MEDICATION NEEDED

by Ruth A. Sheets

When I was in 8^th grade, my history teacher made a unique assignment.  We were to write a day by day "news report" of what later came to be called, "the Six-day War" between Israel and its neighbors.  I read the paper and watched the news each evening and realized that the situation was far more complex than any report I could write.  I learned there is a history behind what is happening and that it is not always easily understood.  And, people's beliefs and emotions get mixed up in the events too. 

I got a second dose of this when the following year my Civics teacher assigned us to keep a "diary" of events in the Vietnam War for February 1968, which turned out to be one of the deadliest months of the war for the US.

At the end of each assignment, I was angry that there was absolutely nothing I could do that would in any way impact what was going on.  I couldn't stop Israel from taking over other people's land and I couldn't stop the destruction in Vietnam.  That one-month assignment ultimately led to my loss of support  for our government's war, and all our wars since then.

I doubt the journalists I was reading intended people to feel so angry and impotent, but the men who start wars either don't think about how people will respond to them or don't care as long as we don't get in their way.  I suspect those men are thinking only of how to achieve their goal, whatever that is.  They have to have enough force behind their efforts to keep things going, no matter what, and just enough popular support at home.  Journalists are just supposed to cover the action.

Last month, Russia attacked Ukraine.  The reason has changed over time"  Ukraine is really part of Russia, Ukraine is run by Nazis that have to be taken out, Russia is worried about NATO, Russia wants to give a black eye to the West - the US.  I suspect Russian President Putin has more excuses to pump out in case the above list doesn't work, or he'll keep using them all and add new ones as they occur to him.  Some are lies, some have a kernel of truth.  The whole operation is bullying, getting others to hurt the people he wants hurt so he can go in and take over.  his crew of soldiers is expendable as are the people of Ukraine.

Journalists have been covering the destruction Russian forces have been causing as well as the civilian deaths.  Instead of just numbers, reporters are interviewing Ukrainians facing the Russian onslaught.  It has been harder to interview Russians since Putin has shut down all but his media which broadcasts and prints only what he wants put out to the people.  Does it matter what Russians say if they only receive Putin-approved messages?  What would they base their opinions on when they could be arrested for speaking what the government doesn't want them to say? 

I have been feeling the kind of impotence I felt more than 50  years ago after my jr. high school assignments, as I learn about Russia's attack on Ukraine.  Unless Russia stops its insane invasion, there are no good solutions.  Russia is a nation where one man and the toadies he has groomed to go along with whatever he decides can invade any country or territory he wants.  China's Xi Jinping is in the same position deciding what to do about Taiwan, a nation that is happy with its independence, but Xi claims it is really China.  Will either risk a nuclear conflict? 

The United States is not blameless either.  We attacked Iraq with no real evidence of the "weapons of mass destruction" George W. Bush claimed.  We have been out of Iraq for more than a decade.  Is life in Iraq better now than before we invaded?  It depends on who you talk to.  The many people who died I suspect aren't doing better.

I see no end to the insanity and our feeling of helplessness that accompanies male aggression, unless there is an intervention.  A conservative pundit recently stated that war is the nature of things and part of the human condition, so we should just live with it.  I have heard that all my life, but I don't believe it.  I think it is the excuse we use to allow some men to remain children, the bullying kind of children.  Their childish behavior elicits a parental response from people who let them maintain it, but in adult settings.  We mistake their bullying, loud-mouthed proclamations, and abuse  as strength, not the bratty, whiny, childish trying to be king of the hill, boss of everyone around so they don't have to listen to anyone that it really is.  They particularly don't want to hear from those adults in the room who might tell them "no." 

I have a proposal.  I would like to see women and men who are researchers and want peace for the peoples of the world, to work on a medication that could be introduced to a leader's water system or air when talk of violence toward another nation or group breaks out.  Brain research has increased dramatically since my Jr. High days, so I am hoping something positive can come of it.  Brain scientists should look at the parts of the brain that light up when leaders and others are itching for a fight.  Find a way to send a medication that would slow down that part of the brain long enough for a cool-off period.  The medication could be spread as a temporary fog or highly targeted water infusion. 

I know I'm dreaming, but something does need to be done to  keep child-men out of power whenever possible, and keep men in leadership from harming other nations or their own people.  We as a whole people of Earth need to work on stopping global warming ASAP.  We don't have time to waste on deliberate destruction, killing, and out-of-control child-man leaders, some of whom have nuclear weapons, not to mention the cyber ones. 

We need you, brain scientists.  We need an anti-war, anti-megalomania medication soon!  Very soon!!

SEXISM AND MISOGYNY ALIVE AND WELL – HOPEFULLY NOT FOR LONG

by Ruth A. Sheets

I will state here that I have been a feminist since before I knew there was a word for what I was.  That was true in school as well as my Catholic catechism classes when the teachers in both settings called on the boys far more often and let them act out while reprimanding girls for the same actions.  And, I challenged those teachers more than once "How come you call on the boys all the time?"  I never got a satisfactory answer, but I came to understand.

One Sunday in church, I looked at the nuns sitting together in their special spot and realized how incredibly talented they were and why it should be that only men could be "on the altar" during mass.  Not even these deeply spiritual, well-educated women could ever hope to pass the sacred rail.  Everyone who held any role of significance in the church was male.  No women need apply, except when I looked around, it was women who filled the pews and kept the church going.

