Thanks for diving into this, Summer. I remember that 90s AK culture. Now they're all grown up and have money for bigger trucks 😂
I've always found it kind of funny that our little human brains had to gender divinity in order for 'god' to make sense to us. The act of making god male is a comically insecure deed with the specific intent to subjugate women.
If any man had bothered to be in the room when a woman gave birth, he would know how little he could know of creation.
Yes to all of this 🙌🏽. I wholeheartedly believe that the Greco-Roman foundation for an institutional structure warped the entire way we view women (the true builders) and their power. This whole system bred a conflict between the more masculine women and more feminine women, hence the competitive nature of groups, mean girls etc. Anywho I love your points and thank you for taking the time to put this together 🙏🏽💜🍑
Great as usual. I recognize the phallocentric world you grew up in as akin to the one that raised me, a tomboy, also a nerd, but a basketball player and so free from the bullies. A a gay girl, I have occasionally been included in some of the locker room talk over the years. Yikes. I grew up in the 1970s and 80s in Northern California, which was also a last holdout for hippies. These furry men could be quite dominant in their performance of long-haired masculinity. I teach gender history and had the opportunity to teach a grad seminar on masculinity a few years back during the first Trump years, in which we sought some definition of masculinity that wasn't toxic. I came away from teaching this class with a sense that I wanted to never identify as a masculine woman again. I chose the term virago. The "vir" meant both green and strong and has provocative shared meaning with virtue and virgin. A Druidry teacher of mine said the term didn't mean much to her: she'd heard it meant difficult woman. This was good enough for me and made me laugh.
My God, you are brilliant, and I am blessed to have a family tie to you. You leave me speechless, open my mind and heart in new, thoughtful, expansive, creative, heart-centered ways that reshape how I see the world. Honestly, at first I was intimidated by you. It's that, "I'm not smart enough to grasp this" part of me that I am working on. I'm so glad I continue to delve in to your work Summer. You are so much of what our world needs right now. Pure light. You are a healer. I am full of gratitude for you and your work.
Damn. I am... speechless. Um... thank you? Thank you <3 (insert prayer hands and lots of hearts!!!! ((i'm writing on my computer))) I'm just going to marinate in this a little longer.... :)
I learn that in my college women’s classes that matriarchal societies existed because you always knew who your mother was, but not 100% sure who your father was.
As usual, done with class and dry humor. I noted you managed to figure out how to fit in as a teen. That is a very necessary skill still in some places.
As you may also recall, I probably don’t fit the profile of someone who might enjoy your writing. But I do. And like you, I learned to fit in early in life as a survival technique, I can drift seamlessly in both worlds you describe. ❤️
As a straight male who actually went to Dutch Harbor and read books when I wasn't figuratively pounding my chest on deck and in the wheelhouse. One who was often more interested in the sensitive side of life, and actually thinks the world would be a better place if women had an equal role, or even predominant I know there's nothing to fear. My Mom was the toughest person I ever met. And I didn't know that until the moment she was not here. I am rambling here because it is AWESOME that you can articulate the unspoken and say things that need to be said. I don't know why the BS that goes on in so many areas of life even passes for truth, because it's a big fat lie! I for one am tired of it. So kudos for standing up, I hear you and I’m listening. Keep up the good work!
Hi Larry! Dutch Harbor, that's the real deal! Thanks so much for reaching out. I'm finding it really illuminating how more men than women resonate with this idea. I think they're fed up with narrowly defined ideas of masculinity. Which is sad but good, because that's how the big boat eventually turns! Thanks for being here and being a part of that turn <3
Summer, you really remove the walls of caution. Whereas you live in a smallish community, based on the subject matter I have read in your posts, you are a woman of the world in many respects. I view your work through a lens that shows you going to all the wells and cliffs you can to create a worldwide connection. I admire that, and you inspire me.
A number of years ago, I read a book called The Alphabet vs the Goddess. I believe it's a little fuzzy in the evidence department but it feels accurate to me... the idea being that it was the development of the alphabet and the linearity of the languages that stem from it that led to patriarchy. Obviously this is a simplistic and reductive description, but it made a big impression on me when I read it. (My background is in languages and literature)
Oh interesting! And here I thought it stemmed from domestication of land in life stock. I’m sure they’re all interconnected! The linearity of language and its connection to patriarchal. Religion is interesting! I hadn’t heard that one.
Yes... I believe there's a connection there as well. I mean if we think about it, you don't make up an alphabet if you're busy running around chasing animals so that you don't starve. When I was in grad school in the late 80's there was a lot of discussion about the phallo-centric nature of language in Western civilization and how it's at the heart of what creates culture.
