warrior women

We currently are in the midst of a time in which many are waking up to the way that culture, roles and beliefs create the meaning of our lives and control the direction our lives take. 

There have always been cultural beliefs that cripple people, and even kill people.  If you can't think of any, think of albinoism in a place that considers albino body parts lucky but albino lives useless. 

Think of female genital mutilation to make a woman clean enough for marriage and prevent her from wanting sex, but that also makes childbirth dangerous. 

Think of little girls with their feet bound so that they must be carried from chair to bed their whole lives--the perfect little princess, crippled by her place in society. 

But there is more evidence of this than just physical crippling., In America, women were not taught to read or write unless their family was both wealthy AND thought it important.  Poor girls did not go to school in many places until after the civil war--at all.  That was not their place--that was not their purpose.  We are not so far from the old "keep um barefoot and pregnant" advice that used to be given to sons.

There were/are times in which adulterous women were stoned.

Victorian America enjoyed clitorectomies to prevent masturbation and "high-natured" women from wandering outside their vows.

While there are a multitude of ways in which women have been controlled and punished and crippled, and we recognize those still going on in other cultures and religions,  we are blind to our own cultural input into how women are.  (If shaved legs, plucked brows, liposuction, implants, nose jobs, and monthly exposure to chemicals in the name of feminine beauty isn't cultural--I don't know what is?)

Our current, insidious, mental crippling of women is not well recognized by most.  They offer to teach their son to use the lawn mower and their daughter to clean the bathroom.  We note how pretty and proper little Betty Jo is while bragging on Sam's muscles and strength and intelligence---even when he "is just acting like a boy, i.e., tearing up the yard, back-talking his teacher or vandalizing the neighbor's garden.  When they get dressed up, the boys are expected to go play and roughhouse, the girls, in dresses need to be careful not to show their underwear or break their new and delicate sandals.  We now buy them both legos, but his are primary colors to build space ships and buildings, hers are pastel and come with lots of people and flowers and pets.

We question the sexual orientation of girls in science, girls in sports, girls that drive trucks. 

We want them to figuratively, cover their heads and not follow dreams that are too lofty for girls.

And we do it while bragging on their beauty, their artistic ability, their cooking skill, their poetic nature, and great communication skills.

I love the beauty of women, the artistic and crafty, the well made meal, flowing word craft and long talks full of emotion and ideas.

I also love power tools and astronomy and geology and chemistry.

I will not say I am more or less feminine due to either of those loves.  Our interests do not need gender identification or sexual identity.

There is so very much more to us--male us, female us, people, girls and boys, men and women--than our gender.

There is a long tradition of the triune goddess.  Maiden, Mother, Crone.  But I think, before someone had there way with tradition, trying to make woman less "manly" , trying to soften away her power, there was a fourth.  I think the warrior woman is as basic to the female version of god as the other three.

There have always been warrior woman, from Harriet Tubman, Joan of Arc, Anne Bonny, Gruine  O'Malley, Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Charlote Perkins Gulman, to most of our mothers and grandmothers and selves, each a version of a warrior, that fight their fights and struggle for improvements in society and and communities like she-bears, like lionesses, like---women with a cause, a reason, a project that needs to be conquered.  Every female that has rejected her place in society, that has loved a profession that is seen as manly, that has battled for her loved ones and fought for her right to be herself, is familiar with the importance of her own warrior self.

But why do we limit one half of society while empowering the other?

What does that do, how does that work, why would anyone need that to continue?

Fear?

Insecurity?

A deep need to be the boss of the family?

A strangely twisted belief that makes women less--evil and dangerous?

Who cares---women are just people just as men are just people.

Let your inner warrior woman out every once in a while.  You don't have to kill anyone or even take up roller derby---but flexing those muscles occasionally will make you remember your own power.

And it might help you to tackle that next big chore--running for the senate, running a business, running a chain saw--whatever.

You can do it.