Thank you, Stephanie! This looks GREAT! This is exactly the topic
I'm interested in.........!
Jackie
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Nov 7 14:28:31 1997
by asylum.asylum.org (8.8.5/8.8.4)
From: neutopia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Sacred Marriage of Ecofeminism and Ecovillage
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 16:25:34 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> from "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
at Nov 6, 97 03:08:17 pm
I thought that you would be interested in my on going struggle within
the male-controlled ecology movement. Here is my feminista
Gayla, you write to Albert:
"I can't work for ENA as long as it means working through you."
I called the Ecovillage Training Center today and talked with Corinna about
the problem of Albert and the oppression of women within the Ecovillage
movement. There are other women who feel the same way as we do. I think
it is time that we started an ecofeminist gaia listserve to:
1. Support the courageous actions ecofeminists make to break male bonding. We
need to be a support network for women who are trying to break out of the old
destructive heterosexual bonding in order to find new patterns of creative
partnerships with men necessary for the ecovillage movement to become
evolutionary/revolutionary/lovolutionary life-style model.
2. Strategize together about how we can change the GEN hierarchy so that we
can be governed by a "holocracy" (a government of wholes, within
wholes, the alchemy of the two becoming the a Gaia Philosophy, or what
I am calling the "ideology of true love,"), the core principle within
an ecovillage. Allowing the old-boys-club to go on in the GEN
hierarchy will only lead to dictatorship and fascism. Who wants to live
in an ecovillage which isn't directed by the mystery of true love?
3. Make public declarations and architectural blueprints as to what our
vision of an ecovillage is all about in terms of ecofeminism. We must
direct the ecovillage movement to accept women's issues such as child
care, providing for the sick and elderly, collective food and
housework issues as top priority. Our goal is to make these issues
men's issues since they need to take half the responsibility for doing
the essential work.
4. a place where we can plan conference panels and slide shows about women's
roles in eco-spiritual communities. We also need to demand space for
our ideas, poetry, and short stories in the Design Exchange and other
of GEN's publications as well as a premier place on the Gaia Web page.
We need to let the boys know that using sexist language such as
"Mankind" referring to humankind is unacceptable language in GEN's
publications.
5. Also, we must demand the ecovillage network to provide women with equal
time and computer equipment as the men have. To do this, we will want
to design communal computer centers and childcare centers into the
ecofeminist ecovillage design so that everyone can have equal assess
to the communication technologies.
6. a place where we can develop ecofeminist curriculum. Reading lists,
discussion group topics, and the study of feminist utopias. We also
need to start a resource base of ecofeminist groups and people who we
would like to come give workshops or have extended visits at
Ecovillage Training Centers. Starting ecofeminist consciousness
raising groups in the Intentional Community Movement seems very
important if we are going to change our second-class position.
7. We need to develop educational plan for early childhood education which
teaches children about the value system of the ecovillage movement.
One of the basic principles is that human issues come first! We also
need to teach children how to be myth-makers of their own life-stories
and about how Gaia spirituality radically differs from patriarchal
religions.
8. a place where we can help each other find financial funding and begin to
implementing an ecofeminist economy for the ecovillage movement. Clearly the
patriarchal economic model doesn't work. So we need to have an ecofeminist
plan of wealth sharing so that we can find a way to move ahead with an
alternative model of development.
9. We need to set up a public relations group so that we can hold press
conferences and write statements to the press about our ecofeminist point of
view within the ecovillage movement. We might also have to use such tactics
as civil-disobedience and social protest in order for our demands to
be known by the GEN hierarchy.
10.We need to make a conscious effort to connect with the social issues of our
times and not to escape into isolated "utopian" communities. Do to this we
must see ecofeminist ecovillage as place of social resistance and social
change. Our gates must be open to social-change artists who are
struggling to save the world. Ecovillage Training Centers need to
become training grounds for social protest movements against the
multi-nationals and a base to teach our ecofeminist utopian visions.
Corinna (a member of the ENA group) said that she can get the listserv started.
Then we need to brainstorm a name for our ecofeminist/ecovillage movement. Gaia
Makers is the first name that comes to my mind.
So, what do people think?
Corinna, can you get the listserv started?
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Nov 7 14:40:12 1997
by asylum.asylum.org (8.8.5/8.8.4)
From: neutopia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: The Ecovillage Governance Structure
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 16:37:13 -0500 (EST)
In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> from "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
at Nov 6, 97 03:08:17 pm
As a Spiritual Leader, Please Help Us.
Open Email to Stephen Gaskin
I know that I have been sending you email about my dismal situation with
your friend Albert Bates and you have not responded. But I am writing you now
as a man of the spirit whose calling in life has been to understand
spiritual matters to help me. I believe the basic problem between Albert
and me is a matter of the heart and spirit. So that is why I am writing
you in hopes that you can help us overcome our troubles because so much
is at stake.
