Drumming Amazon

Drumming Amazon
Drumming DykeAmazon

Big Dyke from SF Dyke March

Big Dyke from SF Dyke March
MasterAmazon

Monday, July 23, 2012

Website of Heroic Lesbian who was in Movie Theater at time of shooting during Aurora CO shootings July 19, 2012, Batman premiere

http://kdvr.com/2012/07/20/raw-video-witness-says-shooter-had-the-gun-in-my-face/

Binational Boulder Couple Facing struggles and fears of deportation

I feel strongly that ALL Lesbian couples should have the same rights as hetero couples to stay together and live happily without fear of deportation, and raise their children with love, support and happiness rather than fear that one of the spouses should be deported. Though I know these two Lesbians have way more privilege than I can possibly imagine in my life, it still hits close to home, in that they are Boulder citizens. In any case, here's the website for them below listed, and my response to them.


http://www.stopthedeportations.com/blog/2012/07/cathy-catriona-colorado-lesbian-couple-with-three-children-applies-for-green-card-to-keep-family-together.html#comment-4556

Your story touches my heart. My partner and I legally married in California twice: once in 2004 during the ‘Winter of Love’ waiting in line for 8 hours at San Francisco City Hall, which 6 months later, all 4000 of those marriages were annulled by the State, and then again in 2008, two weeks before Prop 8 passed. Fortunately with all the legal wrangling, the State Supreme Court allowed our marriages to stand, but they also allowed Prop 8 to stand too. It is being fought against as well.

Even though I live in California with my Dyke spouse, Boulder, CO. is my adopted home town, where my family moved to in 1972, and I lived in till I moved here to the California Bay Area in ’84 for my sexual freedom. I came out as a Lesbian in Boulder in 1981. My family still lives in Boulder and I visit it every year or so…my heart is very fond of Boulder and I miss it, so your story is literally ‘close to home’. Also my mother who lived there till she died, was a nurse.

I am glad you have found the love of your life, and given your children a happy home. Obama could so easily freeze that law and it’s enforcement, where you could both live together without fear of deportation.We must keep moving forward in the struggle for all binational Lesbian and Gay couples, as well as the overall marriage equality struggle and I’ve known too many out here in CA who are going through these very same issues.

For many years we’ve marched for Marriage Equality at the SF Pride Parade and supported all the Marriage Equality actions happening here. It ALWAYS includes those also who are binational couples as well! We must keep agitating for change so we all can love the person we choose and keep her in our lives, like any heterosexual can do. If Barney Frank can marry the man of his dreams, so should every Lesbian couple be able to raise their children and have a happy home where caring and love reigns.
-With all my Support and deep connections to Boulder,
-FeistyAmazon

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Butch/Woman by Robin Blythe-niCatain-Guest Writer

butch/woman

"Are you woman first?
or lesbian?"

that's like asking
if my body is nerves
or blood

which claims my first allegiance?

my brain
or my heart

as if you could take the brain
out of a body
or a butch
out of a woman

without taking the very lifeblood
from her being

Friday, July 20, 2012

The usual debate that is used to silence us, on a LESBIAN group: How MTF's have it so much worse than Butch Lesbians and women in general...my response

"I don't know what a ladystick is, but I have some trans women friends that I don't wish to see insulted. They're a part of the queer community and they are the ones who face even graver danger than us for just walking down the street. Did you ever read Stone Butch Blues ? I thought Leslie F did a wonderful job depicting the early queer community, which includes both queer and trans folks. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that several trans women were murdered in the US in the last few months. This is a group of people that deserves and needs our ally-ship and support, not more queer and transphobia."-Lady A.

MasterAmazon:

Please, don't give me that Stone Butch Blues bullshit. Or that the trans have it worse than Butch Dykes.....I've heard all that crap, while y'all continue to coopt Lesbian identity, selfhood and community. I"M DONE WITH IT. I"ve had threats and violence against me and mine AS a Butch Dyke, with another ButchDyke at the hands of men!

