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Gender
In Favor Of Menstruation
The first time it happened, I was in Bible School in Weldon, North Carolina on the second floor of the Methodist Church educational building, listening to Dozen Pierce say that God knew how many hairs were on everybody’s head. I wondered if He knew why my stomach hurt.
October 1983Reclaiming The Dark
An Interview With Starhawk
When we’re striving for all light we get away from the dark. As a witch I see the world itself as sacred. If there were such a thing as heresy in the craft, which there isn’t, that would be it — saying that you want to get away from half of what’s in the world. It’s a denial of what sacredness is. That particular metaphor, the light/dark split, is really a fundamental basis of racism in western culture. It was used very deliberately in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the beginning of the slave trade. Part of the justification for taking the African slaves was that their color proved they were cursed by God. It has always been a metaphor used for genocide against people who were dark, against dark-haired Jews.
August 1983All Men Are Brothers
Selections From The Writings Of Gandhi
I do not want to be reborn. But if I have to be reborn, I should be born an untouchable, so that I may share their sorrows, sufferings, and affronts levelled at them, in order that I may endeavour to free myself and them from that miserable condition.
May 1983Meeting The Monkey
I was an infant, clinging to an umbilical cord, and the stark truth of this world was that there was no one to clutch, cling to, no one to reel me in, no one to rescue me but myself. So I clumsily conceived a new self, one that did not need to design an intellectual wall of insulation against this vacuum.
May 1981How Men See Women, How Women See Men
As a butterfly surveying a flowerbed, as objects, not very clearly at all
October 1980Doing What I Do
Nursing — My Wounds And Theirs
I started out to help but I’ve hurt. I wanted to defend, but I became a judge. I was to be warm and generous but I grew cold. In doing for others I forgot myself. I’m supposed to be feminine and defer but I’m a male and chafe.
April 1980Woman’s Choice: A Sampler
Excerpts From A New Intimate Monthly Journal Of Feminine Expression
I figure the recipe for getting depressed is: Don’t get any exercise, don’t see your friends, don’t eat a balanced diet, don’t do the things you enjoy doing most, don’t take responsibility for the odds and ends of life that need to be attended to whether you enjoy them or not; postpone them. Instead, do: spend a lot of time on the things that you enjoy least, stay indoors, and get lots of sleep.
March 1980Winning In America
A JAKE scream is the best. It can probably out/decibel a primal scream any day of the week, and has the added advantage of surprise attack, giving it increased sincerity. You don’t know you’re going somewhere special to scream. It is convenient, occurring in the ordinary workings of daily life.
August 1978An Interview With Robert Bly
The sixties seem to have been a disaster period as far as relationships between men and women go, though one thing did come forward. Women began to feel much more confidence in their own energies.
July 1978