A literary discussion today - our Supervixens Holiday Booklist. Meet the Snools!
"Feminist Supervixens" of every sex and gender are invited to participate in this feminists' circle. Our goal is to build a vibrant community of feminists here on Daily Kos. The emphasis here is on camaraderie and support, not argument and debate.
The idea of a "feminists' circle" was inspired by the work of Jean Shinoda Bolen, whose book The Millionth Circle described her vision of spontaneously forming women's circles that eventually catalyze a transformation in the world:
When a critical number of people change how they think and behave, the culture does also, and a new era begins.
From her web page on circles:
Imagine yourself in a circle of women, meeting together around a fire in the center of a round hearth. The fire in the center of the circle is a symbol of divinity,of spirit or soul, of goddess or god; it is the archetype of the Self in the center of your psyche, as it can be in the center of a circle, and as such, is a source of emotional warmth, spiritual and psychological illumination, wisdom and compassion.
Feminists who are interested in being a guest-host can email hrh at: feministsupervixens (AT) yahoo.com
An "Afternoon Delight" Supervixens today, because I must attend a festivity this evening!
As a Book Person, I like to give books to people for the holidays (and for birthdays, special occasions, and ordinary occasions). Here are excerpts from a few favorites I'm giving to friends and family this year.
First, an excerpt from Pure Lust, by that Positively Revolting Hag, Mary Daly. I think we all know a few Snools!
As Wanderlusty/Wonderlusty women weave our way Weirdward into the Realms of Pure Lust we find we must fight off the Fixers/Tricksters, those poisonous presences whose program is to freeze/frustrate our Movement. These are the sovereigns of the sadostate, which can also be called the State of Boredom. For it is infinitely boring to be blocked from the movement of/toward one's innately ordained happiness.[...]
The compulsion to bore everywhere bores Lusty women. The institutions of Boredom - its media, its schools, its industries, its amusements, its religion, its governments, its culture - are programmed to control Viragos, to keep us within the confines of bore-ocracy, using bore-ocratic details and mazes. Weird women snore at the brothers' Bored Meetings, seeing through the lecherous leaders as Chairmen of the Bored. [...]
Given these conditions of Stag-Nation, Elemental Shrews and Furies urgently experience the need for Re-Naming/Re-Claiming our stolen Flames, undoing the promethean theft of Fire, retrieving our ravaged desire.
The would-be preventers of this retrieval of gynergy, the ghosts/ghouls that want our movement dead, are snools. The noun snool (Scottish) means "a cringing person". It means also "a tame, abject, or mean-spirited person" (OED). In sadosociety, snools rule, and snools are the rule. The dual personalities of these personae - the cast of characters governing and legitimizing bore-ocracy - are unmasked by definitions of the verb snool. This means, on the one hand, "to reduce to submission: COW, BULLY," and on the other hand, "CRINGE, COWER." Snools are sadism and masochism combined, the stereotypic saints and heroes of the sadostate.
[...]
Snools appear and re-appear in various forms. [...] Among the henchmen required for the smooth operation of fixocracy are the cocks, danglers, pricks, and flashers who keep girls and women intimidated. Necessary also are the fakes, framers, frauds and hucksters whose job is to manufacture and spread delusions. Heavier work is assumed by rakes, hacks, rippers and plug-uglies. Plug-uglies are among the grosser snoolish incarnations. Plug-ugly is defined as "a member of a gang of disorderly ruffians often active in political pressure and intimidation." [...] Plug-uglies, while creating the illusion that they are always giving something, are in fact drainers of energy whose plugged-in fittings close women's circuits, sapping the flow of gynergetic currents so that these cannot circulate within/among women.
Such, then, are the rulers/snoolers of snooldom, the place/time where the air is filled with the crowing of cocks, the joking of jocks, the droning of clones, the sniveling of snookers and snudges, the noisy parades and processions of prickers. Such is cockocracy/jockocracy, the State of supranational, supernatural erections. This is a world made to the image of its makers, a chip off the old blocks/cocks, who are worshipped by the fraternal faithless as god the flasher, god the stud, and god the wholly hoax.
Wayward, wanton women, having been warned of the snoolish snares, proceed forthwith on our Wonderlusting/Wisdomweaving Quest.
Ah, Mary Daly. I simply adore her.
We Supervixens aren't afraid of Virginia Woolf. We each need A Room of One's Own. In this excerpt it's clear that she and Daly would agree on some things:
The Suffrage campaign was no doubt to blame. It must have roused in men an extraordinary desire for self-assertion; it must have made them lay an emphasis upon their own sex and its characteristics which they would not have troubled to think about had they not been challenged. And when one is challenged, even by a few women in black bonnets, one retaliates, if one has never been challenged before, rather excessively. That perhaps accounts for some of the characteristics that I remember to have found here, I thought, taking down a new novel by Mr. A, who is in the prime of life and very well thought of, apparently, by the reviewers. I opened it. Indeed, it was delightful to read a man's writing again. It was so direct, so straightforward after the writing of women. It indicated such freedom of mind, such liberty of person, such confidence in himself. One had a sense of physical well-being in the presence of this well-nourished, well-educated, free mind, which had never been thwarted or opposed, but had had full liberty to stretch itself in whatever way it liked. All this was admirable. But after reading a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight dark bar, a shadow shaped something like the letter "I". One began dodging this way and that to catch a glimpse of the landscape behind it. Whether that was indeed a tree or a woman walking I was not quite sure. Back one was always hailed to the letter "I". One began to be tired of "I". Not but what this "I" was a most respectable "I"; honest and logical; as hard as a nut, and polished for centuries by good teaching and good feeding. I respect and admire that "I" from the bottom of my heart. But - here I turned a page or two, looking for something or other - the worst of it is that in the shadow of the letter "I" all is shapeless as mist. Is that a tree? No, it is a woman. But... she has not a bone in her body, I thought, watching Phoebe, for that was her name, coming across the beach. Then Alan got up and the shadow of Alan at once obliterated Phoebe. For Alan had views and Phoebe was quenched in the flood of his views. [...] I had said "but" too often. Shall I finish it, "But - I am bored!" But why why was I bored? Partly because of the dominance of the letter "I" and the aridity, which, like the giant beech tree, it casts within its shade. Nothing will grow there. And partly for some more obscure reason. There seemed to be some obstacle, some impediment of Mr. A's mind which blocked the fountain of creative energy and shored it within narrow limits.
The book I give most often to people - Gertrude Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas:
Fernande had two subjects hats and perfumes. This first day we talked hats. She liked hats, she had the true french feeling about a hat, if a hat did not provoke some witticism from a man on the street the hat was not a success. Later on once in Montmartre she and I were walking together. She had on a large yellow hat and I had on a much smaller blue one. As we were walking along a workman stopped and called out, there go the sun and the moon shining together. Ah, said Fernande to me with a radiant smile, you see our hats are a success.
And, my son's favorite book: Eloise by Kay Thompson, with brilliant illustrations by Hilary Knight.
Eloise is quite the Supervixen Cub:
She is interested in people when
they are not boring.
There are several more I'll mention later, but this is a start.
Which books by women would you like to give/receive this holiday season, O Supervixens?