Everyday Cultural Battlezone

I had intended this column to be about Janet Jackson's bravery in baring her brown-skin African-American breast before Amerika during half time at the super-bowl, causing tremendous uproar and chaos. Good for her. Brava. A metaphor for our times-the return of the breast of the Dark Mother. And I was going to take a look at the schizophrenic reality of that and the paid-for-view half-time programming involving numerous women running around in their underwear playing tackle football, no doubt baring breasts, and the clamoring, gawking, oogling and beer-drooling of the viewers, all accepted as normal male behavior.

And then Michelle, a young 32-year-old mother of two, was kidnapped and brutally murdered in the county in which I live, a few days ago not far away from my home, her body casually thrown away into the local river like a piece of trash. Now I must write about her. The man who is the alleged perpetrator, an unemployed butcher, is being held in jail without bail. He was caught very soon after Michelle disappeared. It seems there was no provocation for her murder-not that there could be anything justifying his actions. He wasn't an ex seeking vengeance, or someone she wronged. Apparently, he is just a butcher of women. Friends and family say she didn't know him. She was walking home in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, and he somehow grabbed her and threw her into his truck. Witnesses say they saw a woman screaming in the back of a speeding pick-up truck, though they couldn't make out at the time what was really going on. Now they know she was screaming for her life. At the time they thought she might be a drunk person "playing around." Not that any drunk person can truly "play around." Real playing requires presence. A testimony, however, to what is accepted as normal-a screaming thought-to-be drunk woman in the back of a speeding pick-up truck straddling the tailgate doesn't need to be paid attention to.

She was not drunk, and she wasn't playing around. She was a woman, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend, living her life, and she was hunted down by a raging man, just like men hunt and kill animals for "sport." The police found evidence along the roadside-her bloody jacket, a lot of her blood and her tooth. Her nude body was found in two feet of water in the river, with obvious head wounds, and her long hair had been cut off. A man brutally and sadistically took the life of this vibrant young woman and robbed her children of their mother. What did he get from taking her life? What did he get from torturing her? What do any men get who commit these daily/deadly global crimes? What do men get from war?

This is war. This is war against women, anywhere, anytime, anyplace. Women live in a cultural battlezone day in and day out. Women are forced by the patriarchal mind set (PMS) to bear this burden, to accept it, to get used to it, which is impossible. Men don't have to live this way, because the patriarchal male mind dominates and controls any way it possibly can. When a woman fights back, a movie is made about her and she is called "monster." Academy awards are given to the actress portraying this "monster", this person who gave the rage back where it belonged. I don't condone violence. I am pointing out the severe gender inequities of being the hunted and preyed upon. Most men do not have to face living in a world where they are the hunted. Yes, some do-gay men and men of color have certainly experienced this, and other men in other places too. I am not talking about the exception. Several years ago, two gay men were murdered in the same town. Still, because it was men who were murdered, there was lots of publicity and coverage. Michelle was on the news for a short time…in the paper for a short time. Following her story on the television news was a much longer story with much more publicity about a man who was killed by a hit-and-run driver. I am sorry for his death and I feel sorrow for his family. Michelle's murder, however, is something that needs to be in every headline in every paper in the world, as do all the murders, rapes and beatings of women. This war is the root war we must end. No other war will end until this war against women ends. Why isn't Michelle's story publicized as much as the story of a white man who dies accidentally?

I am outraged at the cultural battlezone on this planet for the last 5000 years. People are afraid to say they hate something. I hate this battlezone I have grown up in and my daughters live in that Michelle was killed in. I think it is healthy to hate it. I am not condoning wanton hatred, like that of the man who butchered Michelle and like that hatred that compels men to create wars. What I am talking about is different-not known by the current ruling paradigm. It is a fierce hatred that must be used in a positive way…used for the good to create change, to speak the truth, to transform this battlezone. It is a kind of hatred that does not harm, because it is recognized, felt, contained and used for the better. To deny it is grievous.

I think the man who killed Michelle has a terrible hatred-for himself, for life, for everything. He has not learned that his hatred is not who he is. He has not embraced it and learned to understand it and use the energy in a positive way. He has allowed his hatred to hurt and harm-his hatred made him gynocidal. I am sure he was deeply wounded as a child-where hatred was directed at him. He in turn hated that hatred while at the same time internalizing it, receiving the message that he was not worth loving. All he knows is hatred, which he hates.