IF you want tit for tat, many crimes against Lesbians specifically aren't touted in the press: rape of a Lesbian, a Butch Lesbian by 4 gangmembers in Richmond, CA shortly after Prop 8 passed in 2008, and she had a rainbow sticker on her car, and she was Butch. Shooting and murder of one of two Lesbian partners in Texas, one in critical condition the other dead, just a few short weeks ago. Women all over the world who can be murdered by their spouses, brothers, uncles, male relatives if they don't wear veils, if they get raped, if they commit adultery, if they are LESBIAN they can be put to death. Women die EVERYDAY from male violence, all KINDS of women, not just MTF's. I'm tired of the boohooing, and should we take some space for ourselves, AS LESBIANS it constantly gets crashed by the rest. So, not just trans females get killed. Bio females and Dykes get killed too for being themselves and acting as if they were free, which in many parts of the world, much less the U.S., they are not. We are taking back our space, and we are taking back our communities, and NO we are NOT queer, WE ARE LESBIANS/DYKES!
-MasterAmazon

"Not Giving Up the Fight" I posted about our WBW Dyke Space at Lesbian Caucus group on Facebook

I will not stop this fight, but neither will I use my 'real name' online. NO. My real name has been out there, in now TWO communities REALTIME where I took this stance, two communities I highly value. The first community, when I took this stance and said: 'this woman to woman organization should NOT be changed to accomodate FTM's, those who want to transition to male, and make that choice, because the FOCUS of it is by and FOR women' I was set up, entirely villified, almost lost my precious relationship, the nastiest backstabbing stuff, lies, distortions and ugliness drummed up from my past, or about me, or complete untruths, that essentially I left that community, that same hurt you have H., is the same hurt within me, this is completely REALTIME. The second community is my women's spirituality community, and it's this year they've been trying to recruit trans to come, and publicizing the change in policy. I had to fight hard to at least keep MY workshops for WBW only, when most of the board opposed my point of view, and barely conceded it to me. I will NOT teach my Amazon Mysteries to the born male. And I still was villifed and ugly things said about me, and other Radical Lesbians and Lesbian Separatists who opposed giving up the focus of our Sacred WBW space, and much of it I'm sure was informed by the Pantheacon debate, Z Budapest, Rabbit, Ruth Barrett and others who taught strictly Dianic Wicca for WBW. And they were HORRIBLY villified through the Pagan press as a result by the trans block and trans supporters, for the WBW policy of Dianic Wicca(in the exact same way Michfest is). Not only that, one workshop that was done at the last Pantheacon, the trans and their supporters formed a gauntlet that any woman would have had to have gone through to attend Z's self blessing ritual.......we keep trying to reach out to likeminded others, but why should we do it in back alleys, back doors, in secret apartments, and basically back in the closet? NO. If everyone else can be out of the closet so can we...and while I agree with you and Ch. who have been longtime voices FOR WBW space,that we need to attract women to our cause rather than scare them away, I DO agree with that....we also need to defend our territory as well, and our spaces from cooptation.....

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Important article beautifully written by Max Dashu, on Naming the Sacred, that is Naming Her Female!

http://feminismandreligion.com/2012/06/30/that-which-is-sacred-by-max-dashu/


That Which Is Sacred by Max Dashu
June 30, 2012
tags: Afrashe Asungi, Attukal Amma, Bhagavati, Mago, Max Dashu, Neith, Tonantzin, Wisdom Scroll
by Guest Contributor

"We are going through a huge cultural shift toward restoring the female to her full radiance. However you want to define that, it is rising now, through us.

That which is Sacred, what should we call it? We’ve been told to name it he, him, his. That it was blasphemy to do otherwise, to say she, even as they desecrated the Divine with comparisons to mortal overlords, those cruel masters, despoliators, persecutors. No. Reconsider. That fearful address to an authoritarian punisher takes us far from true reverence. Rather revere the roots of Being, manifesting in all Nature around us, within us. The profound silence, and the Deep calling to the Deep.

