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Starhawk: Why We Need Women's Actions and Feminist Voices for Peace national |
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news report
 Wednesday January 08, 2003 16:04 by starhawk
 Why We Need Women's Actions and Feminist Voices for Peace Why We Need Women's Actions and Feminist Voices for Peace Among the hundreds of groups and actions being mounted against the war on Iraq are a significant number called and organized by women. Code Pink: Unreasonable Women for Peace has disrupted Congressional hearings and mounted an ongoing women's peace vigil at the White House since November 17. Women in Black hold vigils in hundreds of communities around the world on a regular basis. Women Rising for Peace and Justice, the women's caucus of United for Peace, has issued a call for January 17 to be a day of women's actions against the war. To defend those values, we need not just women's voices against the war, but specifically feminist voices. For feminism allows us to analyze patriarchy, the constellation of values, ideas and beliefs that reinforces male control over women. No set of qualities is innately or exclusively 'female' or 'male'. Men can be compassionate, loving and kind, as women can be tough, brave, or callous. But patriarchy assigns the qualities associated with aggression and competition to men, and relegates to women the devalued roles of nurturing and service. Patriarchy values the hard over the soft, the tough over the tender; punishment, vengeance and vindictiveness over compassion, negotiation, and reconciliation. The 'hard' qualities are identified with power, success and masculinity, and exhalted. The 'soft' qualities are identified with weakness, powerlessness, and femininity, and denigrated. Under patriarchy, men are shamed and considered weak if they exhibit qualities associated with women. Politicians win elections by being tough‹tough on terror, tough on crime, tough on drugs, tough on welfare mothers. Calls for cooperation, negotiation, compassion or recognition of our mutual interdependence are equated with womanly weakness. In the name of 'toughness', the power holders deprive the poor of the means of life, the troubled and the ill of treatment and care, the ordinary citizen of our privacy and civil rights. Force, punishment, and violence are patriarchy's answer to conflicts and social problems. Wise feminists do not claim that women are innately kinder, gentler, more compassionate than men per se. If we did, the Margaret Thatchers and Condoleeza Rice's of the world would soon prove us wrong. We do claim that patriarchy encourages and rewards behavior that is brutal and stupid. We need raucous, incautious feminist voices to puncture the pomposity, the arrogance, the hypocrisy of the war mongers, to point out that gorilla chest-beating does not constitute diplomacy, that having the world's largest collection of phallic projectile weapons does not constitute moral authority, that invasion and penetration are not acts of liberation. And we need to remind the world that modern warfare never spares the civilian population. Rape is always a weapon of war, and women's bodies are used as prizes for the conquerors. Women and children and men, too, who have no say in the policies of their rulers face death, maiming, wounding, and the loss of their homes, livelihoods, and loved ones in a war. Patriarchy is the brother of racism, which sets one group of people above another, dehumanizing and devaluing the 'other', who is seen as deserving of punishment, fair game for violence and annihilation. We need feminist voices for peace because the issues of women's freedom and autonomy are being used cynically to justify anti-Arab racism and military takeovers of Arab countries. And the vast global inequalities which benefit the West are also not acknowledged. Nor is the history, that Western exploitation of the East and South generated the wealth that allowed our greater 'development' and 'enlightenment'. We need a feminist voice for peace to say that those who truly care about life and freedom will work to support, not conquer, those women in every culture who are struggling for liberation and social justice. The war against Iraq is not about safety, security, or liberation. The war's real aims include gaining control of Iraq's rich oil reserves and establishing U.S. hegemony over the Middle East. Racism is the ideology of empire, the set of beliefs that tell us we deserve to rule because we are superior to some other group. Racism and patriarchy are the recruitment tools for the legions of enforcers: the soldiers, police, judges, bureaucrats and officials who protect institutions of power. Patriarchy, racism, homophobia, discrimination against Arabs and Muslims, anti-Semitism, ageism and all forms of prejudice keep our eyes trained downward, looking at those we see as beneath us, instead of looking upward and seeing clearly how we are being manipulated. Oil is the lifeblood, and the military is the ultimate enforcer of economic policies which disenfranchise the poor and undercut the livelihoods of working people around the globe, consolidating wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, devouring the family farm, the vibrant neighborhood, the old growth forest and the last remaining wilderness, eroding the soil, poisoning the atmosphere, disrupting the earth's climate and threatening every life support system of the planet. The global corporate capitalist system also exalts toughness and ruthless competition, and exhibits utter disdain for caring, compassion, and nurturing values. Women staff the maquiladoras and the sweatshops that produce the cheap goods of the global economy. The vast majority of the world's poor are women and children. We need women's actions, to make these larger connections, to assert that compassion is not weakness and brutality is not strength, to dramatize our support for nurturing and life affirming values. And ultimately, we need women and men both to join our voices and roar like a mother tiger in defense of our interconnectedness with all of life, the true ground of peace. Information on upcoming women's actions can be found on http://www.codepink4peace.org or www.unitedforpeace.org. For more information on the Women's Vigil and January 17 events, contact the Women's Peace Vigil at 202-393-5016. Starhawk's website is http://www.starhawk.org. |
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Comments (25 of 25)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25she´s a great "reclaimer" you know, and it is a well written piece.
