For being effective, you are sentenced to…

Wow, I'll just quote this directly from What Privilege?

When I was a teenage girl who wasn’t shy about pointing out the advantages I didn’t have, I was surrounded by teenage boys who weren’t shy about telling me, “Stop whining and just do something about it.”

I took their advice. I studied the people who had the social standing I wanted, which in my part of the world was white middle to upper class men, ostensibly heterosexual. I learned the vocal tones and pitches they use and avoid (almost the opposite of what most women do). I learned how they stand, how they approach one another, how they negotiate. I learned what they’re allowed (in their social contract as members of the dominant group) to express and how they’re allowed to express it. And I discovered that by merely using these techniques, I got taken about 300% more seriously than far more competent women who didn’t. And all that well before the age of 20. It’s easy hard to learn if you have a natural talent for reading people, which I do. 

What’s hard to do is to apply it. Because even though I could walk into a crisis situation, take charge, fix it and win kudos even from the most neurotic misogynists in about five minutes flat, there was always a backlash. The better I performed, the bigger the backlash. During the crisis, all people saw in me was an individual who projected leadership and competence and showed them how we could all work together to fix the situation. Afterwards, many of the men saw an unmistakably female person of unimposing size, and they were ashamed of having “taken orders” from me, so to even that score they’d play tricks on me, or yell abuse at me, or just ignore me (by “ignore” I mean to the extent of mowing me down in a corridor rather than step aside). A lot of the women, too, would have second thoughts about me after the fact and join in with the men. 

I’m not looking for sympathy – I got over this bullshit years ago. But the other day on a website, I saw someone saying that women don’t get paid as much as men because women don’t negotiate like men, and it reminded me of all this. When women do negotiate like men, they risk being shunned by a community that doesn’t believe they should negotiate like men, but wants them to stop “whining” when they don’t have what they want. It’s a perfect catch-22. 

And of course, a lot of men don’t see it because they’re not even conscious of the way they react when a woman does approach them the way men are trained to do. They think they’re being perfectly fair, and it’s just a coincidence that every woman who successfully commands men calmly and naturally is later realized to be difficult, intimidating, unapproachable or a just plain mean ol’ bitchy man-hater. 

Is it any wonder history fails to record any effective women in history? Fails to recognize them now? Is it a surprise that Hillary Clinton can do no right in a society where the only “right” way to be is male/white/etc., and women aren’t allowed to be that? Is it any surprise that when women react well to an effective woman because we don’t have any manhood to feel threatened by them, it’s suspicious, a conspiracy, an illogical emotional malfunction?

Everyday Male Chauvinism

Everyday Male Chauvinism is a form of intimate partner violence that is not called violence.  This phenomena of power and control over women is unrecognizable, invisible, and remains unnamed.  This is the name of the game, and it is part of everyday relationships with men, especially white heterosexual men who are privileged in ways that are invisible to them as they are the standard.  This invisibility is what makes patriarchy tick; it's the gas that fuels the patriarchal car.  Take away the gas, and the car will no longer be able to run.  This is what making visible the invisible so powerful.  We must make them visible and call out the patriarchal mindset as it arises.  We must not take the path of least resistance.  We must persevere, fight for our rights as human beings in need of respect, dignity, and love.

Men must understand that women and men live in a world where the patriarchal empire Masculand exists and functions in every sphere of life imaginable. This is a global phenomenon, and it's not leaving without outright resistance.  "The recognition of everyday male chauvinism can result in changes in the lives of women who suffer from it.  Men, along with women, must recognise their own behaviour and WANT to change it, not merely think about it abstractly" as I have seen done even in radical circles.  Women WILL NOT progress without the help and support of men; this is not to say that women do not have power.  This capitalistic system will fall to its feet without women's constant unpaid labor of their minds and bodies.  Feminism has drastically changed the lives of every woman who has come into contact with it. Women's roles within society have dramatically changed over the past century due to the fight that women have fought: they have gained the right to vote, to work, to their sexuality, etc.  Of course, our work is not done.  We have far to go, and even farther than Feminism, but humanity for all.

