I recently had the privilege of reading the first volume of Sharon Doubiago's incest memoir, My Father's Love: Portrait of the Poet as a Young Girl. It is a remarkable read. Here's a somewhat formal endorsement I wrote for it:

"My Father’s Love: Volume I is an astounding feat of integration on a subject fraught with personal as well as cultural disconnect. Doubiago writes about her experience of incest simultaneously from two distinct focal distances. With the convex lens of subjectivity, she brings into acute focus the up-close matrix of daily lies, betrayals, violations, and denials that compose the foreground of child sexual abuse. At the same time, with the concave lens of objective research, she refracts the broader cultural landscape: genealogies of generational abuse, geographies of oppression, cross-cultural conspiracies of silence."

This book set me thinking (again) about incest. Doubiago shared with me from her Author's note in the second volume:

"I wrote My Father’s Love from November 2000-2005. The guides to literary agents that I consulted, the agencies interested in memoir in the related categories of Women’s Studies, Gender, Feminism, Child Psychology, Trauma, Domestic Violence, etc., nearly all ended their lists with “No incest stories.” Though fairly discredited now, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, a political, right-wing, fundamentalist Christian think tank of the 1990s, was highly successful in influencing current social attitudes toward child abuse and fueling the controversy about the validity of reports by those claiming to be victims of parental sexual assault. Much academic and journalistic research has uncovered this now, including the Foundation’s successful blocking of publications and reviews. For more than ten years not a single incest book was published by a major US press—this culminating an era that had uncovered the fact that one quarter and more of all females are raped in childhood. The taboo of the incest book is still very powerful, censorship being an aspect of the silent shadow. Again, what focus there is remains on the abused; the psyche of the abuser is the norm (even admired and emulated as maturity, authority), still fairly unexamined. (What’s examined is dismissed as outside society’s embrace; just lock up the evil, incorrigible ones—that is, the ones who get caught—as freaks of nature.)"

I am currently reading another book on incest, Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History by Lynn Sacco. I am only halfway through it, but so far, it could be subtitled "Denial of Incest in American History."

In a nutshell, here is how it goes: There have always been a lot of girls being seen by doctors for vaginal infections and trauma to the vulva. The doctors have always been shocked by how many cases there are, and they have been unable to accept that these girls are the victims of sexual assaults by male family members. And they have used their erudition and their authority to come up with ingenious explanations for these cases... explanations that protect males, and especially white and class-privileged males.

This was easier to do before a lab test had been developed to identify the bacteria that causes gonorrhea. Doctors could deny that the purulent infection was a sexually transmitted disease. After the Gonococcus bacterium was identified, the doctors needed to become more creative. Yes, they had to admit that these girls did indeed have gonorrhea... but now they were insisting that the source was dirty sheets, chamber pots, second-hand washrags. Which could explain why the father and his four-year-old daughter, and maybe his wife and his other children could all have gonorrhea. In the case of middle-class families, the infection could now be attributed to the poor personal hygiene of the servants. 

Then, toward the end of the 19th century, the burgeoning immigrant populations would provide another handy theory. Racism and xenophobia proved ripe breeding grounds for new and highly contagious forms of denial. Finally, the doctors were willing to admit that  girls with gonorrhea were victims of sexual assault, and not toilet seats... but these assaults were only happening to African American girls and daughters of immigrants. And the motive was a superstitious belief that sex with a virgin would cure gonorrhea. The doctors never bothered to explain why the fathers would continue to abuse these children for years, if "the cure"  was the sole motive, but there is nothing rational about theories of incest denial, except the consistent focus on protecting the perpetrators.

Dr. Flora Pollack stands out as a true heroine in this nightmare scenario of medical enablers. In 1909, she was treating, in her words, an "appalling number" of  girls at Johns Hopkins Hospital Dispensary. She did not care a fig whether or not the perpetrators were perverts and sadists, or "infectionists" (the term for the rapists who purportedly believed in the cure superstition.) She did not think that the primary significance of these cases of gonorrhea was the possibility of  complications that might lead to death, or the fear of institutional epidemics spread by toilet seats. She actually thought that the most significant thing about 1000 girls a year in Baltimore turning up with gonorrhea was that men were sexually assaulting them.  Flora Pollack actually had the gall to insist that doctors seeing cases of girls with gonorrhea should assume there had been a sexual assault... and it only took 90 more years for the medical field to adopt that no-brainer for a standard. A moment of silent tribute to Dr. Pollack. Her courage and persistence must have been Amazonian.

