YOU are invited to bring this book to the public by ordering your copy(s) of this book (in soft cover and/or Kindle version) during this fundraising campaign. You can also support this project by sharing information about this anthology with your friends, family, and communities through personal contacts and social media. All the material for this anthology is already written and being prepared for publication this Fall.
Together we will raise awareness to help the public understand the deeper issues involved in the gender identity political
debate and its impact on us all.
Ruth Barrett, Anthology Editor and Project Weaver
ABOUT THE BOOK
This book bears witness and exposes the current trend of gender identity politics as a continuation of female erasure as old as patriarchy itself.
This anthology brings together voices of forty-six contributors celebrating female embodiment while exploring deeper issues of misogyny, violence and sexism in gender identity politics today, demonstrating the intentional silencing and erasure of living female realities.
These perspectives come at a time when gender politics and profits from an emerging medical transgenderism industry for children, teens, and adults inhibits our ability to have meaningful discussions about sex, gender, changing laws that have provided sex-based protections for women and girls, and the re-framing of language that erases females as a distinct biological class.
ABOUT THE COVER
In my
introduction to the anthology, I suggest that origins of female erasure in Western
culture was propagated by the framing myth of Adam and Eve, and continues to affect
a majority of people on our planet, regardless of whether an individual
practices a religion based on this mythology.
The cover image is intentionally complex and multi-layered in its
meanings. This classical image of Eve in the Garden of Eden is consistent with her
portrayals in Renaissance art as a white European female. Our understanding of
genetics today confirming human origins evolving out of Africa, the original
“Eve” would surely have been a dark skinned female. Clearly the image does not
represent all women in our glorious diversity of color and size. There is a
double meaning intended in the cover image as the “white” Eve in the
Renaissance portrayal has already been erased of her African origins, and
continues to disappear even as she reaches for the fruit from the Tree of
Knowledge.
In the Genesis 2 myth, a male God gives Adam, the first man, the power to
name all the creatures of the earth, including Eve, the first woman. Adam is
given the power by God to name her, and thus given power over the female sex, and given the power to define the very nature of woman. The male's empowerment by God to
name the female is intentional and significant. The woman does not name, and
thus define, herself. Her nature is literally man-made. The power of naming is
a magical act with cultural significance. The power to name ourselves has been historically
usurped from women, and over time we have forgotten that we ever had this power
to begin with. Female erasure continues to be propagated through gender
identity politics today and continuing efforts to define and enforce oppressive
gender constructs on the female sex.
The cover
for this anthology was created as a gift from my oldest and dearest friend,
renown photographic artist Claudia Kunin.
WHAT'S IN THE BOOK?
Through researched articles, essays, first-hand experiences, story telling, and verse, these voices are needed to ignite the national conversation about the politics of gender-identity as a backlash to feminist goals of liberation from gender stereotypes, oppression and sexual violence.
This book is broken down into different topical sections including:
Biological Erasure by Gender Ideology, Re-Framing Reality and the Language of Erasure, The "Violent" Female Body, A Room of Our Own, Personal Stories from the Belly of the Beast, and Resistance to Delusion.
Here are some of the titles (not in a final order):
SECTION ONE: BIOLOGICAL ERASURE BY GENDER
IDEOLOGY
- In
The Beginning We Were All Female - Monika Sjöö & Barbara Mor
- The
End Of Gender: Revolution, Not Reform - Rachael Ivey
- The
Difference Between Sex and Gender and Why It Matters - Kathy Scarbrough
- Female
Erasure, Reverse Sexism, and the Cis Theory Of Gender - Elizabeth Hungerford
- Transgender
Rights: The Elimination of the Human Rights of Women - GallusMag
- “Transgender
Equality Verses Women’s Equality: A Clash Of Rights? Written Evidence Submitted
To The Transgender Equality Inquiry – Shiela Jeffreys
- My
Disservice To My Transgender Patients - Kathy
Mandigo, M.D.
- Exiles In Their
Own Flesh: A Psychotherapist Speaks- Lane Anderson
- An
African-American Woman Reflects On The Transgender Movement -Nuriddeen Knight
- Female
Erasure: A Sampler - Ava Park
- In
The Absence Of The Sacred: The Marketing of Medical Transgenderism and
The Survival Of The Natural Child - Mary
Ceallaigh and Jennifer Bilek
SECTION TWO: RE-FRAMING REALITY AND THE LANGUAGE OF ERASURE
- Eve
Was Framed - Ruth Barrett
- On
Language & Erasure - Hypotaxis
- The Erasure of Lesbians - Alix Dobkin and Sally Tatnall
- Mothers’
Day: A Story – Joan F. Archive
- Pseudoscience
Supplants Female Athletes' Olympic Dreams - Kathy Crocco
- Patriarchy In Drag:
Sexual Imperialism In Africa, And Delusional Revisionism In The
African-American Community -
Luisah Teish
- Transgenderism
and the Male Power of Naming – Julia Long
SECTION THREE: THE
“VIOLENT” FEMALE BODY
- The
Girls and the Grasses - Lierre Keith
- The
Period Poem – Dominique Christina
- Mother
– Patricia Monaghan
- Song
For Menopause – Ila Suzanne Gray
- The
Universe Is Her Form - Vajra Ma
- A
Revolutionary Love Letter To Menarche - Monica Asencio
SECTION FOUR: A
ROOM OF OUR OWN
- The Attack On Female
Sovereign Space In Pagan Community - Ruth Barrett
- Why
Women’s Spaces Are Critical To Feminist Autonomy - Patricia McFadden
- Females
Need Our Spaces For Development Of Feminist Consciousness - Carol Downer
- Transparent:
Spitting On Michfest’s Grave – Phonaesthica
- Ground
Zero: The Clash Of Gender Identity Protections And Women's Space - Cathy Brennan
- The
Undoing Of A Unique Sisterhood - Mara
Lake
- #ApologizeToMichigan - Sara St. Martin Lynne
SECTION FIVE: PERSONAL
STORIES FROM THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
- Reclaiming Female/Speaking Back – Crash
- “Neighbor
Boy” - Temple Ardinger
- I Am
Not A Waste Of A Woman - Max Robinson
- The Goddess of Autonomy – Devorah Zahav
- Destruction
Of A Marriage: My Husband's Descent Into Transgenderism - Sharon Thrace
- Gas
Mark Six – Jackie Mearns
- The
Bathroom - Falcon River
- Social Work Professor Speaks
Out On Behalf Of Her FtM Autistic Daughter – Dr.
