Welcome to SheKos! SheKos is a diary series for all Kossacks to explore issues related to feminism, women's history, and equality. We seek to find solutions within and beyond the Democratic Party to improve the lives of women -- and men -- regardless of race, sexual orientation, or economic status. We believe that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights.
"I ask no favors for my sex, I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God has designed us to occupy."
Sarah Grimké (American abolitionist and suffragist, 1792-1873)
In this 21st century, it is assumed that women are the most liberated and free from gender-bias of all their gentle ancestors. Unprecedented numbers of women hold political office, oversee major corporations, fill coveted spots in medical schools, and serve in our military, all whilst continuing to give birth, nurture, and care for the children who are our future. Yet, in an era of greatest feminine progress, women are still underpaid, undervalued, and even persecuted for their gender.
During the early 1970s, women throughout the United States and elsewhere discovered in consciousness-raising sessions of unprecedented frankness that they no longer had to withhold their feelings about, well, anything. It was open season on any remaining taboos. For artists, identifying discrimination and repression in the museums, the galleries and the bedrooms, it was time for a change. The priapic expressions of the abstract painters of the ‘40s and '50s had dominated the art scene for years. Why not the juicy pleasures experienced by women? It was the sexual liberation of the 1960s that fueled the women's movement, even though the retrospective outlook tends towards news issues like equal rights, glass ceilings, child-rearing and dress codes.
Martha Rosler's Body Beautiful, Beauty Knows No Pain: Hot House, or Harem (1966-72), on the cover of the catalogue for "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
This exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is all about, ahem, forgive my bluntness, the "Power of the Pussy", a phrase I recently became acquainted with in discussions with my girlfriends about female power in a still-male-dominated society.
Source: http://www.artnet.com/...
So, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you, where does the Power of P begin and end: Adam and Eve, Anthony and Cleopatra, Napoleon and Josephine, Romeo and Juliet, Nicholas and Carla, Michelle and Barack? Just how much influence can the P wield? Is it mightier than the sword, more powerful than kingdoms, more sought after than gold or silver? Are women reduced to our nether regions as the ultimate source of power over men, the world?
The Urban Dictionary definition:
The Power of P is the power only a woman can possess because of one of her beautiful attributes.
Women have it, men want it and they'll do anything to get it. Kitties have ruined men, toppled governments etc. It wasn't just Helen's face that launched a 1000 ships.....
The Power of P is best exhibited in twos.
Books, songs, and plays have been written about POP. Bongwater, Jay Z, and Iggy Pop have written songs. Iggy's lyrics:
Pussy power-hour by hour
Pussy power oh what a flower
I want to hold her close to me
'cause pussy power's pulling me
Down
In 1996, Eve Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues an episodic play made up of a varying number of monologues read by a varying number of women. Every monologue somehow relates to the vagina, be it through sex, love, rape, menstruation, mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the variety of names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality.
Every year a new monologue is added to highlight a current issue affecting women around the world. The monologue is performed at thousands of local V-Day benefit productions of the play that take place annually in February and March raising funds for local groups, shelters, crisis centers working to end violence against women. In 2003, for example, Ensler wrote a new monologue about the plight of women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. This Monologue is known as "Under the Burqa."
YouTube has this video gem on POP:
In Eastern cultures, the pussy is sacred and revered. The ancient Sanskrit term 'yoni' means womb, origin, well or in fact mostly female genital organ. The term derives from a cultural and religious background in which the women long ago already were considered as the embodiment of the divine female energy (Shakti) and in which female genital organs were seen as a holy symbol of the goddess. It is considered the temple of light, energy, healing, and life.
Ancient Yoni
Imagine my surprise and glee after doing this little bit of research that confirms the secret that women have known from the beginning of time. Whether we learned from our mothers, sisters, girlfriends, boyfriends, books, music, or internet, one thing is for certain. As a male friend of mine recently put it:
"If a girl wants to get laid, she can always leave the bar with a guy. But if a guy wants to get laid, that's another story."
So, ladies and gentlemen, let the debate and discussion begin. What are your thoughts and experiences. This should be A LOT of fun!!!!
"Men who want to support women in our struggle for freedom and justice should understand that it is not terrifically important to us that they learn to cry; it is important to us that they stop the crimes of violence against us."
Andrea Dworkin (American feminist author, 1946-)
SheKos is open to your submissions. Please email Angry Mouse at angrymouse.grrr@gmail.com with your ideas.