This denied, unfelt hatred men have is what creates the cultural battlezone for women. Women are targeted and projected upon-women are prey to men's hatred because we are the carriers of life, which men in their hatred, hate. We have all been taught that we shouldn't hate, that we shouldn't be angry. Women especially are taught that it is not proper or lady-like to be angry. Men get to be angry-their anger is sanctioned by patriarchy. However, they are taught not to feel, which creates a deep self-hatred, because they learn to hate their sensitivity. We all experience anger and hatred. They are powerful emotions and part of the human experience. What I think the teaching about anger and hatred is, is that it is okay to feel these strong emotions and that we must learn to be responsible in order to learn what to do with them. It is okay to feel them. It is not okay to hurt or cause harm to oneself or to anyone else. We can feel the emotion, transform it and not become it. We don't have to be our feelings. Feelings come and go, like the tide ebbs and flows. We are not our feelings. We are that which feels them-like a hollow bamboo. They come in and they go out, if we don't identify with them. If we identify with them, they control us and we are then out of control, which sparks a deep terror and panic. Satiating that terror is only temporary-i.e., an explosive reaction, a compulsivity to cause harm, mayhem and murder, creating a war.

In the case of Michelle's butcher, he is his hatred. Walking the street and area in which she was killed, I could feel a blanket of fear cloaking the town. An act like he committed sends out reverberations for a long distance. I could feel everyone being affected by his violence. Women especially.

Addressing this lack of safety for our well-being is the single most important issue in creating peace in the world. Every man who hates life must come to terms with his inner condition and transform it. Every man who is ashamed to feel his feelings must cut the shackles of his conditioning and find the courage to own his deep-seated rage. I think any time we hear of a woman hunted down and murdered by a raging man, true brothers need to rise to the fore and find ways to educate each other about their collective pain and take responsibility for it. Men need to go see their murderous brothers in jail and start talking about the truth of their pain. Men need to father their sons in loving ways and give boys the tools to meet their manhood in love and respect, instead of feeding them a diet of violent sexism, domination, stupid and violent videogames, movies and television, dysfunctional competition, one-upmanship, and violent, hard-ass sports.

Today I went with a friend to the spot where I believe they pulled Michelle's body from the river. Many footprints from boots, shoes and dogs were left behind in the mud from the police and search dogs that combed the area for her body a few days ago. I took dried rose petals with me and strewed them along the road down to the river as I walked, saying a prayer for her. I made an offering of the petals to the water, and watched as the currents carried them about, as if they knew exactly where to take them. Butterflies flew overhead and a large blue heron flew above and landed a short distance away. In all the horror, life expressed itself in great beauty as I made prayers for her. It was an amazing paradox. My friend and I built an altar out of stones along the bank of the river, marking a memorial for her. We put more rose petals on the altar and arranged colored rocks in a border, circling the altar. We lit sage and smudged the riverbank. We then drove to a place along the road where Michelle had screamed for her life, where she was bludgeoned by the butcher of women. I drew a heart in the dirt under the redwood trees and placed the rest of the rose petals inside it. We outlined the heart with fresh, green redwood leaves. I was reminded of the brutal slayings of four women in Yosemite by a crazed, raging mad-man several years ago. I went there with a group of women and we did the same thing there for those women. We did a healing on the land where the last young woman was murdered-stood on the very ground where he slashed her throat so severely that he beheaded her--and did ritual to cleanse the woods of the murderer's desperate violence that took the life of four women, including a mother and her daughter, and honored the women as our sisters, as casualties of men's undeclared war against women. Later, I contacted her mother, and invited her to meet with us at her daughter's grave and she shared stories of her beautiful vibrant daughter, bringing picture albums to share with women she didn't know. But we do know. We are sisters, and we can do things like this, because we are lovers, carriers and protectors. of life. We all listened to her stories and cried with her and shared her grief and pain. In those moments, we were women together, acknowledging the battlezone created by men's hatred, and we were peace.

As I stood back to look at the heart I drew for Michelle in the soft dirt along the busy roadside, the roadside of terror for her, I thought that maybe I should just go around the world and build shrines and altars on the places where women are hunted and murdered by raging, hateful, crazy men. I should just go and bring love and beauty to the places where women lose their lives to this heinous sport of hunting.

I left the river feeling not quite so helpless. I felt I had again done something to counteract the tyranny of the cultural battlezone. Tomorrow is another day. The battlezone women live in will still be there. And so will I to stare it down and dismantle it piece by piece, committed to bringing love and beauty to a parched, love-starved, Goddess-starved, female wisdom starved land.

And I thank Janet Jackson for showing us the black breast of the Earth Mother. Perhaps we may remember something deep and hidden. Perhaps we may remember.

Blessed Be.