Rod Amis - Unbound

Unconventional Wisdom

G21 #413: The World's Women DAY ONE G21 AFRICA JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. G21 E-MAIL NEWSLETTER MY GLASS HOUSE Welcome to the throw-down. NEW YORK STATE RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT VOX POPULI RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT ARCHIVES. MEMOIRS OF THE INFORMATION AGE ARCHIVES. LAST WEEK's EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE. WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you. We know you're lazy. Here's a button for a quick translation of this page. Just click on the flag for your country. You're welcome! OR TRY THIS GOOGLE TRANSLATION SERVICE.

NEW ORLEANS - 27 March, 2005: The last time This Editor did an edition of the your World's Magazine specifically devoted (themed) around women, he entitled it "Universal Madonna." It was part of a tripartite holiday series that went men, women and children. Some of the current writers here were not part of that series and, thus, it was not a surprise to Yours Unruly when one of the G21 Africa writers here suggested that I should bring up the theme of the plight of women again. I had just gone on a run for this middle of the fifth year of the "oughties" with the plight of Black Americans and then Palestineans. IF I meant this to be our year of coming strong on salient issues, those of women was a logical choice.

And as problematic as the others, frankly.

Like Vanessa Redgrave, one of my favorite actresses, the older I get the more radical I seem to become. I have moved so far to the Left that I am almost Right.

As Loyal Readers know, most of my friends are women. For a celibate man to say that would, on its face, seem an anomaly. For a man who had most often been described as a "dog" in his youth to say that would put one in the company of St. Augustine. I have learned to accept my personal contradictions. Even my best lover has described me as having been "predatory" as regards women.

All I can say today, in my defense, is that I am only human and therefore as susceptible to testosterone poisoning as any other man.

I certainly know those periods when my hormones are raging.

At the same time, I would like to believe that I have the highest respect for the majority of the human race who are not men. I love the way they look, walk, sound, talk, think, feel. I love women, make no mistake about it.

This fact makes me both guilty and cognizant of how women have gotten the short end of the stick for centuries.

The heinous practice of genital mutilation in Africa and the Arab countries has NO JUSTIFICATION. It is criminal and oppressive. The so-called "pro-life" position in the United States that would starve a living child while being willing to force a woman to accept a fetus created by mistake, that would take possession of a woman's body as if it were property, that would rather see more suffering than less in this world and the lack of sex education enforced by the Bush Administration is criminal. That HIV/AIDS is rampant among Black American women is a testament to rampant stupidity and ignorance. That the rich countries of the world are recalcitrant in addressing the greatest plague, AIDS, that the world has ever seen in order to maintain their hegemony and support the interests of multinational drug companies -- again sacrificing, literally, the lives of women and children -- is genocide. That women and children are the poorest people in the world with the highest mortality rate is a crime against humanity. That women are still killed -- burned alive in Indian -- for the same sexual indiscretions that men commit and brag about is nothing short of mortal sin.

We must all be called to account. We know this goes on every day and if we don't cry to high Heaven about it, we are less than moral citizens.

IF we don't speak out, we are criminals and coconspirators. Your World's Magazine finds that unacceptable and will not be silent.

Every time a woman is humiliated, mutilated and beaten down, so are we. So am I.

Every time a woman is allowed to starve and die, so am I.

So where does the social justice begin, Jeremiah?

This edition of your World's Magazine is devoted to telling you that.

As Editor and Publisher, I take it as my responsibility to let the writers both complain, accuse and make suggestions. I guess, as The Voice from Mount Olympus, I must recommend solutions and I shall.

Fasten your seat-belt.

IANNA

There are those, especially among the ecumenical mystics who sprang up during the latter part of the last century, many who fall under the rubrics New Age and Wiccan, who believe that the world was once a matriarchy. These people believe that the only religions were devoted to the worship and celebration of the Great Mother. Since patriarchy has obtained for approximately the last three thousand years, at least here in the West, and t he history of human civilizations -- as far as we know -- only spans twice that time, we must assume that this age of matriarchal society was so distant as to be nearly incomprehensible.

A question arises for someone as eccentric as Your Unruly. Whenever I exhibit the few images of the Ianna, the Great Mother, in public, I notice a discomfort in the room. I've done this in lectures, when I was in my thirties, and watched people -- both men and women -- sq;uirm in their seats.