As I say, I am only half-way through, and it's only 1920. I have not gotten up to False Memory Syndrome (FMS) yet, and I am very curious to know what those august men of medicine came up with during those 70 years between the cure superstition and FMS. I'll keep you posted.

What is interesting to me is this automatic bonding and protecting of a class of criminals who are truly heinous: men who rape their daughters. As Doubiago notes, even today when incest is more openly admitted, the focus is on the victims and the "psyche of the abuser is the norm." This is what Pollack was wanting to confront, and this is what Doubiago's book indicts. This is the story, this is the social ill... not the  PTSD of the victims, tragic and disruptive as that is.

No, the real story is the silence and the cover-up. What is this peculiar virus that seems to originate predominantly in the male psyche, mutating every few decades and then spreading like wildfire through male-dominant cultures--denying, protecting, discrediting, recruiting?

African American author and Nobel Prizer winner Toni Morrison's brilliant insights about racism have helped me think about oppression in radical ways, and I am reminded of this quotation from her lecture "Unspeakable Things Unspoken:"

"Looking at the scope of American literature, I can't help thinking that the question should never have been 'Why am I, an Afro-American, absent from it?'  It is not a particularly interesting query anyway.  The spectacularly interesting question is 'What intellectual feats had to be performed by the author or his critic to erase me from a society seething with my presence, and what effect has the performance had on the work?'"

My question is "What medical or propaganda feats had to be performed by the doctor or the shapers of the culture to erase incest from a society seething with sexually abused girls and what effect has the performance had on all of us, and especially on women?"

Click here to read "Incest Denial Part Two."
Click here to read "Incest Denial Part Three."
Click here to read "Incest Denial Part Four."

My Plays that deal with incest:

Battered on Broadway
Entr'acte, or The Night Eva Le Gallienne Was Raped
Louisa May Incest
Mason-Dixon
The Parmachene Belle
The Anastasia Trials in the Court of Women
The Spindle
Patricide
Thanatron

Essays dealing with incest:

"The Inconvenient Truth of Teena Brandon"
"Why Annie Got Her Gun"
"The Happy Hooker Revisited"

These are the words of Virginia Woolf in her brilliant essay Three Guineas, which is more radical (therefore more reviled) than A Room of One's Own...

They are also the title of the word collage I presented last night at a literary event here in Portland (Maine), titled "Patriotica." I was one of two women reading in an evening filled overwhelmingly with readings by, for, and about men... illustrating Woolf's point beautifully.

During the evening, I thought of a quotation by Native American activist Winona LaDuke, "I would like to see as many people patriotic to a land as I have seen patriotic to a flag." Sadly, "treehuggers" are usually seen as unpatriotic.

Anyway, here is my contribution to the evening. I want to add a footnote.. In the piece I quote Colonel Janis Karpinski, who was a whistleblower about a military rape coverup. Karpinski was demoted from Brigadier General in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, and she courageously went on to write a book, One Woman's Army, about how she was scapegoated to protect higher-ups. She tells how the prisoner abuses were perpetrated by contract employees trained in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay and sent under orders from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. There have, of course, been attempts to discredit her, but, tellingly, no lawsuits.

Another footnote is that the epidemic of rapes in the military was the subject of a Congressional investigation in 2008.  As a result there was an admirable military  PR campaign, "My Strength is for Defending," which, sadly, appears to have been just so much window-dressing. The raping continues, the suicides continue, and the coverups are ongoing.

One of the thoughts I had in researching this piece was that, if a situation like this had come to light in the 1970's, I believe that women's groups would have organized all over the country to picket and leaflet every recruiter's office, to let these very young, very vulnerable, often low-income women know that they had a 50/50 chance of sexual assault if they signed up, and a 90% chance of being discharged if they report, and an 85% likelihood they would be ineligible for VA support for the PTSD after the involuntary discharge. If they had a prior history of being sexually victimized, that would be used against them in their (mis)diagnoses.