To your first point, I read in a recent article ( I think it was in the Atlantic) that pre-farming societies actually had way more leisure time than agrarian ones, and certainly more time than we do now... for example, the Tlingit in Alaska had plenty of time in winter months, as shown in their gorgeous art that they carved, painted, wove into tools. They had more free time than we do now :-/
How interesting about pre-agrarian societies. I’m now thinking about the cave paintings in the south of France that seem to be part of the hunting ritual. Maybe pre-agrarian societies knew the value for their survival in “leisure time” which would be when they did ritual art that contributed to their success as hunters. Does Tlingit art function this way as well?
I'm guessing they would say that everything is connected, so yes. Lol. This morning I was listening to a radio spot on Native Youth Olympics, which was started in homage to the exercises the Natives up in the Arctic would practice in prep for hunting, or when the weather was bad. For example, the high kick was to show people way far away across the ice that the hunt was successful. The walking on knuckles and toe knuckles was to practice for warding off frostbite. The seal hop was to practice for hopping up toward a seal during a hunt. In the Southeast, where I live, women wove beautiful baskets for gathering berries. Men carved great paddles with their clan insignia to show other villagers which village they represented when they arrived by canoe. There they traded. So clearly, it was all connected <3
That's a match. I'm sure that's true the world over too. Maybe we can dream in a new version of that - the interconnectedness of all things. May it be so.
We probably have to live with small stepping stones in our societal understanding and promotion of gender, unfortunately. But by challenging traditional gender roles and expressions, individuals like yourself are actively reshaping cultural norms and creating space for a more inclusive understanding of identity and gender...
And this idea is something that helps me remain hopeful around this topic
Summer Koester: Your themes resonate with the work of Johanna Moosdorf, who lost her dear husband to the Third Reich -- he was Jewish -- and wrote great novels post-WWII.
Specifically, in 1969/1970, Johanna Moosdorf submitted her draft, then called "Sappho" to Suhrkamp Verlag -- one of the truly great literary publishers not just in Germany but in the world.
Suhrkamp rejected her work in favor of "Nightwatch" (translated as "Nachtwach") by Djuna Barnes. The widely renowned Siegfried Unseld was the Editor-in-Chief of Suhrkamp considered the work of Djuna Barnes to be lesbian (technically, it was, but her work is so very much more), and did not want to publish a second "lesbian" Novel.
(This actually was puzzling -- "Nachtwach" or "Nightwatch" does not in any sense resemble the work of Moosdorf.)
Moosdorf kept revising her work, until a scholarly movement in the early to mid 1970s rediscovered great woman authors: Marieluise Fleißer; Irmgard Keun; Hilde Domin; and, not least, Johanna Moosdorf.
Strong post-war literature spearheaded by Ingeborg Bachmann and Ilse Aichinger (not to speak of the older Nelly Sachs) awakened the movement in the 1970s that resulted in republication of the works of Marieluise Fleißer and Irmgard Keun, and the 1969/1970 novel, "Sappho," was finally published in 1977.
In that year, Johanna Moosdorf successfully released the novel -- whose title evolved from "Sappho" to "Freundinnen" (i.e., Girlfriends) through Nemphenburger Verlagshandlung (Munich).
Point is: The "Phallus" and Patriarchy was emphasized in "Freundinnen" as the underlying ground current for the Third Reich and the genocide and annihilation.
Moosdorf had the two girlfriends (lovers) reflect on the Witch Trials of the Inquisition as a spine-chilling image of the show trials, especially in Nuremberg, during the Third Reich.
"Freundinnen" explores how thoroughgoing the witch-trial annihilation of whole female lines of families had unfolded.
In "Freundinnen", the two girlfriends would reminisce on how one woman or another would take on charges and sacrifice her life and body (to Inquisitional torture) in attempts to rescue her girlfriend from harm.
Then a third girlfriend, a scholar (in the novel), who was writing about both the Witch-Trials of the Inquisition and a 5,000-year-old Mother-Goddess.
The Girlfriends -- all three of them -- reflect on a world determined by the Mother-Goddess and matriarchy, and values dominated by the feminine (including men who shared womanly values).
"Freundinnen" and its sister novel, "Jahrhundertträume" (Dreams of a Century) are so moving, precisely because of the themes you bring forward.
The theme is a world where Nazism would have been impossible, where war would not occur, because it was a world, not with Christianity, but followers of the Mother-Goddess in Sisterhood.
