Sunday Poem–“Hair”

November 12, 2017November 12, 2017 / Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

No females in my family had long hair.

Dad did not like it,

said it showed male domination

over women.

Once when grown and gone

from home, I began to grow mine

out, experiment.

When he saw it, he told me

he thought it unbecoming.

I cut it.

Mom said she had long hair

when she was young.

Her dad forbade her to cut it.

In her twenties she chopped her golden locks

off, flapper style, then hid her head

in a scarf, afraid.

Note: This poem is from the family section of my book, “On the Rim of Wonder”.

Is This How Patriarchy Began? by Carol P Christ

June 19, 2017June 19, 2017 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Is violence more likely when men spend a lot of time away from women and children?

In my widely read blog and academic essay offering a new definition of patriarchy, I argued that patriarchy is a system of male dominance that arose at the intersection of the control of female sexuality, private property, and war. In it, bracketed the question of how patriarchy began. Today I want to share some thoughts provoked by a short paragraph in Harald Haarmann’s ground-breaking Roots of Ancient Greek Civilization. Haarmann briefly mentions (but does not discuss) the hypothesis that patriarchy arose among the steppe pastoralists as a result of conflicts over grazing lands. As these conflicts became increasingly violent, patriarchal warriors assumed clan leadership in order to protect animal herds, grazing lands, and the women and children of the clan.

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Omnipotence: The Ultimate Homage to Male Dominance as Control by Carol P. Christ

May 6, 2017May 6, 2017 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

I follow Carol Christ for a variety of reasons including her words often make me think about ideas, concepts, controversies in new ways.

The concept of divine omnipotence is the ultimate expression of male dominance as control. Divine omnipotence is the view that everything that happens in the world happens according to the will of a divinity, who is in control of everything that happens in the world. When someone dies or great suffering occurs, we are told, “everything happens for a purpose,” “it was meant to be,” or “everything happens according to the will of God—or Goddess.” In our recent book Goddess and God in the World, Judith Plaskow and I criticize and reject this view on both rational and moral grounds.

The doctrine of divine omnipotence is widely assumed, not only in Christian theologies, but in Islam and to a lesser extent in Judaism. Moreover, it is also to be found in western metaphysical and mystery traditions and in the many New Age and Goddess theologies based upon them. Thus…

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Who’s to Blame for Patriarchy? by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

June 7, 2016June 7, 2016 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

This just about says it all. Everything I could think of and more. Anyone who thinks it only happens in Latin America, Africa, other places, not in the USA, has not been following the news here.

Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente A 16 year old girl was drugged and then gang raped by 33 men in Brazil. The police arrested the boyfriend as a suspect. A 30-second video recording the suffering of the girl was uploaded to social networks, as a display of the “omnipotent” power of patriarchy on women’s bodies; a power that not only destroys wombs or bladders but also unbearably wounds the soul.

A woman was attacked in Chile by her ex-husband. Her name is Nabila. He raped her and then ripped out her eyes, in a jealous rage, because she attended a party. Months after they broke up, she dared to have fun without him.

Each day the body of a murdered woman appears somewhere in Latin America. They appear in the middle of the road, in garbage dumps, wrapped in plastic bags, among the woods or on the shore, cut into pieces, impaled with…

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Is it harmful to assign positive qualities to women? by Oxana Poberejnaia

October 17, 2015October 17, 2015 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Another take on how male dominated society affects women and men.

I have recently learnt about features assigned to women and men by a Tibetan Lama. Women are seen as having better access to qualities of space and therefore holding special kinds of wisdom that lead to Enlightenment. Men, on the other hand are better suited to create and act within space, and this they are rightful owners of the actions that lead to Enlightenment.

In popular Goddess spirituality it is also normal to find distinction between women and men’s core traits. The properties assigned to the “feminine” and the “masculine” usually follow the same pattern: Goddess stands for interconnectedness, and thus relations and caring for others. God (if there is a place for him) is about protection and action.

I am afraid to say that to me, this approach only embeds patriarchal order by putting women firmly in the sphere of domesticity, even if in the elevated role of “Domestic…