War + patriarchy = ?

It may seem strange that (forcibly shaving women’s heads), essentially a rightwing phenomenon, should have become so widespread during the leftist liberation euphoria in France in 1944. But many of the tondeurs, the head-shavers, were not members of the resistance. Quite a few had been petty collaborators themselves, and sought to divert attention from their own lack of resistance credentials. Yet resistance groups could also be merciless towards women. In Brittany it is said that a third of those civilians killed in reprisals were women. And threats of head-shaving had been made in the resistance underground press since 194

(…) The French, meanwhile, were shocked by the attitude of some American soldiers, who seemed to think that when it came to young French women “everything can be bought”. After an evening’s drinking, they would knock on farmhouse doors asking if there was a “mademoiselle” for them.

- Antony Beevor in the Guardian

And now, a cheer-up story

And now, for a bit of poetry

I, the atheist extraordinaire, ended up with a bunch of blogs written by Mormon women writers in my RSS feeds. This is confusing to me for many reasons which should be evident to anyone who had a 3-minutes long conversation with me, except for the fact that their writing is really good and tap into a exploration of womanhood that I rarely see in other writing (or if I do, it is often to compare being born female with earth-given mystic powers, which is either very first wave, or very pagan - not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Either way, I found this poem linked from one of these blogs, written by an LDS poet, and I enjoyed it immensly.

Blood and Milk

by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, via C Jane

I dreamed of Oxford …
(spires, a thousand spires, endless lectures, musty halls
a solitary self in a Bodleian expanse
A good life my dear Wormwood. An orderly life.)

then awakened to laundry
and things to be wiped
countertops, noses, bottoms)

How did this happen? And when, exactly?

Time flows, it flows, it flows
and there are choices to be made:

left or right?
paper or plastic?
blood or milk?

There’s freedom in the bleeding;
bondage in the milk—do not be deceived.

Ah, but it’s an empty freedom; a holy bondage,
A sweet and holy bondage.

Five times I chose the chains, those tender chains,
(though once will bind you just as well!)
and checked the crimson flow.
Suckled while dreaming of Trinity Term
but awakened, always awakened, to the laundry
and to that small and cherished captor at my breast.