My narrative here, though true to the novels, cannot arise to the greatness of the work of Johanna Moosdorf.
I have substantially all of her works (a few missing), and have been reading her work two to three times to imprint the great work of Johanna Moosdorf on my mind.
Your values of the Mother-Goddess and feminist values reflect those that became incarnate in the life work of the great Johanna Moosdorf.
Wow, that's amazing! I've heard of Sappho, obvs, but not his book nor the backstory about Johanna Moosdorf. Now I must read it! Thanks so much for this thoughtful, thorough explanation. Everything you say makes sense, how war could not occur with followers of the Mother-Goddess sisterhood. Thanks so much for this!
Oh, Summer—just now watching your belly dancing piece as well…
How timely yet again—recently I ordered a fancy hula hoop from amazon—“exercises” and movements that strengthen my early-50s and neglected core meet lots of resistance in me. And the new hula hoop just isn’t going to cut it either.
So perhaps I’ll start practicing some loose-form belly dancing. What a concept! And your lovely video is such a wonderful starting place to see if perhaps more than the incredible information, illumination and inspiration from your words (and the SNL skit ; ) come from your piece today 💛
Thank you. Big time thank you. Such a welcome relief as well for the succinct history of the female divinity—just what my body, being, life & living need and want to absorb at this exact juncture in time 🦋
Thanks for diving into this, Summer. I remember that 90s AK culture. Now they're all grown up and have money for bigger trucks 😂
I've always found it kind of funny that our little human brains had to gender divinity in order for 'god' to make sense to us. The act of making god male is a comically insecure deed with the specific intent to subjugate women.
If any man had bothered to be in the room when a woman gave birth, he would know how little he could know of creation.
L.O.L. Well put, Sir.
Yes to all of this 🙌🏽. I wholeheartedly believe that the Greco-Roman foundation for an institutional structure warped the entire way we view women (the true builders) and their power. This whole system bred a conflict between the more masculine women and more feminine women, hence the competitive nature of groups, mean girls etc. Anywho I love your points and thank you for taking the time to put this together 🙏🏽💜🍑
Wow, that also provides a whole new perspective. Thank YOU!
Thank you for sparking the perspective!! 🌷
Great as usual. I recognize the phallocentric world you grew up in as akin to the one that raised me, a tomboy, also a nerd, but a basketball player and so free from the bullies. A a gay girl, I have occasionally been included in some of the locker room talk over the years. Yikes. I grew up in the 1970s and 80s in Northern California, which was also a last holdout for hippies. These furry men could be quite dominant in their performance of long-haired masculinity. I teach gender history and had the opportunity to teach a grad seminar on masculinity a few years back during the first Trump years, in which we sought some definition of masculinity that wasn't toxic. I came away from teaching this class with a sense that I wanted to never identify as a masculine woman again. I chose the term virago. The "vir" meant both green and strong and has provocative shared meaning with virtue and virgin. A Druidry teacher of mine said the term didn't mean much to her: she'd heard it meant difficult woman. This was good enough for me and made me laugh.
Hahahah! Yes! Your history is fascinating! Teach us more!
Love this Summer! The phallus is also celebrated as the tree of life, and here is beautiful sculpture of the yoni.
https://indianculture.gov.in/artefacts-museums/yoni
The Great Mother is surely huger than ever in Alaska. My practice is mother earth, father sky and they meet in my heart.
I love that the phallus is celebrated as the tree of life. And that yoni pic ❤️
🙌🏾 🙌🏾 🙏 ❤️ yesssss!!!!
My God, you are brilliant, and I am blessed to have a family tie to you. You leave me speechless, open my mind and heart in new, thoughtful, expansive, creative, heart-centered ways that reshape how I see the world. Honestly, at first I was intimidated by you. It's that, "I'm not smart enough to grasp this" part of me that I am working on. I'm so glad I continue to delve in to your work Summer. You are so much of what our world needs right now. Pure light. You are a healer. I am full of gratitude for you and your work.
Damn. I am... speechless. Um... thank you? Thank you <3 (insert prayer hands and lots of hearts!!!! ((i'm writing on my computer))) I'm just going to marinate in this a little longer.... :)
I learn that in my college women’s classes that matriarchal societies existed because you always knew who your mother was, but not 100% sure who your father was.
Makes sense! Xo, Nancy!
As usual, done with class and dry humor. I noted you managed to figure out how to fit in as a teen. That is a very necessary skill still in some places.
