Original Instructions Part Four

"The Great Mother is beautiful, no matter what… She's not nice. She's no pretty; she's beautiful. And I'm telling you something about the feminine, what the feminine means. She is one scary bitch… We try to control her. You can't control a madwoman who's a sorceress." Paula Gunn Allen
People often refer to nature and the environment as "Mother Earth". Whenever I think of Mother Earth, I think about the wind gently blowing the leaves and the rain flowing into the river. I don't think of "one scary bitch". But this quote is a more accurate way of looking at Mother Nature because weather and natural disasters are not predictable or under our control. Allen says that humans often try to control "The Great Mother" but they need not try to control the world because "the world can save itself quite well. It's doing it." I thought this was an interesting way to look at Mother Earth because we often try finding ways of "saving the planet." We can't fix anything. The only thing we can do is "live and learn and have gratitude and love." If everyone focused on living and learning as opposed to fixing and solving, some of our world's problems might solve themselves.

Bogaletch Gebre, an Ethiopian Women, has supported feminine power by standing up against the traditional practice of female genital excision (FGE). Gebre says, "Until we restore the health of our women, we'll never restore the health of our communities. Until we stop the maiming of women, we cannot turn the tide against the historic maiming of our culture and the modern maiming of our countryside. Until we empower women, we'll never activate the paradigm needed to heal our environment. Until we educate women, we'll never end the cycle of famine and build a sustainable economy." As Chief Oren Lyons pointed out in part 2: "You can't have justice without equity." We cannot solve today's problems, or at least live and learn with gratitude and love, until we have gender equality. Taking this one step further, we cannot have gender equality until we have awareness of gender inequality. Today in Spanish class, we were discussing in groups about if we thought certain issues were going to exist in the future. After saying how I thought gender inequality would end in the future, a guy in my group said that he didn't think gender inequality exists today. After giving him a few examples of how I've seen gender inequality in my own life, he was convinced that it is still an issue. This guy was not a sexist or ok with women being treated unfairly, he just wasn't aware of what gender issues persist today. I was reminded of this when I read about how Gebre was insulted when a friend questioned the Ethiopian practice of FGE. Gebre, as well as many Ethiopian women, were not aware that they were being treated unjustly. It wasn't until Gebre started the movement against FGE that many women acknowledged that they were being treated unfairly and decided to take a stance. Since we cannot solve our environmental problems without equality, our first step should be to promote awareness of gender inequality. This is the only way we will be able to "live and learn and have gratitude and love."