Says It All

 

I'd love to attribute this to someone because it sums up our current situation so well. Unfortunately it was a random meme on Facebook - but it was just too good to waste. 

Chaos & COVID

 

There's just too much going on to share. I spend so much time on the computer managing our Facebook group and researching and writing assignments,  that I haven't been able to face blogging.

But amid the chaos and conspiracy theories, I managed to get the first COVID vaccination yesterday. Last night was a bit rough and I'm on Panadol, but I hope to be better tomorrow.

Hope you are all doing well.

Whatabout-ism & the Patriarchy

I’ve recently been introduced to the term ‘whatabout-ism’. I guess I knew it was a ‘thing’, I just didn’t know what the colloquial term for it was. You probably recognise it as ‘deflection’ – of course on social media it has taken on a character of its own. I’ve discovered the phenomenon is rife in contemporary discourse. Here’s a recent example (directed at me):

'Just another typical responce(sic) from a western female who cares not for her islamic and third world sisters.' 

Wtf? How did we get from a discussion on equity for women to THAT?

My darkest fears were confirmed when I overheard a conversation between prison officers the other day at work. One animated male was holding the floor and raving about how women were oppressed under Islam and how girls were still being circumcised in Malaysia. Again wtf? Is this a pathetic attempt by the patriarchy to put us back in our place because other women actually have something to complain about, but we in the West don't? Of course it is.

So I Googled whataboutism:

‘Whataboutism when employed as a response in an argument, or as a troll tactic, takes away the attention from the issue at hand. A lot of experts have been observing a rise in this logically faulty technique in regular discourse’. (1)

Yep. That’s it. So I Googled 'patriarchy in Australia', just to make sure it was also a ‘thing’ and I wasn't making it up:

‘Is Australia a patriarchal society?

Patriarchy is a site of oppression for women in Australia. All systems and institutions are patriarchal – health systems, legal systems, legislation, education systems, decision-making -political and governments systems, welfare system, and so on are all developed within patriarchal ideology’.

When you say it like that it seems obvious. The author was from a now defunct group advocating for the elimination of violence against women in Australia and it’s on the money.

To combat the new ‘but what about…’ tactic being used by the patriarchy, I don’t engage. Instead I immediately nip it in the bud and declare: ‘this is just a deflection from the topic’. 

It seems to shut them down pretty quickly.

Graphic: modified by author (I changed the text)
(1) https://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/whataboutism-the-epidemic-hidden-in-plain-sight/
(2) Women Everywhere Advocating Violence Elimination Inc (Australia) http://www.weaveinc.org.au

Enough

I'm still on the theme of women's rights because it has dominated my 60 years on the planet. It started the day I was born. I know this because after my father died I found a card that was given to him in 'honour' of my birth. I don't have it any more because I was so furious I ripped it to shreds. There was a photo of my rather dapper dad leaning lazily on the wing of a small aircraft with feet crossed in a suave pose. Alongside was some text written by his 'Elders'* workmates that read something like this: 

'Blah, blah......well if you put in a little more effort, maybe you could do better next time and produce a boy. I'm sure you are at least capable of finding a suitable name for Miss Chrisp' (my 'maiden' name - and I hate that terminology too).

My mother who was definitely not a submissive female, even in 1960, would have been livid. My father always had me on a pedestal so I'm struggling to understand why he kept that card in the first place.

Anyway - moving on. The fury is not subsiding. Women in Australia are really, REALLY pissed off. They are probably always pissed off but the Patriarchy's dismissive attitude to historical and current rape allegations against serving parliamentary members and staff, and accusations of sexism and misogyny have been the tipping point. 

Our Prime Minister - the self-appointed 'dad' of the nation - and we know because that's how he speaks to us - is expecting all of this to just go away. It won't. This man has to be coached by his wife on how to identify with the distress of a woman who has been raped - basically just 'imagine it was your daughter'. The fact, proudly expressed by the PM himself as some kind or epiphany, may well have been the moment the tide turned against him. This guy was unable to see Brittany Higgins as a person against whom a dreadful violation had been perpetrated and needed his wife to make it 'real' for him. As Sarah Toa would say, and as I do often - 'Oh FFS!!!' If I had been coaching my male partner I would have been far less subtle: Imagine it was YOUR ARSE'. Maybe that would have had more impact on the PM.

Our PM has since dug the hole deeper for himself by 1. refusing to go and address the thousands of women who gathered at parliament house the other day and 2. stating in parliament that:

"This is a triumph of democracy when we see these things take place.....Not far from here, such marches, even now are being met with bullets, but not here in this country". 

OH FFS!!!!

That might just be the single most stupid comment of many to bring him down. Let's hope so.

