Trying to kick myself out of a depression, I read a few of my favorite feminist blogs today (Bitch | Lab, Bitch PhD). Favorite because they are in-your-face, claiming the ability to be obnoxious and stand their ground. Here here! I’m entertained by the attitude. Some of the content I take issue with. And I think anger is too easy. It’s only part of the story. But, as I said, entertaining.
It brought me back to why I left NOW-NYC, besides the burnout. The notion of revolution was being turned on its head. Robin Morgan wrote a book back then (1991 I think) called “The Demon Lover” in which she talked about activist women that got caught up in male-run violent activism of the 1960s and 70s. Women like Angela Davis (whom I admire greatly) and Kathy Boudin (whom I met once in a group at a visit to Bedford Hills prison, and she is a fascinating, brilliant woman). In Ms. Morgan’s discussion of how women essentially signed up with organizations that had male-traditional “revolution” in mind, they were facilitating the potential not for revolution but for what she called “revolving”; that is, the same paradigm takes over with different people in control. But there is no structural revolution per se because the notion of “power” is still defined in a male framework: power as a zero-sum game, with some having a lot, some a little, and everyone vying for more. The problem, as I understood it, was that once such “revolutions” actually take place (witness Cuba — heck, witness the USA), the notion of the partnership society, where all work for the good of the other, can’t grow from the roots that were planted in traditional violent terrorist tactics. The ends not only do not justify the means, they actually are informed, shaped, and spawned by them. Violence is in the DNA from the very start.
I believe that it is our willingness to want to play the men’s game that has put us in such a bind. We didn’t have the patience to make our own game, or the network (due to Betty Friedan’s notion of the “problem that has no name” and its inherent isolation of women that precludes networking). So, small groups of wealthy stay-at-home moms marched in mink coats to the Oak Room at the Plaza (Betty herself sporting sunglasses to hide the black eye from a battering husband) in the naive notion that access there actually meant something to all women. Elitist, for sure, and indicative of the second-wave in general: We want a piece of the men’s elitist action, not to question the nature and ethics of the game to begin with. But these women didn’t think of mobilizing the working class woman behind them. Again, that networking thing: You didn’t meet working class women at the Junior League luncheons…oh…maybe they were serving…never mind).
So, what does this have to do with the feminist blogs I’ve been reading? Well, we have indeed become the men we wanted to marry. We seem to be as obsessed with laying down rules and heirarchy over the existing ones. So we debate whether it’s “better” to have kids when you are younger and older, whether motherhood is indeed a “choice,” whether religious women are wacko, and other woman-determined, top-down concepts that are loaded with rules about how we “should” carry on our lives, a patriarchal notion to begin with. It’s no different to me than those who say “you’re either with the President or you’re with the terrorists.” Creating polarity out of nothing.
The truth is, we can rant all we want, and I love a good rant. But, a life guided by pure compassion is necessarily the most revolutionary, outside the system way to live, and the ultimate in subversiveness. The trouble with a lot of female American history is that the expression of human compassion has been proscribed within patriarchally laid-down boundaries: The “noblesse-oblige” of Eleanor Roosevelt, the codependent battered “long-suffering” wife, the ultimate self-sacrifice of a Mother Teresa (well, I guess she wasn’t American, but, you get my point
). We have become giving machines, and each of these female-giving roles are characterized by actions expressed as what I’d call “cookie-cutter compassion.” The reality is, this type of giving is infused with fear and ego. They, by their nature, involve staking out our territory within male-created institutions, and lamely trying to compensate for their shortcomings: poverty/wealth, the institution of traditional marriage, organized religion, and many more.
I’m not Christian by a long shot, but I think the life of Christ (even if it’s a damn good fiction) has so many lessons. There are many others, but, having been brought up Catholic, I know more about Jesus than the Buddha
What Jesus did, and when he did it, utterly subverted the power system, and he died as a result. It is possible that the world as we know it is simply not ready for pure compassion, and the necessary resistance from patriarchal traps of money and power that keep us keep it going. You have to jump from the train, not fight to be the engineer.
So how to be compassionate, and not contribute to the powerlessness of women? Well, first of all, I think I gotta accept that if I want a world of love and compassion, I may indeed remain powerless in the patriarchal sense (a seat at the kiddie table
). But, what the heck? I need food, clothing, shelter, love, community. I really don’t intrinsically need to be the perfect mother, or admired by my colleagues, well-known, considered well-read. I don’t need the perfect house, my kid doesn’t need the perfect school district, I don’t have, or need, the perfect body. I chase my tail looking for these things, and someone’s making money every time I aspire to them (like with the plastic surgeon who sucked the lard out of my thighs and, with it. $8000 from my bank account
).
Who cares about any of this stuff if I live with love in my heart. Letting go of that need to have power and visibility in the male world, and its female counterpart world, is very, very hard for me. I crave it like booze, which was also not very good for me. I think I’ve read that many folks crave foods to which they are allergic. I’m allergic to patriarchy, I think. Immersed as I am in academia, another patriarchal institution, my allergy has been acting up and, as a result, I’ve got a bad case of the spiritual hives.
I’m amazed at how many times Jesus was given the opportunity for power or notoriety, or even just to save his own skin, and he turned them all down. That’s not humility, really, for humility seems to necessarily contain a self-observation and outside judgment that I believe pure compassion does not need. It’s just deep happiness, happiness from having experienced the oneness of pure love as far as humans can experience it. And his insistence on that state of deep connected happiness, expressed as compassion, was and continues to be transforming for millions of people — more transforming than a the lives of the Roman soldiers who were decorated, privileged, and reaped the fruits of the patriarchal game. They had a “seat at the table,” as second wave feminists liked to say.
There have been others like Jesus, I’m sure, and may be some now, and we may never know. I knew a guy in AA from Brooklyn. His name was George. He was an older man who had MS. George was a little nuts, but in the best of ways. Most people couldn’t stand him but I just loved him. He was a blowhard, but he was so kind. When he told his story, it was of a highly successful telecom executive who basically drank it all away. He said, before he got sober, he always dreamed of power and money. Then, after getting sober, he told of his aspirations metaphorically: He dreamed of directing the show, then starring in the show, then playing a supporting role, then being a stage hand. Now he dreamed of sweeping up afterwards. I get it, George, I get it.
For now, in times of making war and hating war, we are smug or we are panicky. Pure love and compassion is pretty off-the-grid. And I wish I had the courage to make the leap.




