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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in matriarchy

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Not a Review of Matthew Lopez's Red, White, and Royal Blue

 

The son of the American President and the Prince of England—already in love—are coming out to one another.

“I'm bi,” says the American.

“I'm gay as a maypole,” says the Prince.

 

Back in the 70s, I can remember reading a profoundly essentialist article by a Jungian analyst contrasting the values of matriarchal and patriarchal societies.

The article consisted largely of three side-by-side columns:

Category      Patriarchy     Matriarchy

(That, according to the article itself, patriarchal thinking favors polarized dichotomies while matriarchies prefer to think holistically, was an irony that seems utterly to have escaped the author. Oh well, it was the 70s; I suppose a little self-awareness would be too much to expect.)

At this remove of time, I can remember only one other specific: under the category Major Sexual Taboo, Patriarchy's was listed as Homosexuality, Matriarchy's as Incest.

As a youth figuring out his own sexual identity at the time, it was pretty clear to me on which side of the hedge my ideological sympathies lay.

 

This is certainly the case in Lopez's new film (based on a novel, which I have yet to read) Red, White, and Royal Blue, set in the New Matriarchy of the fantasy near-future. The US President and the Prime Minister of the UK are both women; so are pretty much all of their functionaries—at least, the ones with any power.

Unsurprisingly, the only push-back against the prince and the president's son comes from the quote-unquote “wrinkled old men” of the Monarchy.

Ho hum. There are plenty of other creaking stereotypes to be found in RWRB as well. The gay guy bottoms, of course. The boorish—or maybe it's ignorant—American's response to the Prince's maypole comment is: “What's a maypole?” Seriously?

Still, it's a romp, if a corny and wholly over-the-top one. The boys are cute (actor Nicholas Galitzine sure looks a lot like Bonny Prince Billy did back in his glory days); the sex (though very delicately handled: the graphically realistic penetration scene is shot entirely facially) is hot, hot, hot.

(No way I am ever going to forgive them, though, for making Minnesota a Red state during the Election Eve scenes. Effing Hollywood: they think Midwest/Flyover Country = Rust Belt. Get a clue, folks; Minnesota is Bluer than California.)

Of course, there's a happy ending, shooting star and all.

Urk.

 

Would matriarchy be any kinder to male-male love than patriarchy? With so little (if any) historical information to draw on, I can see little reason—essentialist presumptions aside (v. supra)—for thinking so.

Still, that's not the point here. None of the -archies (including an-) are going to solve the problems of human society. At the corner of thirteenth and last—now there's a sign-post for you—we're all in this together, men, women, and everyone else; working together is what we've got to figure out.

As for the film, this is rom-com: fantasy, folks.

Don't overthink, don't ask the larger questions.

Just laugh, and ride along.

 

My favorite part of the film remains the maypole comment, which (be warned) I henceforth intend to use at every possible opportunity.

Here too, though, I find myself not entirely sure of what's actually being said. What's so gay about a maypole?

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Not Your Grandfather's Patriarchy

 

I'm first to the door when we get to the restaurant after my mother's funeral, so naturally I open and hold it as the rest enter. This means that I'm the last to the table. By the time I get there, one seat is left.

“We thought we'd put you at the head,” my sister says, “since you're the patriarch now.”

That crackling sound you're hearing? That's the sound of my toes curling up backwards.

 

Ah, patriarchy. For decades now, the term has been synonymous with unjust societal power structure.

I sincerely hope that by now we've all managed to get past the simplistic old matriarchy/patriarchy dualisms of the 80s. As pagans, we really should be smart enough to understand that the world is never quite that simple.

Best not to take our patriarchies too literally; best to remember that, like “Nature,” “patriarchy” is a term of convenience, a way of conceptualizing and talking: a semantic shorthand, no more.

Which isn't, of course, to deny that systematic injustices exist. (Look at the pay gap, if you don't believe me.) Still, we've come a long way since those days of comforting, simplistic dichotomies.

Maybe it's time to start thinking about the shape of what comes next.

 

In my family, we talk about food a lot. (Hey, it beats fighting over politics.) Over meals at family gatherings like weddings and funerals, we usually discuss where to go for the next meal.

Then, after weighing the various possibilities, everyone turns to the current family patriarch to cast the deciding vote.

For years, this was my Uncle Milton: a benevolent patriarch, if ever there was one. My father has admitted to me to having felt a moment of panic when, for the first time after Milton's death, people turned to him.

“I don't want to be patriarch!” he, too, thought. “I'm the clown!” Given the nature of birth-order politics, younger sons often become the family trickster.

Still, some social imperatives outweigh others.

 

Like my father, I'm a clown too, though for different reasons. Many, if not most, of my own stories lead up to a punchline.

Like other outsiders—think of Jewish humor—gay men often play the trickster in public. It's a social strategy, and an effective one.

We learn early that humor—especially self-deprecating humor—disarms, perhaps by making us seem less threatening.

Still, in these latter days, perhaps of all men, it's the fool who is best suited to be king.

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  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    My family talked about food as well. My brother-in-law Marty said it was a nice change from his parents talking about their illne

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 Review: 'Bridgerton' Is Sexy Shondaland Goodness : NPR

 

Somehow, Bridgerton reminds me of a blown-out Ostara egg.

Pretty on the outside, but that's all you get.

It's no exaggeration to categorize the Netflix period costume-drama Bridgerton, set in an ethnically diverse early 19th century Britain-that-never-was, as a fantasy series. At heart, it's a Mating Game drag show—how many fabulous costumes will our heroine get to swan around in this episode?—but, of course, lacking the poignant self-satire that gives real drag its pungency.

