#smashthepatriarchy

What I Want from Men: 100 Days (26)

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 26:

Here is what I want from my beloved male allies right now:

1. Listen to women. When you feel an urge to explain or contextualize men’s speech and actions, just don’t.

2. Amplify women’s voices. In your speaking, and on your social media.

3. Know that, no matter our own histories—from boundary-crossing to harassment to coercion and violence—the stories are hitting us hard right now. The ground of the narrative today is our bodies. We might be feeling vulnerable, fierce, invisible, endangered, dangerous.

4. We don’t really want to deal with your feelings about it all right now. Do your own emotional labor.

5. Speak up, dammit. Call your brothers to account, for their sexist jokes, their boorish behavior, their silence.

6. Stand up for trans and nonbinary folks. They take so much of the weight of gender hatred perpetrated by men.

*****

I spent some time today organizing some scrap fabrics, cutting pieces for the 20 little dolls, and braiding up a couple little people. I’m also playing with free-form crochet on a neck-piece. 

#The100DayProject

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Little Protectors: 100 Days (25)

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 25:

One quarter of the way through the project today.

Starting on a new project today, getting another set of Little Protectors Dolls ready for Radiance. On my initial project list, I gave myself the goal of twenty. I have pieces cut for seven bodies right now, and I can get fabric laid out to cut another fifteen or so in the next couple of days. I braided one doll this evening, just so I could say I had done something other than just organize materials.

What magic shall I call upon for this batch of feisty protectors? Little Girl Dragon Energy. Old Woman Rising Energy. Fierce Mother Bears Energy. Ancestor Rescue Energy. Waving Goodbye to the Patriarchy Energy.

What magic are you calling upon for yourself in these days of turmoil and uproar?

#The100DayProject

@dothe100dayproject

Little Red Breathes Fire: 100 Days (18)

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 18: 

I think it’s time to retell the story of Little Red. Mama warned her, as mothers must do, that wolves are dangerous, on the prowl for girls in the woods, insatiably hungry.  Perhaps Wolf perpetuates his fraud, and devours Red and her grandmother. Perhaps he invites his friends, and they devour her friends. 

Perhaps he even becomes the king of the village, with villagers celebrating his brutality, his cruelty, his power. 

Then, perhaps, Red and Granny, and Goldie and Snow and Cinder and Rapunzel, trapped as they are in the belly of Old Wolf and his toady wolves, remember that they can breathe fire. Perhaps they send flames shooting from their mouths and they burn Old Wolf and his cronies from the inside out.

Perhaps all the villagers gather around, and see the truth of Old Wolf’s evil as the Maidens and the Crone step out of the steaming carcasses.

Perhaps the Patriarchy falls. Perhaps the Bad Men face the ruin of their own making.

*****

Today’s Project work: About fifteen rows of the first sleeve (third attempt). And here’s the thing: I already love what is happening with the color and texture. 

#The100DayProject

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No War: #The100DayProject Day 8

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 8:
How do we resist the forces of Empire and White Supremacy and Patriarchy and Christian Nationalism, which are—really—one and the same? We make the world we envision, the matrisphere (as Perdita Finn calls it), the communities of nurture and sustenance and protection, and we grow these communities as we watch the towers fall.

Their world is beginning to tip and tilt and fall apart, and rich white men are going to start trying to save their own selves. In the process, they’re going to start turning on each other, eating each other, pushing each other down so that they can try to stay afloat. The people will be there to push them out of the way, because we have a bigger thing to do. We have circles of community to preserve and to build. We have children to protect. We have nurturing and sustaining to do. We don’t have time for their hate and their lies. They’re going to take each other down, and when they do we will be there with our soup and our hope and our bandages and our knitting and our spinning and we will create a new world. Let it be so.

Project work today: About twelve rows on knitting on the second sleeve, Another 10 or so hearts and flowers for Pride, a No War sign on the coffee table, and participation in Deborah Oak Cooper’s Wave Goodbye to the Patriarchy Spell.

The100DayProject
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