Heathen, Feminist, and Sexual – what does it all mean?

Since I have a hiatus on my job, I’ve been living on the internet too much lately.  My body is cramping from being sedentary, becoming stiff from leaning over the screen.  But I am Learning; this is why my time is important.

I am learning valuable things, soaking in the existence of others.  I have been spending a lot of time reading the archives of two bloggers,

Davka (http://www.davkadeergirl.com/)

and

Tara (http://www.hobostripper.com/)

Both of them I see as wild-workers.  They have a type of magic, and they employ it, projecting their skills outward, even if their sendings aren’t necessarily in a recognizable form (to some of us).

Both of these women have been making me think quite a bit.  Both have been or currently are strippers.  I have also been a stripper.  And while I’m drawn to their work partially because of that fact, I also think they have a lot to say about the world, and magic, and sexuality.

As people do, they hold different ideas of what they are doing within the sex industry.  It’s a hot topic.  Is it healing, or exploitation?  Or maybe all, or none of the above.

What the hell does it all have to do with Heathenism?  Bear with me.

Sacred sexuality has a rich tradition, going back to humans having ritual sex in the fields to bring fertility to the crops.  Frey and Freya are, in essence, fetility deities of the Vanir, the older, more earth-centered side of the Norse pantheon (whereas the Aesir, which came along a bit later, have war deities and the All-Father aspect of the pantheon, ie Odin).  To me, there is nothing more natural and earth-centered than sexuality.  Fertility in older days essentially meant life, whether that be plant in nature, or human, and sex is an integral part of life.  Otherwise, none of us would be here to discuss sexuality.

I’ve observed the rich traditions of older, earth-centered religions, and they all seem to have this in common.  Fertility is life.

One of the things that scares me about our modern culture is the trend to group sex and death together.  If you don’t know what I mean, think about all the crime shows, with beautiful murdered women laid out on slabs (Sex = death).  Take the Suicide Girls, a very popular adult modeling group.  Their very name  groups sex and death into the same category.  (For the record, I love the Suicide Girls, I’m just using their name as an example of what I see as a modern societal problem.)

I don’t want to glorify the past and say things such as rape or violence never happened then.  These problems did happen, but I don’t think they were viewed in the same way by older cultures. Women were viewed as wise, instead of burned as witches.  They were revered as magic workers.  Rape was not something you just shrugged your shoulders about, it was a huge issue.

In our modern world, sex-related violence is very common.  It’s everywhere.  It’s in our movies, our college campuses, and it’s constantly portrayed on television.  Rape is a very real epidemic.  It is guaranteed that every person knows at least one person who has been raped, even if you do not know which person it might be.  If your friends are a vocal bunch, you may know a lot more than one survivor.  No one flinches when someone murders a sex worker.  Our culture should be ashamed of this.

If no one flinches when prostitutes are murdered, and people regularly talk about strippers as if they aren’t real people, then there is a very real lack of respect for sexuality, in this case, women’s sexuality specifically.

This is why Davka and Tara really speak to me.  They talk about the experiences they’ve had, and what people say to them in clubs.  I have also had similar experiences.  I have had customers in strip clubs (who are probably “normal” people, outside of the club) say horrifyingly awful, inhuman things to me, as if I am not a feeling person with a brain. (“What’s a purty lil’ girl like you doin’ in an awful place like this?”  Answer:  “Making money to pay my way through college.  Tip Me.”)  When you are onstage, as a stripper, that is all people seem to see, most of the time.  So when Davka and Tara make similar observations, they cut me to the quick, because I have also lived that life.

I do not think that stripping is wrong, in any way.  I think if some things were different, it would be a very rewarding, wonderful thing to do.  But I sense this malaise in our culture, and I believe it is rooted in the lack of respect for women.

This is why feminism is important.  Feminism is not about supporting women over men; feminism has, as its goal, to not hold either sex over the other – to have a world where what sex you happen to be is immaterial.  And one area where women are still struggling is politically – we are still struggling for the basic right to decide what happens to our own bodies.

I believe women won’t be able to take back their powers fully until we regain the power to control our bodies, fully, without kowtowing to the morality of others.  For this reason, I have been learning more and more about plant lore.  I am still a baby in this aspect, but the first thing I did was went out and found a book about how to induce a natural, plant-based abortion.  It is one of the most valuable books in my collection.  It covers everything from plant-based birth control (such as queen anne’s lace seeds) to emmenogogues and oxytocics.  If you are interested in finding this text, the title is  Reclaiming our Ancient Wisdom:  Herbal Abortion Procedure and Practice for Midwives and Herbalists, by Catherine Marie Jeunet. It is published by Eberhardt Press (www.eberhardtpress.org).

The other reason I’m researching plant lore is all the wonderful things plants can do to help our bodies heal naturally. (Tara has a great amount of information randomly sprinkled through her blog.)  Simple raspberry leaves, when brewed like tea, have a great impact on whether I’m prostrated by menstrual cramps, or okay to go about my day, relatively pain-free.  What if we still knew all the plants like we used to?  They are another great way to regain control of our bodies, and they are inexpensive, and don’t require any political upheaval.

I think sometimes that the internet just might bring about the ruin of the English language as we know it, but I also love it for all the knowledge it brings to everyone.  I never thought I would be reading blogs about stripping, and picking up valuable plant lore along the way.  But I am.  I’m soaking up knowledge.  And I can’t wait to use it.

Velsignelser,

Muninn