Thanks to a kind internet friend, I am currently signed up for Suzi Blu‘s “Be. Divine.” workshop on Ning in an attempt to keep my creative juices flowing throughout the holidays when I typically get depressed (doesn’t everyone?) and things start to go sour for the winter season.

Truthfully, I don’t think I’m going to be making any of the projects in the class and I’m sort of being a non-participator in the sense that you’re supposed to start the class by being grouped up with a “goddess sister” to help keep you motivated and well…I don’t want one. I’m flaky and unreliable and I don’t want to feel like I’m responsible for someone else’s good time in this class. I just don’t want to feel like I’m letting someone down or that they got screwed in the “goddess sister” department. The other part is that…I don’t feel like I have very much in common with most of these women, which I’ll get to in a minute.

The main reason I won’t be completing any of the projects in the class is simply because I’m fucking POOR y’all, REALLY REALLY poor, and I can’t really afford to buy new stuff for this class or ‘waste’ the supplies I already have on stuff I’m not going to sell. These days I just can’t afford to play, as sad as that sounds.

If you think that’s as sad and pathetic as it is, feel free to hit up that “donate” button on the right-hand side of this site and throw some cash my way, or even better, purchase something from the shop. That’d be rad. OR if you’re feeling REALLY generous, you could always just buy me presents to cheer me up, some of which are art books that would really help me out. And that’s the end of the begging /poor me portion of this post.

So goddesses…my first assignment for class is to make a goddess journal and write down what a goddess is to me. Well, since my goddess journal is currently drying its first cover layer on my desk, I decided to write about it here instead. Maybe I’ll print it out and put it in the journal when it’s done, I dunno. It IS going to have Courtney Love on the cover though!

Anyway, the question was posed in class a few days ago and I’ve had some time to think about it. I’ve also had the opportunity to observe some of the other women in the class and there’s something that’s really bugging the crap out of me and I feel like I need to get it out.

I don’t know what a goddess is to me yet, but I have decided what a goddess ISN’T. A goddess ISN’T someone who can only be pro-woman by being anti-man. The anti-man, “boys are stupid” sentiment being thrown about in this community of women is really starting to grate on my nerves. It’s not just because I love men and have the greatest husband on the planet. It’s not just because I have an amazing son. It’s not even because I know an equal proportion of intelligent men and women and truth be told, I’ve met way WAY more stupid women than stupid men and I’m talking about the ability to make life decisions here, not  the ability to add 2 + 2. But like I said, that’s not even it.

What it is is the inability to say positive things about women without tearing down men at the same time. Really, the two shouldn’t even have anything to do with one another. I mean, what do men really have to do with women to begin with?

What killed me is that I made a blog post on the class page showing off the “Bitch Barometers” I’d found and explaining them, and one of the women said in a comment “I’d change the 2nd barometer to be more luscious, but still designed to keep the men OUT!!” This actually made me make a face at the screen and kind of step back for a moment. In making those, in thinking about my uterus or my period or cramps or any of the above, men never even enter my mind. In fact I’m PMSing like a motherfucker right now and last night when I suddenly decided I wanted an ice cream cone, who went to the store in a snow storm at 11pm to buy me cones and Haagen-Dazs from the convenience store even though it’s $10 a goddamn pint there? That’s right, my husband Blake. The same guy who drew me a bath afterward, with green tea bath salts I might add, and then sat on the toilet and talked to me for 45 minutes about life and the world in general while I soaked my aching girly bits. The same guy who happened to minor in Women’s Studies and is probably a bigger feminist than I’ll ever be.

I take offence to male-bashing, just as much as I take offence to woman-bashing. I mean ladies, before you say something anti-man, say it in your head but in the opposite, against women and see how it sounds. Is it still funny or cute then? Why then, is it acceptable to repeat it against men? Then you’re just as bad, if not worse, than the stereotypical men you believe to be the majority of the penis-having populus. You just propagate the problem. If any woman ever said some of the things I hear out of this class in front of my 5-year-old son, I’d slap them silly. It’s the same thing as saying “Girls are bad at math” in front of a 5-year-old girl. (And if anyone said that kinda shit in front of my daughter, believe me, I’d slap ‘em just as hard.)

Why can’t these women build other women up just on the merits of being a woman? And why does everything have to be a man’s fault? I just don’t get it.

My family is matriarchal. I don’t know where the men go, they just disappear. It started with my great-grandmother, whose husband died young, then her daughter, my grandmother, who took over his furniture store at a time when women didn’t even have jobs, let alone created them. Then came my mother, who had me at 15, but still finished high school, ran her own business for 12 years and is now a successful artist. And then there’s me, and as much as I’m down on myself all the time, when I go down the mental list of the shit I’ve done and the shit I’ve been through, I’m not a goddess, I’m a fucking WARRIOR.

And let me be clear: It’s not ALL of the women in this class who are boy-bashing. It’s just enough of them for me to feel uneasy about the vibe, it’s like cheap perfume stinking up the place when we’re supposed to be acting like goddesses, discussing divine femininity and perspiring rose petals.

So what is a goddess to me? Dudettes, I still don’t know about the modern definition. But I’m pretty sure Aphrodite, Artemis, Hecate, Persephone, Kali or any of the others didn’t waste their time bitching about how stupid boys are. They had better things to do. And so do I.

I should end this here, but I just want to be CLEAR CLEAR CLEAR that I’m not dissing Suzi or her class, I’m just fired up by a few stupid comments by some chicks who should be old enough to know better. I get that some women have had bad experiences with men, but I have a problem with anyone who paints any group with the same negative brush, especially in this instance where we’re supposed to be women building up other women so we can all become goddesses in our own right. I don’t think this can be achieved with the way some are carrying on. I mean, you CAN build one group up by tearing another down, but isn’t that the exact thing our feminist mothers and grandmothers fought AGAINST? Think about it.

So I guess I’ll get off my soapbox now. I’m not really looking for a fight or a feminist philosophical debate, I’m just saying that women can stand on their own virtue and tearing down the entire male gender doesn’t make anyone closer to goddess status.

Shutting up now. Going to bed.