“Shifting”

In 1975, my consciousness shifted powerfully in my first Seminary class, “Woman, Man, and the Sexual Revolution.” My eyes were opened for the first time to the effects on me of living in a culture that devalues women.

In 1984, I entered a training program with Anne Wilson Schaef. I stayed connected with her community for six years. In that time, I confronted the deadening effects of living in our culture’s dominant competitive, hierarchical system and began a personal program of life-inducing recovery in an alternative system called Living-in-Process.  

In July 2022, Joe Manchin called for his colleagues in Congress to support the Inflation Reduction Act, calling it a “responsible path forward.” This, after refusing to support the Build Back Better Act which included legislation to upgrade caregiving and support for the disabled and elderly. He and his cronies were quite willing to compromise away those benefits which primarily affect women. My daughter and I are two of those women.

In August 2022, inspired by Bryan Stephenson, I posted a piece called Shifting Narratives … Stephenson’s call to shift from a “narrative of difference” to a “narrative of union.”

In January 2023,  I posted Fusion, Wholeness Emerging. Inspired by Riane Eisler, I compared cultural models organized around wholeness-evoking partnership models vs division-sowing domination models. 

Obviously, this topic regarding the effects of cultural systems on all living beings, especially women and girls, interests me and informs my worldview.

Through that lens …

I listened intently to Christiane Amanpour’s recent interview with Eve Ensler, who has renamed herself, V. This year is the 25^th anniversary of a global movement to end violence against women, girls, and the planet that grew out of her 1996 play, The Vagina Monologues. The movement is called V-Day. For 25 years she has been on the front lines.

How Is It Possible?

V said she feels like wailing and crying when she looks at the continuing and escalating violence against women & girls … how little difference her 25 years of advocacy seems to have made. There are more questions than answers.

Naming examples from around the world, she cried out in despair, “How is it possible we are still here after 25 years?”:

• Denying girls an education & women the right to work outside the home
• Executing those who protest for freedom of dress for women & girls
• Escalation of rape being used as a weapon of war
• Reversal in the progress made to end female genital mutilation
• Erosion in the rights and protections of front-line workers
• Denying women the right of choice over her own body
• Inspiring women who serve in governmental positions having their own &/or their loved one’s lives threatened, forcing some to resign

“So much has become acceptable,” she bemoaned.

Pandemic Pushback

Forbes confirmed what V lamented about the dramatic pushback against women resulting from the pandemic … eroding the gains previously made. In an April 2021 article, Forbes named the disproportionate effect on women … citing nine in-depth consequences surrounding the tremendous toll taken on women’s home life, health, work, and economic well-being … and thus on their futures.

Under What Name?

Apparently in her new book, Reckoning, (which I haven’t read, though I have read reviews), V struggles with what name to give this system where a few have so much power over the many … where a fringe minority has so much power … where there is little-to-no recognition of the need to make ending violence against women a priority issue.

She recognizes that people are wary of and frightened by the word patriarchy. She doesn’t know what else to call this driven-by-war paradigm that deems so many as second-class citizens. I know the dilemma.

Intractable?

Why is it that what is so essential to human life is so easily violated, sacrificed, and erased?

What makes this unhealthy, harmful, detrimental system so intractable?

What holds it in place?

Is there a way to break free?

These are questions V asks directly and underlies

• Bryan Stephenson’s call to shift our narratives from difference to union
• Riane Eisler’s plea to shift from a paradigm of dominance to one of partnership
• Anne Wilson Schaef’s efforts to shift from a competitive, hierarchical system to one of Living-in-Process

Those are questions I’ve been pondering for many years and will explore more fully in my next post, drawing upon the work of another icon. I would love to hear your experience.

What does this subject evoke in you?

Is this something that concerns you?

What resources do you draw upon to address this concern?

What questions do you live with and what answers have you found?