There's just too much going on to deal with here - I can't type fast enough to keep up with the anger that rises up. A question: who's surprised at the upwelling of fury? I can categorically say it isn't women. None of this is new to us. If there has been perceived silence on these issues it is just that - 'perceived'. We HAVE spoken over and over again but once again, the responsibility lies with the men - they have not been listening. Even the good men have underestimated how brutal this issue is for women. If they are wise they will concede that and will be respected for it. If they try to be too supportive and 'empathise' I don't think this will turn out well for them, which will confuse the poor bastards even more.

How is it that society has operated so well (on the surface) while this very ugly social problem has been festering? Basically because women simply 'get on with it'. We have to. We've had to do that ALL our lives. I venture to say that without exception - we have all been sexually harrassed, often, and we have all been considered less than equal  by the majority of the male population. This is worldwide, this applies to the whole human species. This applies to generations of women, from the end of the Sumerian matriarchal culture to now. 

We have had enough.

* Elders was established in 1839 and is an iconic agri-business that still operates in rural Australia, now with international affiliations.

Image: https://www.redbubble.com/i/wood-print/Time-to-Smash-the-Patriarchy-by-xanaduriffic/

PM Scott Morrison's quote: ABC News

The Tower of Babel is Falling

I’ve been wanting to write this post since last year when I read the astrological predictions for 2021 but have been hesitating. I know a couple of my regular readers are atheists, Christians or mainly believe in scientific evidence. Not that any of these would necessarily stop them from being open to what I am about to share. 

I also have a disclaimer: I can’t tell you why astrology works but in my experience - gathered over a long period of time - it just does. My personal observations coupled with my love of Jung and his archetypal patterns are all I have but they have convinced me that somehow, based on some matrix I don’t understand, it works. That’s all I can say. 

I’ve been using astrological types – birth signs – for years to help me communicate as effectively as possible with my students. (That and numerology – but that’s another story). I follow an astrologer known as Astrobutterfly which I’m guessing isn’t going to fill the doubters with confidence either. I don’t usually care about what sign the moon is in or what the planets are doing because frankly, it’s all a bit tedious and I don’t want it to rule my life or the decisions I make. But this year - although I was skeptical at first - something big is happening in the skies and there is ‘evidence’. 

In 2021 we moved into a new 200 year era. For the last 200 years Saturn – who rules karma and is also characterised by structure, order and the way we do things - has been in Capricorn. Capricorn prefers to build ‘powerful, top-down structures’ which I’d suggest is anathema for anyone who wants to live in a democratic society. This sign represents the zodiac’s patriarch…..’a bit like a soldier: dutiful, hardworking and best when he has a country or family to serve’. I never get on with Capricorn males – personally I find them to be chauvinistic and condescending towards women because they need to be dominant. Maybe it’s just me - I’ve gone head to head with authority figures all my life. But after decades of railing against the Patriarchy I am hopeful for the future – because we have left that era behind. 

In 2020/21 Saturn moved into Aquarius, and officially, we are now in the Age of Aquarius. Yes, I know – it was supposed to happen in the 60s, but the stars are telling us that although there was a huge social shift back then and a sign of things to come – this is the real AOA.

Humankind has been dominated by the masculine principle as far back as recorded history (I think I’ve mentioned before that I had to go back as far as Sumeria to find matriarchal dominance and rule). A ‘good’ patriarch can have a very positive influence on our lives and I would suggest, is valued in most if not all cultures. But a bad one….well you don’t have to think too hard to come up with a blue-suited or military-uniformed patriarch that has done a lot of damage to his country and people. There are too many to choose from. In fact it’s probably harder to find a good patriarchal role model than a bad one.

What distinguishes the last 200 years of this patriarchal order is that because Saturn has been in the Earth sign of Capricorn we have been dominated by the ‘material’ aspects of human existence. In 2020, ‘the world’s 2,153 billionaires (had) more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 percent of the planet’s population’. You don’t have to be a rampant socialist to know there’s something very wrong with that. Here are some more stats from Oxfam’s 2020 report:

• The 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.
• Women and girls put in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day - a contribution to the global economy of at least $10.8 trillion a year, more than three times the size of the global tech industry.
• Getting the richest one percent to pay just 0.5 percent extra tax on their wealth over the next 10 years would equal the investment needed to create 117 million jobs in sectors such as elderly and childcare, education and health. 

A belief in the material alone has led to a decline in the number of people who believe in some sort of ‘afterlife’ or ‘reckoning’, an omnipotent entity, ‘God’ or an equivalent ‘non-religious’ spiritual framework. Some of this was necessary of course - we needed to break the hold of religious dogma which, like the patriarchal order, was equally about power. Unfortunately the good stuff like ethics and compassion that went with a belief in something other than the material seems to have declined also. For the past 200 years the accumulation of personal wealth has been a priority driven by earth based values like ‘consumerism, resources, status, hard work, money’. According to astrologers, these values will now change.