Why isn't that happening today? Many reasons. The economy. Women simply do not have the luxury of activism. Also, a generation of women who seem to think that  naming and resisting oppression is what makes them victims... (WTF, literally) Lesbians having the option of insemination and adoption, so that we are no longer a predominantly childless community, and our priorities, for better or worse, reflect this shift.

I have written an essay titled "Medals for Military Sexual Trauma:A Proposal." Medals would be far more effective than a poster campaign, because the awarding of medals would necessitate a profound shift in the military mindset... a shift acknowledging that "women" and "soldiers" are not mutually exclusive categories, a shift acknowledging that an enemy soldier is a soldier who assaults any US military personnel, a shift acknowledging that that rape constitutes wounding and that PTSD is a wound.

So here is "As a Woman I Want No Country..."

These are the words of lesbian author Virginia Woolf: 

“... if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect either myself or my country. For,’ the outsider will say, ‘in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."

According to the website of the Military Rape Crisis Center, one in three women in the military will be sexually assaulted. Two out of three women in the military will be sexually harassed. Congresswoman Jane Harmon from California has done the math: “A woman who signs up to protect her country is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.”

Over 90% of all females that report a sexual assault are discharged from the military before their contract ends. From the 90%, around 85% are discharged against their wishes. Nearly all 
of the 85% lose their careers based on misdiagnoses that render them ineligible for military service and ineligible for VA treatment 
after discharge.

"... in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."

In a startling revelation, Colonel Janis Karpinski testified that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior U.S. military commander in Iraq, gave orders to cover up the cause of death for some female American soldiers serving in Iraq.

Karpinski testified that a surgeon for the coalition's joint task force said in a briefing that "women in fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the port-a-lets or the latrines were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and in 120 degree heat or warmer, because there was no air-conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from dehydration in their sleep."

The women were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark. The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn't located near their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the bathroom. According to Karpinski, "There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night." "And rather than make everybody aware of that -- because that's shocking, and as a leader if that's not shocking to you, then you're not much of a leader -- what they told the surgeon to do is don't brief those details anymore. And don't say specifically that they're women. You can provide that in a written report, but don't brief it in the open anymore."

Sanchez's attitude was: "The women asked to be here, so now let them take what comes with the territory."

“... in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."

Sept 2009 The report by the Defense Department’s Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military Services, based on 15 months of work and interviews with more than 3,500 people at 60 locations around the world, said the department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office is not providing policy or oversight for key responsibilities, or interacting with military officials in the field who are accountable on this issue.

“... in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."

“Administrative discharge.” The words stung, like I had just been slapped or spit upon. I couldn't follow the rest of the lieutenant colonel's words. Only that the man who raped me was being given an honorable discharge. 


The rapist would keep his rank and his benefits. His record would be unblemished. He could reenlist the day after his discharge. “With all due respect, sir,” I said with the intensity of barely controlled fury, “that isn't acceptable to me. I don't ever want to see this man wearing this uniform again, leading troops again, or dishonoring another veteran at their funeral.” 


The lieutenant appointed as my advocate told me that she had once been raped, but decided not to file a criminal report. 

“It was easier to just forget about it,” she told me, and implied that I should, too. This is how life is for women in the Army. 
When I rejoined my comrades, no one would talk to me. Not even the women. They all faulted me for breaking up the unit, for getting the rapist taken off of the deployment. The rapist had a long history with the unit, while I was the new girl. 
A few days after I rejoined my unit, we reviewed some video footage from training. At one point, the rapist’s face filled the screen. I was paralyzed, lightheaded with fear and nausea. I ran to the bathroom and vomited. Minutes later, a female I had trained with and lived with came in to use the bathroom. As I sat on the floor heaving with sobs, she stepped over me to wash her hands, survey her hair, and leave. I was alone. To her, I was worthless.

