Western feminist movements throughout history have prioritized White women – sometimes incidentally, sometimes explicitly. Because in prioritizing one cause, one is necessarily marginalizing others, moving your identity one step up the ladder rather than tearing down the ladder entirely. I think they are particularly good at helping us understand why narrow identity movements – women’s rights, gay rights, Black rights – always fail on some level. I recommend Audre Lorde or Angela Davis if you want a good listen/lesson on intersectionality and the inherent oppression of hierarchy. Without going into a summary that would be woefully inadequate, I’ll just say by way of introduction that the first part of the book goes into the archaeological evidence of successful matrilineal societies (not matriarchal – patriarchal practices under female leadership – but a different culture entirely), and the second half promotes the species-saving potential of actualizing such societies today. I should look into the provenance of some of the claims, I suppose, but I don’t remember hearing anything particularly scandalous about it, so I’ll proceed with the assumption that the historical facts are more or less accurate. (My “important” book hoarding sometimes serves me well.) But nothing sad about that bringing me back to this book, quietly sitting on a shelf gathering dust through 8 moves. Sadly, it wasn’t until the #metoo movement that I started questioning my own sexist tendencies, as longtime readers may remember. Poor thing didn’t understand that my father’s “girls can do anything!” attitude was only half the rallying cry, the dependent clause being, “if they act like boys.” I had no interest in this New Agey squishy bullshit, as I labelled it, because I had inherited, unbeknownst to my conscious mind, a real sexist attitude towards many kinds of women, and a complex, befuddled, and nearly unintelligible set of beliefs that led me to obsess about physical strength and independence, yet prized the traits associated with females – care, compassion, community, nonviolence – while fighting against the idea that women should demonstrate those characteristics, or that they could anything but supplemental to established structures. I believe some well-intentioned woman gave me this book 30 years ago, thinking that as the teen daughter of progressive feminists, I would be interested. (A sort of book review: The Chalice and Blade, Riane Eisler)
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