Raising Fists Of Fire

(or how to bring out the feminist in me)

I started reading Jon Krakauer's book "Under The Banner Of Heaven" which is his nonfiction book about the Mormon faith which we borrowed from friends. I have been saying for years that Americans need to stop trying to fix the oppression of women in other countries because there's plenty of it right here in our own back yard. What I was thinking of were all the women getting raped on our streets and being bullied and beaten by their own boyfriends and husbands. Who needs to go to the Middle East to find women being treated like chattel?

Chattel always makes me think "cattle".

I have always been vaguely aware that men, in the last couple thousand years, have gotten permission to treat women like lesser beings almost exclusively from religion. They can open the Koran, the Bible, or Josef Smith's weird doctrines to find every kind of encouragement to demand "obedience" from the "weaker" sex. In no place will you find more proof that women are bad, that they can't be trusted, that they are traitors, and of course, whores. Because for some reason, God, in all his manifestations seems concerned that women might take over the world if not kept under check.

If women ran the world there are some pretty fundamental changes that would occur. We would probably still have wars, because women will fight just as hard to protect what's theirs as men will, but there would be a lot fewer of them because most women are too busy working their asses off to obsess over invading other countries. Rape would be one of those atrocities that would almost never happen; like cannibalism it would fade into obscurity. The majority of pedophilia would disappear.

This book has effectively flushed out my feminist ire. I have many times said that I am no feminist. I don't relate to man bashing. I like men for their own peculiar strengths as much as I like women. My sense of self worth isn't tied at all to how I compare to men. It bothers me to hear women sport slogans like "Whatever man can do, woman can do better" which is a lot like engaging in a pissing contest which is one of those masculine quirks that I find pretty gross and pointless and women being just like men makes them also no better than men. I have always thought that women should see that their worth doesn't need to be measured against a man's worth. We are all equal, but different. I really don't believe that either of the sexes is superior to the other.

I am not the same as a man. Except that we're both human.

I love chivalry. When a man opens a door for a woman, or offers her his coat in the cold, I don't see it as a sign that he thinks women can't open doors for themselves or that they are weak incapable beings. I have always seen actions like these as signs of respect, caring, and as a man's ability to stop thinking of himself for two seconds to open the way for a lady to pass through. There isn't enough of that kind of thoughtfulness and when I see it it makes me happy. Feminism has made men afraid of chivalry. Which I think is very sad.

However, reading about a religion in which women don't even get to go to heaven unless their husbands "call" them to heaven using their secret name makes me want to rise up with fire in my fists and knock down every man who ever made a woman believe that her spiritual life rests in a mortal man's hands. I want to burn all religious books in which women are called whores because they've been raped by man, because man's appetite cannot be controlled. If we're going to throw that word around at all I think we're going to have to call at least 50% of all men whores too.

But why do we need to throw that word around at anyone? I don't believe that God calls anyone whores, I don't think there is any cause for that word to be used in any context besides one in which a person engages in exchanging sexual favors for money. And just for the record, I don't think a prostitute deserves less respect because of her profession than anyone else deserves and I don't believe that God loves a prostitute less than a virgin or a man. In fact, next to a man who abuses his wife and/or children, I think a prostitute is a much better candidate for heaven.

Not that I believe in heaven. Because I don't.

I've said many times that I don't believe in God in a biblical sense. And I don't. I believe that God exists not as a personality that experiences human emotions but as a spiritual force in nature that is greater than ourselves.

I am not even a quarter of the way through this book but I can see it's going to stretch the elasticity of my beliefs and my perceptions of other people's beliefs. One thing this book confirms for me without question:

Fundamentalism in any religion is evil. If there have been atrocities, it is usually the fundamentalists at the bottom of it all. Every religion has them. In Islam it is the suicide bombers. In Christianity it is the people who are killing other people because they believe that life is the most sacred thing on earth. In Mormonism it is the polygamists who have taken inbreeding and marrying children off to old men to new heights of evil.

There must be some fundamentalist group attached to Buddhism, but I have not heard of any yet. It's hard to twist the Buddhist concepts into evil, but I'm sure if anyone can do it, humans can.

I feel very fortunate to know so many good men. Men who have a healthy respect for women...men who stand with the women in their lives as equals. I wish all women could know what it feels like to stand side by side with the weaker sex* working together at living this mortal life well.

I guess women have a lot of ass kicking left to do in order to free themselves from their chains. They should probably start by writing their own religious doctrines like men have been doing for a couple thousand years. Us Americans should probably stop looking in other countries' back yards for oppression to "fix" because there's a whole lot right here in our own.



*Ha ha ha.