6 books on the shelves and workshops and goddess stuff and activist training, and the LMADA award for lesbian writing.
Great woman Starhawk, pity about the name though.
Jezebel? well really i remember Ian Paisley used to use that term of abuse.
probably still does, and i´m sure you have a Few Ideas on Jezebels yourself.
and I really like how she is so careful to avoid the manhating thing.
Now Kathy Acker was different.
I miss Kathy, another one of those premature deaths (brain tumor) do any other readers woman or man know of Kathy Acker´s activism?
I liked her self styled "post punk anarchist cut up" style and with her interest and knowledge of islamic patriarchies I´m pretty sure she would have been writing good stuff still if she had survived.
you just want to delete it don´t you!
jezebel.
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/rohl/jezabel.htm
(it´s about make up)
That wasn't me. (I mean, if I were going to criticise Starhawk it would be for her wooly new agisms, not her sexual preferences)
Anyway, the article doesn't appear to be anywhere on the net, so my usual call for posting a link and summary wouldn't apply.
Actually, for those of you so interested in history, you will find many of Starhawk's so called new ageisms are actually OLD AGEISMS, 'isms' that were widely practiced in this country until a new a better way of thinking came alone (or forced its way alone). Some call it capitalism, others science - but whatever it is, it has created chaos and destruction ever since.
If you really want to understand history and in particular human's relationship to the earth, you will have to study beyond the Spanish revolution my friends.
Narrowmindedness cannot hide in liberal schools.
While I don't hero worship Starhawk, nor any other idol, I (As a Man) do admire her work and more so, her actions.
I'll happily go beyond the Spanish revolution, but I stop short at throwing away the Enlightenment and returning to a belief in magic. Whatever else you can say about science, computers have a much better success rate than telepathy when it comes to communicating over long distances, and antibiotics cure more disease than magic crystals.
The efficacy of science doesn't mean we should throw away everything that doesn't have a metallic sheen and blinking lights. But nor should we pretend to ourselves that magical methods, from acupuncture to zoomancy, have anything to do with the world as it is.
Ray,
Of course you cannot deny that Science has made progress. Especially regards Computers and communications technology - things that you and I seem fond of!
However, acupuncture and cystal healing and the like aren't necessarily 'magical' and have generations of proof backing up their effectiveness is illness prevention and healing.
Modern medicine seems to have emerged at the same time herbal medicine and traditional healing practices were being destroyed as 'progress' butchered and burnt up to 9 million European people, mostly women.
With that knowledge and culture went our respect and ritualistic connection with the earth. It also witnessed the emergence of a new doctrine of 'science over all' which has prevailed since. It is a doctrine that has fucked with the earth, with women's rights and roles and with our right to have access to all types of medicines, healing, belief systems.
I don't advocate any return to a past I cannot remember but nor do I subscribe to this nonsensical bullshit about Science as master. There are so many realms of humanity and understand that not even Indymedia supporters can understand.
Nobody can deny that things are going downhill fast. Sure, a new social system is needed and quick, but with it must come a new relationship to the earth or else we will find ourselves categorised with the dinosaurs as EXTINCT. Wouldn't it make sense if this new system was earth focused? and we used our present technological advances to help us return to an ancient way of thinking and acting towards each other and towards the source of all our food, water, air, energy and resources?
All for anarchy but it doesn't mean jack shit on its own!
The good thing about science is that it provides a way of investigating reality that provides real information. The trouble with acupuncture, crystal healing, and 99.99% of all 'traditional' methods of healing is that they don't actually work. (Or, to be more precise, they are sometimes quite good at causing the placebo effect, but in and of themselves they don't work. A trained acupuncturist doesn't do any better than someone with a sothing voice and good bedside manner placing needles at random) Don't believe me? Try to find some double-blind studies that show them performing better than the placebo option.
