Dancing WITH OM SHANTI (INDIA, HINDUS, KALI AND DURGA)

In this post, I rock and roll for a while with Om Shanti, who says the violence of the goddesses Durga and Kali "should *never* be taken at face value...."*

Om: Whatever you think Durga and Kali's actions might *mean," the fact is, they *are* violent. Although anyone can say their violence does not mean violence, the fact is, on a constant basis, Durga and Kali throw examples of violent behavior on the big silver screen of the Hindu mind.

For every new generation of Hindus, they hustle out their Technicolor lessons in how to do violence.

Do all religions crackle and pop with violent deities? No. In fact, it's my understanding that few do.** So why Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity? What's up with them?

To say as you do that deity violence symbolizes the "destruction of ignorance," begs the question. If I gave any dude off the street a ten-dollar bill to come up with ten *non-violent* ways to symbolize the stamping out of ignorance, he'd tick them off in no time. First on his list would be teachers, reading and schools.

Om, read up on ancient Indian history.*** In my humble opinion the ancient Indus Civilization was one of the most radically awesome in all of human history: not only peaceful and non-violent, but also technologically sophisticated and economically egalitarian (everyone shared the same high quality of life).

But I know of no evidence that this awesome civilization danced with violent goddesses. The Indus Civilization existed before the Indo-Europeans hit India sometime during the second millennium BC, and shoved their patriarchal warrior religion and social hierarchy down the throats of the Indian people.

According to Heather Elgood of the British Museum, the entire Rg Veda holds not one major goddess in it. One of the most visible, however, was Usas, Goddess of the Dawn -- notable mostly because she was raped by her father, the god Dieus.

Om, India and the glorious Indus Civilization figure prominently in my new book, on sale beginning in November or before, Switching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future. Be sure to read it and let me know what you think. If you want, you can even pre-order a copy now, by going HERE. Or ask your local librarian to spring for a copy.
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*For the rest of Om's comment, see August 19 post, "Fooey on Fighting."
**I welcome info from anyone who can prove me wrong on this.
*** Jane McIntosh's A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization is an excellent source.
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thnx to Rajamanohar for the foto of the reconstruction of the Indus Valley Civilization city of Mohenjodaro; go HERE to see more.

God-less TEMPLES: FOR SHAME

In a world stuffed with millions of Goddess-less churches, Geraldine Charles finds it odd that the world's five or six Goddess temples are chided for being god-less. A few snippets from her delicious article:

...the Magdalene figure is still being offered to us as a role model, although in the new, improved version we are now told that as modern Magdalenes we can “marry” the god and bear his child. I’ll pass, thanks....

SNIP

"...Of course, we haven’t even considered reclassifying male deities as demons (see any Old Testament for evidence of this done unto goddess)!

"It should hardly need to be pointed out that a Goddess Temple exists for a reason – in part to redress, in a very small way, thousands of years of complete imbalance, by providing a place where our love of goddess can freely be expressed and celebrated. Why have a token male deity in such a place? Surely that would simply be an afterthought, even an insult...."

For more, go HERE, to Geraldine's provocative online-zine, The Goddess Pages.
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thnx to Moo. Just Moo. for the foto. Go HERE to see more.

THE MISS Buffalo Chip CONTEST

"...the joke McCain made at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally encouraging Cindy [his wife] to enter the topless Miss Buffalo Chip contest...." (From Maureen Dowd in the New York Times)

And this is the man who thinks he's qualified to lead the free world -- over half of which is female.

The world can't take four more years of Bush.
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thnx to I Like Being Tragic for the foto of John McCain; go HERE for more.

Radical RELIGION AT THE DNC

Well, 2008 has been the year of the dispossessed for the Democratic Party -- running as it has, a woman and a black man for the presidency both in the same breath.

So why not one more milestone: a pagan delegate at the Democratic National Convention in Denver -- one holding open, public, pagan rituals there?

"Rita Moran describes herself on her Blue Pagans at the DNC [Democrat National Convention] blog as the Chairperson of the Kennebec County [Maine] Democratic Committee, ... attending the Democratic National Convention as an official delegate for the state of Maine.

