Women and the goddess complex

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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[size=150]Don’t know if this should go under religion or philosophy?

What is it with women and the goddess complex?

Do women have hard time connecting to religion with the monotheists concept of ‘God the Father’?

Here are a few sites to give you some background.

blogs.camden.rutgers.edu/wpmu/sc … ion-class/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_movement

womenpriests.org/classic/swidler3.asp

goddessariadne.org/whywomenn … oddess.htm

Warning: last site has sexually explicit material.

goddesstemple.com/

I’ve always been in favor of worshiping women. (Although have no interest in licking their boots and being whipped.)

I never could understand physical abuse towards women.

Sure I like to make women shake and quiver - but not from beating them.

If someone pisses me off that bad…then for the sake of inner peace…if it doesn’t fit I must acquit.

I always thought that without women, life would be very, very, very hard to live.

They say that to be happy you need:

Something to do

Something to look forward to

Someone to love

Someone to love you

Women help fill the void for the love category of this equation.

Sexual cults are becoming more popular now where devotees (usually men) get dominated by women and the men take the abuse from ‘the goddess.’

Guess it is nothing new, more of a modern twist on bondage.

But the idea of goddess and devotee used in such sexual relationships is more of a modern development. As the ancient goddesses were in the form of statues and not in the flesh.

What are your views on modern women and the goddess complex?[/size]

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Don’t know if this is the right place to say this, but for fuck’s sake, stop posting in size 18. It makes your posts VERY tedious to read.

Sometimes, for various reasons from an intellectual, review-of-feminism perspective like mine. It’s mostly down to a popularisation of a serious feminist critique which made it trivial and needlessly combative. In a nutshell, the serious critique is that because all dominant ideologies (and feminists generally take for granted that patriarchy is or at least was a dominant ideologies) are in part rooted in a particular control of language, a series of habitual relations between words (a sort of literary fundamentalism, if you like) that a radicalisation of these relations (and later, a deconstruction of them, when using such phrases became popular in lefty intellectual circles) is one way to combat that ideology.

Now, whether the ideology actually has anything to do with the mechanisms in the world (and consequently, whether this radicalisation of language makes any difference in the world) is a matter of lengthy debate. Again, most feminists assume that it does, because most feminists are, dialectically speaking, Marxists. At least, in Europe. I know a lot less about American feminism.

The popularisation of this very pertinent theory is summed up by a recent attempt in the UK to rename manhole covers ‘personhole covers’. Not only is this revisionism of the stupidest kind, it achieves precisely nothing in terms of actual equality.

Good thing you warned us.

I couldn’t give a damn for worshiping anything really. Call me cynical, but I think that if you have genuine respect for a woman or women then you’ll be capable of seeing their flaws, and criticising them for them in an earnest and productive way. And expect the same from them. And try to have a sense of humour.

I can. People will use the means available to them to gain an advantage. Hell, we do live in a global capitalist society after all.

A friend of a friend of mine, a female in her mid 20s, met a guy over the internet. She goes round to his house and is spanked violently, sometimes with objects (cane, whip, book, whatever). She does this of her own accord, has no obligations to this person (well, she didn’t have when it started, I’m sure over time certain emotional attachments grow even in sado-masochistic relationships). I think she’s mad, quite frankly, but I’m not going to oppose this in any way because I generally like to treat people as ends and not means (one of Kant’s imperatives, and probably his most compelling).

Probably wise.

It’d be impossible.

They fill the first two as well.

And do men not do so largely of their own volition?

Well, the acts themselves are nothing new, and maybe the desires being satisfied are nothing new either, but the rhetoric and imagery is in constant evolution.

Depends on the faith of their devotees. In the Greek mythology, the gods and goddesses took a material form all the time.

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Don’t know if this is the right place to say this, but for fuck’s sake, stop posting in size 18. It makes your posts VERY tedious to read.

V:

[size=150]I’m an old guy with bad eyesight. Will stick with the size I like.

Will reply piecemeal as replying to your post en toto is tedious for me.

As you say…people will use the means available to them to gain an advantage.[/size]

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[size=150]…people will use the means available to them to gain an advantage

V:

Going a back to this statement, what advantage is there for men who beat and abuse women?

Isn’t there more advantage to not abuse more so than to abuse?

It was not exactly true that I not understand.

I understand the abuser is not at peace.

But my thoughts about women are in the direction of loving, instead of beating

I guess I do not understand why they let their peace get so off track to be in that position to abuse.[/size]

…My discussion of this topic from an earlier post…and in small type

How do you lose anger?

