As many of you know, most older feminists seem teeth-rattling terrified of the Great Mother Goddess. Ms Rosemary Radford Ruether is no exception. Below is a peek at part of a pack-it-to-‘em review of her latest book, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine*. At the way-bottom of the post is a very rough reminder of when all the various "Ages" happened (Neolithic, etc.). “Ruether totally denies the Goddess of the relatively peaceful and healthy Neolithic and devotes almost her entire book to those goddesses that haunted the hellish Bronze and subsequent ages, all of which have been defined by war, conquest, subjugation, social ranking and poverty - right up to the present day.
“Ruether doesn't seem to want to get to the truth in this book….. A big part of her agenda: We hafta hide the Neolithic Goddess because this goddess will hurt women. She says the Neolithic goddess 'duplicates what I suspect is one of the key roots of the need of males to dominate females -- namely, it identifies women predominantly as the representatives of the "natural." If women, and women alone, personify the forces of nature in the cycles of birth and death, either they need to be dominated by men in order to control these forces of nature, or they are the primary gender that will somehow "save" us from the destructive effects of millennia of male domination of nature' (pp. 39-40).
“…There's no reason to believe that a strong Neolithic goddess meant women and only women personified nature, or that there were no male gods anywhere in the time/culture period. Does Ruether have a time machine? Did she go back and check?
“I'm afraid Ruether's speaking old-speak. Younger women today know that just because women give birth doesn't mean men see them as mere bodies walking around with no heads, abilities, capabilities, or important place in the larger world.”
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A VERY VERY ROUGH IDEA OF WHEN ALL THE ‘AGES’ HAPPENED
Paleolithic Age: roughly, before 10,000 BC
Neolithic Age: roughly 10,000 – 3,000 BC
Bronze Age: roughly 3000 BC til whenever you began using iron (it’s different in different places)
Iron Age: This has lasted up to the present, but I guess you could say some of us shifted into the Steel Age at points along the way.
I left out a lot of little Ages, like the Calcolithic, Eneolithic, Upper and Lower Palaeolithic, etc. But I'll let you look those up on your own.
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*U. of Cal Press 2006
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thnx to fang for the foto
4 comments:
In the British Isles, the bronze age didn't begin until around 2000BC, when the warrior beaker people arrived at the end of the neolithic
-Pignut
In what is now sometimes known as New Zealand, the people here were neolithic until around 200 years ago ;-)
I'm curious as to what constitutes an 'older' feminist.
kate.
Yes, the "Ages" are only very approximate, depending on several variables including what area of the world you’re talking about. Indigenous New Zealanders were Neolithic until 200 years ago, but I’m wondering kate if you came from ancestors who moved out of the Neolithic earlier than that?
As to what constitutes an “older” feminist, you’ve caught me. Instead of “older feminists” I should have said “most published feminists whom I’ve read and who I suspect have been feminists for a while because I know they were publishing several decades ago as well currently.”
And I should also say that we owe a humongous debt of gratitude to these feminists, because they've improved life immeasurably for all of us today, both women and men alike.
Athana - most of the mainline (white chick) feminists hate Goddess worshippers because they think we make them look bad. I think they make us look bad because they're dumb enough (some of them) to think that there is no patriarchy anymore. I've actually had young feminists tell me that. I tell them they need to wake the fuck up.
I have no respect for a woman that doesn't have the ovaries to stand up for her Goddess.
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