Greetings from the Land of Enchantment

The Current State of Feminism

On the radio this morning, they were telling the story of the year that 'bra burners' gathered at the Miss USA pageant to protest and call for a women's liberation movement. It was 1968, the year I was born. A few years later, my own mother picketed the state capital in Austin, Texas, to protest against the Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution--yes, you read that correctly. She only confessed this to me a few years ago, with some trepidation in her voice. Yet, despite my roots, or perhaps because of the vibration happening the year I was born, I became a feminist (well as much as anyone from my generation could be one).

I quickly learned the limitations of the movement as well as the complete lack of awareness on the part of women my age and younger of the benefits that the women's movement had delivered to to them. Before the early 70s, women couldn't get a credit card without a cosigner, much less buy a car or a house. So even though women still aren't paid the same as men for the same work, we've made progress.

Forty years ago Yogi Bhajan came to the states and within 10 years he began his own women's movement--The Grace of God Movement--to elevate the consciousness of women and in turn heal the planet. He would scoff at those women crying out for 'equal' rights and declared that being equal to a man would not only be impossible but a huge step down for women, who he described as 16 times more intelligent, 16 times more capacity, and 16 times more powerful than men. (The downside is that we're also 16 times more neurotic, insecure, etc., but we don't like to talk about that as much--smile.) That in fact, women were the source of everything--including men.

So as I listen to contemporary women still longing to be "equal" to men, I let out a little sigh. Why be equal when you can be worshipped? Why be equal when you can be infinite? Why be equal when you can be you--and there's nothing equal about that!

posted by Sat Purkh Kaur Khalsa @ 6:18 AM