A Digression into the Misogyny Behind Gender Identity
As advertised, I'm going to briefly digress from my storytelling in order to address a dangerously misogynistic insult that our government will impose on this nation's women should The Equality Act of 2021 be made law. Don't despair, though, because I'm going to address it from two perspectives. The first will be my personal response to this outrage, in this post. The second will be an account of my shamanic inquiry into the matter, which I'll share with you in my next post.
If you've been following my posts, you already know I'm a feminist Bear shaman, and I've shared some of my adventures as such with you. I call my practice feminist shamanism for several reasons. The first is that it restores the archetypal Feminine to the practice of contemporary shamanism, which, like so much else since colonization, has been infected with patriarchal biases. It also means that feminist shamanism not only offers individual women novel ways to deal with patriarchal abuses, but that being a feminist, I’ll occasionally engage in feminist activism to offer a feminist shamanic perspective on various cultural or political issues. This post falls into that category.
But feminist shamanism goes far beyond journeying and adventuring in shamanic reality, however refreshing and restorative to the feminine psyche doing so may be.
Feminist shamanism also interprets the guidance received during such adventures in ways that allow for its appropriate application to how we move through our daily lives as women. Such guidance often contains crucially important information for women navigating the patriarchal dysfunction of these times.
Although many gains have been made in women's rights in many areas, contemporary women are nevertheless living in a profoundly patriarchal culture whose misogynistic contempt for the Feminine currently simmers just beneath the surface of society, breaking through into general consciousness from time to time.
Granted, contemporary hatred of the Feminine is not currently being expressed in the kind of public, religiously sanctioned mayhem that resulted in the Burning Times in 16th and 17th century Europe. During that time thousands—if not millions—of women were killed, most often by burning at the stake, for practicing ancient women's ways. (The estimates of the number of women killed varies from 10,000 to 9,000,000, depending upon the research methods and biases of those investigating this women's holocaust.)
In today's contemporary culture, individual women are being psychologically battered, beaten, raped, and murdered at alarming rates by intimate partners and other misogynistic males in private settings.
What inspired me to digress into this subject, you ask? It's my visceral reaction to the potential ramifications for women of the 2021 Equality Act now moving through Congress.
Below is the official Summary of the 2021 Equality Act by the Congressional Research Service, in the event anyone is still confused about whether or not this bill discriminates against and endangers natal women.
It sounds great until you get to the last bits, and even so it would be fine if the noxious term "gender identity" were removed, or in some cases replaced by the word "sex," because the term "gender identity" is being used by misogynistic men who are not satisfied with being trans women, to bully and oppress women. This is being accomplished by their insane demands that we disbelieve and deny what our own eyes, ears, intelligence, life experience, and senses tell us. They demand that we instead believe their gaslighting lie that men are in fact actual women, no different from natal women, if they say they are.
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SUMMARY OF THE 2021 EQUALITY ACT
Prepared by The Congressional Research Service
This bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system. Specifically, the bill defines and includes sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation.
The bill expands the definition of public accommodations to include places or establishments that provide (1) exhibitions, recreation, exercise, amusement, gatherings, or displays; (2) goods, services, or programs; and (3) transportation services.
The bill allows the Department of Justice to intervene in equal protection actions in federal court on account of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The bill prohibits an individual from being denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual's gender identity.
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My personal take on this bill is that it erases the actual biological and cultural and experiential meanings of the word female from the English language, and along with that, all the rights and protections that females have fought for centuries to restore.
It means that any male would have the legal right to enter any space that has historically been designated "women only," a designation that exists for the very much needed physical, psychological, and sexual protection of women, and that women would have no way whatsoever to prevent this, or to protect themselves from potential assaults.
If this bill becomes law, any male who simply says he's a woman will have the legal right to gain entry to women's public restrooms, gym shower rooms, or dressing rooms in women's clothing stores, all small enclosed spaces difficult to escape from, where actual women are generally in varying states of undress. (Thinking here of the woman who accused the former president of raping her in a women's clothing department changing room.)
Such men can gain entry simply by declaring they're women, in spite of the obvious fact that one look at them should inform any sane person that they're NOT women.
I find this part of the bill to be the most infuriating, because it means that women would be legally required to disbelieve what our very eyes, ears, and senses tell us, which enables us to distinguish women from men, among countless other protective realizations, and to believe instead that any man who simply SAYS he's a woman IS in fact a woman, no different in any way from a natal woman, which is a dangerously insane premise.
This bill is nothing more than a political expression of craziness and crazy making equivalent to the craziness and crazy making that fuels Qanon on the far right.
Instead of legally enabling the erasure of the female sex, and exposing women to even more dangers than we already face, our leaders should be questioning the sanity of those males who are insisting they are no different in any way from actual, real, natal females.
Yes, the politicians sponsoring and attempting to make this bill law are SAYING that this bill is about gender equality, but they're lying. This bill is in fact one of the worst assaults on women's rights in the history of this country.