Stephen, the closest I have ever came to you was in the late 70�s at
Barnwell, South Carolina at an anti-nuclear demonstration. It was
underneath a big tent. I was with my Communist party associate, Sidney
Waller, whose husband, Jim, a MD who was working in the cotton mills to
help educate workers to Brown Lung disease, was killed in the streets of
Greensboro, North Carolina by the KKK/Nazis/FBI several weeks after the
Barnwell demonstration. I was at the fatal demonstration where the
communists were killed until a voice in my head commanded me to get in
my car and leave the demonstration immediately. After I found out that
there had been a shooting and six communist worker leaders had been
shot and killed, I realized there is a mystical force guiding my
destiny.
Underneath the tent at Barnwell, it was open mic time. Sidney spoke
first. She was yelling in the mic about the communist workers party
activities including their plan to hold the �Death to the Klan� march which
ended in the murders. Then the mic was suppose to go to me since I was
next in line to speak. But someone from The Farm grabbed it and said it
was your turn to speak. It was apparent that they didn�t want another
communist to speak in that tone of voice which was so dogmatic. I protested
and said that it was my turn at the mic and that I wasn�t going to speak
about communism. I wanted to say a poem. I can�t recall if it was you,
but I think it was you or one of your followers who was responsible for
allowing me time to recite one of my anti-nuclear love poems. I was
always grateful for you for that. It was a very intimidating experience
for me as a young woman who was just arriving at her political voice to
be there surround by large men from The Farm. Now, I know that one of
them was Albert.
So you can see that I have been struggling for the right to speak about
love and peace and the social criticism which goes along with it, for
decades. Unfortunately, I am becoming an expert on the way groups use
censorship and ostracism to avoid voices which are confronting certain
base truths about the times and what needs to be done to stop Thanatos.
Certainly, this denial of the message that I carry is what happen to me
on the Ecobalance listserv when the administrator banished me.
To put in frankly, I don�t think that Albert could ever personally
inspire me again on a romantic level. He ruin the chances of such a
noble relationship when he got back from Iceland and didn�t even bother
to call me on the phone when he was in Boston, two hours from me in
Amherst. But what concerns me, and the reason I am writing you this
email, is because of the Ecovillage Movement. You see that
intellectually I am stuck if I can not be part of the Ecovillage
Movement. I see its potential to create social transformation if it was
to incorporate an ecofeminist agenda and becomes an
evolutionary/revolutionary/lovolutionary movement to create a network of
world peace settlements resisting the global nuclear power regime.
Of all the exhibits on development I saw at the Habitat 2 conference in
Turkey in 1995, I was most inspired with the Ecovillage Movement and the
symbols they represented. I was so excited about it that I went to their
opening reception. But at the opening reception, when they introduced
the Gaia Team and there wasn�t one woman representing the organization,
nor did I hear them mention any women�s issues, I had second thoughts
about the movement. Most of the speeches were about sustainable
technology and green capitalism. It seemed very patriarchal. My dreams
of finding people who would be interested in my ecofeminist point of
view which I could bring to the movement, seem hopeless as we were was
surrounded to Turkish secret police and people where getting arrested for
freedom of speech.
I remember now that during the reception I tried to talk with Albert,
but he was walking around with a video camera glued to his head. It
seemed impossible to get his attention even though I tried. Becoming
very disheartened, I thought the men of the movement were just not
sensitive enough to see the poetics of Gaia and be able to understand my
ecofeminist architectural theory which I brought to the movement.
Standing in front of the GEN exhibit, I felt I had been a part of the
movement for years as far as tuning into the noosphere and writing about
Gaia. My Gaia Religion seemed to be a vital element, the magic womb,
which was missing from Ecovillage theory. But if I could never get their
attention because of a lack of public forum, then how would they ever
recognize me and see the work I have done towards the great cosmic
Cause?
Arriving back to the United States after my stay in Istanbul, I was
still very intrigued by the ideas presented by the Ecovillage
literature. My Web page which was published as an illustration in Time
Magazine article on the Gaia Religion, reflects my enthusiasm since I
have given the Ecovillage Web page link a primary place on my page.
But now, after being exiled from the Ecobalance listserv which is the
only �public� listserve of the Ecovillage network and the heartless way
Albert has treated me [see his message below], how can I possibly feel
that I should anyway support and promote their movement?
In my vision of Neutopia, there are public forums or listservs where
anyone can say whatever they like, even if it is hate speech. I think
that this is the only way we will be able to know where such thoughts
exists and how we can go about educating these people who hold these
corrupt thoughts to a different reality so that hated speech will
dissipate. To simply censor, throw in prison, or to kill dissenting
voices will never create a utopia. It will only duplicate another wicked
tyranny�-perhaps one which uses green technology and organic
agriculture�-but nevertheless, a tyranny.
I have experimented with open forum on my Usenet newgroup
alt.society.neutopia. There is even a hate group against me called the
Neutopian Monster Truckers who analyze my every word, makes fun of my
most serious ideas, and gives me this and that psycho-babble about how
mentally demented I am. I was advised by friends that I should start a
moderated group to eliminate hearing such voices.