During my deployment, Major R often accused me of being promiscuous, of spending too much time with men (which made up about 85 percent of the post's population and my entire office), and of putting myself in dangerous situations. He once said this must explain the rapist’s actions. With tears and anger, and no regard to military bearing, I rebuked the major. 
“I have done nothing wrong,” I shouted. “He made his own decision to rape me.” The major cringed at the word “rape,” then stared at me with contempt and told me to leave his office.

“in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."

There is no set reaction to Military Sexual Trauma. You may feel fear, shame, anger, embarrassment, or guilt. You may have a response right away, or it may be delayed for months or years. You may feel sad or scared months or years after the assault.

After Military Sexual Trauma you may:

• Avoid places or things that remind you of what happened.
• Avoid your friends, family, and other people.
• Have trouble sleeping or have nightmares
• Feel numb or feel nothing at all.
• Have relationship problems.
• Think about death or killing yourself.

“... in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."

Broadway and Off-Broadway... the touchstone for "arriving" in the world of theatre in the US... the El Dorado, the Brigadoon, the Camelot...  So why aren't there more women playwrights who make it? 

Here's how it works...  Remember the old playground game called Red Rover? Two lines of kids facing each other, and one team calls out, "Red Rover, Red Rover, send so-and-so right over!" and then the kid whose name was called starts running toward that line, while the kids all link arms and try to keep her from breaking through.

Now... here's the part that's pertinent: If the kid breaks through, she gets to take one of the two people who let her break through back to her home team. But, if she cannot break through, she must join the enemy team. To put it in corporate terms, the loser must assimilate.

In the world of top-tier commercial theatre, they don't exactly call us over by name. These days they do make a pretty big show about "Where are the women?" So we come a-running, manuscripts under our arms. If we can't break through, we are supposed to line up with their values, even against our own interests. Yes, and some of us do. 

These women who have gone over to the big-boy team may seem like good strategic points to try to break through. But, they are not. They understand that, if they are the reason another woman breaks through, they will have to leave the big-boy team and return with the winner back to the women's team. And we all know the women's team does not own any commercial theatres. They are far more motivated to keep us out than their brothers on the line.

Well... Red Rover is an analogy for a dynamic that has frustrated women playwrights for centuries. What is really at stake, of course, is power. And having a voice is having power. And women's voices, when we really tell the truth about our lives, cannot be assimilated with the voices of those who are benefiting from the systems that oppress and exploit us. That's what this is all about, really. It's not about men who don't like women, although that's part of it, of course. It's not about women not being good enough. It's about whose story is going to be heard.

So, okay, whose stories are heard? Let's look at four examples that are on issues that are central in the lives of women and critical in defining our experience and shaping our personalities: rape, sexual harassment, assault, systemic child sexual abuse, and its subset, incest.

When these stories get told in the commercial theatres, and they do occasionally get told... who does the telling? Whose point of view, whose issues are represented?

Let's take a look: 

One of the first plays that was focused on rape was Extremities, and it actually opened with an onstage, attempted, violent rape. The choreography was usually out-of-hand. Audience members would catch blobs of flying oatmeal, and, as Wikipedia notes, "it  wasn't uncommon to see the lead actress with bandaged and splinted fingers during the run of the play." Real bandages and real splints, people. Actor, not character, assaulted. Susan Sarandon left the cast, if memory serves me, on the advice of her therapist. Farrah Fawcett had an actual stalker disrupt one of her performances to ask if she had been receiving his letters and photos. So this, one of the very first plays focused on rape victims, opens with a scene that is guaranteed to traumatize the audience, if not physically and emotionally brutalize the leading lady.

And the subject matter? The would-be victim manages to overpower the rapist and tie him up. Her housemates come home and the subject becomes, "Whatever will we do with him?" Because, of course, we all know rapists rarely are convicted, and even if they are, they may or may not be sentenced to prison. Should the women kill him?

In other words, the focus is on the rapist. The question of the play is, "What would women do to rapists if they were ever in a position to exact revenge?" Now, I know hundreds of survivors of rape. So does everyone, because it's one-in-three women. And I have sat in on thousands of conversations on the subject, and never, ever ONCE has it been, "Gosh, what will I do if I ever catch one?" It's simply not our issue. 
 
