I’m reading Gloria Steinem’s “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, a compilation of her essays from the 1960’s through to the 1980’s (and with revisions from the 2nd edition of the book in the 1990’s).  One of the essays, “The Politics of Food” talks about the value that we place on females and on female work.  A telling nutrition study was conducted in the 1970’s, reporting that in India women deliberately deprived themselves of nutrition because they believed that the ‘earning members of the family’ (who at that time were mainly men) and any males who were ‘potential earning members’ were more valuable than those who did the domestic work and the work of child-rearing…because those pieces of work, those 24-7 actions of nurturing and care were considered devoid of economic value by both men and women in that culture.  Unfortunately, this is neither unique to India nor to the prevailing cultural beliefs of 40 years ago.  In 2015, there are still many families who believe that the men should be fed first because their work is somehow harder or more valued than the 24-7 activities a woman is engaged in if she is managing a household.

Why are we more willing to pay a farmer to grow food (which, in itself is an act of nurturing) that we then purchase and eat to nourish ourselves but we’re not willing to pay women to birth and nurture humans who may turn into farmers who continue the act of seeding, nurturing and harvesting? Or to create humans who may become any one of a variety of individuals who create beautiful works of art, astounding advances in technology, life-savings discoveries in science?  The crops that a farmer grows and then provides to other living creatures are not more or less valuable than other creations…although I would argue that without food, we would not live long enough, as a species, to be able to do the many wonderful things that we do (or the many horrific things as well).  However, all things, all creatures have equal value on this planet, each of them playing a unique role in the web of life.  The higher value placed on the actions and work of men underscores the double-standard and all pervasive and globally sanctioned devaluing of the ‘work of women’, or at least the work that women have been limited to doing, much of which is the miraculous birthing and nurturing of other human beings.

The double-standard is more deeply entrenched by the insistence of the importance of a woman’s choices during her pregnancy and as she mother’s her children and the contradictory and alarming lack of state-funded support for women during pregnancy and especially post-natally.  I have been guilty of believing and stating that much of an individual’s psychological issues stem from how they were or were not nurtured by their mother.  While it is unequivocally true that this initial relationship is critical to the well-being of a child, women are challenged to ‘be their best’ without adequate support systems and with the continued perpetration of the messages that females are less than males.    This is because the male-dominated cultures that exist in the world today have a vested interest in preserving the hierarchical structure whose foundation is comprised of non-white individuals and women of all races.  But a foundation based on the denigration of others lacks integrity and in time reveals its own degradation. 

Whether the metaphor is that of a degraded foundation or a diseased root system, the effects are the same. In her essay “Far From the Opposite Shore”, Gloria describes the root of the disease in male-supremacist cultures as “the sexual caste system…whether or not it developed as the chronologically first dominance model in prehistory, it is clear…that women’s freedom is most restricted in societies that are also devoted to keeping some race or class groups ‘pure’ by birth in order to perpetuate their power".  As such, she continues “all effective actions taken against [the sexual caste system] will contribute to society’s radical transformation.”

Focusing on the symptoms and ignoring the root causes has never healed anything.  Yes, symptoms tell us that something is amiss, and the state of the environmental, economic and cultural demise we are experiencing globally are symptoms...of the suppression and devaluing of the feminine and anything defined as 'natural'.  What if our dominant culture actually taught us to value the birthing of life, rather than the glorified taking of life that we see demonstrated to us in all types of media, in the unrestrained pillaging of the planet and in the industry of war?  What if we insisted that any propaganda that denigrates or demonizes women were given the same attention and restrictions that any hate literature against homosexuality, against other races and cultures is treated with today?   It could only lead to a respect for all living creatures and the planet Herself.

As a species, we devalue and try to control anything we perceive as ‘less than’ (whether that is a human, a thing or an activity).  In this day and age of 2015 there are still thousands, if not millions of people on the planet who believe that males have innate ownership over the members of their families (wife, children, and pets) and of the things that are accumulated within the context of the family (car, house, bank accounts, food, etc).  In fact many men treat their own vehicles with more care, attention and respect than they do the humans that share space in their households.