I'm all for a better relationship with the earth, and even rituals that make us think about that relationship, and our relationships with other people. Its when people start pretending/believing that a piece of crystal that has had words said over it is any different from any other piece of crystal, that our fate is written in the stars, that water somehow 'remembers' substances that used to be present, and other examples of magical thinking, that I get irritated.
fair points indeed Ray.
Where this debate will always lead is into the realms of belief or non-belief and qualitative assessment etc.
Science is great for providing us with proof. It can prove that Sellafield is safe and at the same time prove that Sellafield is dangerous. Scientists are still busy pumping our proof that global warming is not happening while other have proof to the opposite.
And spirit. Ay yes, the mighty human spirit. I never could manage to determine how or what exactly it is. Science never helped me but I do believe in it. Why, because I have seen it.
Yes, unquestionably believing in the power of certain mindsets and philosophies is very dangerous - as indoctrinatingly dangerous if used by healers as by libertarian socialists.
On Sellafield, science is good at finding out exactly what is emitted into the sea, but we have to define 'safe' for ourselves. And science can tell us what the average temperature was around the world, and can even estimate what the effects of increased CO2 in the atmosphere would be, but its a big planet, and there's lots of other things that can have an effect on the climate.
What seperates science from magic is the idea of experiment, of testing things to see if they do what they claim, and I think that's very egalitarian, because it runs against the idea of trusting people because they are in authority. While we might not like some of the things that science has helped us create or discover, I don't want to return to the days of doing things because 'that's how they've always been done', or 'just because'.
Ray,
gonna have to run and say agree to disagree on a few pt.s but in general I concur that Science has great uses and developments but it is not, and never will be, the ultimate belief system or method of organisation/action......... Everything has its place if only it would be allowed into it.
after someone else posted a 23 article.
on Mayans.
Now I´m a big fan of 23.
network 23, John23, 23 chromosomes and lots of what Ray might describe as "discordian" stuff.
I´m not going to get involved in another of these debates oh no I´m not.
no.
no.
no no no.
Occidental Science and particularly medicine has followed a reductionist path since the Enlightenment, one that certainly has given us many great advances, I wouldn´t be alive today having been born with congential disorders if western medicine hadn´t developed invasive surgical techniques, however one can not dismiss all alternative medical therapies or treatments.
Western Science and medicine and Capitalism has given us a patent based chemical approach to the body and it´s ailments, just as many scientists and doctors have begun to think are the very chemicals we throw into our foodstream the causes of a whole range of new desieses.
Western medicine is affect based.
We treat symptoms not causes.
Now I most certainly agree that a crystal is not different because someone has muttered over it, that argument has been raging since the reformation under a different name (transubstantiation) and has given our language many expressions of incredulous cynicism.
("hocus pocus" is a corruption of the latin "in hoc pices" the phrase intoned at the moment when the host of bread is alledged by Roman Catholicism to become the body of Christ and not just a symbol)
so no crystals don´t change because of words.
but to dismiss their unusual properties and possible (i stress possible) health giving properties, might be naive, it would certainly run counter to the most scientific prinicples of inquiry that inspired last years Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
(attentive readers will remember I predicted in very discordian spirit using the ipsiphi name all Nobel prizes last year, and the Chemistry prize was won by a team for the investigation of molecular crystaline properties). Properties that are anomolous and may prove to assist future medical work as well more bizarre deep space exploration projects.
So to conclude, agnosticism is best in these things.
Superstition is very dangerous.
hocus pocus.
But so too is stasis in scientific belief.
Pyrogigine and other mathematicians in their work on chaos theory have shown that much that we can not reason nor understand still occurs.
We have along way to go in any area of scientific speculation before easy to read and easy to understand "bluffer guides" will be available on many areas of human investigation.
Till that day I think it better not to dismiss 23, crystals, non human intelligence, quantum anomoly or any of the new age baggage.
But take it with a pinch of crystaline sodium chloride.
I wouldn´t be surprised if asian or chinese medicine eventually is seen to be superior to western medicine.
in that it seeks to treat causes.
and most causes of illness have a psychological dimension.
So don´t underestimate the power of "hocus pocus" placebos.
The counter reformation didn´t!
:-)
om 23 om 23 om 23 om 23 om 23 om 23 om 23
Sorry....
