Dear Editor
We are amidst a War on the Feminine. Just see the raping and fouling of Mother Earth for greedy profit, boys and men being told “Be a Man” and to shut down their softer side, the low wages offered to child care workers, the devaluing of culture and of women’s intuition, and most obviously now the early parole and release from prison and into our community of a man with a 30 year history of abusing women and known to be a loaded bomb with a short fuse; without any real restrictions or warning of all the women who helped justly put him in prison for attempted murder.
We all have mothers. They are our only way into this world. Many of us have been blessed with sisters, wives and daughters. This is an issue for all of us.
What can we do? We can begin by noticing the standard set by the leader of this country. Since coming to power, Stephen Harper has turned Canada into a war maker after many years of being a Peace Keeper. He has cut funding to nearly all groups and programs that benefit women. He has cut funding to most programs that encourage arts, music and culture in Canada. He has mightily funded the military industrial complex and let the wounded and PTSD soldiers flounder in their pain and time of weakness. He has encouraged raping Mother Earth, who feeds us all, for her resources and has removed protection for 90-plus per cent of Canada’s lakes and waterways so the resource extractors can foul them at will.
And very clearly, Mr. Harper has shrugged his shoulders at the deaths and disappearances of hundreds of Native women, thus saying the lives of these mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters don’t matter; that it’s okay to have “open season” on women.
It’s NOT okay.
Some may repeat the old spells of Western Civilization:
1) “It’s like this all over” – yet that’s not true, there are many societies now in the world that highly value the Feminine.
2) “It’s always been this way” – Not true! Most of the Native peoples of this continent, and most global tribal societies highly valued and value the Feminine. The “Senate” of the Haudenausaunee (Iroquois) was the Women’s Council, which could and did veto going to war, and could and did remove any chief they knew was not good for the Nation as a whole. Plus anthropologist Maria Gimbutas’ work showed pre-Bronze Age societies in much of southern and central Europe with no weapons and yet all the arts of civilization.
3) “It’s Inevitable” – It’s NOT. We can rise to the occasion and not let our local women’s murders be in vain.
We can acknowledge this to be the season changer in our lives, the new light after the darkness of the recent total eclipse of the moon. We can break the spells.
We can demand of all the Federal candidates that they explain what they will do immediately in Ottawa to reverse this trend, to reinstate programs that halt sexual abuse of both women and men, to give support to those who have been abused, legislate equal pay for equal work, establish affordable quality day care with well trained and well paid workers, make all “resource” industries fully liable for any and all pollution, teach about the rich history and culture of Canada’s Native peoples (“if you believe a people to have no history worth mentioning, it’s easy to believe they have no humanity worth defending.” – W.L. Katz), teach the history of women and acknowledge their great contributions to our society.
We all need healthy women in our midst who are not living in fear. As the card with the photos of the three local murdered women that was given out at the beautiful and heart-warming candle light vigil in Wilno said, “We must unite. Violence against women cannot be tolerated, in any form, in any context, in any circumstance” (- UN Sect. Gen. Ban Ki Moon)
We must demand of the Ontario government that its justice and prison systems focus on rehabilitation, rather than punishment. That prisoners who are not open to mental health counselling and are not into signing agreements to refrain from basic life damaging practices not be given early parole. That the safety and well being of our society depends on women living without a loaded bomb with a short fuse in their/our midst.
We do value the Feminine in our lives, in ourselves, in our community and in our world,
Robbie Anderman, Killaloe, ON