As you may also recall, I probably don’t fit the profile of someone who might enjoy your writing. But I do. And like you, I learned to fit in early in life as a survival technique, I can drift seamlessly in both worlds you describe. ❤️
✨ ✨ ✨ I believe you! Its kinda fun, huh? Flitting between worlds like this? Thank you, Robert! ✨ ✨ ✨
Also, belly dancing is HARD. Huge props to you!!😍🙌
Ty! Have you tried it?
Yes! It thoroughly kicked my ass but I made it through one season. Perhaps it's time to try again.🤔
As a straight male who actually went to Dutch Harbor and read books when I wasn't figuratively pounding my chest on deck and in the wheelhouse. One who was often more interested in the sensitive side of life, and actually thinks the world would be a better place if women had an equal role, or even predominant I know there's nothing to fear. My Mom was the toughest person I ever met. And I didn't know that until the moment she was not here. I am rambling here because it is AWESOME that you can articulate the unspoken and say things that need to be said. I don't know why the BS that goes on in so many areas of life even passes for truth, because it's a big fat lie! I for one am tired of it. So kudos for standing up, I hear you and I’m listening. Keep up the good work!
Hi Larry! Dutch Harbor, that's the real deal! Thanks so much for reaching out. I'm finding it really illuminating how more men than women resonate with this idea. I think they're fed up with narrowly defined ideas of masculinity. Which is sad but good, because that's how the big boat eventually turns! Thanks for being here and being a part of that turn <3
LOVE this! Never was this truth made so palatable. Thank you for again providing so much for me to reflect upon 🙏
Awesome, John! I love how you put that! Thanks so much
Summer, you really remove the walls of caution. Whereas you live in a smallish community, based on the subject matter I have read in your posts, you are a woman of the world in many respects. I view your work through a lens that shows you going to all the wells and cliffs you can to create a worldwide connection. I admire that, and you inspire me.
Wow, James! That is lovely. Thank you so much!
A number of years ago, I read a book called The Alphabet vs the Goddess. I believe it's a little fuzzy in the evidence department but it feels accurate to me... the idea being that it was the development of the alphabet and the linearity of the languages that stem from it that led to patriarchy. Obviously this is a simplistic and reductive description, but it made a big impression on me when I read it. (My background is in languages and literature)
Oh interesting! And here I thought it stemmed from domestication of land in life stock. I’m sure they’re all interconnected! The linearity of language and its connection to patriarchal. Religion is interesting! I hadn’t heard that one.
Yes... I believe there's a connection there as well. I mean if we think about it, you don't make up an alphabet if you're busy running around chasing animals so that you don't starve. When I was in grad school in the late 80's there was a lot of discussion about the phallo-centric nature of language in Western civilization and how it's at the heart of what creates culture.
Well, we definitely see it in English words!
To your first point, I read in a recent article ( I think it was in the Atlantic) that pre-farming societies actually had way more leisure time than agrarian ones, and certainly more time than we do now... for example, the Tlingit in Alaska had plenty of time in winter months, as shown in their gorgeous art that they carved, painted, wove into tools. They had more free time than we do now :-/
How interesting about pre-agrarian societies. I’m now thinking about the cave paintings in the south of France that seem to be part of the hunting ritual. Maybe pre-agrarian societies knew the value for their survival in “leisure time” which would be when they did ritual art that contributed to their success as hunters. Does Tlingit art function this way as well?
I'm guessing they would say that everything is connected, so yes. Lol. This morning I was listening to a radio spot on Native Youth Olympics, which was started in homage to the exercises the Natives up in the Arctic would practice in prep for hunting, or when the weather was bad. For example, the high kick was to show people way far away across the ice that the hunt was successful. The walking on knuckles and toe knuckles was to practice for warding off frostbite. The seal hop was to practice for hopping up toward a seal during a hunt. In the Southeast, where I live, women wove beautiful baskets for gathering berries. Men carved great paddles with their clan insignia to show other villagers which village they represented when they arrived by canoe. There they traded. So clearly, it was all connected <3
That's a match. I'm sure that's true the world over too. Maybe we can dream in a new version of that - the interconnectedness of all things. May it be so.
The Alphabet vs The Goddess was such a formative book for me, even if the evidence is... fuzzy:)
https://open.substack.com/pub/gregorypettys/p/the-goddess-cannot-eat-our-plastic?r=f1gey&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I just read your piece… loved it!
Love this!
We probably have to live with small stepping stones in our societal understanding and promotion of gender, unfortunately. But by challenging traditional gender roles and expressions, individuals like yourself are actively reshaping cultural norms and creating space for a more inclusive understanding of identity and gender...