As I was saying, you're a muppet Ruairi.
Yeah yeah yeah older religion my fucking arse.
Starhawks bullshit brand of wicca shite (And I've waded through the turgid "Spiral Dance) is about as old skool as the cheeky girls.
Starhawk has come from the skool of paganism wicca shite, which is a watered down pale imitation of old world religion, washed through some of the more sanitized of crowleys books, and a dash of LOTR thrown it. It's tedious easy nicey nicey version of a religion of blood death and animal/human sacrifice.....
Thats what I'm talking about shoving handfuls of mushrooms in my mouth, dancing around naked before chucking your sorry ass in the wicker man, and watching you burn in thanks for another harvest.
Not that wanky ass bullshit that starhawk peddles.
Oh and Ruairi as for the benefits of your old world living in nature shite I've comprised a list of the evils of science.
1. Pencillin.
2. Aspirin.
3. Disinfectant.
4. Soap.
Ruairí never forget if this was that time you hark back to, you'd more than likely be dead.
Not that thats necessarily a bad thing.
Who are you King Mob?
What's with all this cowardly anonymous shit?
Have fun in the secret zone!
yeah, who is King Mob? and why do so many people play this 'I'm gonna insult you and hide in cyberland' game. It's terribly sad.
There seems to be a brain behind the bullshit but also a really deep feeling of loneliness, isolation, frustration and anger. Ranting and rubbishing others won't solve your sadness. Try and engage people and you might be pleasantly surprised. Otherwise stay in your miserable world but please don't keep trying to bring us into it. It's tough enough living in the muck without morbids like you. Good luck in your quest Mob and co.
notice how it seems (unless I am mistaken) ONLY men relied to this article by Starhawk.
I think this is interesting.
You imply I'm afraid of you Ruairi, frankly I find this liberating.
Like a persona I throw on I can come here and let you know exactly how I feel.
I noticed you couldn't/wouldn't answer any of my points.
Would that be due to the well er ESSENTIAL TRUTH that you and your wishy washy vaguely new agey isn't nature fabulous man, and technology is ruining everything pure and good, attitude is utter bullshit and you know it.
King Mob
Oh and Ruairi this message was brought to you by the magic box with lights humming on your desk
of all Wiccans. That is the first and most important point I'd like to make. I respect the woman and her actions as well but I also am well aware that there are fluffy bunny sorts out there as well who'd love for their lives to live out like a Disney film. Yes indeed science and modern medicine has it's place in the world and is necessary however there also should be a balance in all things, a healthy respect for what is natural from that ancient grove of trees that bold of lightning that just struck a mountain and started a much needed forest fire (they SHOULD happen on a 7 year cycle according to foresters, however due to firefighting practices they now don't happen for well over 100 years in most cases), so you see even destruction has it's time and place.
As a Wiccan and also certainly not claiming to be representative, I choose to respect what is natural and what that natural progress has brought the world - what I choose NOT to respect are the politicians and their puppets who tend to push the many into the greedy spats of the few.....Starhawk says much the same though with more eloquence. I have to respect that.
Blessings,
Shonna
I'm not a Wiccan myself and tend to be suspicious of it as it seems to be a very fuzzy way of thinking about the world which can dull the edge of logic and reason. I believe both of those are very useful for combatting oppression and inhumanity.
However I do respect Starhawk as an activist and a feminist. If half the people replying to this article had done half as much as Starhawk to combat oppression and live a life with low-impact on the planet then the world'd be a better place.
I'm also not certain that the "irrational" and "emotional" can't be very useful in making one determined and committed. I suspect that an admission that much of what one justifies on logical grounds is rooted in fundamental emotion and individual preferences and would make most of us a little clearer about the reasons we do things.
All that said I consider the scientific method coupled with skepticism and a deep respect for what we don't and can't know to be the only way forward.
Has anyone noticed the strange tingling from the aura? It's particularly strong on a Thursday. I know the lay lines have been a wee bit overloaded since the solstice, but can someone advise? Mind you the voices have stopped singing New Seekers number ones, but I don't know how long this will last. Watch out for the black wine gums, they contain a substance which if added to Tesco's Fruit and Fibre leave a path open for the void. You have been warned!!
Very well said, Shonna! I am not a Wiccan, but follow a similar path as you do. I agree that science and modern medicine have their places but I also respect the lightening bolt and know when to get out of the forest when I see one.
How is Wicca connected to hinduism?
If you want an old religion why not go for that.?