A confluence of three separate memes impinging on my subconscious has got me thinking about the patriarchy. The first was an essay written by Emma Goldman on Trafficking and Women, published in 1910 in the collection Anarchism and Other Essays. I had read Goldman before, but this essay took me by surprise as it spelled out in great detail how women and even children were shuffled around by elaborate networks for the benefit of rich corporate white men working in the far flung outposts of capitalist resource plunder. For those whose familiarity with the Jeffrey Epstein case thought (as did I) that his was an extreme outlier (surely), well, it shows that this has been going on for so much longer.
I then happened to hear on the radio, on the way to the post office, a song by Arianna Grande called God Is A Woman. My brain made a mental page mark on that one, and for awhile thought little of it, at least until this morning. But it also so happened that my wife and I watched just last night Amazon’s She Said, about the Harvey Weinstein serial abuse investigation by two women reporters at the New York Times. Some time this morning my brain pulled out these three confluent mental inputs and cognitively choked as if I had inhaled some talcum powder.
As if spitting out a hairball, I formulated the words ‘don’t fuck the patriarchy; make them beg for it’, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you are familiar with Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Anyway it sounded like decent bumpersticker material. I thought of using that as the title of this diary, but thought better of it. I will leave it to others to review She Said, or to recount the plot of Lysistrata, but I will conclude with my thoughts on Emma Goldman, an activist, feminist, and writer filled with fire, passion and courage. If Emma could enjoy a revival of new and younger readers, the patriarchy wouldn’t stand a chance.