People sometimes say that we will know feminism has done its job when half the CEOs are women. Thatโs not feminism; to quote Catharine MacKinnon, itโs liberalism applied to women. Feminism will have won not when a few women get an equal piece of the oppression pie, served up in our sistersโ sweat, but when all dominating hierarchies - including economic ones - are dismantled.
Lierre KeithItโs time to put away our fairytales, all of them, and assume our responsibilities, the adult responsibilities that begin with adult knowledge. Our planet needs us. She needs us to think like healers and act like warriors. And if you think thatโs a contradiction, then get out of the way.
Lierre KeithResistance is a simple concept: power, unjust and immoral, is confronted and dismantled. The powerful are denied their right to hurt the less powerful. Domination is replaced by equity in a shift or substitution of institutions. That shift eventually forms new human relationships, both personally and across society.
Lierre KeithWhatโs looming in the shadows of our ignorance and denial is a critique of civilization itself.
Lierre KeithThese political passions are born of a hunger so deep that it touches on the spiritual. Or they were for me, and they still are. I want my life to be a battle cry, a war zone, an arrow pointed and loosed into the heart of domination: patriarchy, imperialism, industrialization, every system of power and sadism. If the martial imagery alienates you, I can rephrase it. I want my lifemy bodyto be the place where the earth is cherished not devoured, where the sadist is granted no quarter, where the violence stops.
Lierre KeithWhat is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That's 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every last niche, and there is no roll call on the nightly news.
Lierre Keith