What are Femifesta?

Femifesta? OK, the reason for the name is not rabid “PC-ness” (b/c that sort of pedantic PC-ness gets on my tits as much as anyone’s). Although I do believe in finding and using gender neutral terms for every possible title—fire-fighter, police officer, post- or mail-carrier, chair or chair person (I prefer facilitator or leader, however, as no person is a chair)—the “man” of manifesto is not from the masculine noun but from the root “manu” meaning by hand. So one of the things this Blog is going to do is define words. I begin with defining what I mean by Femifesta (plural of femifesto, because it is not one, but many ideas that make up my femifesta) …

According to my the Miriam-Webster online dictionary, manifesto means "a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer". The basis for my creation is, of course, Marx’s Communist Manifesto, which deconstructed many issues of the modern world and its economies, but unfortunately ignored what may be the single most pressing element: ie, unpaid labor of women, which results from the patriarchal value of power as the primary value of society. This is not the “power” of personal empowerment, but rather power over, meaning control through fear and violence, as opposed to value and respect for life, pleasure and happiness. It’s true that the US Declaration of Independence was the first document to recognize “pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable human right—just over 200 years ago, it’s a new concept on an evolutionary stage, one that we really have not had time to get our heads around. A shame, really, considering that biologists believe that the modern dog may have evolved from the wolf in just one (human) generation (“Dogs That Changed the World,” Nature two-part special, PBS, 22 and 29 April, 2007), but nevermind.

In ignoring the unpaid labor of women around the world—and regardless of class, women always do more work than men; of course, women of “upper” or leisure classes do less work relative to women of lower classes or even perhaps men of lower classes. But within their own class, and as a class of their own, women do the vast majority (UN Council on the Status of Women says 2/3 to 3/4) of all the work in the world. That being the larger half of the human population and doing the majority of the work does not translate, in a free-market economy, to owning the majority of the wealth; or in a collective economy, to controlling—or at least leading—the decision-making process, is neither logical nor just. From a supply and demand economics point of view, women supply the majority of necessary labor for the world—from the 1st world to the 4th world—to function. From a centralized economic point of view—from those according to their ability, to those according to their needs—women also have proven much more “able” than men, to multi-task, to provide sustenance, to nurture, to educate, to motivate, to manage, to lead and to cooperate, than men. I do not argue that these traits and abilities are either biological or environmental, only that, as the world exists today, they are generally true.

Consequently, from both production and service point of view, women should be valued more than men as essential to society—even leaving by our ability to reproduce virtually on our own, thanks to artificial means; or even literally, by parthenogenesis, although that has not yet been shown to work for humans.

Of course, we are not. That is because, as Marilyn French argues, the modern, patriarchal world values power over life, control over pleasure. If we as a species—or even as western society, or the nation of the USA—could shift our value system—and it would be a dramatic shift indeed—it would transform the way the world “as we know it.” A male friend of mine, no friend to feminism, once said to me, “If men were to express their real feelings, civilization as we know it would collapse.” Hear hear—let’s do whatever we can to bring about that collapse. As another male—not a personal friend, but a friend to the species and to justice—when asked what he thought of “Western Civilisation”, answered, “I think it would be a good idea” (Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi).

So Femifesta will define the ideals, goals, practices and campaigns that I believe necessary to create a society where “pursuit of happiness” gets as fair a go as any other guiding principle in the modern world. And I am hopeful (although perhaps I too have been brainwashed by too many years of “trickle down” rhetoric) that if Western society can find learn to value pursuit of happiness and pleasure over power and control, that our corresponding release of fear and anxiety will result in a determination, even need, to help the rest of the world achieve the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Nor do I think it can really be a one-sided venture—many, many poor societies in the world have many people who, despite poverty and minimal standards of living, exhibit elements of humanity and nurturing for their fellows quite unknown in Western society. We, who have all the money and “stuff”, have not the compassion of millions in India, China, Indonesia, and small tribes of individuals all over the world whose generosity and openness to Westerners has, in general (except for in a few isolated aberrations), diminished very little despite 500 years of its being devalued, debased, and used as rationalization for genocide throughout the southern hemisphere.