Women in female drag. Now there's a concept.

In Bridgerton, we enter into a world entirely matriarchal, with (basically) an all-female cast. Yes, there are a few nominal male characters, virtually all of them pretty prizes for the scheming central characters, without interior life of their own. (That they're beautiful and occasionally take their clothes off provides only limited consolation.) If this seems due payback for all those decades of hero-centric TV with its pretty-but-empty female trophies, unfortunately, in the end, one is just as boring as the other. Revenge nearly always makes for better fantasy than reality.

At very least, Bridgerton manages to avoid the all-too-predictable Masterpiece Theater trope, in which the lowah closses (= servants) are always good for a loff. (I'll include here Julian Fellowes' current Gilded Age, basically an English costume-drama in American drag.) Here, the dramatis personae are all Persons of Privilege, and working folk—amusing though they be—stay duly in the background, where they belong.

Although I don't doubt that eventually we'll be seeing the more-or-less obligatory Christmas episode, one advantage for the pagan viewer is that this is a thoroughly secular fantasy, in which religion—Christian or otherwise—plays virtually no part at all. As I said, this isn't a period piece, it's 21st century in drag.

What redeems Bridgerton is its unabashed let's-pretend ethnic romp. What if early 19th-century Britain were as ethnically diverse as contemporary Britain? What would it be like to live in a multiracial society utterly lacking in racism? In that sense, having laid aside even the slightest pretension to historical accuracy, the series offers the viewer a breath of fresh air.

Alas, Bridgerton's ethnic diversity is as far as it goes. Predictably, its lack of non-cardboardy male characters puts any sort of gay interest beyond the pale. (Unlike real matriarchies, there isn't even any lesbianism.) Sorry, Netflix, if you think that your gay audience is going to content itself forever with identifying with female characters while salivating over all those firm young male bodies, I've got some bad news for you.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

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Title: Thornbound (The Harwood Spellbook Volume II)

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Matriarchies of the Midwest

I had to laugh when, at the annual Mahle Lecture at Hamline University in “St.” Paul this weekend, I heard feminist theologian Carol P. Christ describe the ideal human society as a “matriarchal egalitarianism.”

Really, I had to laugh.

The coven that I'm part of has been going strong for nearly 40 years now. Next fall we'll be 39 (a significant number = 3 x 13). We're a group of friends who share a spiritual life. Most (but not all) of us are women.

This group is the center of my social life, and the center of my spiritual life. We're deeply engaged with one another's lives. I've helped raise our youngest coven kid.

Hence my laughter.

Here in the heart of the American Midwest, I've lived in a matriarchal egalitarianism for decades.

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  • Hearth M Rising
    Hearth M Rising says #
    Thank you for this. Raising children is the central work in matriarchal communities, important in everyone's life, not just a nucl
  • Murphy Pizza
    Murphy Pizza says #
    Right on! And wasn't the Mahle Lecture blast! Such a thrill to get my battered copy of Weaving the Visions signed by both Carol Ch
What Is “Egalitarian Matriarchy” and Why Is It So Often Misunderstood? by Carol P. Christ

In their purest form, “egalitarian matriarchies” place the mother principle at the center of culture and society. Their highest values are the love, care, and generosity they associate with motherhood. These values are not limited to women and girls. Boys and men are also encouraged to honor mothers above all, to practice the traits of love, care, and generosity, and to value them in others.

“Egalitarian matriarchal” societies are matrilineal which means that family membership and descent are passed through the female line. They are also usually matrilocal, which means that women live in their maternal home all of their lives. Family groups are usually extended rather than nuclear. Often there is a “big house” in which groups of sisters, brothers, and cousins live together with mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and great-aunts. In what I imagine to have been the original form of the system (still practiced by the Mosuo of the Himalayas), men also live in their maternal house, visiting their lovers at night, and returning home in the morning.

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  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    Thank you, Carol, for this thought-provoking explanation of terms. From my own experience as a 70 year-old male who was put on te
  • Carol P. Christ
    Carol P. Christ says #
    Thanks Ted. Currently I am re-reading Women at the Center. The egalitarian matriarchal Minangkabau people believe that without (re

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
I Am the Matriarch....

You held my hand
Guided my steps
And supported my dreams.

We did not always agree
But eventually the paths
Of our divergence met at
The singular point of Love.

You possessed the wisdom of age
And experience as the power of
The feminine coursed through you as the
Elder and first Mother.

This mantle was passed to you from
Your Mother and hers from a continuous
Line of strong and courageous women.

Each passing of this Queenship
Made a little easier the road ahead
And for me that easier road stretched
Exponentially further.

Your life was hard so that mine
Would be made easier and the
Blessings I pass to my daughters
Will be ones of a newly forged strength
That has been honed and tempered in the
Fires of pain and joy of those who came before.

You have found your freedom and
In passing from this world left behind
The mantle of Matriarch that I now
Must take up as I find my way.

I am not ready but this is not a choice
And I will take on this gift wearing it
Proudly until my time in this world
Is done....

I Am the Matriarch
And in this naming I
Set foot on a path all
Women will one day walk.

Recent loss of my Mother has set me to thinking about much that I have claimed as my space of knowing about the power of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine. Our focus never wants to stray into thoughts of when the inevitable will happen, so we direct our claimings to those of identification as the lusty Maiden, the creative nurturing of the Mother and the prized wisdom of recognition as a Crone.

...
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