The point is: It is not only necessary for women to fight, but men’s active work is needed.

"The manifestations of everyday male chauvinism are part of a systematic behaviour—they are not occasional and momentary manoeuvres but are tactical steps constituting a strategy. The strategic aim is again the maintenance of the power position, of male dominance, and its restoration if that power is injured. The emphasis is on maintenance and restoration and not on the creation of power because this latter has already been ensured largely by the social, structural element: patriarchal society."

"Men’s 'small' controlling, violent and dominant behaviours are forms of behaviour all within the limits of so called normality and are not particularly outstanding.  They are recognized by men as normal in their lives without even realizing their harmful behaviors.  They do insidious and continuous harm to women’s autonomy, dignity and even their psychic equilibrium. They are extremely common among so called 'nice' men whom public opinion would call neither violent nor particularly controlling  or male chauvinistic."

"These almost unrecognisable mechanisms of “soft” control (i..e. everyday male chauvinism) exercised over women have a devastating effect not only on women but in the long term also on the men who exercise them." These mechanisms of control used by men are damaging to both the man and the woman.  Men are held transfixed in terror, and must prove they can defend themselves endlessly.  They also must defend their property, i.e. women, cattle, his choice of business.  They must defend their "manhood" against other men, and mostly they perish even attempting that.

Male domestic violence and rape in our culture is turned into a fiasco of "victim blaming" where women are castigated as whores and deserving of men's violence.  So, what makes us think the more subtler forms of violence against women like verbal abuse and intimidation are ever even remarked upon in our culture in our daily lives?  Even when it's the most common, most widespread mechanism of control.  Break a woman (soldier) down, and they are yours forever.

Maybe you're thinking to yourself that women are very often violent themselves, even violent against men.  Yes, this is true.  Women can act in all sorts of ways just as men can and vice versa, but the violence women commit is against the flow of the dominant system of patriarchy.  They are working against an everyday patriarchal society where violence committed by men is dominant in their daily lives.  Women, unlike men, are quickly and swiftly shut down and dismissed as bitches, worthless whores, witches, man haters, crazy, unreasonable, illogical.  Pick your favorite.  On the other hand, when a man acts this way, in an intimidating (although, for them, reasonable) way, he is treated like next years king.

In simpler terms, intimidation on women looks bitchy, unreasonable, deserving of put-downs and hatred.  On men, it looks like terror, logical, right, and even can be sexy.

To really make this point compare these photos:

While both look harsh and terrifying, which one's anger looks and feels unjustified, unreasonable, stupid?  Which one looks and feels terrifyingly reasonable?

This woman in the photo uses intimidation and slave-owning techniques just like the man, so don't both genders use intimidation and everyday "male" chauvinism?  Women may use everyday male chauvinism as a mechanism to protect themselves, to fight off feelings of powerlessness from the unequal division of power, or to stand up against the dominant power structures set up to put women back in "their place."  Sometimes the woman, herself, usually alone, must use the dominant system of revenge: castigating him for his indifference and ruthlessness, jail him, use capital punishment.  This is not because she just loves to be sadistic like a man.  It's because it's the only way she is finally able to gain any sort of sense of safety.  If your attacker keeps attacking and threatens to kill you, rape you, or hurt you and those close to you, and if the capitalistic world institution can't help you (even further, they discredit you and castigate you), you are left to defend yourself "outside the proper lawful system".  Outside this "moral" system of lawfulness, we are left to fend for ourselves in a world where our concerns are not considered worth a even a cent! We, women, must stand together, and SHOUT, SCREAM at the top of our lungs that we are not immoral, psychotic, or vengeful.  It is the system which "drives us crazy" and "makes us psychotic and hysteric".  It is a personal feeling and experience that every woman has experienced in a wide variety of ways.  That sick Chicana woman.  That blonde whore.  That negress slut animal.