Kathleen “Kelly” Levinstein
SECTION SIX: RESISTANCE TO DELUSION
- Gender, Patriarchy, And
All That Jazz - Mary Lou Singleton
- The Surgical Suite: Modern-Day Closet For Today’s Teen Lesbian
- Marie Verite
- Yes
All Women - Sara St. Martin Lynn
- The
WANTED Project - Nedra Johnson
- Females
Need Our Spaces For Development Of Feminist Consciousness -Carol
Downer
- Into
the Mind of Kosilek: Grace’s Daughter – A Book Review – GallusMag
- Radical
Embodiment And The Reproduction Of Resistance - Mary Ceallaigh
- A
Creed For Free Women - Elsa Gidlow
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
This anthology encourages readers to consider how and why our female bodies matter, and how our bodies inform our everyday lives. Contributors shed light on how the language of gender-identity politics has been purposely used to reframe and replace specifically biology-based realities, reinforcing the destructive hierarchy that objectifies and harms women and children.
Some contributors connect the momentum of female erasure to the ways we treat our Mother Earth. Others share their personal struggles with being gender nonconforming women, with some sharing their journeys from living as trans men and their choice to de-transition. Some discuss political struggles and triumphs arising from providing female-centered spiritual spaces, reclaiming their female bodies as a source of power and significance, and why it is so important for all of us to consider asking deeper questions about how misogyny, violence, and sexism are being enacted in this issue.
Contributors come from a wide variety of backgrounds in terms of race, class, religion, sexual orientation, and age (ranging from twenty to eighty-three years old), and live in the United States, Zimbabwe, Australia, and the United Kingdom. They are lesbian feminists, political and spiritual feminists, heterosexual-womanist women,mothers, scholars, attorneys, poets, medical and mental health providers, environmentalists, and women who chose to de-transition, all providing perspectives that are ignored, silenced, vilified, or underrepresented in the popular media and disregarded in discussions promoting legal protections for transgender persons at the expense of women and girls. Some contributors wrote under pseudonyms to keep their teaching jobs or to protect their children from harassment.
ABOUT THE ANTHOLOGY EDITOR
Ruth Barrett is an ordained elder Priestess, seasoned ritualist, and teacher in the Dianic tradition where the Goddess and the female body is the central religious metaphor, and rituals exclusively celebrate the female life cycle and support healing and liberation from gender oppression. Ruth has provided rituals and classes in sacred female-sovereign spaces for women and girls for four decades.
Ruth Barrett received her B.A. in Folklore and graduated with honors from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1976. In 1997 Ruth was honored as recipient of the L.A.C.E. award for outstanding contributions in the area of Spirituality from the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles. Ruth co-founded Temple of Diana, Inc, a national Dianic Temple, with life partner, Falcon River, where she co-facilitates a women’s mystery school.
She is author of Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries – Intuitive Ritual Creation (Llewellyn, 2007), and has contributed to several anthologies, including Stepping Into Ourselves – An Anthology of Writings on Priestesses (Goddess Ink, 2014), Foremothers Of The Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries (Taneo Press, 2015), and contributed to Women in World Religions: Faith and Culture Across History (ABC-CLIO, Inc., forthcoming 2018)
Ruth is also an award winning pioneering goddess-centered folk musician, mountain dulcimer artist and singer whose numerous recordings beginning in 1981 have been among the pioneering works in the Goddess Spirituality Movement. In 2011, Ruth was honored as recipient of the Jane Schliessman Award for outstanding contributions to women’s music from Women in the Arts.
She was director of the Candlelight Concert at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival from 1993, until the festival’s close in 2015. Ruth was honored to be a presenter and performer at the Parliament of the World's Religions held in Salt Lake City, Utah, 2015.
Ruth started Tidal Time Publishing LLC to produce this anthology and future projects.
www.tidaltimepublishing.com
FUNDING
How The Funds Will Be Used
- Professional Copy Editing: $5000
- Cover design: $1500
- Interior book design, layout, printing, permissions: $10,000
- Marketing and IndieGogo fees): $4,000
- Technical Support for web development $1000
- Legal Fees: $3,500
Our initial goal of $25,000 will cover the investment we have already made in bringing this book to the public and to its publication. We are looking forward to launching stretch goals for translated editions, and other exciting related projects.
The book will be out in the world this Fall!
If you don't see your country in the shipping options, please contract us so we can expand it to the global community.
Every contribution of any amount is deeply appreciated and will help us reach our goal. This is a grassroots campaign and word-of-mouth support is also a vital element to our success.
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