This is what separates the enlightened mind from the unenlightened mind and why enlightenment can’t be forced on someone.

Can you force someone to lose the anger if they are not ready to?

Tired of being angry?

Just relinquish control and anger will be diminished.

Anger and control go hand in hand.

Some of these tendencies come from habit other times they stem from ignorance. Either way we can change our habits or extinguish ignorance with knowledge, mindfulness and practice. The first step is realization that something is disturbing our peace needs to be changed, so glad you have taken this first step for without realization that there is a problem nothing can be done. I get stuck here as well with wrong thoughts and wrong speech and am thankful for your post as a reminder to be on guard of this tendency and to work on being mindful of the Buddhist eightfold path. I already have the knowledge but sometimes am not mindful of walking the path.

On page 90 of the AA’s 12 and 12 the writers mention how the addict cannot afford “justifiable anger” and it should be left to those better qualified to handle it. With reference to this statement – it is gospel - there is no argument here. We can always settle such disputes by looking deeply into the person, place, thing or emotion in question and ask if it helps or hurts our practice?

Does having anger and hatred in our hearts ever increase our peace or serenity or does it diminish it? Even is we are justified, so called, in having this emotion does it suddenly become a peace generator in our life with this newfound license to hate or is it still a peace buster whether we have an excuse or not? The path is clear about which direction to take and all that remains is the release of the anger.

Some people get confused with this anger question and beat themselves for still experiencing this emotion thinking they should be a “perfectly spiritual individual” and above such lowly emotions as getting angry. They think they can perfect their lives and wipe out natural law with one blow called spirituality.

Due to the diversity of thought we humans are capable of we have all sorts of thoughts and emotions that pop up in our heads. Without this ability we could not think as we do. But, just because thoughts or emotions pop up in our heads the choice is ours alone whether we foster and build on any particular thought or emotion.

Spirituality does not eliminate such thoughts - it just helps decide what we do with them.

Anger is also part of our natural make up. Anger is an emotions that can serve us when we need to summon it up in a life or death situation such as self defense or when our species had to hunt big game for a living - hunt with spears, clubs and rocks. Even if we are dealing with life or death self defense and must generate anger, the byproducts is still a disruption of our peace as we recover from the circumstance as a shaking and rattled mess.

So, even if anger is justified, so called, it does not magically become a peace promoter in our lives instead of a peace destroyer.

Anger is also an important emotion for self preservation in less dangerous circumstances than big game hunts, for without feeling anger we wound not seek out change - changing our environment that might be an unhealthy one for us. So, we should never regret feeling anger, but just as anger and excretion are two naturally occurring parts of being a human, we should let them serve us instead of we being enslaved to them.

Anger comes in two forms.

Nature Based Anger and Toxic Based Anger

Always remember, anger is a nature given tool of defense and living right. But it takes humans to tun this healthy tool into an unhealthy, toxic tool of destruction.

Besides justified anger, there are HUNDREDS of other things that one cannot “afford” in their life is they desire inner peace. Sure, we can all white knuckle it and just scrape by with, ready to slip off at a moments notice if we want to put our desires before our practice. But, learning what fits and what does not fit comfortably in our life is the ongoing battle we all have to undertake if we want peace. In short, we have to ask if our practice can “afford” the many things we come into daily contact with and the measure of our success will be determined by how well we live within our comfortable means by asking this “affordability” question.

Before I could find lasting and peaceful recovery I had to learn to refuse many areas of my old life that did not serve me any longer. This is how I coined the phrase, “You are not recovering until your start refusing…refusing the old sick ways that got you here.” The 3 paths that addiction (Yes, anger is addictive) can take are these: the addiction can be increased, it can be decreased or can be frozen. These 3 paths shows us which direction we are headed in with our recovery at any given moment.

Clarity about affordability comes from a continual orientation of putting our programs wants first and our personal wants or desires second and by asking the question of how any person, place, thing or activity will affect my recovery program? Once the addict has this affordability mindset in place they can direct their thoughts towards the cultivation of recovery, so that whatever action they are engaged in - it is always evaluated from this perspective and they can find great success from applying this single minded dedication to change. Suddenly they find their recovery practice and life can become as one and asking such questions becomes second nature for them.