The majority of women who use violence are merely protecting themselves against the systematic violence that is committed against them on a daily basis.  Any oppressed group can use the tools of the master when the time arises in the right moment of strategic consideration, but, watch out for some serious BACKLASH and watch out FOR YOUR VERY LIFE.  For instance, a man may rape a woman or maybe he throws her around a little bit, or maybe he says something hurtful, or maybe he cheats on her.  The woman may use violence that typifies everyday male chauvinism when other mechanisms aren't available due to her systematic oppression, but the difference is she will be labeled an uncontrollable raging bitch, and therefore simply dismissed as hysteric.Women are castigated as very violent in comparison to men . It's not their "normal" roles to be violent, so any instance of violence by women is heavily sedated by the power structures in place. Neutralized I should say.  This is what we are fighting, women.  Listen up.  Men are neutralizing us before we even have the chance to stand on our two feet.  They kick us down before we even stand.

More men need to LISTEN, really listen... really gravitating to the weight of what women are saying daily about their particular struggle within their very lives NOW.  Women also, especially, if we are even to get this war back on with more equal footing.  What is she going through?  What is she concerned about endlessly as if in a psychosis that can't be woken up from?  Even those men who give us the time of day to speak don't seem to realize the gravity of what we are saying.  After all, their emotional range isn't ideologically supposed to be anything more than an emotional-less stone or anger.  Alas, we are to only be seen, looked upon as their porcelain dolls for them to glorify when we go with the flow, and we will be vilified when we act against the flow of THEIR power structures.  If we "go with the flow" we are seen as innocent, pure dolls, but when we ACT against that flow, we are demonized and systematically dismissed.

We are never to be heard.  We are like children with little right to exist beyond men's needs.  Men treat us like children as they "know better".  They have an "intellectual stamina" over women due to all that inherent male superiority given to them by this patriarchal structure.  Believe me, they realize this structure exists and that it oppresses women.  They invented it afterall, this system of slavery, this slavery of the gender class woman -- can you contradict me?

This is, of course, the same old story of male logic which keeps women down and out of intellectual circles in all fields of life except love, motherhood, and wifehood.  This is of course the biggest farce.  Women very well know what's going on.  They've been learning since they were BORN that they could not be "men" as they were stuffed into a pink bonnet and severely punished for acting out against the gender class man.

Men have been indoctrinated with the idea that they are the show runners of the world.  They see themselves as the rulers, the bosses, the kings, the organizers, the politicians, and this is, indeed correct. THEY ARE.  Big whoop.  Women are the ones breaking their backs with little reward or little thanks from their bosses, their husbands, their boyfriends, and even their families.  They do the dirty work.  They clean, sweep, organize the home, print the kids homework, create the pamphlets for that organization, set the dates for that beach or business trip, shop for your groceries, and the list is almost endless.

What is all very, very critical to this is the man's (and woman's) realization of his (her) socialization, indoctrination as a kid.  As a young boy, he adapted to the terrain of traditional roles set up for him before he's even born (his father maintained the family, his mother takes care of him, and on top of that he sees how other families interact in such similar ways).  His father uses "male logic" on his mommy.  His mommy uses kisses, hugs, complements, and sex as a tool of submission when she requests anything from a man, including him.  These ideas are indoctrinated, uploaded, buried beneath the boy's very understanding of men and women.  It becomes reality.  Even if he knows about patriarchy and wishes theoretically to dispose of it because (logically) he knows this is best for Homo Sapiens survival, he still knows these patriarchal roles are functioning NOW in the world.  He knows, at anytime, he can use these mechanisms and maneuvers against women and other men which degrade both.  He knows, beneath all of that, that he has the capacity to destroy a woman's self-esteem and sleep with any woman he wishes simply through the mechanisms he's used on his mother or sister or that cousin he felt up when he was 15 and she was 5.

This is so well into his very life-being.  He doesn't realize how much of that is in him, even when he may endorse the equality of both women and men in order to dissolve the gender classes.  He exploits and abuses the fact that the woman is an “expert” at taking care of others. He know she's been conditioned to do just that, so why not let her do it as she knows best and it'll be easier anyways, right guys?  By reinforcing women's already socialised calling “to live for others”, it leads the woman into the roles that are hers “by nature”, "by roles", and now "by patriarchy". 

