DESPITE MY HARSH CRITICISM of the U.S. brand of feminism -- chiefly for the bourgeois bias that allowed it to be co-opted by Big Business and turned into an instrument of class warfare (note the gender quotas that literally destroyed my life) -- I nevertheless passionately support female equality, and in fact have done so for as long as I can remember: to such an extent that often during my childhood and occasionally even in manhood as well, my friendships with girls and women got me labeled a sissy or suspected of being homosexual.
Moreover (and mostly on the basis of my experience as a journalist and part-time college instructor), I long ago concluded there are some things women actually do better than men. The most significant of these is thinking outside the proverbial box -- that is, solving problems by methods to which we men are for various reasons oblivious. To exemplify what I am saying, here is a videotape of four women on horseback who accomplished -- with a great saving of equine lives -- what any number of men with machines had been unable to do no matter how hard they tried.
Normally I am unmoved by musically accompanied news footage. But what happens in these frames is so profoundly mythic, the Celto-pagan flavor of the Vangelis accompaniment merely adds another (entirely appropriate) dimension to what is taking place. Thus I would be remiss if I failed to mention that in ancient times, such rescuers would have been considered specially blessed by Epona, the Celtic horse-goddess, who by her attributes is an incarnation of the Great Mother herself.
(Many thanks to my sister Elizabeth Bliss for forwarding me the ink to the video.)
Posted by Loren at January 17, 2007 10:08 PM | TrackBackThe text in that video calls the rescue a unique, different approach. Maybe the difference is in observing the natural flow of things: that rain will abate in time, that a herd will follow a strong leader. Maybe the uniqueness is trusting that a victim can be empowered to participate in his own salvation. Pagan belief is about our "creatureliness": always observing, learning from, and cooperating with nature. I don't know why the stereotypical male thinking is about dominating the natural forces and relying on tools and machines to do it. I'm optimistic that we can all think "out of the box" and that the tension of our male-female ways of thinking is a natural force, too, that will have a positive outcome. The universe has an eternity of time to shape both men and women. And those horses would have been rescued one way or the other because people had the will to attempt many approaches.
(And I secretly, sometimes blatantly, hum my heroic anthems when I go about my good-deed-doing, and my musicals as I go about living my comic little existence. So bring on the musical accompaniment!)
Posted by: Barb at January 18, 2007 07:07 AM