I was going to make some apologies to go along with this post but I'm not sure I really need to. Hopefully anyone reading it can tell that my argument here is not against faith, necessarily, or with an individual's relationship with God but against the doctrines of faith and the people that use them to oppress and abuse others. If you are not such a person, than I am not addressing or criticizing your actions or your faith.

Petty Crimes And Misdemeanors

Petty misdemeanor #1: When the local health food store has a vast collection of Saturn peaches with moldy stem ends, and regular peaches covered in bruises and crawling with ants. Yes, ANTS. I know this is a tough economy, but there is no excuse to try to sell people old substandard food for the cost of a new born baby. They only partially atone for the lack of freshness that most of their produce exhibits by selling the most beautiful basil I have ever seen in my life which they only occasionally let go limp.

Petty Crime #2: To eat at Jack In The Box during the height of the best season of the year for fresh food. No wait, the crime is to eat there at all. Ever. I saw a huge line of cars at the Jack In The Box drive up window yesterday and it made me so sad to see so many people choosing salty grease flavor over all the options this season opens up- what about a tomato-basil-mozzarella salad with oil and balsamic vinegar? Or if you really crave that all American meal, why not make your own damn hamburgers? NOT HARD TO DO PEOPLE. If I could afford to do it I would stand on the other side of those drive ups and hand out really good food that's easy to make. I would drag all those pasty fast food asses to a cooking classroom and show them how cheap and easy it is to make good food at home.

Petty Misdemeanor #3: To pick carrots from your own garden and let them sit on the counter for two days getting wilty and then still not use them for anything. I must atone for this one by using them in a soup. I plan to make a lentil soup today. Lentil soup is so good. I have those fancy little French lentils that need using and it would just be the hugest shame to waste those carrots. Can I just defend myself a little bit here by pointing out that much of my garden produce has had to spend a couple of days on the counter due to overbooking the fridge space with other food? Can I get off with a warning this time?

Petty Crime #4: To shop at Walmart. Oh wait, that's more like a felony. I have gone there twice in two years, one of those times was yesterday. I went because staples didn't have any Fiskar scissors and I figured that since I can't get my favorite underwear anywhere else here in town, I would buck up and enter the American ideal of hell. Oh god. The atmosphere in there is suffocating and brawling and scrappy and fat and cheap and crappy and depressing and loud and poor and represents the lowest point of our culture and our national personality.

No other store has quite so many crying babies, whining children, unhappy adults, nagging voices, or so many isles of candy and other forms of the worst kind of "food" available to mankind. Why is it I never see confident stylish people there? And at what point in my life did I start looking exactly like a person who's favorite place to shop is Walmart? That is a major crime. I realize, (and this never ceases to surprise me), that many of my favorite people shop there. People I love, respect, think are beautiful, kind, conscientious, and politically savvy. I never see them there when I'm there, though. I see low America. I see mostly desperately depressed and stressed moms trailing children behind them like loud shackles. They all look tired and look like they're losing hope through their pores.

It is way worse than JoAnne's Fabric.

I would be willing to argue that Walmart is an American cult bigger than Mormonism. I would not be at all surprised if the "elders" got together to buy out all Walmarts. What could be better than to join together the two hugest cults in our country? Then the Mormon plan to take over the world would be within their reach. What a coup that would be because Walmart is owned by the religious right wing of this country. It would be a battle of dogmas.

I just got the strange visual of Tammy Faye bitch slapping some Mormon lady in Jesus jammies.*


You know what alarms me more than any other aspect of Walmart? That some of the stores sell produce. My brother in law and his wife were telling me that they buy produce there and it just made me infinitely sad and scared that the food people eat has gone so far down the road to perdition that people can buy "fresh" produce in a place that puts all it's value in the word "cheap". My in-laws are good people and deserve to eat food that is good quality and comes from Virginia, where they live. They deserve to have produce that actually tastes good. They deserve to eat produce that actually nourishes them.

Every time I shop at Walmart I feel dirty afterwards. I feel that I have betrayed the potential of my country to be something so much better than it is. I feel that I have betrayed myself, which is much worse. So, that's it. I am renewing my vows to not buy from them again. I will shop online for the few things they carry that no other local store carries. I will not be party to the Walmart degradation of my fellow countrymen. We are worth so much more than what they have to offer.

But don't worry, I will not spout out lectures to all of you who find needs being filled by them. We each have our own journey, we each have our own choices to make and perhaps you have made other healthy choices that I have not yet made. So I'm not going to judge you. But if anyone wants to join me in my resolve, I welcome you!



*A term I only learned last night from our friend Erica who grew up as a Buddist child in Utah, surrounded by Mormons. I'm getting the dirt from the inside now!!