Apparently we should be grateful to Capricorn because thanks to his ‘vision, determination and systemic thinking’ we have been able to build useful systems that have made the world a more ordered place, and given us material structures that have benefitted humankind. But just like the Roman Empire when systems get too unwieldy and can’t be controlled from a centralised source, they collapse. The Tower of Babel is falling.

So back to 2021 where we have FINALLY moved from the dominance of the patriarchal earth symbol Capricorn to the airy, innovative and socially and community-minded ‘mental’ sign of ideas in Aquarius. Aquarius stands for freedom, the recognition of individual uniqueness, connection with like-minded people, experiential learning, collaboration, getting in sync with the universe and the greater good over individual interests.

So how does all this manifest? According to Astrobutterfly:

Step 1: People start to become dubious about the centralized power held by just a few corporations and institutions that can dictate pretty much everything and impact our lives without us having any say.

Step 2: People rebel against this unjust balance/distribution of power and take coordinated, bottom-up action (Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius) to change the rules of the game.

Step 3: New rules that better reflect a fair and balanced distribution of information and resources.

When I mentioned ‘evidence’ earlier I was referring to all that has happened recently, and all that is happening now. I’ve been keeping a tally and it seems that every day, another patriarch loses their position of power, another structure is found to be rotten at the core. Please help me out and mention a few more in the comments but here are some of them: the #metoo movement, the fall of Trump (one of the most destructive patriarchs in recent history), the expose of money laundering in the Crown casino franchise (owned by one of the richest families in Australia), the current rape allegations in Australia’s parliament which threatens to bring down a right-wing dominated, conservative patriarchal government. And last but by no means least – a tiny virus, one of the smallest organisms on the planet – has severely undermined and damaged the Capitalist system that has given the Patriarchs their tremendous power. Perfect.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the demise of the Patriarchy is inversely proportional to the rising up and speaking out of women – who also speak about inequity and for the oppressed. But we have been speaking out for decades and been ignored or shut down. Maybe now women and those who suffer under the Patriarchal order will be heard. I get the feeling there is a momentum out there now which isn’t going to be silenced. It’s going to be a bumpy road, there will be chaos and conflict – the Patriarchy isn’t going to give up without a fight and the collapse of structures and systems will have devastating consequences for many of us.

But let’s welcome the Age of Aquarius – the water bearer, redistributor of power and wealth, and bringer of knowledge to the world. 

Image: Author. 'The Tower of Babel'. Hand drawn, digitally collaged and coloured.

https://astrobutterfly.com/2021/01/11/new-moon-in-capricorn-reset-renewal/

https://www.astrology.com/planets/saturn

https://astrostyle.com/love/manstrology/capricorn-man/

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people

Fitting In

 

This great graphic supports my favourite quote by Krishnamurti:

'It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society' 

Image: Unknown source.

7 Years On

In October last year I received an email exactly 7 years after finishing and submitting my PhD thesis. It was from the executive director of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and editorial board member of the Jungian journal Psychological Perspectives asking if I would be interested in 'writing an article (or two)' on some of the material in my PhD thesis. 'Our readers would surely be interested in these views and I would love to bring them to their attention'.

This is a tiny portion of my reply: 'Thankyou for your response. I was very moved - not many people 'get' what I was actually trying to do in my thesis.... Please run it past your editorial board and let me know what they think. I am happy to give permission for them to reproduce any images already in the thesis, as well as the sketches and visual research that wasn't included and which you haven't seen'.

Two days ago - just as I was just about to leave for work - I received this:

'I wanted to let you know that I submitted the first chapter of your thesis. Our editorial board like it very much and would like this chapter to become a paper - this decision because your thesis is only the first part of a more extended work. The board wanted an ending to the chapter so that it is self-contained. Ideally, they would like to make it more concise and include images of your art. I am sure that they would love your other chapters as well if they are re-written into separate papers. Would you be willing to re-write the first chapter so that we can publish? This decision is, in substance, what we hope would happen. I would be thrilled to have this first paper and, hopefully, more published'. 

When I was first asked to submit I felt pretty overwhelmed but thought the board might agree to publish the first couple of chapters as is. I haven't done any academic writing since I completed my PhD. I figured rewriting it would be a hell of a lot of work and I doubted I was up for the challenge. Academic journal articles are written in a different style than a thesis and I felt out of my depth. And what with the world ending in the not-too-distant future and many of our societal structures collapsing - including the respect academics have traditionally received - what was the point? I know being published is critical in academic circles but there is little to no chance it will increase my employment prospects. I would not receive a dollar either.

Anyway, I dragged out the first of four parts I had already divided my thesis into, took another look and started writing again. I found it easier than I thought - possibly because I had already started editing and had had a break from it for a few months. It's amazing how obvious the flaws are when you have some distance.

At my request the nice gentleman at the CG Jung Institute provided me with 3 examples of journal articles they had published and offered to be my 'sounding board'. So I guess I'm doing it. I'll see how I go with the first one before I commit to the other 3.