Women’s Mysteries

IT’S PUBLISHED!!
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IT’S PUBLISHED!!

Woohooo! It’s up! It’s accessible! It’s here! My dissertation, as finally published by ProQuest! “Everyone Gets Lifted Up”: How Matrifocal Families Can Enhance People’s Lives and Reduce Systemic Patriarchal Oppressions If you want to read it, please enjoy — and (since I know it’s rather long, and heavy going!) if you get through it, please…

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Finding the source of dis-ease

Butter chicken for dinner tonight — yum! It’s in the crockpot and starting to make the house smell delicious. Combined with the fact that it’s summer and my proposal deadlines are all stalled until my adviser returns from her (well-deserved) vacation, that means I find myself with a bit of writing time on my hands,…

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Woman in the Shaman’s Body

The apparently overwhelmingly powerful need to control women which some men appear to have is painfully expressed yet again in a form which is recorded by anthropology professor Barbara Tedlock’s research for her 2005 book Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion & Medicine. Granddaughter of an Ojibwe midwife and herbalist, and…

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Way too much sexual analysis ;)

As was noted yesterday, Biaggi’s essayists examine the emergence of patriarchy in order to persuasively analyze and explain our current global issues — such as environmental devastation, a near-perpetual social injustice which particularly oppresses women and the poor, the increasing corporatization of the massive war and prison industry — then posit a brighter and feasible…

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Blood Rites & the Rule of Mars

Interestingly, it is only recently that socially gendered coding and categorizations have been recognized, such that the biological condition of being male is not automatically conflated with the social production of masculinity. I believe the next book — white American feminist, award-winning columnist, independent scholar, and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich’s Blood Rites: Origins and History…

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The Real Wealth of Nations: the people

Irigaray’s fascinating work, which I reviewed yesterday, calls for a radical change in the individual’s worldview as expressed through an intersubjective spiritual caring and hospitality, but is (perhaps unfortunately) also written primarily for the academic. Intriguingly, in the same year an eminently pragmatic book was published on much the same subject, though from a far…

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Difficult & fascinating: Daly & Irigaray

My next selection to showcase here is Euro-American radical feminist philosopher, professor, and theologian Mary Daly’s fiery and iconoclastic Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big. I believe the book is a fascinating exploration of Daly as shaman for her community of women. Deliberately written to occasionally flout standard (as in: patriarchal) rules of…

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The first 20,000 years: women’s work & women’s social power

As we work towards shaping social realities, research on women-centered societies which are based upon cooperation and partnership facilitates a more sophisticated discussion of cultural alternatives. This discussion also ensures that the voices of women of color are respectfully heard and recognized as both researchers of integrity applying a wide variety of methodological approaches to…

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The Minangkabou & the Mosuo: modern matrifocality in action

Of particular personal interest are a number of truly excellent books I have, which present anthropological research on several modern and still existing matriarchies. In each case cultural matrifocality instigates a tending and nurturant social worldview, leading to a surprisingly stable and self-regulating society. Two examples emerge in 2003 from Southeast Asia: Peggy Reeves Sanday…