Is there some residue of the matriarchy in our race-memory that we still find frightening? Just asking.

To the converse, is there something about patriarchial society that fears sensuality and lust? Are men afraid of being in the throes of ecstacy? Again, just asking.

From the Buddha of the East, to Yahweh in the West, our thinking is now shaped by the idea of the Father God. Ianna is not with us and has not been in recent cultural memory except among the fringe elements just mentioned.

And if we attempt to look back across the ages at the face of the Great Mother, what do we see? Whether Isis, Asteroth, Ianna, or Gaia, do we see a preferable alternative to Zeus, Odin or Yahweh? Is it compassion and nurturing, a respect and homage for the natural cycles of the world, a grand and harmonious cosmic consciousness? Are those matrilineal societies still extant, such as Judaism, mirrors of a great human tradition that we should emulate today?

There are further philosophical questions that arise. Why was the repudiation of the matriarchy so widespread and insistent? Why, after three thousand years, did disparate and disconnected cultures begin to look for prophets, gurus and philosophers who spoke of a more inclusive vision of the universe?

Did humanity look into the face of the Great Mother and find more anger and fear than love and nurturing?

These are rhetorical questions, of course, but rhetorical questions worth asking if we are concerned with the essential nature of humanity ...

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Central to the Great Mother belief system, as best we understand it, there is the condition of "ecstasy." It is analogous and a counterpoint to the Christian notion of "Pentecost." In both instances, the believer is infused with a holy spirit that transcends and defines reason. This state of ecstasy redefines ones world view and is transformative, much as the Christian Pentecostal experience. described in the Acts of the Apostles, changed the nature of the disciples' evangelism.

The significant and defining difference for devotees, or disciples, of Ianna is that they were thereafter privy to the mysteries of the universe.

Allow me to repeat myself in order to clearly define the last premise. The Christian Pentecostal experience was transformative in that it allowed for the formation of an evangelical, that is a recruiting, community. The Great Mother experience of ecstasy was transformative in that it allowed for the revelation of mysteries.

In short, the latter experience was "initiative" or personal (thus, the term "iniate") while the other was essentially social and communal.

After the experience of Pentecost, Christians had no choice but become a communal religious order, an emulation and reflection of the Jewish community from which they sprang. The Great Mother religions, on the other hand, were about a personal identification with their view of the source of Life.

If we understand these conditions, we begin to gain an insight into the essential natures of matriarchal and patriarchal belief systems.

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We, in the West, are Christian because of a decision by the Emperor Constantine. By the time the decision was taken, the Roman Empire was in severe decline and Constantinople (now Istanbul, significantly named after the Emperor of the eastern empire) overshadowed Rome in significance. His choice, as those Loyal Readers who are students of history know, was between the Christian confession and Zarathustraism. Christianity won on the social technicality that women were afforded equal rights in Heaven.

Yes, Constantine had an Empress.

A small, independent and outspoken magazine like this one can't reach you every week without the support and patronage of its readership. As our way of thanking those who have committed to keep your World's Magazine here on your desktop through their generous donations, we feature their names and cities here in our Roll of Honor. SUSTAINING PATRONS DARHL STULTZ, Largo, FL, USA TIMOTHY MEADOWS, Anaheim, CA, USA CHERYL HILL NATION, West Fairlee, VT, USA DRAGAN & DRAGANA VICANOVIC, Belgrade, SERBIA LESZEK MICHAELWICZ, New Orleans, LA, USA TERRY TERRIAN, Sebastopol, CA, USA MATT STOWELL, New Orleans, LA, USA Supporting Patrons BARBARA ATWELL, Berkeley, CA, USA BECKY ALTEMUS, Houston, TX, USA IAN CRYSTAL, Ph. D, New Orleans, LA, USA LARS KEFFERSTAN, New York, NY, USA MEREDITH TUPPER, Tampa, FL, USA NICK ALLEN, New Orleans, LA, USA RIC WILLIAMS, Austin, TX, USA STEVE VIVIAN, New York, NY, USA STUART ALTMAN, ESQ., New York, NY, USA We encourage you to add your name to this Roll of Honor. GENERATOR 21 cannot continue and thrive without your support. Thanks in advance. To support G21, please send checks or money orders to: G21: The World's Magazine Attn: Rod Amis c/o Matt Stowell 1310 Barracks New Orleans, LA 70116 USA To donate by credit or debit card, please go to the Western Union website by following the highlighted link. Should you donate via Western Union, please notify us via e-mail. Please make all remittances payable to Rod Amis. Again, thanks.

