I have just read and then printed
out for further study a fascinating article Stephan Schwarz alerted me to by Hanna Rosin on “The
End of Men.”  The article starts
out with an account of the strange things now happening when families get to choose
the gender of their child.  When
this technology first arose people worried that it would lead to  a serious disproportion of male babies
because world wide, people wanted sons more than they wanted daughters.  It turns out it didn’t happen that
way.  

Requests for
female babies now vastly outnumber requests for male babies. 

Something very
deep is taking place in American society – and apparently other societies as
well.  Even in ultra macho
Japan.  I hope these tid-bits have
encouraged you to read the article.

Rosin’s piece
gives us a new vantage point on the rise of NeoPaganism and the Goddess
religions.  First taking off in the
late 60s, NeoPaganism then helped inspire the efforts by Christian, Jewish, and
Buddhist women to raise the status of women and the Divine Feminine within their
own spiritual traditions.  As I
researched the writings of these women over and over again I found Starhawk
mentioned as an important force in their thinking.  Other feminist Pagans, such as Z Budapest, also receives frequent praise.  My guess is that future historians will regard Starhawk
as an important spiritual force in America. One cutting across many faiths.

Rosin also notes
an equally fascinating rise in what she terms ruthless “alpha women,” and even
women murderers.  Her observation led me to reflect how that bastion of
pretend maleness, the Religious Right and its ‘conservative’ Teabagger contingent, has given us
a number of the former, from Sarah Palin to Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman.  These women remind us that being female
and exhibiting feminine traits are not the same, but that they are appearing in the bastion of faux masculinity is telling.  

If as appears to be the case women are
moving increasingly into dominant positions, an interesting experiment in human culture will be
taking place.  Given that so much
of American society is rooted in hierarchy and domination (except on Fourth of
July speeches when freedom and equality briefly receive their praise) will women become as infatuated with power and domination as men
are prone to, or will they moderate it?

If Robert
Sapolsky’s story of female initiated lasting cultural changes in baboon society  can be applied to human society, on balance this shift in the relative status
of men and women will be very good indeed for the human race.