, and tell them just how glad you are that they were born.


That's Christmas... make love an action.  Love all those you can and if you don't have family go make one!  There are people like me out there, lonely and friendless in a "new" town and people a lot less fortunate.  Go be an angel... help and love a stranger, just because someone loves you.  


I challenge you, be an angel not an ass.  You don't need all that materialism to volunteer at a soup kitchen, go to a children's hospital and play games or bring toys, go to a women's shelter and give love to a women who doesn't yet know how to love herself.  Or, if you're lucky enough to have them, hug your mom, your child/children, spouse/partner, friend, or a total stranger who looks as lost as we have been a time or twenty!