There is a lovely Serbian text, my love, in which the speech St. Cyril (supposed author of the Cyrillic language) has to compete with Zarathustrian thinkers in presenting the case of a choice to the Emperor. It is both witty and profound. I wish you could read it, as I have.

The point of this aside? History is full of accidents. The way we think about the world and the universe is shaped by caprice as much as by logic.

Finally, as regards women: they have had some philosophical victories along the way.

GANDHI'S WIFE

The Mahatma is one of my icons. Most of us in the Progressive community honor his memory and aspire to be more like him.

BUT if I had a daughter who said she wanted to marry that little man, I'd lock her away until he was out of the picture. I don't know a single woman among those I love and respect who would marry such a man.

Mohandas Gandhi is known to have loved his wife deeply and she is known to have felt the same. It takes a special kind of woman to love a saint.

DIGRESSION: We have bandied the aphorism a long time that "Behind every great man there is a great woman." If that is true then Yours Unruly shan't be great. And I suppose that Augustine, Aristotle, Homer, Wilde, James Baldwin and Beethoven were all chopped liver, as well.

I bring up Gandhi's wife in this context because, when considering the women of the world, we must consider all facets of life for the majority of the world's people. This particular woman is apropos to our subject because she is silent in the record of our history, for the mos t part, while playing a prominent part in its development. In their private moments, she must have chastised the "great" man often. She must have been the especially tortured among his closest associates. She must even have wondered, once or twice, if she had hitched her wagon to that a madman.

Yet, her words are absent from our record, much as those of political wives -- with few, and mostly modern, exceptions. Gandhi's wife, like Caesar's wife, is presented to us only as an image, a mute model of moral rectitude and romantic devotion. There is tragedy here and a sense of our own loss if we are committed to a record of truth.

I think of Shirley Graham DuBois, by way of contrast. She was the wife of the African American icon, W.E.B. DuBois. It was my fortune to meet her, during my youth, at her palatial flat overlooking the Nile in Cairo. She had just published a "liberation" novel about a great and violent takeover in South Africa. It is all of our good fortune that Nelson Mandela provided a nonviolent approach to change.

My point about Mrs. DuBois is that, much like Hillary Clinton -- who coincidentally also insisted on the use of her maiden name in forms of address -- she did not want to be a silent part of history simply by dint of having married a "great" man. Rather she needed and actively worked to make the point that she was a "great" woman. Therein lies the contrast between she and Gandhi's wife.

THE AVERAGE PERSON

Thus far my approach in this journal entry has been philosophical rather than practical, historical-critical rather than conclusive. This is by intent. I believe it's necessary for you to understand the basis of my thinking before considering my proposed solutions.

You will probably find this shocking, until I expand on my very short list, but the solutions to the conditions under which the majority of the world's population -- women -- and the average person -- a Chinese woman -- suffer are clear and simple. The United Nations settled on them during the last century. If you mean to address the plight of women in this world you have to deal with only three issues:

1. Poverty: The mass of people who are impoverished, even in the wealthiest nation on Earth, are women and children. You fight poverty, you immediately change the status of the world's women.
2. Hunger: More women and -- tragically and sinfully -- children die of hunger than men. This is not just concomitant to the poverty issue. More women and children are refugees in a century that seems to be bent on creating refugees; and more women and children are the victims of war. The issue of potable water has not received enough attention by the Mouthpiece Media or world leaders and it should be. We are facing a crisis.

   Events like the recent catastrophic tsunami in South Asia and East Africa only exacerbate the problem.

3. Education: This one is self-evident, from non-ideological sex education to the number of the world's women who are denied access to education at all.

Just dealing with those three simple issues would impact how the world's women are treated as regards employment, as regards our marital customs -- cross-culturally -- and impact the choices that girls and women have in this era of so-called "globalization." All of this is do-able. The resources are already there. But the resources are intentionally being withheld.

