The other day, when futzing around on my mom's computer, I came across this speech I wrote my senior year of high school. Upon reading it for the first time in years, I was struck by the extent to which it moved me, not only because it inspired a surge of appreciation of my own writer-ly self at seventeen, but because it still applies to our social climate. See below:
"Members of modern-day society move through life at a frenzied pace, always competing, afraid of being left behind or trampled. We have established a “power-over” culture, one in which we fight to control others, bending them to our wills with manipulation and destruction. At the root of our violent behavior is patriarchy, the empowerment of males at the cost of women’s equality. Taking into account the war, terrorism, and inhumanity that currently comprise our cultural struggles, it seems that now, more than ever, we have created an estranged global community. The closer we step towards components of distrust such as isolationism, nationalism and militarism, the farther we get from growth.
Connection has been constant throughout history. Issues and ideas that are seemingly unrelated are, in fact, linked together as part of the cyclical stream of events that comprise the past. Only through connection can we see the division that our society has created. We have become so clouded by the media and the culture of excess in which we live, that we cannot see how deeply embedded patriarchy is. But every time we subordinate ourselves, soften our voices or lower our heads, every time we obey the inner voice that punishes us for being too much, we feed the establishments that enable patriarchy.
We succumb to the patriarchal system unconsciously and should not reprove ourselves for doing so. Punishment only serves to disconnect us from ourselves and to disallow the inner strength that is essential for change. Rather, we must educate ourselves, we must nurture ourselves; for it is only once we are empowered within that we can empower each other.
In a way, adherence to a patriarchal world view is inevitable. Oftentimes we do not recognize its existence because it is all we know. Women occupy the margins, not the text of our history books. They are objectified on billboards and underrepresented in every area of government. Above all, they are told to be silent, quieted by a culture that nourishes itself upon their oppression. Balance is essential to a healthy lifestyle. With women so clearly marginalized can anyone, male or female, reach their full potential?
The answer is no, by suppressing women, we disable men as well. Just as we expect women to strive for an ideal defined by their gender, we expect men to do the same. Where women are encouraged to be unnaturally silent and submissive, men are expected to dominate, a role which separates them not only from the female gender, but from the female within themselves as well.
Enter feminism. A movement that is so often considered “man-hating” is, in reality, focused not only upon women, but upon humanity as a whole. Misconceptions of the feminist message keep it from total success. Labeling women as radical devalues their cause and it becomes acceptable not to listen. Although militant advocates exist, change will come from those who seek to unify, not divide. This “real” feminism, what author bell hooks calls “revolutionary”, is centered upon (in her words) “being able to confront head on the ‘enemy’ no matter what form the enemy might take-man, woman, child, state, church, school, friend, lover, and most frightening, “the enemy within”. [1]
Today feminism is associated with the woman’s movement of the 1960s, a time when women like Gloria Steinum and Delores Williams lent their voices to the feminist cause, silencing the inner enemy that kept women in the kitchen instead of the working world. We recognize these advocates for their innovation but forget the past from which their message sprung. Before them, centuries of feminists had woven together their visions, creating a tapestry in which the female voices of the past and present combine to cronicle the history that is ignored by most accounts; the history of women.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said, “The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”[2]
I believe that with these words, Mrs. Stanton has summarized the objective of feminism. It is the furtherance of thought for all people that defines the movement and prompts the “divine floods of light”, establishing the inner-powers essential for growth.
But to meet ones inner strength requires connection and introspection, factors that are discouraged for the threat they pose to the patriarchal power. Instead we are taught to disconnect from ourselves, a separation that Starhawk, a modern-day witch and scholar, calls estrangement. Without autonomy we unconsciously maintain the patriarchal norms, trapping ourselves in a cycle of destruction. Detaching us from our individual power stops us from relating to the exterior world; it is no wonder that we culturally disregard our responsibility to the environment while we defend a propensity for violence. This destructive trend is perhaps the most guarded of our cultural doctrines. Change is associated with fear rather than perceived as natural. Indeed, people will go to extreme lengths to maintain a setting in which they feel comfortable.
The cultural disconnect that enables our estranged behavior needs mending. The dynamics of our “power-over” society must shift, causing people to seek power in positive, not negative forms. The awakening of our connections is vital to our survival and requires the discovery of what Starhawk calls immanence, the power from within. Unification within ourselves is only as strong as the connections it inspires with others. For women especially, who have been historically isolated from knowledge, from their bodies, and from each other, the formation of sisterhood is essential. Change comes slowly, requiring the strength and support that is the basis of sisterhood. Alone we cannot accomplish what we can as a cohesive whole. Unification within oneself is essential to establish a power from within; only then can we form a female power impassioned enough to counter patriarchy. Looking inside oneself results in the discovery of human nature and our connection to the earth. Recognizing power as internal and enabling instead of harnessing it to disable others would prompt our society to empower, not cripple, and love instead of hate.
There is no denying that history excludes women. They are omitted from documentation because to include them would be to acknowledge and empower them. Many of the challenges faced by women today are rooted in the same issues that they have struggled against throughout history. Education, for example, has been continually denied to women. Throughout the ages, female education has been halted at an early age, replaced with lessons in etiquette and home economics, areas of study which encourage restriction rather than expansion of thought. Even today, in a world that claims equality, women comprise two-thirds of the world’s 876 million illiterates, a statistic that is not expected to decline.[3] Without the opportunities afforded by literacy, women are left with little opportunity to challenge the social constraints that influence issues such as infanticide, genital mutilation, and spousal abuse.
The gravity of our global disconnect is overwhelming. Faced with a multitude of complex problems, one wonders where to begin change. So many of the problems that affect today’s women are established at adolescence or earlier. We are programmed from birth to fill our gender roles, boys get blue blankets, and girls get pink. For change to begin we must first come to terms with the masculine or feminine parts of ourselves. For men especially, the accepting of their own femininity serves to dissolve the cultural expectations that their gender includes. No longer bound to dependence upon “power-over” to define themselves, men, through knowledge of their own female identity, can cultivate their power-from-within and break away from the fear that supports estrangement. The world in which we live has been stripped of personality, power, and connection. Our society reserves value for a select few who are, traditionally, white males. The belief that they are somehow superior and more powerful is supported by the destruction for which they are responsible. Power is measured not by the strength of our connection, but by the range of our destruction. The more one devastates, the greater one’s power and the more societal fear and respect. Instead of spirituality and introspection we revolve around machines and technology; they have become our religion. We are constantly striving to create more and to further our profit, trying to fill a void with money that only connection to ourselves can dissipate. The domination of patriarchy remains, enabling the destruction that will eventually result in the demise of all things. To prevent ruination, we must overcome the fear that has trapped us in a “power-over” environment. This fear has to do not only with each other, but with what would result from change. What would happen if we were to cease dependency upon violence and manipulation? That is the question we must pose to future generations, and we must begin now.
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