"Rita, who runs a bookstore in Maine [Apple Valley Books in Winthrop, Maine], was outed and stalked last year by a local conservative Christian organization [Christian Civic League of Maine]. Since then she has dedicated herself to being an open and positive Pagan presence within the Democratic Party.

"She is blogging daily from the Convention, and recently held a public pagan ritual in downtown Denver, where the Convention is being held."

Go HERE to read more.

Truth be known? I find it a bit of a chuckle that it was the radical religious right that helped catapult Pagans onto the national political scene.

You go, Rita! Go, girl!!
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thnx to kennebecdemocrats for the foto of Rita. Go HERE to see more.

YOUR Money & THE GODDESS

Since all the news channels seem to be staging regular shows lately on the topic "Your Money," I thought I too should snap out something on the subject.

So. What does Goddess say about Your Money? Well, one thing is certain: She and YAJ rarely agree on anything. So whatever's he's saying -- She's not.

And since YAJ says the rich suck ("It's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven"), the Goddess must be thinking the rich shine like stars.

Only here's the thing: the Great Mother thinks poverty is so not cool, that if there's even one poor dude trudging around the planet, She can't concentrate on anything. So even if you're rich and She adores you for it, you may not get much of her love and attention -- She's too busy bleeding over that one poor dude.

I mean, what healthy mother loves it when some of her kidlets are rich but others are poor?
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*YAJ is the god Yahweh-Allah-Jehovah. Although most see YAJ as three separate deities, he's really only one, big sorry mess of a dude (British zoologist Richard Dawkins calls him a “… vindictive, bloodthirsty …, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully" ~ Dawkins 2006: 31).
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thnx to North Idaho Dad for the foto; go HERE to see more.

A LONG TIME IN Slime

“… in 1700 BC, the [Goddess-centered] Minoans were as technologically advanced as Europeans were in – get this — AD 1700. To me, this is an astounding statement. What it means is, after being beaten to a pulp by father gods, Europe took 3400 years to bounce back onto its feet again — technologically speaking at least.”

~From Swtiching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future, coming November 28, 2008 (but you can pre-order it now, at Amazon.com).
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thnx to me, Athana, for this drawing of Minoan bull leapers, which was found by archaeologists on a wall in the ancient palace of Knossos on the island of Crete

A GOOD TIME WAS Not HAD BY ALL

Yesterday a local newscaster announced that an elementary school music teacher was arrested for fondling little girls.

The story took my thoughts wandering down this particular path: there's a whole boatload of ways people have sex such that their partner has no fun whatsoever: Rape comes to mind. Child molestation. Incest. Public exposure. Public indecency.

Then this popped into my mind: The Bible says the only non-sinful sex is procreation sex. Sex for pleasure is a trashy, sordid sin.

And then I wondered: could there be a connection?

Could it be that war-god cultures have sex offenders simply because some dudes can't get aroused unless at least one person in the sex act (their partner) is failing to have a good time? I mean, isn't this exactly what the Bible dictates?

Here's the thing: I don't think people un"blessed" by Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or the other war-god religions do pleasure-absent sex. Take, for example, the Trobriand Islanders of the early 20th century. Making love there was nothing but delicious and delightful -- for everyone involved.

I'm sure I'm not the first to make this Bible/rape connection, but still -- it's an interesting possibility, no?
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thnx to Wiley C for the foto; go HERE to see more.

FOOEY ON Fighting

A few days ago, Vicki Noble emailed me about a new film called Durga Rising:

"I am writing to encourage your attention to ... an original documentary film about ... the Indian Warrior Goddess Durga. In a time of unprecedented destruction and corruption on this planet, there is a need for "slaying the demon" of ravenous greed and murderous violence...."

"Durga--somewhat like the Greek Nemesis--is the Goddess who brings the world back into balance, by slaying the patriarchal demon who is destroying the world. Surely after 5000 years, it is time for such a radical rebalancing."