Do you really think men aren't thinking this?  That if they get their wives or girlfriends to do the laundry or those dishes or plan that trip, he won't have as much to think about except his long held desire to exploit her and live out his dream of become "expert" or "theoretician".  It'll be just like living with mommy.

Women are conditioned to be a mother, wife, assistant, secretary, dispatcher, psychologist, social worker, telephonist, receptionist, cleaner and cloakroom attendant all at once for one man and for those men she works for at "her" job without any help from other men or women what so ever (unless, she dare ask for it, for help... which may lead to a hit, a put down, and terror).

“Often men feel that a relationship has deteriorated when the mechanisms of male power, which are accepted as everyday communication, are no longer enough to maintain power over women.” -Why Does He Abuse? Why Can He Abuse?

***This writing was highly influenced by the paper, Everyday Male Chauvinism.  Direct quotes are taken from it and have been modified by me.  No copyright infringement intended. 

Abuse of the MIND

Are you being emotionally abused??

I really want you to THINK about this, hard.  

If you can't feel love from someone who says they love you, it's NOT love.

REPEAT: LOVE SHOULD FEEL LIKE LOVE.

Listen to your INSTINCTS, your EMOTIONAL RESPONSES in every situation.

Listen and protect yourself against harm.  Set Boundaries. 

In the past...

How have your parents treated you?

Do you feel they don't let you become the person you want to be?

Do you feel they demand obedience from you through FORCE of will?

How have your boyfriends and/or husband(s) treated you?

Do you feel they use you only for sex?  

Do you ever feel that they can't share other parts of 

themselves with you in an emotionally healthy way?  

Do you feel they demean you?

Do you feel inadequate around them?

Do others in society regulate your sexuality?

Do you feel you are being shoved into a BOX?  

Do you feel pressure to be something you don't want to be, 

and even forced into being something you don't want to be?

Does your sexuality feel  like it SHOULD be

more than horny, sexy, inadequate, or dirty?

Do others make you feel different, ugly, wretched?

Do others make you  feel like you don't belong because of your ethnic makeup?  

Do you feel uneasy in a grocery store or in a shopping mall 

where your ethnicity doesn't predominate?

Do you  feel  GUILTY for being YOURSELF?

REMEMBER: Abuse isn't always a clear WORD-GAME.

Emotional abuse takes different forms.

Emotional abuse IS SUBTLE and INVISIBLE.  

This is how domination and submission works.

NEVER TAKE THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE!

STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS!

RESIST DOMINATION!

RESIST SUBMISSION!

Emotional abuse is the most common way oppressed peoples of the world 

are held under the control of those who are our abusers.

Yes, that's right.

World capitalism is based on the domination of the false categories of 

adult white heterosexual men who

 UTILIZE 

Emotional and Physical abuse 

to 

CONTROL, MANIPULATE, and DISTORT 

our 

minds, hearts, and bodies.

This is TERRORISM. 

A terrorism so intimate that it infiltrates our very thoughts, emotions, minds, and souls.  

This is a RAPE of the mind, body, and SOUL.

Emotional abuse is CLEAN VIOLENCE.  It leaves no marks, no PROOF of abuse.

This is the perfect weapon. . . 

A weapon used by the dominators of a world system based on ABUSE of its people.

This weapon annihilates personal identity, and shames.

It destroys the oppressed people's of the world sense of SELF.

http://www.joy2meu.com/emotional_abuse.html

REMEMBER: Love is not, nor will it EVER be:

Critical       Shaming  Abusive      Controlling      Manipulative

Demeaning     Humiliating     Separating     Discounting

Diminishing        Belittling        Negative       Traumatic

Painful most of the time            etc.

RAPE

"I'm not fighting for a world where 'radical' rape exists. I'm fighting for a world where the world is free of any rape what so ever."

 

The Question of Violence

Montessori Education and The Partnership Way

A Message From Dr. Riane Eisler, Founder of the Center for Partnership Studies, and best selling author of many books including Tomorrow’s Children, The Chalice and the Blade, and The Real Wealth of Nations. Dr. Eisler and the Montessori Foundation have worked together for many years.