But again, this is the textbook or idealistic way of looking at this affordability question, we need practical application in the real world. Many of us have families and jobs and to be a total renunciate of all things disruptive to our peace and our recovery program is not always possible or desirable when looking at the big picture. I often hear excuses from other addicts saying they can’t stop this or that because of their family, jobs or other obligations, so we need to balance these two extremes of being a total renunciate with the other extreme of being paralyzed and not changing a thing because of excuses and justification. We have to work towards a balance if we want peace and just like exercise, we always seem to find reasons for not doing what we know is right.

The way I work it is to be aware of what is disruptive to my peace and to change it if possible as a first choice or work on accepting it as the serenity prayer says as a second choice. I try to stay away from justification or looking for excuses to continue on the wrong path. I either change things or work on accepting them. If we base our decisions of proven principles of recovery it helps takes us out of the decision making process and rests our recovery on solid foundation instead of excuses.

I don’t beat myself for not being able to perform well in every given circumstance under the sun. I know that I do not mesh well with everything and everybody in life and I have certain limits and abilities. To do otherwise would say that we have the right to be perfect and violate our make up and that we have no limits or boundaries to govern us and are godlike. The 12 step programs reminds us to work within our limits by “staying right size” on pages 122-125, so it tells me right there I am not immune to all things destructive just because I work the 12 steps.

In SCA they have a tool called abstention. They abstain the best way they can from people places or things they have found to be detrimental to their recovery program efforts from past experience with them. My recovery success is based a lot on abstaining from people, places and things that do not mesh well with me and if I cannot avoid them, then I work to make the unavoidable fit better by changing things on my end.

Yes, we cannot change others, but we do usually have control of ourselves and how we participate in dealing with others. Even though we cannot completely change or wipe our many problem areas in our life we can usually change some aspects of most problems to make them more bearable. So, I am always looking for small changes to make in the right direction and this recovery orientation towards the direction of change helps by giving hope of possible larger future change as well.

In addition you can work practice a meditation on the 4 Immeasurables aka Divine States of Dwelling. Radiate the 4 Immeasurables in all 4 directions as well, as above and below you so it emanates from your being throughout the universe.

Meditate on:

Limitless Compassion for all suffering beings.
Limitless Joy for over the salvation of others from suffering
Limitless Peace for all beings whether friend or enemy
Limitless Kindness towards all sentient beings.

But bottom line is either you must change from the inside out - or life will change you ‘its way’ from the outside in and this tends to rot your insides with the byproducts that a life of toxic anger produces.

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Increase the DPI setting on your comp. Posting in 43 size will not help you while you write the post.

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[size=150]Sometimes, for various reasons from an intellectual, review-of-feminism perspective like mine. It’s mostly down to a popularisation of a serious feminist critique which made it trivial and needlessly combative. In a nutshell, the serious critique is that because all dominant ideologies (and feminists generally take for granted that patriarchy is or at least was a dominant ideologies) are in part rooted in a particular control of language, a series of habitual relations between words (a sort of literary fundamentalism, if you like) that a radicalisation of these relations (and later, a deconstruction of them, when using such phrases became popular in lefty intellectual circles) is one way to combat that ideology.

V:

Do not understand what you are getting at.

Would be glad to respond if you will rewrite in readily understandable language[/size]

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[size=150]

Increase the DPI setting on your comp. Posting in 43 size will not help you while you write the post.

V:

I write on a WP program and cut it and paste here.

When you get old you will see DPI is not the same as large size.[/size]

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[size=150]V:

They say that to be happy you need:

Something to do
Something to look forward to
Someone to love
Someone to love you
Women help fill the void for the love category of this equation.

someoneisatthedoor: They fill the first two as well.

V:

Yes, they fill all four as you noted.

But like all things, one thing, no matter how fine, only goes so far with giving on a person a good life

We need a semblance of balance as in…a Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread and Thou.

It is this balance point with the goddess subject that interests me.

Some women ‘like to’ think of themselves as a goddess.

That is fine. Self worth comes in many flavors.

But there are some women then ‘really think’ themselves to be goddesses.

BTW…Where are the women philosophers view on this subject?[/size]

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Oh come on man. Women can’t really be philosophers. They don’t have that creative ability to think in abstracts. I think they were designed mostly to breed and serve.

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They have the creativity. Perhaps, in general they even have more of it. It is the (again, in general) lack of reasoning and logic (left-brained skills). Right-brainers tend to be more emotional (even if they have another left-brain skills. along with the desire, to hide it).

Men and women are equally intelligent for the most part, I believe, it’s just the fact that one is more emotional and lateral thinking, while the other more logical and straight-forward, sequential thinking.