Deeply I go down into myself. My god is Dark and like a webbing

made of a hundred roots that drink in silence. ― Rainer Maria Rilke

There are myriad emanations of the indescribable Source, but Goddess women call it she, as medicine to what they have forbidden in us, to us. That Shakti, the effulgence that pours through all living beings, including the rocks. The Shekhinah, the ever-flowing waters of Nummo, of Anahid. The Tao that is “the mother of whatever exists under the sky, upon whom myriads of beings depend for their birth and existence,” as the Dao De Jing says.

“The Universe is the Goddess. She is not separate from it, She did not create it and then let it be. She is what is, what was, and what will be.”1 So the Kemetic people praised Neith, Mother of the Neteru, on her great temple at Sa in the Nile Delta. Inscribed magnificats exalt her in some of the greatest spiritual literature of the world:

Neith, Mother of the Neteru


Greater is her name than of all gods and goddesses

The primordial One, eldest of the primeval gods

She who made that which is

She who created that which exists…

Who gave birth to Ra,

Who brought forth in primeval time herself,

Never having been created.

But not all wisdom is written. In Colombia, the Kogi have passed down oral traditions about the Mother of Songs who bore all kinds of people in the beginning.

She is the mother of the thunder, the mother of the rivers, the mother of trees and of all kinds of things. She is the mother of songs and dances. She is the mother of the older brother stones. She is the mother of the grain and the mother of all things. … She alone is the mother of things, she alone… 2

The Nahuatl litanies of Mexico are resonant with the same majesty : In teteu inan, in teteu itah, in huehuetéotl. “Mother of the gods, father of the gods, the Old Spirit.” 3

So much confusion has been sown about Goddess reverence. Even the word “goddess” is contested today. It’s considered blasphemy by the Abrahamic religions that define religion for billions of people. In popular culture it has been totally desacralized, stripped down, and trivialized. People talk about a pop star as a “sex goddess” or diva—which means “goddess” in Italian, but is now used to describe performers with overinflated egos. “Goddess” has no cultural standing in mainstream society, except as a negative. Few people are conversant with the rich and ancient history of goddess reverence. Instead they see press reports about finds of an “8000-year-old sex goddess.”

Not many people understand what spiritual feminists mean when we speak of Goddess or goddesses. Many, probably most of us, conceive of

Spider Grandmother, detail from the Wisdom Scroll (Max Dashu, 2001)

Goddess and the Sacred Woman as a continuum, encompassing living beings, spirits, ancestors, essences, qualities and vast governing principles like Maat, Tao, and Wyrd—Fate being another name for divine Law, the Way. We see parallels in the pagan Gothic Halioruna (“holy mystery”) and the Great Mystery of aboriginal North America. For us Nature is holy, ultimate Reality, and the fount of wisdom.

That there are Mysteries does not necessarily lead to the mystification practiced in authoritarian institutions. Our reverence has nothing in common with abasement, or the submission demanded by hierarchies and their doctrines. It flows toward what is valued and admired, what causes awe: a rushing river, wind moving through a great forest, the fire-patterns in embers. It is roused by powerful music and beautiful art, incantation and drumming and dance. There we enter into the Presence where knowing and healing come, into connection, wholeness, the Center.

We have deists and atheists and polytheists and panentheists among us, and adherents to many majoritarian religions too. Each aspires to follow the deepest truth she can uncover within herself. For that reason there are many different approaches: some pray, some invoke, some take the deities as symbols, others as beings, or as Being. Others ride the currents of mystic bewilderment, recognizing the impossibility of condensing their experiences into language.

We affirm the long-reviled Female, now expanding out of ancient cultural confinements. In her liberation males will be transfigured too. There is room for the gods, without the taint of lordship and oppression, and for co-gendered expressions of the Sacred. In the ultimate sense gender is ephemeral, and in a just world it would not matter, but we live in a world that is severely out of balance, afflicted with male domination to a high degree. So in our invocations it is She, as Afrashe Asungi says, the Divine She. As Judy Grahn has chanted for us, She, She Who.