"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more"

Anne Frank, Entry in her diary dated July 15, 1944

Over one million children under the age of sixteen died in the Holocaust. One of them was a young girl by the name of Anne Frank.

Anne was a Montessori child from February of 1934 until after the summer of 1941, when she and other Jewish children throughout Holland were told that they could no longer attend school with ‘normal’ children. Her Montessori experience was something in which Anne took particular pride. Non-Jewish schoolmates who survived the war tell us how much she enjoyed her school and the things she studied in those years. In her diary, she describes days after she could no longer go to school in which she carried on as many of her exercises as she could with home made materials. 

Like so many others, my life has been inspired by Anne Frank. She has become a symbol of everything precious and beautiful within the human spirit for people all over the world. Her story is perhaps especially poignant to me because I grew up in Austria during the same period, and barely escaped the Nazis myself. But to all of us who have a connection to the vision of Dr. Maria Montessori, little Anne is  the symbol of what  Montessori schools contribute to the lives of children.

Much of my life has been devoted to an effort to understand and come to grips with the great questions that I raise in my book, Tomorrow’s Children: A Blueprint for Partnership Education in the 21st Century:

•  What is the meaning of our journey on this Earth?

•  What about us connects us with, and distinguishes us from, the rest of nature?

•  Why are some people violent and cruel? Why do some of us feel the need to hurt and kill? Is it simply human nature? Is that why violence seems to be infecting so many children? If so, why are some people caring and peaceful? What pushes us in one direction or another?

•  What are our ethical and moral responsibilities as human beings? What impels us to wonder about such things?

Since time immemorial, people have sought answers to these kinds of questions through religion, philosophy, and the empirical method of investigation we call science. 

In my earlier book, The Chalice and the Blade, I attempted to show through specific evidence what Montessori educators know through their experience with children: that people are not inherently greedy, violent, or competitive, and that we are capable of living together in relative peace. I attempted to document that human beings actually did live in partnership and relative peace for tens of thousands of years.
As did Maria Montessori, I also came to the inevitable conclusion that in order to create a peaceful world, we must lay the foundation in our children, beginning when they are very young.

Unfortunately, in many schools, children often feel powerless to change the course of their lives, much less the course of the world around them. Many become immersed in the materialism and self-centeredness that permeates mass culture, futilely seeking meaning and belonging in the latest fad or commercial offering.
Montessori schools around the world offer an alternative way to raise and educate young people that I call Partnership Education. It is designed not only to help them to better navigate through our difficult times, but also to help them create a future that is oriented more toward partnership, rather than the familiar form of interpersonal relationships that I call the dominator model.

In the dominator model, relationships tend to be based on patterns of domination and submission. Most of us have observed, and perhaps experienced, the pain, fear, and tension of people who use coercion, jockey for control, or who try to manipulate and cajole when they are unable to express their real feelings. We can find this going on every day in the relationships within some families, classrooms, workplaces, and among nations or fanatical groups of ideologues.

Thankfully, most of us have also experienced another way of being, one where we feel safe and seen for who we truly are, where our essential humanity and that of others shines through, perhaps only for a little while, lifting our hearts and spirits, enfolding us in a sense that the world can after all be right, that we are valued and valuable. Relationships like these are based on mutual respect, nonviolence, and a desire to work things out in a reasonable and equitable manner if at all possible.

Although we may not use these terms (partnership and dominator), they do accurately describe the two extremes of the ways that people tend to organize their relationships, from the level of our families to our businesses, and even relationships among nations. While in real life things are rarely black or white, but rather shades of gray, we are all familiar with these two models from our own lives.

The partnership and dominator models not only describe individual relationships. They also describe systems of belief and social structures that either nurture and support – or inhibit and undermine – equitable, democratic, nonviolent, and caring relations. Once we understand the partnership and dominator cultural, social, and personal configurations, we can more effectively develop human institutions that foster a less violent, more equitable, democratic, and sustainable future.