The premise that anyone can own another human being’s body, soul, mind is an ancient premise that is required to maintain power.  Gloria states it well (as she always does) in her essay “If Hitler Were Alive” that in the authoritarian preachings of right-wing fundamentalists ‘individuals are men…the family is their basic unit of security” and women are not considered an individual with the right to basic human rights.  “It’s as if a basic right of men is to dominate women” and by extension the families that are created by women.  She continues that the basic levels of authority “might argue about what level and kind of power will be considered supreme, whether it’s national, international, secular or religious…but they all agree that the patriarchal family is the basis and training ground for any authoritarianism”.

Now I am very happy to be able to say that my husband is more aware of power imbalances in relationships and between women and men than most of the men I dated in the years leading up to my marriage at the age of 48.  However, I was surprised one day at his strong reaction to my sharing of a portion of Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet” in which the ‘prophet’ tells the villagers “Your children are not your children.  They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.  They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you…”  Although I personally contest the idea that children do not come ‘from you’ (any woman that has felt a child grow within her womb would argue that they most certainly do come from us), I agree with Gibran’s sentiments regarding the illusion of ownership of another human being – children, women and men alike. However, my husband insisted that he did indeed own his children since he helped to create them and they are dependent on him.  Although my husband almost always agrees with my feminist views on world issues and he most certainly is not the typical alpha male that insists on being the one in control in his ‘house’ so his reaction not only surprised me but was concerning as well, given it's a slippery slope to suppression of another.  However, what his reaction underscored was how deeply embedded in our psyches is the belief that humans should control Nature (or risk being controlled by Her) and, by extension, men should control women and children (or risk being controlled by them).  This brainwashing shows up in so many power structures and in many families around the planet. 

Another example of this brain-washing showed up recently when my 13-year old stepson (who I would describe as a very aware young male who often asks intelligent questions) asked us why the food services people in schools are always women.  I commended him on his great question and proceeded to explain that for hundreds of years (and especially since the industrial revolution), access to jobs that either pay well or are valued has been limited primarily to men and women, and non-whites in general, have been restricted to subservient roles…the most underpaid roles in our culture and, in the case of women who manage their households, not paid at all. 

I continued to describe the irony inherent in this: the very undervalued roles that nurture others are the ones that allow men to thrive so that they can go on to live empowered (and ‘power over’) lives.  In the midst of my explanation, my husband made a joke about the topic (he often uses humour when he perceives potential conflict or feels uncomfortable about a subject matter) and I explained that it was not okay for him to ridicule the subject matter because it is important.  What I didn’t say, but wish that I had, was that ridiculing the status of women and the issue of power imbalances is another patriarchal tactic that is so deeply ingrained in our psyches that it shows up even in people who are more aware than most. Ridiculing as an attempt to disempower another group (almost always because that group is feared) is common behaviour…but that doesn’t make it okay.  Just as it would not be okay for me to ridicule him or minimize an issue he felt strongly about, for example, the slow death of the Arts in our public schools in Canada while funding for Athletics, Math and Sciences continues to grow.

The controlling of women as the sacred portals through which the human species are birthed into this world is necessary for the sustaining of the dominant culture and is alarmingly increasing in North America.  This is a cultural backlash by the purveyors of the patriarchy who are only now taking the successes of the 2nd wave of feminism seriously.  The hierarchy of order and authority can only be maintained by controlling the masses and the best way to create the foundation for such a paradigm is to start with the most intimate realm of the family.  If women are not allowed to decide whether to have children or not, then the state and the industries of war can continue to have access to cannon fodder that ensures the maintenance of civil unrest and war around the planet…the consequence of which lines the pockets of the 1% of the population that holds 99% of the wealth.

