Misogyny abounds: the Aquarius eclipse and Venus opposing Pluto highlight more violence against women
August 7, 2009*Trigger warning: this post discusses misogyny and violence against women.
*Continuity warning: I’m writing about three very upsetting things at once, trying to be personal, political, and astrological all at once. At three a.m. No apology, just warning.
So in case anyone forgot, we had another major eclipse on Wednesday, and it was in Aquarius. In addition to being the last of a series of especially potent eclipses this summer, being in the most tweaky sign of the entire zodiac certainly didn’t do anything to lessen the blow. Uranian-ruled Aquarius is a strange sign, because it paradoxically connects you with your own inner firebrand while also pointing you to something much larger within the collective, something that needs addressing. Thinking critically, it becomes apparent at some point how larger issues actually affect your personal status quo- and if they don’t, Aquarius and Uranus encourage a shift in your perception. Because that is really what is required for change and progress- an objective shift in awareness, such that you come to see the world for what it truly is, not just what you personally experience, and how that needs to change in order for everyone to have a more positive experience of the world.
Sometimes looking to Aquarian/Uranian parts of a natal chart might hint at what kind of issues (political, social, etc.) really strike a chord for you. I’ve written numerous times already about my natal Venus conjunct Pallas Athena on the MC in Aquarius; it goes without saying that gender theory, especially women’s issues, are of paramount importance to me. I am a feminist. I am not ashamed to say that out loud. I am very aware of misogyny, and I have experienced quite a lot of it in my life, and I am not sure which is the cause and which is the effect, but it doesn’t matter. It’s there. And it boggles my mind when other people, especially other women, seem to be oblivious to it- or worse, aware of it, but willing to ignore it because “that’s the way the world is.” HELL NO.
This is something I think about pretty consistently, but especially recently in light of realizing just how traumatized I still am from last year’s attack. It’s not just that I never got a chance to fully process the trauma; the additionally upsetting part is that I never quite got to own my victimhood because, as is very often the case when women are the victims of violent crime, it seemed like everyone who was supposed to help me was grasping at straws to figure out how I was to blame for it. When the police initially came to the scene, I was asked if I “always go at night dressed like that.” It was barely nine o’clock on a Friday night, and I was wearing a pair of capris, a loose-fitting blouse, and a pair of ballet flats. When the detectives took my statement to file the report, they asked me, “Why do you live in this neighborhood? Why don’t you live somewhere nicer?” prompting me to not only reveal how much I made, but to have to explain how gentrification works, and how violence can (and does) happen even in nice neighborhoods. When I mentioned in the report that I had been on a date prior to being attacked, they asked me in leering voices, “How was the date?” My mother says they were just trying to lighten the mood, but I think they wanted to hear that I had been sexually active with a man, to somehow justify why I was now sitting in their office disoriented and bruised and bleeding down my face and hysterical. (For the record, I told my date from that night about the attack, and he said, “Wow, that’s terrible, are you okay?” and finding out that I was, promptly never spoke to me ever again.) When I started therapy to hopefully begin my healing process, the therapist managed to conflate certain of my interests, like burlesque and horror movies, with the attack, alternating his questions about the actual event with bullshit like, “What is the appeal of taking off your clothes in front of people? Why would anyone do that?” and “Why would you watch movies that scare you? Why can’t you just avoid things like that?”
I really didn’t tell that many people about the attack. You can see why. With professional help like that, who needs everyone and their mother knowing? And the worst part is, I’ve read so many similar stories of women who have also been victims of violence, who have dealt with dismissal and shaming by the people they thought were there to help them, and some who haven’t even gotten that far, who never even sought professional help, fearing exactly that same kind of judgment. It’s inherent in the culture, and unfortunately, I know it the hard way. So do all these all other women. Both in these ways and in much more benign but equally insidious ways that happen daily.