Montessori schools are founded on the partnership model and encourage children to develop the ability to work together, think independently, and be empathetic and kind. As studies have shown, students in Montessori programs both tend to excel academically, they have exceptionally high levels of self-esteem and social and emotional maturity.

Teaching Children To Recognize Human Possibilities
Most schools give young people a false picture of what it means to be human. We tell them to be good and kind, nonviolent and giving. But on all sides they see and hear stories that portray us as bad, cruel, violent, and selfish. In the mass media, the focus of both action entertainment and news is on hurting and killing. Situation comedies make insensitivity, rudeness, and cruelty seem funny. Cartoons present violence as exciting, funny, and without real consequences.

This holds up a distorted mirror of themselves to our youth. And rather than correcting this false image of what it means to be human, some aspects of our education reinforce it.
In many schools, the history curriculum still emphasizes battles and wars. Western classics such as Homer’s Iliad and Shakespeare’s kings trilogy romanticize ‘heroic violence.’ Scientific stories tell children that we are the puppets of ‘selfish genes’ ruthlessly competing on the evolutionary stage.

Montessori schools deliver a different message, even from early childhood. Here children are seen as complete human beings, and are encouraged to discover their own talents and voices. They learn at their own pace, and are challenged to focus their attention and energy on self-mastery, rather than besting their classmates. The goal is still to produce very well educated people, but the means by which this is achieved are much more empowering and respectful.

One of the things that I admire about Montessori is that it offers children a much more balanced and positive view of history. Rather than glorify violence and conflict, Montessori schools help children to look at societies from the perspective of daily life, with an equal emphasis on the roles of women, who were, after all, anything but invisible and irrelevant, as well as the roles men played. Montessori students study the culture, cuisine, art, music, and great stories of past civilizations. Rather than pretend that bad things did not happen, they teach children to examine the evidence of celebration and kindness that did exist, along with the stories of not only warriors and kings, but of the people who made great contributions to social justice, scientific understanding, the arts and great literature, and the search for peace.

Montessori schools also bring to light civilizations, past and present day, that have often been ignored, where social life flourished on a basis of partnership and celebration of life. One of my favorite examples of this is the study of Minoan Crete, a glorious civilization which was ultimately destroyed not by invasion and conquest, but by a series of earthquakes and natural disasters.

It is interesting to consider why schools have continued to emphasize the themes of wars and domination in the history curriculum for so long. Not that they should be ignored, but why these experiences are often glorified seems illogical, if we all want peace on Earth.

But think about it from this perspective. If human beings are inherently violent, bad, and selfish, we have to be strictly controlled. This is why stories that claim this is ‘human nature’ are central to an education for a dominator or control system of relationships.

They are, however, inappropriate if young people are to learn to live in a democratic, peaceful, equitable, and Earth-honoring way: the partnership way urgently needed if today’s and tomorrow’s children are to have a better future – perhaps even a future at all.

Children are impoverished when their vision of the future comes out of a dominator world-view. This world-view is our heritage from earlier societies which were structured around rankings of people who considered themselves ‘superiors’ over their common and everyday ‘inferiors.’ In these societies, violence and abuse were required to maintain rigid rankings of domination – whether man over woman, man over man, nation over nation, race over race, or religion over religion.

Over the last several centuries we have seen many organized challenges to traditions of domination. These challenges are part of the movement toward a more equitable and caring partnership social structure worldwide. But at the same time, much in our education still reinforces what I call dominator socialization: a way of viewing the world and living in it that constricts young people’s perceptions of what is possible and even moral, keeping many of them locked into a perennial rebellion against what is without a real sense of what can be.

Montessori education is one of the few educational approaches that has been so highly successful in giving children both a sound grasp of core knowledge, and the big picture of human history and human possibilities.
The connections between my own ideas and Maria Montessori run deep. In my book, Tomorrow’s Children, I quote from Montessori’s works, and use the great themes in Montessori education, to illustrate many of the reforms that I have urged to transform the schools of today into the schools that we need for tomorrow’s children.

Montessori education has celebrated its first one hundred years, and has proven to be not only highly effective, but more relevant and important today than ever before. With the challenges that we face as human beings – social, environmental, and international – I am not aware of any other educational system that provides such a clearly defined overarching plan for preparing teachers to implement partnership education, along with the curriculum needed to support it.