From the reversing of laws that previously allowed for abortion or severely limiting the conditions in which a woman is allowed to abort; from the reduction or discontinuation of medical funding for contraception (in the face of increased funding for prescriptions such as Viagra; from the lack of federal government will-power to enact legislation that limits the damaging, polluting and pillaging of the planet (primarily because they are lobbied, non-stop, by self-interest groups and corporations whose primary focus is on accumulating wealth and power at the expense of the many), we are faced with many obstacles to turning this giant ship around. 

And so, when someone rolls their eyes at me that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill when I point out the power imbalances that still exist on this planet, when they tell me that women have equality (even though females are being murdered around the planet for trying to access education), when they tell me that aggression in men and submissiveness in women are inherent traits,  I remind myself why I feel compelled to do the work I do and to point at the elephant in the middle of the room.  At the end of the day, it’s about saving the one and only planet that we have to live on and increasing the quality of life for all creatures that are sustained by it.  

There is an important connection between the alarming number of people and, mostly women, who experience pelvic disorders ranging from issues with reproductive organs and the pelvic structure itself (especially, but not limited to, hip joint malfunction and S.I. dysfunction).

The pelvic structure needs to be both stable and flexible in women and men – but especially so in women given that their pelvic structures are shallower and broader than mens.  Add to this the fact that throughout a women’s life, hormone fluctuations create an increase in a particular hormone called Relaxin that makes the connective tissues around women’s joints much looser than normal.  When connective tissues around joints are compromised, when they are weakened or over-stretched, the muscles that surround that joint and that connect with those tissues need to be even stronger to provide the compromised stability.  Unfortunately, in the case of the average woman, the muscles around the pelvis, over the course of a lifetime, tend to get weaker, especially in the culture that we live in today which is, by and large, quite sedentary.  An additional challenge is the Western acceptance of yoga and the exaggerated focus on increasing flexibility and range of motion.  This is helpful for men (whose pelvic structures and joints in general tend to be tighter) but only serves to make women less physically stable.

Part of this weakening can be attributed to life-style choices and, for some women, life-style expectations and demands.  Birthing multiple babies creates a repeated physical trauma for the pelvis and a consistent and constant loosening of the stabilizing connective tissues such that, if a woman even had the spare time to engage in physical activities that target the strengthening of the pelvis (and what new mom or mother of multiple young children has such time?) those muscles would have to be developed to an incredible extent to counteract the periodic instability.

But there is another deeper, and perhaps more insidious metaphysical obstacle for women when it comes to creating a sense of strength and stability in our pelvis – the centre of our personal power.  The pelvis, and more specifically, the womb is the physical and energetic source of all creation; however, not only the creation of little human beings but also, and equally important, the creation of our own lives.  And that metaphysical obstacle has to do with the fact that culturally (around the world in varying degrees) women do not have the last say(or in some cases even the first)  about how they want to use their own bodies or even experience their own bodies. In many cultures around the world women are not allowed to decide whether to have children or not and if they get pregnant, the decision to sustain that life, or not, is almost always out of the woman’s hands.  This underscores the alarming and ancient degradation of very necessary boundaries around a woman’s sensuality and sexuality and personal power overall.

This lack of empowerment translates to a weakening energetically and physically for the woman - in her place of power, which is demonstrated in the number of women annually who undergo hip replacement surgery and invasive reproductive organ interventions This is purposefully executed.  But as purposeful as it is, women still have the capacity, at some level, to claim their power and their rights as human beings.  However, depending, on the culture they live in, the claiming of their rights, and especially their reproductive rights (which, by the way men automatically have in tha they get to decide whether they are going to father children or not; men are allowed to ‘waste’ semen by masterbating rather than saving that life force to create another human being) have been severely limited for thousands of years and continue to be the focus of control for lawmakers and religious organizations.