And this idea is something that helps me remain hopeful around this topic
Thank you, Brenden, for joining me in this adventure!
Really enjoyed this thoughtful and personal essay!
Thank you much, Frank!
Summer Koester: Your themes resonate with the work of Johanna Moosdorf, who lost her dear husband to the Third Reich -- he was Jewish -- and wrote great novels post-WWII.
Specifically, in 1969/1970, Johanna Moosdorf submitted her draft, then called "Sappho" to Suhrkamp Verlag -- one of the truly great literary publishers not just in Germany but in the world.
Suhrkamp rejected her work in favor of "Nightwatch" (translated as "Nachtwach") by Djuna Barnes. The widely renowned Siegfried Unseld was the Editor-in-Chief of Suhrkamp considered the work of Djuna Barnes to be lesbian (technically, it was, but her work is so very much more), and did not want to publish a second "lesbian" Novel.
(This actually was puzzling -- "Nachtwach" or "Nightwatch" does not in any sense resemble the work of Moosdorf.)
Moosdorf kept revising her work, until a scholarly movement in the early to mid 1970s rediscovered great woman authors: Marieluise Fleißer; Irmgard Keun; Hilde Domin; and, not least, Johanna Moosdorf.
Strong post-war literature spearheaded by Ingeborg Bachmann and Ilse Aichinger (not to speak of the older Nelly Sachs) awakened the movement in the 1970s that resulted in republication of the works of Marieluise Fleißer and Irmgard Keun, and the 1969/1970 novel, "Sappho," was finally published in 1977.
In that year, Johanna Moosdorf successfully released the novel -- whose title evolved from "Sappho" to "Freundinnen" (i.e., Girlfriends) through Nemphenburger Verlagshandlung (Munich).
Point is: The "Phallus" and Patriarchy was emphasized in "Freundinnen" as the underlying ground current for the Third Reich and the genocide and annihilation.
Moosdorf had the two girlfriends (lovers) reflect on the Witch Trials of the Inquisition as a spine-chilling image of the show trials, especially in Nuremberg, during the Third Reich.
"Freundinnen" explores how thoroughgoing the witch-trial annihilation of whole female lines of families had unfolded.
In "Freundinnen", the two girlfriends would reminisce on how one woman or another would take on charges and sacrifice her life and body (to Inquisitional torture) in attempts to rescue her girlfriend from harm.
Then a third girlfriend, a scholar (in the novel), who was writing about both the Witch-Trials of the Inquisition and a 5,000-year-old Mother-Goddess.
The Girlfriends -- all three of them -- reflect on a world determined by the Mother-Goddess and matriarchy, and values dominated by the feminine (including men who shared womanly values).
"Freundinnen" and its sister novel, "Jahrhundertträume" (Dreams of a Century) are so moving, precisely because of the themes you bring forward.
The theme is a world where Nazism would have been impossible, where war would not occur, because it was a world, not with Christianity, but followers of the Mother-Goddess in Sisterhood.
My narrative here, though true to the novels, cannot arise to the greatness of the work of Johanna Moosdorf.
I have substantially all of her works (a few missing), and have been reading her work two to three times to imprint the great work of Johanna Moosdorf on my mind.
Your values of the Mother-Goddess and feminist values reflect those that became incarnate in the life work of the great Johanna Moosdorf.
Well, I did a search for her book but all that comes up is German! I wonder if it's translated into English anywhere..?
Wow, that's amazing! I've heard of Sappho, obvs, but not his book nor the backstory about Johanna Moosdorf. Now I must read it! Thanks so much for this thoughtful, thorough explanation. Everything you say makes sense, how war could not occur with followers of the Mother-Goddess sisterhood. Thanks so much for this!
Oh, Summer—just now watching your belly dancing piece as well…
How timely yet again—recently I ordered a fancy hula hoop from amazon—“exercises” and movements that strengthen my early-50s and neglected core meet lots of resistance in me. And the new hula hoop just isn’t going to cut it either.
So perhaps I’ll start practicing some loose-form belly dancing. What a concept! And your lovely video is such a wonderful starting place to see if perhaps more than the incredible information, illumination and inspiration from your words (and the SNL skit ; ) come from your piece today 💛
Thank you. Big time thank you. Such a welcome relief as well for the succinct history of the female divinity—just what my body, being, life & living need and want to absorb at this exact juncture in time 🦋
Awesome Lesli! So happy to hear that! I love the image of the butterfly, too 🦋 🌹