I earnestly hope that as parents, you can appreciate the value of the education that you have chosen for them by sending them to a Montessori school. There they will absorb critical life skills and values that will serve them well down through the years.

Riane Eisler

They: A Poem

We are missing parts of ourselves because they became a part of us over time,

and we allowed it, all for the sake of love.

We let the night forever stand still, never letting us see the blinding light of the true nature of the sun.

They became a part of us,

and now moon sized holes fill our hearts that they inhabited because they have left us…

We risked our lives all for the sake of love that they can't seem to offer us.

We feel ripped apart, needing just to find a new piece of life to sew back together the damage.

The time comes to fill those holes with others: others that seemingly aren't they.

We disappear when we attempt to fill the holes, but it's all we can do to bandage an unhealing wound.

It's not hard though to let go of they,

because they didn't inhabit a big piece of us that really mattered…

We didn't truly loved them…

We love, yes… but only on the surface of our hearts and brains

because we couldn't let them penetrate further.

We were never really able to be ourselves around those that terrify and rape,

Never able to express ourselves without condemning and glorifying our thoughts,

Never able to just be around them like we can with those others…

We always knew this, but continue to ignore it even now…

We don't want to admit failure.

A failure of love,

A failure we've been told is our fault,

because it's our job to fix those they into something of our own liking.

Our lesson becomes Let Be and Let Live,

but we live in a system that doesn't Let Be.

We thrive in a system of retribution and disease,

disallowing a true love of they.

This is what happens when little girls and boys are psychologically conditioned from birth to think that romance and love with those they are the ultimate goals in life.

We tear ourselves apart trying to achieve just an once of love and then we tell ourselves we aren't worth it.  That we are ugly, damaged, stupid, enraged, fat, crazy, bastards, in need of change, a genius, gullible, all powerful, worthless, the king... because we are.... because of society's conditioning of how we act and behave.

We think it's our fault because the movies make it seem so easy to love and hate those they.  So black and white.  We think it's our fault because we live in a society where abuse and pain is kept secret from little girls and boys.

Oh, we know it, we know the abuse and pain happens.  We always have.  But it's oh so quiet on the home front.... The nuclear family is the ultimate secret keeper, even to themselves.

Fearful Love: A Poem

Stop calling me boring
    Because now you’re boring me.
Stop telling me I’m unproductive
    Because now I can’t move.
Stop telling me to be all you want me to be,
    Because I can barely get up in the morning because of the confusion.
Stop saying makeup is ugly,
    Because now I feel ugly… and CRAZY confused.

Stop all of it.
Start loving me.
Stop killing.
Start living.
Stop the hatred.
Start touching me
    with your words.

I can’t go on like this.
I can’t even breathe
    Because you are no longer my breath of fresh air.

Touch me with your words
    And I will lovingly give you all you want.
Touch me, and I will touch you back, letting my hand glide over you because you touch me so deeply with your words.

I love you,
But if you can’t understand me, sympathize with me, hold me, then I can’t go on truly loving you.

Women live in a world of makeup and make believe because they can barely obtain it in real life.
Women put a smile on their faces, when really they are drowning in sorrow.
Women fake it until they make it.
Women give man new life, even when women mask their pain with fantasy.
And then when the fantasy fades away, men ask, “Where did you go? You aren’t the women I married.”
And the woman responds, “You killed me with your talk of death.”
And then the man verbally abuses, punches, rapes, dismembers, until she is in a state of submissiveness.
    And the woman responds, “Yes, honey, I love you, always.”

-To all men and women who have hurt me

Not Ever

This Scottish 30 second ad campaign, "Not Ever, addresses women-blaming attitudes towards rape such as claims that dressing provocatively, being drunk or flirting with men are contributory factors. Its hard-hitting approach is intended to make people stop in their tracks, and to shake out and challenge ingrained prejudices many people have towards women who have been raped."



Here is the site for Rape Crisis Scotland and NotEver if you're interested.