The conversations go like this:  "How can I leave the house?" or  "How can I support myself while I'm trying to work through the PTSD?" or "How can I keep from losing my partner when I have so many traumatic associations with intimacy?" or "How can we make sure this never happens again?" or "How can I help my daughter/lover/sister/neighbor/roommate... myself?"  These are the issues for women.

The rape play that went to Broadway was voyeuristic for perps and restimulating for trauma survivors, and obsessed with a question that only a rapist would find compelling.

Well...okay... but how about sexual harassment? And, yes, it's a real problem. These stats are from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

• 31% of the female workers claimed to have been harassed at work
• 62% of targets took no action
• 100% of women claimed the harasser was a man

Aside from the physical and emotional toll, many women have to change jobs, often more than once, and this has very real career and wage consequences. And, for women in the military, the stats tell us that 95% experience harassment. And, of course, in the military they can't can't change jobs or quit. Yes, it's a problem.

So, the sexual harassment play to go to Broadway? Oleanna. It's about sexual harassment on college campuses.

Okay... but I'm talking about the mainstream Broadway treatment of an issue that is huge for women. In the play, it turns out that the professor is a well-intentioned victim of a confused female student who has been manipulated by those evil, man-hating, paranoid bitches (read "dykes") over in Women's Studies.

Wow. And whose story is that?

Okay... next example. Let's take something that is irrefutable, documented, topical, and epidemic... the priest abuse cases. Of which there are tens of thousands globally. 

The play that went to Broadway was Doubt. Yep, you heard that right. Doubt. And, again, there is an evil, man-hating, spinsterish woman-- this time a nun.  And of course, the priest is progressive and much-loved. Yeah, so  you know who you're supposed to be rooting for. He ends up, in spite of a history of "doubtful interactions with children," with a promotion, and she ends up... doubting. Now, some have said that the play plants seeds of doubt, but I doubt that. Read the reviews. It frames a global horror as a situation fraught with gendered ambiguity. Not.

And how about incest? Well, there was How I Learned to Drive, which went to Off-Broadway. This play is by a woman, and represents a very accurate depiction of sexual abuse by a skillfully seductive, adult family member, who preys on the insecurities of his victim. The playwright depicts, with accuracy, the confusion of a teen victim who is unclear about her role in the perpetration. Her protecting of the memory (play is told in flashback), her occasional role as the aggressor, her sentimentalizing of her relationship to her uncle/perpetrator... these are all very real dynamics that can be present for the victim of incest. AND this confusion, this sentimentalizing, this ambivalence is actually part of the post-rape syndrome. The play does not frame it that way. Audiences and reviewers go away with comments like, "Incest is a complicated issue; there's no black-and-white" and "it's a two-way street." If you don't believe me, read them online.

And who benefits from that?

This is what is at stake in the Red Rover game for women trying to break into commercial theatre. Whose voice will be heard? 

And you know what? The most important, the most dangerous, the most competitive, and the most successful strategy we can engage is to arrange our lives and our careers so that, first and foremost, we can hear ourselves.

Board games... I remember playing Candy Land... it was probably my first. And then, of course, there was Monopoly. I can remember figuring out early on that, unless one was adept at strategic alliances, the outcome of the game was pretty much determined by the toss of the dice.  It might take a long time to play out, but basically, if one landed early on Boardwalk and Park Place, it would be pretty tough to beat that monopoly. Then there was Risk, a microcosm of Cold War thinking and global domination.

Turns out, board games are ancient, the earliest one named "Senet" being pictured in a fresco in an Egyptian tomb from 3000 BC. "Patolli" was played by the ancient Aztecs, and the Royal Tombs of Ur contained the "Royal Game of Ur."

But let's go back to Monopoly for a second. If board games represent microcosms for cultural mindsets, it behooves us to understand the origin of this game. The game that taught me capitalism was, according to the BBC, a redesign of a board game first published by (wait for it) a woman who was a Quaker and a political activist. Her name was Elizabeth Magie. The original name was "The Landlord's Game" and it was intended to teach people how monopolies end up bankrupting the majority, while enabling a small minority to amass an ill-gotten fortune. On January 5,1904, the game was awarded U.S. Patent 748,626.

