Dialogue: ER

Original Message

From: ER, Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Dear Robert,

We are different. Of course we are.

But the concept, its obvious truth, causes me fear. I know my history. That difference allowed men, over centuries and millenia, to transform us into the dangerous "other." It allowed men to deny us an education. Not to read meant to remain slaves. It denied us the right to choose partners, the right to paint, publish...the right to vote, the right to property, even our children. (Only wealthy women/daughters were sometimes permitted tutors.)

This, after all, was the past. Wasn’t it? But is the current status of most Arab women a thing of the past?

And, given the conservative power in this country, who’s to say we won’t revert, slowly, ever so slowly, to the past? Law by law, a slow decline, almost unnoticeable. It’s already beginning.

Your editorial was rational yet passionate, not one single lapse in tone, graceful, as graceful as the yoking of female and male.

Are your words only a sparrow call into the wilderness? In my underground telluric imagination, and fearful hope, it wasn’t.

And the reason for that suppression, the fear of women—which seems more common than I had previously imagined—remains totally opaque to me. It is as if the south pole of a magnet decided to proceed upon its own, ignoring the north and thereby destroying its effectiveness. The historical record is stark: women have been universally repressed, with great deliberation and malice.

But. Weren’t women complicit—I’m asking here for genuine insight, not being ironic or satirical—in their own bondage? I think there is more here than the mere physical dominance; after all, a man has to sleep sometime and if there are children, a woman has to be mobile to tend them: a waking woman is always stronger than a sleeping man...if she wishes. So how did the Sky God people manage to subvert the earlier, chthonic, cultures? Pretty obvious that most earlier cultures were earth centered rather than sky centered; so what made the Sky people so strong as to be able to subsume all others? Used to think that it was steel...but a little research revealed that steel is easier to make than bronze and the early steel was generally softer than bronze of the same era. The whole movement was a true paradigm shift, one of the most profound in human history...the scientific revolution was simply an offshoot...science follows directly from the reductionism of the bifurcation of male and female...each cuts away half of reality and either ignores or sequesters it.

I see no reason—other than the weight of history—that that practice of suppressing the Female principle cannot be overturned, that women cannot assume a place that is equal, and fully natural in the function and structure of a society. That society cannot, must not be, a scion of any culture now extant—all seem to me to be equally contaminated by the past—but must be something radically new, or terribly old….

If humanity is to continue to exist, we must come to see the world in a different way, see it as a process to be engaged, and not a beast to be tamed.

My sense is that my voice is very small, but not lonely. I think that the poetry is the last few Bellowing Arks indicate that something is indeed stirring, that women at least are beginning to wake up and look at other possibilities. I don’t have much hope for men...for one thing, they have too much invested in the current status quo...and very, very few seem to "like" women, much less respect the Female. That has to be changed. Part of my difficulties in this matter is that I am male and can have no true understanding of the Female, so any suggestions that I might make will be contaminated by my past and present. I continue to call upon the women I know to begin, as a thought experiment, to imagine a viable culture that would give woman/Female her natural stature.

To name a thing is to call it into existence; let us name a thing that will help heal the world. If the task seems daunting, so? Education is important, but isn’t it clear that the kind of education done now simply perpetuates the system? Conflict resolution and anger management are not the way out of our trap; I don’t believe that suppressing the Male is any better answer than suppressing the Female; they have to be yoked and work in tandem for a healthy culture to evolve.

Enough! Do feel welcome to respond, disagree as violently and frequently as you feel necessary but continue to participate in this conversation. Your comments are valuable and thought-provoking; dialog is necessary if an answer is to be found.

From: ER

I too have studied long and hard on this. And I will reply in kind. But just for now: one thing is true. Women are/were complicit. Earlier it was to protect their pregancy, and then later their children. Why? To gain food, a cave; in other words survival. Also: to reveal one’s strength, physical or intellectual, or to chose the path of Lillith, is to lose love and gain aloneness. Now, and only recently, women can obtain their own food and cave.
But before, let us say until 1920’s, we were kept from this choice. Did we allow it? Yes. Perhaps because it meant being name the "other," or becoming an outcast. Poor, isolated, prostituted. Like the Jew or the Black...and we know what happened, is happening, to them. (Marx wrote tellingly on this...the economics of needing and producing slaves to keep capitalism healthy.)

I am convinced the sky god, or Apollo, won by force. By sheer physical force...rape and slaughter stay as a memory in the body. Don’t they? Is there not some primitive memory in each woman of what happens if she revolts?

I need more time....just some thoughts. Elaine.

You know, Robert, there is a wetlands behind Reed College, a short walk away for me, wooded, paths and small islands, herons...and I yearn to go there many times. For the silence, the isolation, and the beauty. But, I don’t....even now, even old. I sometimes think I could carry a small gun, just so I can walk there without thinking to watch and be aware. It’s very sad, and very real.