NGOZI RAZAK-SOYEBI makes a valid point in her argument that "those crazy Philistines" (meaning most of us men) actively work to keep women out of The Game of life. I'd personally use much stronger terms, unsuitable for a "family" magazine (heh!) like this one. Those assholes don't realize how they are hurting us all, all of humanity. We need two oxen pulling the yoke of human progress and human rights, two horses pulling the same plow. I'd like "the average person" on my side in this struggle -- and have no doubt about it, it is a struggle.

My next door neighbor, whose name is Denise, lives in a Section 8 half double the same size as my own (I live in the other half) without certain trendy amenities that I have that would make the place more attractive for White people who are hip to the gentrification of this part of the 'hood.

Some people here claim we are in the "Lower Nine," meaning the last district in New Orleans. They are wrong, as anyone who grew up and knows the Lower Nine would tell you. Yes, we are part of the Ninth Ward, but we are that part that is contiguous to the rest of New Orleans proper. We are still in the Bywater. Once you cross the Industrial Canal, you are in the real Lower Ninth Ward, that should have been made part of St. Bernard Parish -- rather than Orleans Parish -- except for political machinations.

Back to Denise. We share the same sized space. The difference is that she shares it with six children. I live here alone, for the time being and by the grace of God. Nick seems to be inured of having an indentured servant who can do construction work for him and increase the value of his properties. (He just bought the single next door to this double and I am assigned to sand and paint it and help to do the repairs to work off my debt.)

My guess is that Denise is in her late thirties or early forties. She probably started young, if you know what I mean and I believe you do.

This is what life in the ghetto shows you every day of your life: the plight of women. In New Orleans you see strong Black women like Denise, who hold down a job, provides for her children and tries to keep them in check (meaning not involved in all the awful influences of this neighborhood) every single day. Denise neither gets or asks for props. She does what she has to do. In a better world, a world I keep trying to envision, she would be canonized.

I hope that is NOT just me.

There are women all over the world, the world's women, making similar heroic efforts. They are the real machers, to use the Yiddish locution. We men just stand by and watch ... Or a few of us write about them with awe.

Any media person of integrity will tell you about "The Rules" of what type of coverage passes muster, especially here in America, but in other countries as well. It is acceptable, for example, to run video of a woman lamenting the loss of her family in a war zone but you won't see a dead woman or a child who has stumbled upon the unexploded remains of a cluster bomb. "The American public doesn't want to see those images. They are in bad taste."

Editors, almost invariably male -- including this one, will take a pass on the practice of using depleted uranium weapons -- which has been standard for the American military for over a decade -- and its implications for the health of women and children in a war zone. But they'll gladly run a story about women throwing a party, debutante style, to show off their latest surgical enhancements.

Editors, almost invariably male -- including this one, will kill a story about women in towns effected by NAFTA, where the men have all moved closer to or over the border for work, leaving they and their children to fend for themselves in favor of one about a "plucky" small town girl from anywhere on the globe who started her own line of clothing.

The recent flap about the lack of women in the news room should not be taken lightly. "Let us sit and tell stories of great men."

Too many modern-day journalists still romanticize themselves as the Shapers sitting around the campfire spinning mythic tales of the men who made the world. Women, children, servants, are notoriously absent from such tales. Oh, strike that. They may appear at the end looking on in silent adoration or gratitude.

The average person must chafe; not only at the expurgation of history but how the modern world view is so devoid of her presence and her concerns. It must rankle that she is so assiduously presented as a bystander rather than participant in her own day-to-day life. American writer Mary McCarthy wrote famously, roughly forty year s ago: "Scratch a woman, find a rage."

This Editor knows all about rage and wonders how, at the beginning of this new century, anyone can NOT be outraged about the status and circumstances of the world's women.

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NEWS TO ROD

We are personally saddened by the passing of the Pope.

He was a great beacon in a dark world. He travelled to minister to his flock more than any other Holy Father; so much so that there were few places you could go -- even Phoenix, Arizona -- where people did not have stories about when the Pope came to visit. For a globe-trotter like Yours Unruly, that was heart-warming.