In 1933, three years after the start of the Great Depression,  the game was reinvented as "Monopoly," and it has become the most popular board game ever played. More than one billion would-be millionaires have passed Go and collected $200 in the eighty years since it's invention.

But something very strange seems to have occurred along the way from "The Landlord's Game" to "Monopoly." Life has begun to imitate art. We, as a planet, have begun to treat life as a board game, and the earth as the board.

Right now, as I write this, the greatest environmental disaster on the planet is transpiring. An explosion on an oil rig, due to lax oversight, shortcuts on materials and research, and exceptions to regulations, is causing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil to pour into the ocean.

That's a catastrophe. Now, imagine that the explosion had taken place in a building in Manhattan... and a fire is raging, destroying PROPERTY (keep that word in mind). Fire trucks and ambulances show up. But imagine government officials sending them home. "No, this explosion has occurred in a building owned by Widgets, Inc. and it is their responsibility to deal with it." And then, of course, Widgets, Inc. who is in the business of making and selling widgets, has to scramble to get in the business of firefighting and rescuing people... for which they have little expertise, less budget, and miniscule motivation... because the bottom line of a corporation is producing profits for their shareholders. Actually, there will be a certain tension between this firefighting/lifesaving and the interests of the stockholders. And, meanwhile, the fire rages on, spreads through the city, and destroys lives.

That would seem crazy, wouldn't it? As soon as the explosion occurs, the model changes. There is a full-on mobilization to deal with the disaster.

But that's not happening in the Gulf. Everyone is standing around and waiting for  Widgets, Inc.-- in this case, British Petroleum--to stop the destruction and save the lives. And this mission is definitely in conflict with their bottom line. We can see that. They immediately began to pour millions into public relations and lobbyists, because that's the kind of damage they understand: government regulation. That's the fire they are skilled at putting out. They have mobilized to keep the press away from the coastal areas. They understand company secrecy. They have raced to pour chemicals more toxic than oil into the ocean in order to sink the oil, get it out of sight. They understand the PR value of that, also... never mind that these chemicals will kill sea life. Out of sight, out of mind. And their CEO has complained about wanting his life back. Thousands of folks on the Gulf Coast have permanently lost their livelihood and with it the life they have always known, but the BP CEO has gone off to the yacht races in England, because, in his words, it's one of the biggest races in the world!

And is this their fault? They are, after all, a corporation. They do what corporations do. There is an unforgettable documentary The Corporation, which you can watch for free (and legally) on Hulu. It lists the characteristics of a sociopath, who is, admittedly, a menace to society... and then it goes down this list, showing how corporations exhibit every one of those characteristics... that, in fact, those characteristics are built into the very definition of a corporation.  And how absolutely disastrous to society this is, and especially, now that the Supreme Court has granted them the legal rights of an individual (human).

Corporations view the world as a monopoly board. There are opponents and allies in the game, but no real people. There is property, but no real planet with nature and ecosystems. And the reason why there would be a governmental response to an explosion in Manhattan is that this explosion would be impacting private property. But the explosion in the ocean...?  Well, nobody owns the ocean.  Nobody owns the floor of it. Nobody owns the water rights to the ocean. It's up to BP to fix it.

This seems crazy to me. And there were immediate offers of funding and expertise from other governments. These were turned down. Hands off! This is a corporate problem!  Goddess forbid anyone do anything that infringes on the territory of a corporation. The last thing this administration needs is more hysterical press about socialization, government takeover of business. Which is odd, because we have certainly nationalized a ton of banks and other financial institutions in the wake of the mortgage crisis. Isn't the "failure" of the ocean as an ecosystem something that would warrant a bailout?

But, the ocean is not a property. And the billions of ocean creature lives lost in this disaster do not form a voting constituency. And life is, after all, a board game.