Many say that this She is found in our own inner spark, a microcosm of the entire Vastness, and a gateway to it. We say She rather than It, rejecting the impersonal object in favor of a numinous and melodic approach to consciousness. In the same spirit, many of us say Goddess rather than “the Goddess,” which carries a sense of A Thing or Idea rather than Essence and Presence. However she is understood (and whether she is experienced in body-knowing or relational or conceptual ways) we address what we hold sacred through this mirror of Goddess. We know this will create a profound transformative impact on the patriarchal world we live in. The opening of cultural doors that have been slammed shut and tightly locked up, in some places for millennia, is momentous and hugely significant.

Andean Medicine Women. Detail from Lifegivers of Tahuantinsuyu (Max Dashu, 1984)

Women’s recognition of our mythic exile is powering a widespread impulse to revive and restore Goddess culture. Longing for a female face of the Divine is pouring forth from diverse cultural directions: women of European descent who feel cut off from their pagan roots by a long history of compulsory Christianity; Jewish women reclaiming the Shekhinah, and some the ancient goddess Asherah as well; African-Americans reaching for the pre-captivity sacraments of their ancestors, and sometimes back to ancient Egyptian wisdom; Koreans bringing forth Mago, Puertorriqueñas remembering Atabey, and Mexicanas affirming la Guadalupana as Our Mother Tonantzin.

Invoking the names and images of Goddess answers a deep hunger in women, and among a growing number of men, to restore balance, for justice and truth. This longing is felt beyond pagan circles. It’s a call, a cry mounting from women within the majoritarian religions, a movement that transcends traditional religious boundaries. A great expansion is opening, from the nuns who won’t be silenced, women in the gathering Islamic reformation, all the overturnings of decreed female inconsequence, of patriarchal frameworks and hierarchies, in the flowering of an interfaith movement centered in love, not authority.

The world’s largest female ceremony, Pongala, is carried out annually in Kerala, India. A million women assemble to boil rice porridge for the goddess Attukal Amma, Bhagavati. In this massive Goddess event, women of all religions and castes make offering and blessings together, in a spirit of reverence, sisterhood, and generosity. 4 We are going through a huge cultural shift toward restoring the female to her full radiance. However you want to define that, it is rising now, through us." -By Max Dashu

Here's my reaction to a post on 'The Future of Pagan Gatherings: Virtual or Local?'

FeistyAmazon

Huge festivals, except Michfest, don't really appeal to me, the way smaller ones that are more focussed are. I'm interested in a women only environment when I ritual, and preferably a natural one. It doesn't appeal to me to gather in a hotel one iota, in a city environment. For a mixed event, something both natural and citified, a smaller event like Berkeley Pagan Pride is enjoyable to me, maybe something in a local greenbelt park, like up in the Oakland/Berkeley Hills. I like the grassroots too, not the whole worship of 'big names' that goes on with gathering/festival circuits.

I know there are those that swear by Starhawk's 1500 strong Spiral Dance, and while I've enjoyed watching them on video/youtube, or others telling me their enjoyment of them, that is way too much energy for me, and too impersonal. I want something with more personal connection, and a 100-200 womon Spiral Dance is more than enough for me!

Burning Man fascinates me, and I'm glad people can go somewhere's and be their artistic Pagan selves, but like was mentioned above at Stonehenge, so many just go for a big drunk/drug fest and to get laid by as many people as possible. I'm all for: 'all acts of Love and Pleasure are My rituals' but so much of this is just about one big party/celebration and less about spiritual connections, community and Goddess, and EXPANDING those connections throughout the year, not just for that one event. My question is "how do such events fit into our daily lives and continue our deep connections through ritualling with one another in community? Not just for that one time a year, but THROUGHOUT the year. How do we keep the energy going?"

I have had no desire to go to Pantheacon. Raise all that energy in a mixed environment but have no Nature to connect with afterwards to ground? At least when I went to Michigan Womyn's Music Festival one year, and LED a large ritual of 200 womyn for the Full Moon, afterwards I spent an hour alone grounding as the Moon rose, connecting with Nature in that meadow we had just done the ritual on!

I like the idea of Land and Sanctuary, and CONNECTING with Nature in myriad ways, as well as with each other, and weaving the Tribes together in a REAL way, not just a virtual one! Yes, put your money where your mouth is, and KEEP IT GREEN(and I don't mean just $)!