This revelation happened when I was in 8^th or 9^th grade.  At the same time, I visited my mom's Protestant (Schwenkfelder) church and a woman minister came to preach.  She was the pastor of a church in the denomination.  I was shocked because I had not heard of a woman being pastor.  I had just been hoping at the Catholic church girls could serve at mass, read from the scriptures, or sing in the choir.  I wasn't at first thinking about women as priests, but the idea grew in my mind, why not!  I asked one of our priests why a woman could not become a priest.  His answer was textbook, "Jesus and his apostles were all men."  When I asked about Mary Magdalene, Mary and Martha, the 3 women who planned to tend Jesus' tomb, he said they were not true apostles.  "Are you sure," I asked.  No answer.

My frustration with the church's anti-women stance took me and the other Catholic members of my family from the church at the end of my Sophomore year in high school.  None of us returned.

It seems not much has changed in the Catholic Church related to women in the past more than 50 years since I left.  Women can now read scripture and pass the sacred rail during mass, but women have no real authority, not even nuns who have given their lives to the church.  They do have a female Supreme Court Justice now, though, one who mouths all the traditional Catholic positions along with the other four conservative Catholic males on the Court. 

There was significant movement in the 1980s to inclusify the language of scriptures, hymns,  and prayers in some denominations, sometimes successfully, but many people in the church pews do not want the inclusive language.  It isn't familiar.  The Christian understanding of God as fully male in all God's "persons."  When I have asked women if it bothers them to see God as only male, most say they like the idea of a loving father in charge.  One friend told me that her father was not great and she liked the "good father" image.  They said, of course, Jesus was male and the Holy Spirit is just a spirit and they don't see it as male or female, or really, mostly male, but well . . ..  

Just as our society is built on the proposition that white is superior to all other races, most societies in the world are built on the proposition that male is superior to female.  For such propositions to be sustained, most people must either believe it or be forced to live it.  And, often, women are enforcers along with the men.

Just as there have been strong, intelligent, resourceful people of color throughout our history who have been ignored since they were simply, not seen by white people, there have been strong, intelligent, resourceful women of all races who were mostly ignored because they didn't fit male expectations of what a woman should be and anyone who actually met the expectations was no one worthy of notice.

Part of that set of female expectations included indoctrinating the children into the status each family member has:  Father at the top, ruler of all he surveys, boy children because they will inherit the father's world, the mother, then the female children.   I suspect that kids living in a traditional family today, if asked, could accurately identify the pecking order.  And, it's not enough that men are at the top of the human hierarchy, women need to be regularly put down, undermined, and kept in their place for the benefit of all.  There are always reasons for this, of course, at least for those who are doing the diminishing.

In some Muslim countries today, women are not to be educated or to only receive the most rudimentary schooling, and nothing in that education particularly useful.  It is strange since the Prophet's wives were well educated and his first wife was a business woman.  Maybe the men are just plain scared of women and having to share power.

In many other parts of the world, girls are only educated if the boys have been taken care of first.  Girls get what is left over.  Maybe the thought is that if women are educated they will want more than just bearing and raising children and being the maid for their husband.  Can't have that!

Here,  women are gaining some political status.  There are more than a hundred women in our House of Representatives and a few in the Senate which means we only need around a hundred sixty more to be at full representation since we are more than 50% of the population.  That is going to be a struggle because even women are often unwilling to vote for a woman, and feminism has become a dirty word.  It is popular for women to proclaim "I'm not a feminist!"  When asked what they think a feminist is, women say something like "it means women should take over everything and I like men and . . . ."

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was by far the most qualified person to be president and she did win the popular vote by nearly three million votes.  About 53% of the white women who voted, voted against her.  They couldn't/wouldn't explain why they chose a man who lied frequently, cheated in his business dealings, thought it was OK to grab women's genitals, insulted anyone who didn't agree with him, and more.  I believe it was a very simple choice for those women; he was a man and any man, even the worst man is better than the best woman.  When you have been fed all your life with the gruel of "man good – woman bad," it is hard to get past it, and there is very little incentive to do it.  

I was speaking recently with a woman I like and respect.  We got on the topic of politics and she mentioned that she hates Nancy Pelosi.  I asked what about her made her hate the Speaker of the House.  She said she didn't like her positions on things.  I asked if there were something in particular.  She couldn't name one thing.  I asked if it could be that Pelosi is a woman in power.  She said she didn't think so and added she didn't care for Kamala Harris either, saying it was because she wasn't doing anything.  I asked what she thought about her going to Hungary to work on issues related to the Ukrainian refugees.  She wasn't aware of that.  I asked what she thought VP Harris should be doing.  She wasn't sure but "more than she is doing."

I know my friend is not unique.  hating or dismissing women is standard operating procedure and nearly always has been.  It can be pretty powerful and disheartening when it is a woman who is the misogynist. 

I expect some, even many men hating and dismissing women but am still shocked at the level of it among women.  Maybe the problem is there have been so few positions of authority for women, if a woman gets one, there is nothing for anyone else. 

There are many positions these days created by men for female misogynists.  They are the handmaidens of the sexist males.  These women who stand against equality claiming "I am already equal, just in a different sphere." are employed by conservative media, churches, educational institutions, the courts, even politics to maintain the status quo. 

Yes, Sexism and Misogyny are alive and well and many men and women are participating.  We need a new "Age of Enlightenment" where women can be seen as standing for themselves in decision-making and men work to stop men's desperate need to be superior while fearing (knowing) they are not. 

Men ushered in the last "Age of Enlightenment" where they continued to hold in place, using "reason" all the old male supremacy ideas of the past while they talked about "all men are created equal."  I guess women, it's our turn this time.  We need a new "Age of Enlightenment" in which women refuse to let men make decisions for us about our bodies, our education, our faith.  Many men are on women's side in this but, alas, some men in power are afraid of losing that power, and to women?  The "man good-woman bad" theology needs to be ejected in favor of something far more egalitarian.  OK, women, and pro-woman men, we're on!  Let's get this done!