My religion is as follows: Maybe once we are finally kind to all – humans, cats and dogs, rats, the small bugs in your bathroom sink, geese on the sidewalk, and opossums on the side of the road. When we value all life, we will find Heaven. Where there is no suffering (though pain is inevitable). We will see that we are all the same. You and I cry, like the mother deer next to her road-killed baby. Like the clouds, too heavy to hold another drop. We will look into the ocean and finally realize what it means to see our reflection.
I believe if men stopped hating women, the world would find peace. We would move towards a greater good. We would walk towards Heaven. But many men refuse to be naked of their ego, because they have created nothing within their own skin. Should they shed their ego, they would still be half womb. They have not managed to evolve as women have.
One of the greatest signs of evolution is emotional intelligence. Many men substantially lack this quality. They are often primal and violent. Their great confusion spreads like a disease through our world. Porn addictions breed trauma-trailing men. Into domestic violence. Into broken homes and eventually a broken world.
Maybe men shame women for their power, because they are too dim to understand our light.
Sociopaths often start with animals. They start small, and they know what they are doing. They are practicing taking life. They often kill cats – an animal commonly related to women. Then they kill us (or worse). I believe this is in part because men do not like that women give life. Maybe they feel they must balance this. Because the answer will never be in their palms, they use their bare hands to take it from us instead.
Men are also often on the forefront of women-shaming conversations. Teaching us to hate our womb is at the core of women-shaming ideologies.
Physically and mentally: We are taught to feel ashamed of our stomachs, especially our core. I do not find it a coincidence that this is where our uterus lives. We are shamed by intersecting medias (social media, tv, film, ads, celebrities, “wellness”, etc.), for having a natural body shape that reflects the home of our reproductive organs. In conversations relating to intimacy, women are predominately shamed for sexual activities or attitudes which men are praised for. We are taught to feel ashamed, grossed out, and alienated from our own organs. Men’s sexuality is accepted, paraded, and often used as a default perspective which molds women’s experiences. Even drawing images of men’s reproductive organs is seen as humorous and usual because of the wide normalization of the male body. Meanwhile, women’s bodies are advertised online, yet controlled frantically in schools. We are taught not only to be ashamed of our bodies, but to believe it is not our own.
Even in language we see this culture. While both sexual organs can be used in a derogatory way, dick asserts dominance, power, control, while the pussy expresses fear, cowardliness, and submission. While slut and whore are wildly over used for women, what term do we have for the male equivalent? Even the language we use to describe the physical act of sex enlists violence. Words like smash, pound, crack, rock, hit, beat up, and kill, to describe intercourse are all examples of how our culture imbeds violence into the woman experience. Even the word vagina comes from the origin meaning “sheath for a sword”. The dominance vs. submission narrative we regurgitate through language is archaic and unruly.
We may see this topic as taboo, but we’ve ignored it for many years and things are not getting much better, so I think it’s time to get over the uncomfortable nature of it all and start taking accountability for how we enable a misogynistic culture.
There is a reason violence leads to women. There is a reason we will never make it to Heaven. (Maybe we are in Hell, and that’s why there are men here)
At least when we die, we may find Heaven in the soil. When we can no longer do harm to others. To women or opossums. Instead, we become family to the dirt, to weeds, to trees, and birds. From the seed of a maple to the beak of a bird to the belly of a hawk to the claws of a coyote. From the ashes we hold hands with roots. We grow to grass, to the cow’s lips and tongue. Churn to butter, drip to milk, and fall as red meat on your mother’s plate. We finally collect into interbeing.
If we could find a way to be kind, to feel safe enough to love everything, then we could live in Heaven. But this is not in my world’s future. I will not make it to Heaven. But I will find it after death. When I am reconnected without a choice. Where we can grow interconnected without having the choice to be unkind- We can only be. **
I see Heaven when I hear the sound of running water and the flapping wings of a bird. I know Heaven is real when I see a squirrel on the same branch as a Robin. And I know I will find it, as Winter finds Spring.
We find heaven when we are back in the cycle of life. And who creates life, time and time again? Women. I don’t know that I’d say “God is a Woman.” But Women are the Creators of life.
**
I believe there is truth in every belief. For example, maybe we are reincarnated at all times. We are everything. We are reincarnated ideas, stardust, eons of layered crops and cells. I believe there is Heaven, as I described. I believe there is God. I see a Creator every time women give birth. I see a Healer when a woman loves a man even after he has cut her open.
Also: I find it utterly strange and unnatural that we have placed men next to nothing but God.
How can it be that the people who commit 80-90% of crimes are closer to God? Does this mean that God is cruel, and men are designed closer to him? The most horrific acts are done by men. The worst things women have done, men have done worse. Yet they are more Christ-like? What does this say about Christ?