Except it's not. We need to remember this. We are not the lords of the planet, we do not have rights over other forms of life. We act as if we do, but the day of reckoning, when we realize our interdependence, is upon us. Life is not a board game, much as some of us would like to believe that it is. If it was, all of us would be drawing the "Go Directly to Jail" card.

Changing pronouns doesn't always solve the problem in a culture where males are dominant and where women are sexually colonized. There is no male equivalent for "whore," for example. And if a man is a master of his craft, does "mistress of her craft" really have the same meaning?

And what about God? Is Goddess just God in a skirt? Or a skort? Or jeans and a flannel shirt? And just what does gender mean when we are in the realm of spirit?

These questions have been on my mind, because I recently completed an adaptation of the Christian Science textbook, intended for use by women interested in a system of metaphysical healing with a remarkable track record. The book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures written by Mary Baker Eddy, was originally published in 1875, and this publication was followed by an astounding record of healings attributed to the reading and application of the teachings it contained. The Christian Science Church was founded on the healings, which, according to Eddy, proved her theory.

I was a serious student of Christian Science for several years, until the homophobia of the Church's policies in the 1980's compelled me to withdraw my membership and leave the religion.  I have written about this in my introduction to the adaptation.

But I never forgot the power of the teaching, and, in fact, the more I read about recovery from trauma and about quantum physics, the more I felt the brilliance and prescience of Eddy's work. In a nutshell, she believed that what we know of the world, derived from the five senses, is inaccurate... that, in fact, matter is unreal. And, in fact, quantum physics has demonstrated this. Moreover, she writes that the mind reporting the delusion is the delusion itself. Kind of like a dissociated state reporting reality. And all of this would be philosophical speculation, except for her insistence on an ultimate reality, that is Spirit, which, according to her, can override this false testimony of the senses.

To explain another way... The Christian Scientist, understanding Spirit to be all and matter to be nothing, would approach the appearance of a tumor the same way she would the appearance of antlers.  She would understand it to be an impossibility, a lie. She would not apply affirmations to make it go away. She would work to understand the impossibility and to line her thinking up with the spiritual reality of the allness of Spirit (also called Mind, Principle, Soul, Life, Truth, Love).

To make a long story short (read my intro), I have grown more, not less, interested in Eddy's system since leaving the Church a quarter century ago. Which is why I decided to adapt the textbook. (The book is in public domain and someone actually put it online in Word.)

And... this is where radical-feminist-lesbian-nature-based-goddess-worship ran headlong into 19th-century-protestant-Christian-patriarchal-Biblical tropes. Eddy's metaphors, which were useful to her in putting across a radical teaching in 1875, were not useful to me. They were, in fact, serious impediments. I did not feel that they were in any way integral to her theory, which is why I undertook the adaptation in the first place... but the whole point was to preserve as much of her 700-page book as possible... so what to adapt and how?

Yesterday I was reading a copy of Herstoria, which is a fabulous publication, by the way.... and I ran across an article "The medieval mystery of a prayerbook, secret writing and a woman's learning..." by Kathryn Powell.  It was about the discovery of an 11th century prayerbook that appears to have been adapted by a woman sometime in the 12th century. And, yes, between the lines she had changed the pronouns. She had also decoded secret writing that appears to have been some kind of game played by the monks. 

I felt myself in a long tradition of women struggling to tease out the core truths in metaphysical systems couched and coded in patriarchal terms.

Changing the pronouns in my case meant changing many other things-- words like "sin," "evil," "dominion," "purity," "righteousness." And, of course, removing all reference to the Bible and to Christianity. After much thought, and more than a little influenced by the Gulf Coast disaster, I changed "God" to "Gaia." I wanted to do more than put God in a skirt.

I do not belief that masculinity and femininity are yin and yang ideas, two halves of some whole. I believe that women are quite whole by ourselves, thank you, and that historically, our so-called "other halves" have made life a living hell on earth for us. A spirituality, and especially a metaphysical system of healing, that is for women has to reflect this wholeness. At the same time, there is power in personifying a higher power, because in moments of terror and chaos, intellectualizing is not much comfort.

Anyway, the exercise was profound, and the book is A Science of Gaia. It's available as a PDF download, an eBook, or a paperback.  Blessed be!