feminish

The latest Carnival of Feminists has just been published over at Body Impolitic. It’s packed with great posts from blogs I’ve never heard of (as always…) and is illustrated with fantastic images. Go peruse!

[I’ve snapped this detail from the Carnival - it’s a photo of late 19thC actress and singer Lillian Russell]

A few readers have got in touch by email to say how surprised they are by my response to feminist Christian Kathryn’s comments on my Wintry link-fest post.

I feel I should explain myself…

When I read, talk or write stuff, or just get on with my daily life, I always try to practice being as open-minded as possible. It’s a point of principle I’ve had since I was a child, encapsulated in Buddhist philosophy’s grounding principle of openness, articulated in this precept:

Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, I am determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist teachings are guiding means to help me learn to look deeply and to develop my understanding and compassion. They are not doctrines to fight, kill or die for. (( The 1st of the 14 Mindfulness Trainings ))

So, in principle, I don’t mind people being Christian and I certainly don’t mind people being Christian at me. Hiyever, I do object to fanaticism and I do object to intolerance. And if someone chooses to be preachingly Christian at a thinking spiritual lass like me, and on this rigorous and grounded blog, I would like them to be ready to receive as good as they give. For the record, I never tolerate spam, which I take to be text posted off-topic to promote another site or product.

But the most honest explanation of my hard response, is that my own spiritual life is based on rigour, and I get impatient when others aren’t rigorous and, further, when they expect me to buy into a non-rigorous position. I work hard to only trust and have faith in things that I myself have experienced to be true.

The spiritual dimension has worth for me only when it really deepens and enriches my daily life. For example, on the post in question, I wrote about how my mindfulness helped me be awake to experience winter; and yet (as far as I could gather) Kathryn wrote about how she was asleep to the fact it was Winter and, for some reason which I don’t quite understand, this was connected to her Christian beliefs. It struck me as foolish, and she fell hostage to my fortune. (( Btw, I also emailed her to ask her if her comment was indeed spam; if it wasn’t could she please come back and respond. She didn’t reply… ))

Fierceness (”letting off with both barrels”, as one of you put it) is nonetheless not my intention, so I shall do my best to be tolerant of everyone, even the unthinking and especially the fanatics.

Try me.

The red vine taught me to accept the darkening days and damp winds.

The light is hazy and thick in the valley this morning - not at all glaring or crisp. I like it.

The past few days have been bright and clear - the kind of penetrating, stark light that leaves no room for slow wake-ups, that gives you no chance to say ‘almost’ or ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps tomorrow’; the kind of light that makes everything around you immediate and transparent - an almost urgent daylight: ‘up we get’, ‘off we go’, ‘come on now’, ‘let’s get to it’, ‘you’re already late’!

Today is different. The world seems softer - a bit more suggested, a little less obvious. If the bright days tell-it-how-it-is in high digital-camera definition, days like today are quintessential Lomo days: mysterious, blurred and heady. You’re not quite sure what’s going on. It feels like dawn has been extended and daylight postponed - the hours have stretched a little and it’s safe to slow down and to take your time.

It’s the kind of day when I can press pause on my feminism and enjoy my cup of tea, properly.

It’s that time of the month again…

There’s the first-ever Carnival of African Women on ‘Blogging and Identity’. And there’s the 24th Carnival of Feminists, with posts on feminism and pop culture, choice feminism, sex-pos feminism and ifeminism.

And, of course, a crop of links about the Veil Thing.

What veil thing? you might ask, if you spent most of this week sheltering under an umbrella from the overhead storms of cyber-media-discourse.

I write that and I immediately think of something I once heard from a very wise woman about a verandah in a monastery in China. It was known as the Listening to the Rain Verandah…. She had stood on that verandah once in a huge, warm thunderstorm. As she was enjoying the verandah she wished she could always have that verandah to go and be on in thunderstorms; to have a reassuringly dry place to take refuge in while the world happened noisily, at one remove, around her. The kind of verandah you can walk out onto and hear the rain and watch the rain and be in the rain and yet not wet. Sometimes I want to come back to that kind of nice, dry verandah in myself. You know the mood…. Those days when you don’t want to catch people’s eyes and wished you were wearing a hoodie so you could just pull it right over your brow and be protected from It All. The kind of day when you don’t want to talk. And the rest of the world can just deal with it.

