Butterfly Effect - ressourcesfeministes

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13 we go mad together. Robin Morgan’s poem “Monster” concludes her collection of
the same name. She writes: “May my hives bloom bravely until my flesh is
aflame / and burns through the cobwebs. / May we go mad together my sisters.
/ May our labor agony in bringing forth this revolution / be the death of all
pain. // May we comprehend that we cannot be stopped. // May I learn how to
survive until my part is finished. / May I realize that I /am a / monster. I am //
a / monster. / I am a monster.// And I am proud.” Robin Morgan. Monster, pp.
85-86.
14 evil eye. The evil eye is associated with powerful women, the archetypal figure in
western mythology is Medusa, but there are many others elsewhere. For more on
the archeological record of the Eye Goddess, see Marija Gimbutas, 1989. The
Language of the Goddess, pp. 50-61. According to Barbara Walker, women who met
men with a direct glance were considered to have the evil eye. “‘proper’ women
keep their glance lowered in the presence of men.” Barbara Walker. 1983. The
Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, p. 295.
15 hooliganism. Alla Pitcherskaia, a lesbian from Russia, was charged with the crime
of “hooliganism” because she continued to to work with a lesbian youth
organisation. Amnesty International 2001. Crimes of Hate, p. 20.
16 witchcraft. When the European colonisers first came to the shores of Great Turtle
Island (North America) the power of women in Native American communities
was curbed. Paula Gunn Allen writes that lesbians were as powerful in
“medicine” and that this can lead to charges of witchcraft not only from non-
Indigenous American but also from Native men who may fear the spirit power
of lesbians. See Paula Gunn Allen. 1986. The Sacred Hoop, pp. 245- 261. In the
European world many lesbians and independent women were accused as
heretics and burned at the stake. The catherine wheel is a cultural memory of one
such method of torture and death.
17 borderlands. Lesbians live their lives straddling at least two cultures, what I have
called the metaxu (Gr. µ) the between world. Gloria Anzaldúa refers to this
as the borderlands, a place that is both physical and clearly marked but also
emotional and indeterminate. As Anzaldúa writes it can also be a place of fear
and hardship. “This is her home/a thin edge of/barbwire.” Gloria Anzaldúa.
1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, pp. 3-13. Also see her poem “To
live in the Borderlands means you” which continues: “are neither hispana india
negra española/ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed/caught in the crossfire
between camps”. Ibid, pp. 194-5. For more on the concept of metaxu (although
not in a lesbian context) see my 1993 essay “Diotima Speaks through the Body”
in Bat-Ami Bar On (Ed.). Engendering Origins.
18 disappeared. Among the disappeared of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay were politically
active lesbians. In Chile, Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes was arrested. She survived and
has written about her experience. See Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes and Lynda Birke.
2001. Talking With/In Pain: Reflections on bodies under torture. Women’s Studies
International Forum. Likewise lesbians have been among the persecuted under other
regimes, among the best documented being the Nazi Regime. For one personal story
see Erica Fischer. 1996. Aimée and Jaguar. Or, as philosopher Jeffner Allen points out:
“Whenever the profiles of my memory, like the horizons of time, are erected by men,
I cannot remember myself. At such moments, male domination not infrequently
forces me to remember myself as essentially and ‘by nature’ the Other who ‘is’ only
in relation to me. I, dismembered, disappear into nonexistence.” Jeffner Allen. 1986.
Lesbian Philosophy: Explorations, p. 13.