But see, I just don't wanna go there. I want to heal the world through Mother love. Fooey on fighting violence via violence. Call me addle-brained, but I just can't let go of the idea that teaching, and "gentle prodding" will do the trick.*

In my opinion, Durga, Kali, Nemesis and other violent goddesses are simply patriarchal makeovers (i.e., beginning around 6000 years ago, the war gods began taking non-violent goddesses and turning them violent; see comments section of Feb. 21, 2007 post, "Time to Ditch the Dude").

When the brothers in the forest tried to rape the awesome Irish goddess Macha, did She slash back with physical force? Nuh-uh. After tying them one by one to trees, She taught them "right ways" (see Oct. 17 '06 post, "Handling Bad People").
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*Although this won't be as easy as falling off a log. Few of us know the tricks to fighting violence with the weapons of teaching and gentle prodding. This is a skill that needs to be studied, experimented with, and taught -- just as our military has studied, experimented with and taught men and women the art of planned violence.
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thnx to ancientartizen for the foto; go HERE to see more of her work.

WALTER ON THE War GODS

"When I anchored the evening news, I kept my opinions to myself. But now, more than ever, I feel I must speak out. That’s because I am deeply disturbed by the dangerous and growing influence of people like Pat Robertson and James Dobson on our nation’s political leaders.

"...I have watched with increasing alarm as Religious Right groups manipulate religion to further their intolerant, political agendas. ... They have gained considerable influence at every level of government...on local school boards, in the Administration, the courts, and in Congress. They have shrewdly twisted the traditional healing role of religion into an intolerant, political platform...."

MORE>>>

WhAcKeD-Out AT WIKI

Just left this on the The First Sex article at Wikipedia:

"I'd like to pass the following warning on to the owners of Wiki, and then I'm going to give up on this article and its virulent male 'contributors.'"

"Early Italian government experiments with electronic democracy demonstrated vividly the ability of bad contributors to drive non-strident non-mentally-ill contributors away—''only the loudest and least sensitive persons were left on the Italian system at its demise''." From the Chronicle of Higher Education."

Is it obvious I had nightmare experiences with trolls living 24/7 under the bridge at this article, just waiting to slash and burn any sane idea laid down on the pages there?

Oh, yeah! Tunsa fun!

On the other hand, maybe some masochistic reader of this blog would like to take a turn going over and duking it out with the darlings there. Morgaine Swann and I have already taken a turn, softened them up a bit.

Maybe if enough of us have a go at them, we can at least get Wiki to institute some kind of policy re: mental illness in contributors.

The worst over there is the dude SesquipedalianVerbiage (altho good old ses has a few aliases to protect the 'innocent').

I waltzed over to the site just now, and discovered that in the last five minutes, good old Ses had deleted a footnote that referenced my statement to Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade. No explanation given -- just Poof! Footnote gone.

That's kinda nice, ya know? Usually good ol' Ses, with one gigantic sweep of his Mighty Mouse, deletes whole passages (all of them scholarly, documented, and some even specifically called for by Wiki administrators).

Remember: ya don't have to (and actually should not) defend The First Sex. You just need to make accurate statements about what Davis wrote in it, and what others have written about book.

ADDENDUM: Just danced over to Wiki's The First Sex article again (five minutes after finishing this post), and-- poof! My quote from the Chronicle of Higher Ed is gone.

Jeezum! Can't believ it took 'em five whole minutes to slash and burn a simple four-paragraph entry!

Sigh. I'll just end with this:

Please, please don't ever trust anything Wikipedia does on women, women's issues, or anything Christians don't like (women, women's issues, homosexuality, Paganism, goddesses, Wicca, who burned down the Library at Alexandria [we all know it was Christians who probably did it, but try to get that one to stick on Wiki!]).

Dear Mama: ... HELP!

I'm just saying -- the world is in big-time need of deities pushing peace.

And what mama doesn't push peace? So it's clear as Windex: we need Mother Earth to promenade up from Her underground hideaway (or, She might have gone to the moon -- in which case She needs to float back down here ASAP).

