Move over Daddy, Mama's comin' home!

Back in the 70's, I had no idea what the feminist movement meant to me. I was vaguely aware of the whole bra burning thing. And Gloria Steinem. And The Feminine Mystique (In the book, Friedan hypothesizes that women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children). Frankly, in mine and most of my friends peripheral awareness - if we thought about it at all - we thought of the women involved as bitter man haters. And the bra burning was titillating (she said tit!) but puzzling. Speaking for myself, I couldn't wait to NEED a bra and going without one irritated my nubile new nipples. I get the symbolism now, sure. It seems it would have made more sense to burn corsets or girdles or support pantyhose! But I am SO appreciative that women before me fought for my right to be ignorant and apathetic. One look around the world shows us how far American women have come - because that shit happening to women in the Middle East and Asia and Africa was happening to ALL of us. They were setting us on fire y'all! On FIRE!

This is just a little aside, but while American and Britsh women have experienced 3 waves of feminism since the early 1900's, the French had something called 'French Feminism'. I'm not sure but I think that consists of women in tight black pencil skirts smoking filter-less Galois cigarettes and sneering "Fuck Vous!" at clueless men on the Champs Elysees.

It wasn't until I read Eckhart Tolle's book "A New Earth" that the enormity of what women have been dealt throughout history hit me. You know we used to rule the world, right? Go back about 13,000 years when matriarchal societies ruled the earth. The shift of power from women to men started in the neolithic period and of course we women saw the signs.

1. He became distant.
2. Worked late.
3. Came home with booze on his breath.
4. Suddenly found fault with everything we did.

But, we told ourselves we were being paranoid. Afterall, when we asked him, he said everything was fine. So, despite our big fat matriarchal intuition we kept quiet and did nothing until, beginning in 1900 BC, women woke the fuck up to find that they'd lost the right to choose a partner at will. They were traded by their fathers to their husbands and were subject to his lordship! Their children also became property of that lordship. It was a complete coup!

Now, according to Tolle, we are all spirit and ego and women are less ego driven (unless we're jlo) because we are less mind identified. We are more intuitive. It seems that EGO needed male dominance to flourish and grow. So the great scourge on women began. The sacred feminine was declared demonic and somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to 5 million women were tortured and killed. Every culture and religion joined in. As we know, the oppression of women still exists in many parts of the world. What this tells me is that men were and are scared shitless of us!

It's widely believed, in certain circles, that the "Return of the Feminine" is in motion. Tolle talks about the increasing worldwide "awakening" that will serve to dissolve the collective ego. "New Age" and "Empowerment" thinking has been evolving since the 80's and is really exploding now. So, I think the big shift is going to happen on....December 21, 2012! And 13,000 years from now some guy is going to be blogging or telepathing about not really having been aware of the whole maleism movement and how he thought it was ridiculous to burn his jock strap when he had waited so long to get his very first one!