There’s a lot to be said for hoodies. And umbrellas.

But I digress. Back to the Veil Thing. Well, there’s the Jack Straw Veil Thing, which is sizzling away here, here and here (there’s also a good point here).

And then there’s the feminist blogosphere Veil/burqa Thing (see also this and this) - an evolution of last month’s Boob Thing.

And the thing is (“what is the thing, Natasha?”), the thing is - these discussions are better than any I’ve ever had offline. Honest. Go read.

[UPDATE: I just improved the linking in this last paragraph re. Bitch|Lab’s fair comment below.]

I’m struggling to live in peaceful co-existence with the couple of hundred aoûtats that took residence chez moi yesterday. They must have jumped aboard while I was harvesting walnuts or at dusk when I was ruminating on an outcrop of the cliff above the valley.

Now I know my body has probably 100,000 non-human cells for every human one, but these little luminous orange specks having a buffet on my belly is just not A-O.K., Okay?

The restaurant’s closed, guys.

Move out!

This is a call for comments from people who read this blog. I know there’s more than a few of you because I can see my stats…

I’ve decided to return to the Immanent Grove for a long retreat - at least three months of cold, stark, meditative living in the middle of nowhere for the Winter. Yup, three months it is: a girl’s gotta follow her heart.

In the few weeks between now and then, I’d really like feminish to be as lively and active as possible. I’ve realised how much I’ve got to say. (And at least here the readership is voluntary; I can’t say the same for the victims of my TV/ supermarket/ front-room rants…) But I’m also pretty sure this can act as a provocative forum - especially for the E1 ladeez.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thank you to Lingual Tremors for putting together an excellent 23rd Carnival of Feminists.

The theme is women and healthcare, including a cluster of writing on ‘Health care in a Handmaiden World’. The post that most caught my eye was from Indian Writing on What’s not in a name: names given to unwanted / unwelcome girl babies in some sections of Punjab/Haryana.

Go read!

Feminish is back after a few hours down today.

Sorry about that, folks - I seems to have been a consequence of humans polluting the atmosphere for the past few centuries, leading to global warming leading to Californian heatwaves leading to aircons on full-blast leading to power cuts where my server is living.

I don’t like war, but I know I have violence in myself.

I do like tea, but I know that sometimes the women who picked it weren’t fairly paid or fairly treated.

I don’t like the idea of make-up, but I sometimes feel more happy wearing it than not.

I hate getting dressed.

I don’t want to be like Mum, but I also do.

I feel guilty about my privilege, but also grateful. Without it I wouldn’t have read the books I’ve read, met the people I’ve met, or had the experiences I’ve had. I want to use my good fortune for the benefit of others - but I’m not sure I’m doing that very well.

I see how, despite myself, I’m a party to the oppression of women - I sometimes catch myself thinking it matters how they are dressed, how they keep their homes, how they treat their children or pursue their careers. And yet I’m loathe to be judged by these same standards myself.

I think porn is outrageous, but I’m hesitant to speak for the women who engage in it, or to support organised ways to stop it. I want my freedoms and I don’t want to deny others theirs. But I still hate porn: I hate what it does, to the men who consume it and the women those men then consume - the women in the photos and the films, and the wives and girlfriends and platonic friends back home.

I like to read and to think but sometimes I take in too much and think too much and would much rather just lie under a tree, looking at bugs.

I feel happiest when I’m practising meditation. It calms my anger and lifts my sadness and gives me peace and clarity I’ve never experienced otherwise. I feel less feminist but more fully human when I’m really practising. Which, when I’m in that place of awareness, makes me feel truly free; and when I’m not, makes me feel very worried.