And when She lands, we need Her to boot Yahweh, Allah, Jehovah, and all the other war gods (China, Russia, and Japan have them too) off to Mars.

Who could argue with this?

I mean, what crackerhead would be dweeby enough to blow this off?
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thnx to Patrick Q for the foto; go HERE to see more of his work.

GODDESSlessNESS

A few minutes ago, while I was writing the index for Switching to Goddess, this entry just popped out of my pen:

"Dark Ages: Goddesslessness as a cause of"

Never heard nor seen the word "Goddesslessness" before, but it feels useful to me.

Whaddja think? Does the world need this word right now? Is it too racy for a book index?
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thnx to windowseat for making this foto open for all to use and see

THAT BOGEYWOMAN Called NATURE

Yesterday Duncan and I wound our way into the old-growth forest behind our house with two friends -- forest I adore, gift from Goddess.

But only a few minutes into the woods, one friend said:

"These woods are scary. Did you see the Blair Witch Project?"

I said no. He said, "If you'd seen the Blair Witch Project, you'd be scared too."

Instantly the multicolored balloons hovering over my head -- a multilayered excitement over sharing these woods -- all burst at once, as if my friend had popped each one all in the same second.

And instead of moving deeper into Goddess, we turned around and trudged back home.

And then there's this: One of the last Stephen King books I poked into was The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon -- about a young Maine girl battling for her life against Nature, which King turns into a devil/demon stalking this pre-teen for all of 250 pages.

I'm wondering: is our problem not valuing Nature? Or is it that many of us are gaga petrified of it?

Traipsing AROUND WITH TROLLS

I can't believe what a blast it is to play with trolls! People always moan and groan about them, but I think they're adorable.

It's much more entertaining chitting around with them than it is working on the index I'm trying to write.

Like little fireflies, they dart in and out, trying to make waves in the air around you.

Reminds me of the time I was 10 and my brother was 6.

He'd sneak up behind me and give my arm a tweak with his forefinger. Although he knew he couldn't get away with just outright walloping me, he also knew that a small tweak was something I couldn't get any sympathy for, from Mom or Dad.

"You're older than he is," Mom would say. "Deal with it."

Ah, the good old days.

THE TROLL TIMES Talks TESTOSTERONE POISONING

Here, at the specific request of certain trolls skanking under bridges at this site, are articles about how an excess of male hormones -- in both males and females*-- is associated with increased aggression:

"Aggression, Impulsivity, Plasma Sex Hormones, and Biogenic Amine Turnover in a Forensic Population of Rapists." Giotakos, Orestis, Markianos, Manolis, Vaidakis, Nikos, Christodoulou, George N. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy; May/Jun2003, Vol. 29 Issue 3, p215-225.

"Testosterone poisoning." By: Alda, Alan. Ms., Spring 2002, Vol. 12 Issue 2, p35

"An Antidote for Testosterone Poisoning: YA Books Girls--and Boys--Should Read." by: Crowe, Chris. English Journal, v91 n3 p135-38 Jan 2002

This next article shows -- as the original post suggested -- testosterone-poisoned individuals, whether men or women [HELLO, DUDES. GET IT THIS TIME? MEN OR WOMEN? HOPEFULLY YOU WON'T MISS THE MESSAGE AGAIN], can be trained to overcome their disease:

"Testosterone, sexual offense recidivism and treatment effect among adult male sexual offenders." McKay, Alexander. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality; 2005, Vol. 14 Issue 1/2, p43-44.

This article is about

"a study on testosterone, sexual offense recidivism, and treatment effect among adult male sexual offenders which appeared in the journal Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment.

"There is well established evidence that the hormone testosterone, with its active metabolite dihydrotestosterone, influences both aggression and sex drive in human males.

"The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between serum testosterone and sexual violence in a sample of adult male sex offenders attending an in-hospital treatment program.

"The sample for the study consisted of 501 adult male sex offenders voluntarily admitted to the Phoenix Program, an inpatient sex offender treatment program in Edmonton, Alberta.

