Content Theft: The residue of Patriarchy running the show.
John William Waterhouse -I am half-sick of shadows, said the lady of shalott
:Feminist Beekeeping Friday:
I am at a real crossroads this week. I’ve got some unpleasant thoughts moving through my brain. I’ve tried sorting through them with friends and colleagues. I’d like to have a strong argument or stance before writing about it, but I don’t. I have a Scorpio full moon cocktail of compassion and raised hackles. What I’m going to talk about may put you off. The subject is women stealing from women.
Let’s back track. This wee little Friday post is called Feminist Beekeeping Friday because it’s about time we have a place for women’s voices in the world of bees. After all, bees have been associated with the feminine and the life-giving goddess for a few millennia now. In ancient Europe, where apis mellifera comes from, the bee was held sacred and depicted in statutes of bee goddesses. In Greece there were temples kept by bee women tending the sacred arts of seership, healing, dreaming, and ritual. These women were simply called Bees.
So I loosely base these Friday musings on bees, women, the feminine, and dismantling the Patriarchy. Cheers, darling!
Where were we? Oh yes, the Great Silencer. As Patriarchy entered Goddess culture, women’s voices were systematically silenced. Women’s ways demonized. Women’s power vilified and shamed. Women’s bodies violated. Right on down to the present era. We are raised in a society that is the adolescent offspring of a belief system which still encourages oppression, witch hunts, inequality, and ownership. Capitalism is a byproduct of this belief. So is egocentric individualism. So is spiritual bypass. What a mire we’re in.
Some of it survived though. Hidden in plain site, or just at the edge of your vision. It has been waiting.
Enter the rise of feminism. The rise of women’s voices. The return of the sacred feminine. Here we are, carving a place for ourselves because it’s finally - maybe - safe enough again. Here we are, the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn, seeking our own spiritual truth without very much guidance.
Have you ever wept in longing for the mythic grandmother to come apprentice you to her arts? Have you ever sought pilgrimage, initiation, rite of passage, ceremonial transformation without a compass? Did you read that “how to” book and despair? Go to that workshop? I get it. I did. I spent over twenty years in study. Sometimes I found rare gold, and it stripped me to my bones. I wept for the lost wisdom. I began to find where it was hidden inside. I am still weeping. I am still finding.
I began to put all this study, work, and practice into form. I began to craft my own teachings. People came. I was overly generous. I hear that a lot. What does that even mean? I wanted to give it away. I wanted to keep it veiled. I have ancestors’ voices in me that need it to stay veiled. I have ancestors’ voices that need me to be loud and public. I want to be generous. I want to make a living. I don’t want to loose vitality in the process.
Women came to my courses and they changed my life. I get to be the thing I longed to be but could not find at 15, at 25, at 30. Somewhere around 35 I found my voice. I found my stride.
Here in the present, it has been brought to my attention quite recently, there are women who are now repurposing my content, my class names, and my words with very little discretion and not a mention of their source. These are women who have taken my classes. Pause. What I do and what I teach is NOT proprietary. Where I learned much of what I teach is open to all. I am not special. I don’t get the one diamond pass. Unpause. I have spent years cultivating my own form of teaching, my own practices, based on the spirit-informed integration of teachings I’ve received from others. I’ve also learned from the land. From my body. From my creative soul.
What a sticky business.
How do we strike out on our own because we are inspired? Because someone’s teaching spoke deeply to us? Because a school or a program awoke something in us? Inspiration is the name of the game. That’s the point. That’s why a person teaches.
I have no problem with inspiration. I have no problem with people sharing things that came from me, that came from the woman before me, that came from the spirit within me, that came from the ancestors behind me. What I do have a problem with is plagiarism. With content theft. With idea theft.
What it comes down to is a deep internal sadness around loss of integrity. Around the loss of the human hive in the oldest sense of women gathering. We’ve learned to distrust each other. So many women don’t trust other women. We’ve learned to doubt ourselves. To gaslight each other. Where is the sisterhood? I don’t know the ethical call here. There is a reason things stayed behind the veil. Stayed hidden. This experience is the modern version of that reason. We are still functioning from within a male-centric, colonizer framework. We appropriate. Take what you want. Don’t give credit. Commodify it. Brand it. Go for the quick fix. Is your longing so great that you take with out notice? Is this the spiritual starvation of the West?
There is a beauty in the exchange of skills, practices, and hard-won perspectives. It’s perfectly human to share and share again. However, don’t let acquisition stop the journey. I don’t now much, but I do believe that mimicry is selling yourself short. You don’t have to invent the wheel or be totally unique. I most certainly am not! I am a patchwork quilt. However, you also don’t have to be that thing you see outside yourself. There’s a chance that your desire to mimic someone’s work is actually an invitation to dive deeper within. To excavate the hidden seas and rare silver rivers of your own body’s knowing. The secrets waiting in your ancestral library. The particular language spoken by the bit of earth you’re standing upon today. Can you bear to turn your gaze to the hallowed keening of your longing?
Meanwhile, there is a woman somewhere at her loom, weaving thread she died herself, with hands that have held the hands of many sisters. She is singing an old song as she works. It is rhythmic and hypnotic. It took her years to learn the pattern. It took many unravellings. The warp and weave stretch your heart as you gaze on them. She will spend her whole life making this cloth. She is making it for you.
Meanwhile, that same woman is you. She is weaving with threads she spent lifetimes spinning. She may be working a loom built by sisters, mothers, grandmothers, but she is the one who has earned her seat. She is singing an old song as she works. The rhythm is like the hum of bees. She has learned how to make honey. She has learned how to sting. She has mended many frayed threads. Some she cut away. She has learned about boundaries. It broke her heart. It made her whole. She is re-sanctifying the ground of herself, her sovereignty, and her safety.
She will spend her whole life making this cloth. She is making it for herself.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti -Penelope.