If anything, creativity is a feminine thing, if we are to lump things in either masculine or feminine.

Stereotypically, men follow the rules/method of completing the task, while women question why. The man may have enough understanding of a topic, and enough creativity of the subject, to start asking more complex questions, searching for answers. He becomes a philosopher of sorts.

Women can take their creativity and, with enough intelligence, be philosophers as well, granted she has certain opportunities in her life for her to devote her thoughts to phenomenon outside her immediate environment and other such “female”–attempting-to-get-and-keep-a-man–pursues.

Women that need a HUGE wedding with everyone she’s ever known, causing her fiance and/or parents to spend an amount of money in one night–just for her to prove to the culture that she has sealed the (cultural i)deal --are idiots. There is little reason, and an abundance of emotional neediness, in that mix.

Creativity is certainly not a guy-thing. Man have more beliefs to consider when they act, but they nonetheless model behavior they have seen, for the most part. Creativity may be present in the better thinkers, but that is why they are better THINKERS, not followers of social scripts (usually, in fact, it is the anxiety of cognitive dissonance that creates the true thinker, as his emotions won’t allow him to follow guidelines of behavior that afflict with his understanding of the moment.

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You all are way too funny.

Women can’t do this, women are only good for that. ROFL

Keep up with it, and vocalize it loudly to the women in your lives and around you, please do. Any woman that falls for some guy that has such preconceived ideas about female limitations,well, she deserves what she gets. And any chauvanist guy that falls for a woman that falls for him deserves what he gets.LOL

Well it is true by default women and men aproach life differently it is more of a compliment to the opposite gender.

Before processed formula and breast pumps for babies, women were stuck being the ones to feed and care for children. They had the equipment. Males did not.
So over the generations women developed their nurturing emotional side while men provided the family basics. Fair and equitable job splitting. The male if handed an infant could not nurse it. The infant would die. Not a real good thing.

Men did not develop the nurture side to the extint that females did, instead they developed the protective side. Fair because while the woman had her hands full of squalling infants and kids, the man was the one able to protect the family from the elements. Niether side was easy, it was labor distribution.

Because men did not have viable milk producing breasts is the only reason the genders split the work. Women could not go hunting for days and leave the man in charge of the kids. He could not feed the infants.

Over generations of course thought patterns would develop into different paths. I would still say that the division is equal. Now jump to our day and age.

The barriers are collapsing. The two genders, thanks to technology, are able to step into a different role and jobs. Both sides have little faith that the other gender can step into the gender related roles easily or do as well as their gender can. It takes time to be something your society has declared by default you cannot be.

If both men and women had the physical ability to nurse infants from the start of our species. There would be no gender gap ego issues.

Both genders are equal they just did different things in order to support survival. Now in this day, this does not have to be, so things are changing and so we have ego competition between genders. Really it is all very stupid and totally without logic. Women are not better than men in their set social preconcieved gender roles and men are not better than women in theirs. They are balanced as equals as they always have been. One cannot survive without the other. We are dependent upon the opposite gender for survival of the species.

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All? I beg to differ. I said no such thing. Your use of ‘all’ is stereotyping and careless…

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You are quite correct. I apologize

I was not directing it at those folks like you. Having lived in the south most of my life(Texas and Mississippi) the “you all” is a habit of speech. Its use directs it to the proper parties by common knowledge. I tend to forget it is misinterpreted by those not familiar with it. My apologies for being negligent.

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I used to date a bitch that thought she was a feminist. When I got done emotionally and psychologically running her into the ground, I cut her loose and she was pregnant and withdrawn from college in under a year. Score one for dicks!

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What do you mean score one for dicks? You seem to be keeping score in some competition of who has power over who, who is more able to influence and affect whose life.

There are A LOT of stupid, shallow girls that like the idea of being a feminist. They are just like people who misuse religion–a cultural image of strength and growth used merely to indulge oneself in impulsive and ego-saving behavior.

This doesn’t say anything about women’s potential, just as your actions don’t say anything about men’s.

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Well in that case, let’s just take a look at who’s been dominating societies since they first began. This should lead to the same conclusion as my statement above.

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Lead to what conclusion? “Score one for dicks!”? This was the “conclusion” directly above, so I assume you’re referring to this.

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God?

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I would say ignorant people.

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S’alright.

Ah, of course. Now that you mention it, I am familiar with that particular idiom. In which case I owe you the apology for not seeing your use of ‘you all’ for what it was. My apologies.