"The authors suggest that the findings indicate that testosterone levels are not just associated with aggression and sex drive as separate entities but also to sexual aggression specifically.

"When the analyses were conducted separately for those who completed the program and those who did not, an important finding emerged. That is, for those participants who completed the program, higher levels of testosterone was no longer predictive of the likelihood of sexually reoffending.

"In other words, the intensive group therapy provided by the program appears able to intercede in the influence of testosterone on sexually deviant behavior."

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*The original post was about excesses of male hormones, in both men and women -- something that flew right over the heads of the trolls, even though they insisted they are all as smart as Socrates, and that they all read the post 100 times or more.

NEW POLICY

I delete posts containing profanity, scatalogical language, or failures to respect the human body or any function thereof.

I delete posts by people who fail to show respect for me or commenters here.

If I delete one of your posts, I probably won't even read your subsequent posts before crashing into that little trash can under your name.

I am starting a list now of people who will be deleted (I have a bad memory, and I want to remember these people):

o wtf? aka rob
o t-dub
o sadek
o warzauwynn (on probation for poor manners)

WHERE'D DADDY Come FROM? WHERE'D MAMA Go?

Today, on Echidne of the Snakes, I tried my hand at explaining why there's war -- and violent daddy/sky/war gods instead of Mother Goddesses:

Suzie, the major point is we're being held hostage by a largely unconscious set of cultural rules passed down from certain of our ancestors who lived with long-term starvation.

Today we behave just the way they did while starving.

All the ways we're different from, say, the Trobriand Islanders, or the aboriginal Hawaiians? Those ways look like the ways of starving people:

1. "The feeding of the self is the all-consuming passion" becomes our ranking the individual higher than the group.

2. "An indifference to the needs or pain of others" becomes our allowance of a perpetual class of poverty, and our warfare.

3. "Husbands leaving wives and babies to fend for themselves" becomes our men constantly going off to war, our deadbeat dads, and our God the Father -- a punitive, distant sky god versus the old Earth Mother who existed all around us in the trees, wind, soil.

4. "Older children gathering into gangs and stealing from those younger, the old and the sick" becomes our young, healthy males assuming the ace power positions in our societies; it becomes our child abuse, and our rape.

5. The starving person's "loss of interest in the pleasures of life" becomes our ideas on pleasures being sinful, and ritual flagellation being a high good. It becomes the taboo on warriors having sex with women before battle.

I could go on. Buy the book *Switching to Goddess* for a fuller explanation of all of this. Preorder it on Amazon now. *Saharasia* by the georgrapher DeMeo also deals with the topic.

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thnx to sighthound for the foto; go HERE to see how to use it yourself.

TESTOSTERONE-POISONED PERSON Visits THIS BLOG!

Oh, goody, goody, our possibly-testosterone-poisoned sample-guy left another comment on Sunday's post ("THE POISON WE Hate TO LOVE: TESTOSTERONE")!

This gives us even more information about the T-P'd -- possibly one of the most dangerous groups currently inhabiting the planet.

Turns out this possibly-testosterone-poisoned dude *was* the one on the right in the picture that went with that post. Believe it or not, he's the one who looks like he has a sense of humor!

(Life Lesson #1,234: the testosterone-poisoned can look fetching. #1,235: Don't ever bite into a cookie just because it looks good. Check the filling first.)

And turns out he does have a vocabulary beyond the 100-basic Indo-European word list! Unfortunately, in a fit of possibly testosterone-fueled fury, he slipped and let it be known that he thinks the Enlgish language originated a few centuries ago with Chaucer.

I hate to say it, but this does feed the popular notion that the T-P'd are a bit light in the brain.

Again, in this second sample of his writing too, he seems unable to stop himself from peppering his speech with scatology.

Also, he's obviously never heard of the common term "testosterone poisoning," suggesting others in his life have tried to shield him from his disease.

Interestingly, he thinks bloggers are confined by Strunk's Elements of Style. Excuse me for a moment (HA, HA, HAHHAHAHAHHHAAAA, HARDY, HARDY, HAR HAR HAR HAR hiccup hic). OK. Better now.