It’s ironic then, that the Roman Catholic Church, one of the strongest critics of abortion, makes abortion a spiritual crime (and has convinced law-makers to make it a crime in the eyes of man-made law), and yet had no qualms about sending adult humans (yes, no longer a fetus, but definitely human) into engagements of war through the Middle Ages when they sent their ‘Soldiers of Christ’ out to war and continues to support through current global conflict either financially or by ‘silence is consent’.

Right wing fundamentalists, Christian or otherwise, often demonstrate the same conflicting behavior…demanding that a woman not be allowed to abort; that ‘life is sacred from conception to natural death’ and so must be honoured (and, by the way, I agree that life is sacred and should be honouerd) and yet these same individuals insist that we ‘support our troops’ as our governments send young women and men around the world to kill other humans or to be killed by them in the name of mythical terrors.  The soldiers that die in conflict have often only just begun their adult lives - many of them have young children of their own, or haven’t had the chance to begin the families that they so desire to have.  Just how is that an honouring of sacred life?

This paradox seems to never come up in conversations about abortion when lawmakers (and, ironically these lawmakers are mostly men) are making decisions about what women are allowed to do, or not to do, with their own bodies.  I love the quote by Gloria Steinem:  “If men could have babies, then abortion would be a sacrament.”  Okay, perhaps not (or maybe so) but at the very least, it would be sanctioned and funded (as much as the war machine is today).

The decision to end a life (whether it is the shortened life of a fetus or the life of a being who has been birthed) is not one to be taken lightly, nor is it for the feint of heart.  I have personally had to make such a decision – to end the life of one of my beloved pets when they were diagnosed with a kidney disorder that had him lose an incredible amount of weight and pass his days vomiting blood.  It was the right thing to do to help him in moving out of a place of suffering and pain and yet assisted suicide for humans is considered a crime in many cultures around the world.  The fact that it is called ‘assisted suicide’, rather than what it really is, which is an ‘assisted compassionate ending of suffering’, demonstrates that we have separated the value of humans from all other creatures on the planet, including the planet itself.

It is equally ironic that most fundamental Christians call suicide and assisted suicide an abomination in the eyes of God…and yet their very God perpetrated or delegated acts of violence (according to the Bible), seeming to have no trouble at all smiting anyone that disagreed with ‘his’ philosophy and spiritual laws.  And even more ironic is that the very individuals who understand and accept the ‘rightness’ of helping an animal to end it’s life when it is suffering, or to cut down a tree that is showing evidence of decay, do not extend the same rights to humans.  Ironically, it is the belief that humans are more ‘evolved’ than, ‘better’ than, ‘higher up’ on the ladder of evolution and hierarchy that causes these same individuals to think this way and yet one would think that if humans are ‘better’ than all other life-forms, why wouldn’t we extend the same kind of compassion to humans who are suffering? 

Whether one believes that all beings are equal or not, the pre-empting of suffering, for a plant, an animal, a fetus or a birthed human being, is a compassionate act.  If a fetus develops severe health issues that would compromise their quality of life, if a baby is going to be born into an environment that is either not safe for them or in which they would experience unreasonable neglect and suffering every day of their life, why would anyone allow that to happen?  Why is it not considered compassionate to pre-empt that life and allow that soul to enter the world through another portal that would drop them into a life where they would be honoured, nurtured and loved?  The argument that only God is allowed to make that decision is mis-direction.  In fact, for the millions who believe that God is within, then God is making that decision when a women is faced with doing so.

Women have always had ways of knowing that, when valued, helped to create optimal situations and life-experiences for themselves and those they chose to nurture.  They continue to have ways of understanding timing, through their natural monthly cycles and through the process of labour.  Women understand that loving oneself and others sometimes requires difficult actions that feel like sacrifices for the well-being of themselves and others.  And so, I invite you to imagine a world in which we actually value these ways of knowing, we honour healthy, personal and necessary boundaries, we cultivate the balance of stability and flexibility and we  nurture the personal empowerment of all living creatures.