The other choice would have been for me to have set up a kill filter to
filer out their messages, the way Albert kill filtered my messages from
his incoming box. I decided that I should not take either of these
strategies in dealing with dissent. This is how dissent has been dealt
with in the old paradigm and I know that it could only lead eventually
to political executions if my Neutopian vision becomes a social reality.
There is no way that I ever wanted Neutopia to be associated with
fascism or totalitarian governance structures. So I know I have to take
the criticism however much I didn�t want to hear it and work with it. I
have found that there are times when I am glad that I have a public
place for my critics. Sometimes I have learn from them. At other times,
they have made me laugh at myself. Every CyberQueen needs court jesters
as part of the check and balance system, so you can see why I need a space
for my critics! Also, I want to know if someone is writing me hate message
like �Tonight I am coming over to your house and kill you.� I don�t want
to be in the dark about such messages which is why working as
Prophetess Neutopia, I made the first commandment in Cyberspace some
years ago on the Leri Virtual Community.
THY SHALL NOT USE KILL FILTERS.
Albert is guilty of breaking this first commandment!
For the Ecobalance movement to eliminate my voice is certainly a bad
sign that the EV movement isn�t one of human understanding and the
right to free speech, but one that terminates dissent. I know that
there are other �private� listservs within the Ecovillage movement
such as the �Elder�s� List of the GEN hierarchy and the ENA listserv
for Albert�s volunteers and staff people. OK, then, there are places
where the GEN �Elders� can talk in �private.� If they wish to exclude
outsiders like myself from these listservs, so be it. But if the EV
movement has no place where open public discussion about the leadership
or policies of the movement can occur, then they are not working under
a good model of planetary governance which is opened to public scrutiny.
They are simply modeling themselves after the existing oligarchy which
manipulates and brainwashes public opinion. Stephen, this is most disturbing!
So, what kind of world could the Ecovillage movement which supports the
policy of stamping out dissent, lead us to? There is a quote I have been
thinking about which sums it up. I don�t know where I got it from, but
here it is: �impersonality breeds violence which will be further
aggravated by the new heights of �erotic zones�, small clusters of
highly protected housing blocks will evolve. These will be something
like feudal villages, built for security and privacy, with the exception
that they will be able to keep contact with the whole world through
computer information and communications technologies. Perhaps they will
also harbor a hierarchy of lords of information, served by uniformed
(but protective) local serfs.� It doesn�t take much imagination to see
what the GEN hierarchy if it keeps excluding ecofeminist voices,
becoming the �Information Lords� protected in their closed ecovillages.
This is why I see it as my duty to humanity to stop the Ecovillage
movement from taking this direction.
My manuscript CYBERQUEEN AT THE WHITE HOUSE doesn�t work well if I take
out the part about the Global Ecovillage Network which I promote
throughout the text. The strange thing is how many times I have almost
connected with Albert throughout the years, but we missed connecting for
one reason or another. The other thing is that I went to Istanbul to the
Habitat 2 conference not only because of my interest in communal
architecture, but because I had an intuition that my soul mate would be
there. Another interesting intuition is that while I was writing the
CyberQueen, I felt I was writing it to someone who needed to read it. I
did not know if I would ever connect with anyone involved in the Global
Ecovillage Network, but after meeting Albert, it became clear to me that
the manuscript had been written for him. GEN needs books to be published
like the CQATWH to promote it as a cultural movement. It is most tragic
for me and tragic to the movement that Albert has cut off communication
with me. It would have been a really fun experience to have been able to
work with him to make the manuscript publishable. But now I am wondering
if I should destroy the manuscript because I don�t want to support a
potentially fascist social movement which doesn�t allow for dissent or
respects the wisdom of women.
I am asking you to help me resolve this problem by talking with Albert
about it. I feel that we still have a lot to learn from each other and
that if we are to build a humane sustainable society, the problems
between us have got to be faced and not covered up.
Thank you very much for reading this message,
Yours in love and truth,
Doctress Neutopia
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 19:12:02 -0500
To: Doctress Neutopia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Albert Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: defamation
Libby:
"It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the
heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you."
--Mark Twain
Have just returned home from Africa and am still groggy from 34 hr en route
w/o much sleep, but have discovered the malicious work you have been about
while I have been gone. Having read CQATTWH on the plane, I had numerous
comments to improve the work and suggestions about publishing, but that is
all vapor now. Any possibility of continuing collaboration on any level
have been nuked in my absence by the sheer viciousness of your ubiquitous
postings.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Scorned? I was nice to you, and I
never intentionally said a hurtful word to you or about you.
A parting quote or two.
"The fundamental difference between a right to "privacy" and a right to
freedom from "defamation" is that the former directly concerns one's own
peace of mind, whereas the latter concerns primarily one's reputation."
--Blacks Law Dictionary
"Ex facto jus oritur" (Our Social Order is but a shadow that our conduct
casts.)
Your incoming mail will henceforth be automatically filtered out of my
inbox. Any additional communication coming from me will be _much_ more
formal.
Kindly be advised.
Adieu,
Albert
