My goodness gracious me! What an absolutely superb idea!
From today's Rabble
Meeting to build a women's party for Canada
| August 15, 2011Numerous women, in asking about our fledgling Women's Party, have wanted answers to specific questions such as: What are the goals for your party? What are the issues you intend to focus on? What populations are you aiming to reach?
When I answer that I don't know, they are nonplussed. I try to explain that these answers will emerge from the meetings themselves as women get to know and trust each other, that we are searching not only for answers to concrete questions but searching for a vision.
And who knows what we may find? All great movements start somewhere. And our world is sick. The waters and woods and top soils of this earth are sick. Over half the world's forests are gone and many fish are left trying to live and reproduce in oceans of accumulated plastics and industrial effluents in many parts of the world. Wild land animals are dying off and many of the ones raised for food are sickened in their growth by chemicals and hormones. Human populations on the other side of the world are torn apart by war, hunger, and early death, while depression, obesity, cancer and Alzheimer's darken our side of the world.
The pharmaceuticals are riding high. Many of us are attached to the pharmaceutical industry, begging for relief from pain, both psychic and physical suffering, while industry processing, whether of food, plastics or herbicides, use compounds that mimic sex hormones, specifically estrogen.
Sometimes, as in the newly manufactured salmon being groomed for the fish farms and stocked in B.C. lakes (this from Dr. Edward M. Donaldson, DFO), estrogen is applied directly to the fish to make them fat and infertile. A totally transgenic salmon (genetically modified) is being groomed for market (AquaBounty). And as soon as this salmon is accepted (dubbed FrankenFish by the media) there is a genetically modified pig awaiting introduction to the market (Revivicor.)
The fact that we don't even know how much genetically modified plant foods we women are feeding our families is an exceedingly shameful thing. Many of our little girls are having their first menses at frightening young ages and male sperm count has dropped 50 per cent in the last 50 years. Is there no end to this despoiling of the earth and the deliberate interruption of natural reproduction processes of her creatures?
Apparently not. Enter the idea for a women's party. What have women to lose from coming together to try to build a strong, common voice that can serve as an alternative to the run-amok alpha males who have brought the earth and all her creatures to the brink? There is nothing anywhere, except in religious scriptures written by men that say men must be the sole decision makers of war, peace, boundaries, banks, buildings and food supplies. Women have different brains, and usually different visions. In my opinion, it's past time for women to come together and ponder what kind of a society we really want, what kind of a vision we must have in order to create a new world.
But that's dreaming, you say? I don't think so. I believe women are tired of trying to make sense of the world men have created. Furthermore, it's lethal. Women are getting educated in higher numbers than men are now. The only thing that prevents women from demanding an equal say in running the earth ship is fear, fear of ridicule, fear of losing men's love, of losing other women's friendships, of losing jobs, apartments, cars, even kids... the fear factor latches onto everything. Fear was bred into us along with mother's milk, how to be quiet, smile, and even though it's okay now to be thought brainy, just don't flaunt it, remember men still run all the important agencies, they still have the police, the military, the prisons, the government, in fact... men still rule the world. But must they?
Things can't continue the way they are. Even if women did nothing, things can't continue the way they are. The male-dominated economic and social policies of the Western world are imploding as we speak of their own accord. Those of us interested in forming a women's party will be meeting again on Sept. 14 in Vancouver. To talk things over. To explore our inner visions of what a truly equal, compassionate and healthy society for all might look like. We have nothing to lose by doing this and more to gain than we might ever have imagined in our wildest dreams.
Why the need for a women's party?
Even after women gained the vote in the Western world, the old perception of women's brain power lingered for a long time. This perceived male concept of women's brains comparing negatively to men's, was one that acknowledged that while women's brains were somewhat like men's brains; they were definitely smaller and prone to unreasonable emotion. And because of the smaller, unreasonably emotional caveat put forth, it was still okay for men to speak for women. And this has been a hard perception to shake, even after the second wave of feminism in the 60s.
However, today more women are in science and have kindly pointed out to their male colleagues that women as a rule, women are smaller than men and human brains are weight sensitive. A person's brain, male or female won't grow disproportionally to the person's body. Just as women doctors have pointed out that women shouldn't be strapped down in childbirth with their bottoms pointed to the ceiling so the male doctor wouldn't have to bend over to catch the baby as was the practice for my generation. But there are two areas in which the male and female brain diverge widely and in my opinion, why women must start applying for world leadership. These two areas? War and male one upmanship.
Male one upmanship is a terrible thing. It almost wiped out the entire human race in 1962 when U.S. President Kennedy and the Russians squared off over the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Any woman interested in coming together and contemplating such a group for discussion and action can email me: betty.krawczyk@gmail.com
Betty Krawczyk, born American 82 years ago, but reborn as a Canadian in 1966, fell in love with the old-growth forests of British Columbia at first sight. Now a great-grandmother, she lives, breaths, writes and speaks of the necessity of saving our public resources for the people of British Columbia and Canada. She has spent over three years in B.C. jails and prisons for blockading corporate logging trucks in public forests. Krawczyk is the author of three books: Clayoquot: The sound of my heart, Lock Me Up Or Let Me Go and Open Living Confidential. She has a new book coming out on June 19, 2011, entitled This Dangerous Place: My journey between the passions of the living and the dead. Krawczyk lives and works in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, and can be contacted at www.bettykrawczyk.ca.