He stood for justice. As a Pole, he knew the ravages of the Soviet regime and stood foursquare against them. Americans like to claim it was Reagan that brought down that regime; the truth might be closer to internal rot and the moral authority of the Pope. He also stood foursquare against the over-reaching of the American regime under George W. Bush.

While standing for liberation and justice on many issues, John Paul II was doctrinally conservative. This can be understood philosophically, if not accepted practically. Many of his dictums were found abhorrent in this quarter. Nonetheless, while disagreeing with him on certain issues, we never lost respect for him.

The world is emptier without him.

LIFE OF ROD

6 April, 2005: There's not that much to tell. My birthday? I spent the evening and night out with my friends Matt and Shawn, both former roomies. A good time was had by all; so good, in fact, that Friday was spent in a vegetative state.

Frank Sinatra, who inherited leadership of the Rat Pack from my alter ego, Humphrey Bogart, said it: "I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, they know that's the best they're going to feel all day." There is something to be said for the Swinging Lifestyle, something I was accused of living by twenty-somethings when I first started the G21, your World's Web Magazine, in San Francisco a decade ago.

Those of you familiar with the Macintosh Operating System will know about "Easter Eggs." There is one for this Glass House. Good luck!

I am still living at the house on Poland Street. I am working off my debt by painting the single next door that Nick has acquired. (Soon I shall have painted more houses in New Orleans than Sherwin-Williams.) It is akin to indentured servitude in that I am trading labor for housing but Nick and I have reached an accommodation of sorts. I shall get paid enough to eat and buy cigarettes and beer.

Nick asked me, "What are you going to do after this?"

I said: "I don't think that far in advance any longer. What's the point?"

So money remains a problem, as does eating.

Matt's birthday was 4 April, only days after my own. I wanted to take him out for at least one drink -- that I would pay for for a change. But it was a Monday. I can't abide Jo, as he knows. So I must wait to regale him. On the Sunday prior, we enjoyed the company of some of the habitues of the Bywater and got thoroughly bright. That was a start.

Vickie is down with no foreseeable chance of restoration.

I received two other birthday gifts in the post. Two books and four pouches of pipe tobacco(?!?) from DC, along with thirty dollars. Chocolate and candles from Barbara and Rich.

I have just shaken off another deep depression.

As we end this segment of Life of Rod there is a knock at the door.

"Dude! Do you have any beerage?"

What are you doing here?

"Your lights were still on? Wassup?"

I'm cooking my dinner.

"Cool! I'm starving! But do you have any beer or not?

Ya think?

"Awesome! What? You workin' on that damned magazine of yours again?"

Why would I do that? Who reads it?

"You'll NEVER believe what happened to me last night!"

Try me.

Thanks for coming back this week.

THINGS I PRAY FOR THIS WEEK

1 - She's between 5'6" and 5'9", between 47 and 52 years of age, actually still reads books on a regular basis that aren't only Romance novels, has a passport and is not afraid to use it; doesn't think that sex is "dirty." AND seeing the light behind her eyes.

2 - My friend Terry's continued life. The man means much to me and I haven't heard from him. I take losing people harder than I admit.

3 - Vickie, my beloved Memory Machine, back to me for our last run.

"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching ... "

Love,
Rod

ROD AMIS has published this magazine since 1990. It first appeared as a hardcopy 'Zine. In March, 1996, he launched it here on the Web. Rod was a Contributing Editor at Suite101.com, where he wrote the " 'Net Publishing" feature. His work has been featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, NRV8, and at the (U.S.) Public Broadcasting System (PBS's) WebLab's Reality Check site. Rod was a contributing writer on technology for Faulkner Information Services. He wrote on Web issues for MethodFive.com's Hyper newsletter.

Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS Internet magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.

In 2002, he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. He did stints as the Resident Philosopher at three separate gin mills in that city in the French Quarter and the Marigny, earning his stripes during two successive Mardi Gras seasons. Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia.

Our Resident Philosopher is now resuming his hejira. Having completed his training as a Community Organizer for ACORN, where he worked to make positive change for other poor people like himself, he left the staff as a union organizer, disillusioned and disgusted by the scam they've run for years. He went back to "honest" work -- meaning manual labor.

Now he needs to find an angel to hire him to do this magazine ...

In his spare time, he chases women in the manner that a fly pursues a spider.

He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.

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