Strength? No. Random Hatred? You Betcha!

This little gem was posted on the WomenStrength group on Tribe.net... For a bunch of people who claim to be feminists supporting and upholding the rights of everyone, they sure are a negative, hatefilled bunch, eh? The original post is in Bold type, and my response is what follows... Enjoy!


"MOTHER'S DAY IS OPPRESSIVE AND SEXIST AND WAS PUT TOGETHER BY THE DOMINANT MALE CULTURE AS A REASON TO BLAME WOMEN FOR THE NEGATIVE/POSITIVE OUTCOME OF THE NEW GENERATION OF YOUNG MEN THAT WILL ONE DAY TAKE THEIR DOMINEERING AND OPPRESSIVE PLACES. AND ALSO AS "A PAT ON THE BACK" FOR WOMEN WHO WERE "SEEN AND NOT HEARD" "


Sheryn - I'm sorry, but I'm just not buying the definition you've provided. It sounds to me as though you are driven by a high amount of negativity toward anything male, and you don't wish to accept any option other than "Men Bad - banish all men - or at the very least, make them all subservient and castrate them all".


The following is the definition of Mother's Day, from Wikipedia:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother's_Day


"Different countries celebrate Mother's Day on various days of the year because the day has a number of different origins. One school of thought claims this day emerged from a custom of mother worship in ancient Greece. Mother worship - which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of gods, and Rhea, the wife of Cronus - was held around the Vernal Equinox around Asia Minor and eventually in Rome itself from the Ides of March (March 15) to March 18.


"In the United States, Mother's Day was originally conceived by social activist Julia Ward Howe during the American Civil War with a call to unite women against war. She wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation:


"From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
"Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the meansWhereby the great human family can live in peace...


"Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Anna Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.


"When Jarvis died, her daughter, also named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908, in the church where the elder Anna Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Grafton is the home to the International Mother's Day Shrine. From there, the custom caught on - spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by somes states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day. Nine years after the first official Mother's Day holiday, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become."


Eileen, as a point of reference, Hallmark did NOT come up with the idea of Mother's Day - they may have been the driving force behind the marketing schemes of today, but they did NOT create it.


If we go with the first school of thought, that it was created waaaaaay back in ancient Greece - possibly before - then we are on a track of the more Pagan and matriarchal aspects of society, and it could possibly not only be linked to May Day and the Equinox celebrations of fertility, but also to the Ides of March, Goddess-worship, and rites of passage into womanhood. Being thankful that one IS woman, that one has the ability to create life, to nurture, and to be an embodiment of a goddess in one's creating of life. Not to mention celebrating the whole "mother earth" idea, which cradles, nurtures and nourishes each and every person on her.


If we then decide to add in what Julia Howe and Anna Jarvis wanted most of all with their movement, which was to try and rally women together to unite for peace and work together toward a common goal, regardless of which side of the issue they were on (in their day, it was specifically the Civil War), it then takes on even further significance, and should not be hated at all.


So, taken all of the this together, instead of concentrating on the consumer-driven, corporate hoo-ha that's been hyped for years, concentrate instead on this:


Mother's Day could be looked upon as a day wherein we - as women, whether we be mothers, daughters, sisters, or aunts - can come together in a united effort to recognize the power that we have in the ability to create life, to nurture, and to nourish each other and the earth, and the power that the earth has to create life, to nourish and to nurture us.


Instead of focusing upon the negative aspect of what this has become, start a new trend for it, and have your friends and family join in. It doesn't have to be a negative day, or a day of hatred toward anything, whether general or specific. Turn it positive, and stop buying into the hype with your negativity.


~M