I shouldn't laugh. It's not his fault he's undereducated about blogging. *That* he can easily learn. The Poisoning on the other hand -- well, that, I think, is going to require professional help.

Note that this possibly-testosterone-poisoned person says he's friends with "the second private citizen in space." If that's true (and we need to remember we could be dealing here with a Poisoned brain), we begin to see the scope of the world's problem. The T-P have friends in verrrry high places.

He ends with a particularly poignant cry for help: "Get fucked you hippie bullshit artist and stop stealing the work of greater men."

Let's look carefully at this statement.

First, it is undoubtedly the result of a double-dose or more of testosterone flooding his brain, reducing him again to the 100 most primitive words in the English language (two of 14 of which are disrespectful terms for bodily functions, suggesting his repulsion re: the human body).

His mind seems so drowned in testosterone he's even forgotten my sex. And is it my imagination, or is he calling me a "*great* man"? I mean, he compares me to "greater men." Doesn't that make me -- at the very least -- a "great man"?

Which brings up another point: do the testosterone-poisoned, during a T-P fit, lose sight of the fact that genders other than their own exist?

Another clue, here: although he says he's read Sunday's post several times, he seems clueless that the post implicates women as well as men as T-P candidates.

Thanks to this poor guy, however, for clueing me in that *Switching to Goddess* comes across (but maybe only to the Poisoned?) as vanity-published. I wonder if that's because the T-P'd think that to publishers, those of us not T-P'd are totally invisible?

Could be that's part of the Poisoning.
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thnx to simon davison for the foto; go HERE for more.

Hot OFF THE PRESS: THE Sinking OF SANTA

This just in from Anne over at The Gods Are Bored:

Welcome to "The Gods Are Feverish!" I'm your host, Hot Annie. Pass the iced tea, please.

But wait. There's no ice.

Word just in from the Goddess Sedna that for the first time in recorded history, the North Pole will be open water this summer instead of solid ice.

Sedna tells me that Santa Claus's workshop just sank under the waves. Total loss.

Apparently Santa's been warned over the past few years that his workshop might be in danger of destruction, but he just ignored it. The only radio station that reaches the North Pole carries Fox Radio -- Rush Limbaugh, et.al., so Santa thought global climate change was just something made up to cheat honest oil executives out of their hard-earned research money.

For the rest, tap those keys on over to The Gods Are Bored, HERE.

And, here's what others have to say on the matter: the BBC; MSNBC; Pravda; the Belfast Telegraph; the New York Times; The London Times; truthout.org; Popular Mechanics; stopglobalwarming.org; salon.com; The Indpendent; redorbit; and last but certainly not least, Cousin Doris, who says, "Global warming is a Hoax."
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thnx to rodolfo clix for the foto; go HERE for more.

THEY'RE Feeding OFF US

Just dropped off the following at Echidne of the Snakes' place:

"The real issue is, why do we have rapists at all? Most simpler societies don't.

"I think we live with something I call starvation culture, in which we behave just the way long-starving social groups do.

In starving groups, the feeding of the self is the all-consuming passion; the ability to feel the pain or needs of others is lacking; and packs of young people steal from children, the elderly, the sick and the disabled.

"Over the millennia, we starvation cultures have obliterated most of the world's healthy cultures.

"Rape is only one of dozens of ways our young men steal what doesn't belong to them. It is indicative of their inability to feel the pain of others.

"We're all in on this. No sense in getting mad at rapists. Until we deal with starvation culture, we're all just as guilty as they are."

For more on starvation culture, enter it into the search engine below.

Or, pre-order a copy of my book, Switching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future*, which is not only about Goddesses, but also about how starvation culture lead to humanity's switch to the father/sky/war gods now threatening to wipe us off the planet.

(Oh. And I almost forgot. I also have a brand new website about Switching. Go HERE to see it.
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* Publisher: O Books, Hampshire, UK; publication date Nov. 28, 2008.
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thnx to staytunedradio for the foto; go HERE for more.