Oma: Just remember, Danielle...Men are all the same. Why should they buy the cow if they can have the milk for free?!
Frustrated, I wonder - Who wants to be a friggin' cow, anyway, Oma? Doesn't this imply not only objectification and a sense that women are objects and commodities rather than living and breathing and autonomous souls? Wouldn't this indicate that I was no more than the measure of the man who 'made' me? Shall I infer that the less experience sexually and otherwise, then, the more valuable the cow?
Women are equally (often more) sexual beings, deserving of some safe forum for free expression, deserving to realize and explore the full expression of their sensual evolution and development without the threat of being unwanted and devalued.
How, in this day and age, such patriarchal denial of fundamental needs, especially in the female have resulted in such offensive mantras underlying the double standard attitude supporting the sometimes covert implication that no man's going to want to buy you when he can have your milk for free.
Infuriated by the injustice of it, I want to tell her something to the effect: Well, Oma, my milk and my love are always free. I can't be bought and will not bear my sexuality as a bartering item.
If I feel it, truly, deeply, it's yours. If not, you cannot buy it or wrest it from me. Quite simply, this ownership of self rather than seeking security in the exchange of goods and security for sex is our first move to really break free of the pseudo-prostitution underlying most of our oldest patriarchal structures in this society.
Let's face it, women were property until the earlier part of last century, just prior to the civil rights upsweep. We were the last of the developed countries to join forces with feminism and recognize voting and property rights for the 'weaker sex'. We wonder why French femininity seems so unfettered and further evolved - they had almost a century head start!
In any event, this blog could go on and on, but I'll just say that her continual digs at my feminine power are a product of the training and domestication she's under the spell of. Addicted to her magazine shows and gossip, she's no less vulnerable to the not so subtle messages our media spoon feeds female consumers in hopes of usurping their self-confidence sufficiently to inspire unnecessary expenditures on various 'feel-better' quick fixes.
I want to say it's not her fault, but it IS her fault, my fault, everyone's fault who turns their heads at this cultural phenomenon of devaluing people under the guise of offering them solutions to the unsettled feeling that something is amiss. And it is!
It is a time in which we, more than ever, need to come awake, to connect, to stay aware and learn responsibility to one another and to the higher power which binds us all to source. It is time, now, to make the necessary changes and to take responsibility for our contributions to the state of things. If we cannot even own ourselves, how can we make the steps necessary to change this world for the better, to effect the reversal of the damage born of selfish behavior and irresponsible entitlements.
It seems to me that she is expressing a fundamental lack of confidence in my ability to succeed as I am, to forge ahead on my own, to be me. It seems to me that this whole "Why should you buy a cow when the milk is free?" mantra speaks to her own inability to love, accept and integrate her own shadows and shames, thus labeled only because whether society or person judged her, she folded. It seems to me that it's time for all of us to heal this feminine wound and own our virility, our sensuality and our sexuality that we may be free at last to contribute the full measure of our souls to the earth so in need of awake and conscious souls to give what they're here to give.
Yes, I am a little miffed at this notion of being called a cow for too many reasons to count; however the blame lies with each and every one of us, myself included, who would go along with the undercurrent of sexual disproval of girls while encouraging the same behaviors in men.
Funny, that, during this era in which more women are graduating college than men, making increasingly superior levels of income, gleaning status both socially and professionally and supposedly evolving at a much quicker rate than most men - if Neanderthal and cavemen commercials are any indication - we would still have a puritanical sense of shame and judgment where our sexual expressions, desires and attitudes are concerned. 'Loose women' are never regarded with much respect, especially out of their ear shot, and those women brave enough to be frank about it always sacrifice something for their insistence that equality is more important than pride.
Isn't it about time we quit thinking of ourselves as cows and stood up for our right to be sexually expressive, virile, and unashamed? Isn't it time to evolve right out of these old structures and misconceptions and injustices to become fully in tune with our nature, natural rhythms and true needs?
I, for one, would rather leave the procuring of meat to beef vendors and carnivores than to continue worrying about whether some man is going to want to buy this cow.