So thinking about this, it was unfortunate but perhaps fated to learn about George Sodini, the L.A. Fitness Shooter and then to read this Psychology Today “please God let it be satire- shit, this is REAL?!” article by Satoshi Kanazawa on the day of the eclipse. You couldn’t ask for a more hideous manifestation of Venus in Cancer opposing Pluto in Capricorn if you begged for one. I cannot stop thinking about either. If there was no Jezebel or Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose to offer perspective, I would actually probably be hiding somewhere.
Apparently George Sodini’s birthday was September 30, 1960. That means he’s a Libra with Mars in Cancer, and Venus and Neptune conjunct in Scorpio, squaring his Aquarius Moon. Um. Is it not screamingly obvious to anyone else why he felt the way he did about women? Venus and Neptune together natally suggest romanticism gone too far- a totally intangible fantasy of what a woman and a relationship should be- and in Scorpio, it’s obsessive. It’s controlling. It’s totally black and white. Because one woman rejected Sodini, ALL WOMEN had symbolically rejected him. And the perpetuation of this fantasy in his blog allowed for the continued nursing of his wounded maleness (trine Mars in Cancer) but did nothing to help him figure out how to productively address his emotional needs (square Moon in Aquarius), or those of any women who could have been potential partners. God, if I only had the time of birth too.
I don’t know if Satoshi Kanazawa was aware of this atrocity when he submitted his insane-sounding rant for publication. But I realized that his post is a striking echo of George Sodini’s bizarre blog. These are both men who believe(d) that their personal experiences of rejection entitle(d) them to make hateful generalizations about women as a whole. Women and feminism become the problem, the reason behind all of their misery- nothing for which they could be personally held responsible. Jezebel says it best: “[the male assumption is that] Sodini shot up a gym because women rejected him, not that women rejected him because he was the kind of guy who would one day shoot up a gym.”
Talk about putting the horse before the cart. This kind of thinking and false logic is frequent bread-and-butter of misogynists, and it’s exactly what Aquarius does NOT want you to do. Aquarius requires looking at the bigger picture, globally, but never globalizing. That is, Aquarian thinking does not come from your subjective experience of the world; it comes from comprehension and awareness of long-standing cultural patterns that affect everyone at large, and then gradually trickle down to you. It’s the idea that before you can make the personal political, you have to make the political personal. Before I was a victim of violence, it was still something I was hyper-aware of- because I knew, from other women’s testimonials, from statistics, from news stories, from every other source around me, that violence constantly happens to women. And because I knew the truth about violence against women- that it has little to nothing to do with sex, with attraction, with beauty, with youth, and everything to do with power and control, and the simple fact of the attacker being a man and you being a woman- that made it all the more terrifying. It could happen one day when I wasn’t dressed particularly “provocatively,” or when I was in a space where I normally felt totally safe. And that’s exactly what happened.
As I process the residual anxiety of that horrible attack, I hate to say it, but I can almost see how it would be tempting to let personal experience color your perception of the opposite gender. I suppose that’s in part why I was so crushed by subsequent romantic rejections- because subconsciously, I was pleading to the men I dated, “Prove me wrong, prove me wrong.” But of course they couldn’t.
Aquarian thinking is not allowing your entirely subjective experience to override and invalidate the universal truth, no matter how much you don’t believe it. Ten million feminists can’t be wrong- if many, many women express dissatisfaction with how they are treated, it is probably not just “whining.” It would behoove everyone, before they decide that a larger phenomenon is responsible for their personal unhappiness, to really, actually, understand what that phenomenon is, and how it plays out in the lives of others. Feminism is not something that exists to personally oppress and emasculate individual men. Feminism is something that is badly needed when things like the L.A. Fitness shooting keep happening and arguments like Kanazawa’s keep circulating, to remind women that they are better than walking targets and sexual objects, that their demand for respect and equal treatment is not superfluous or unfounded in any way. I have an awful feeling that as long as Venus and Pluto are in close opposition, there’s going to be a lot more where that came from.
My eye is twitching such that I can actually see the skin moving. It has been like this since just before the eclipse. Art imitates life, which imitates astrology. I hate it.
UPDATE: My boyfriend Bob Herbert of the New York Times has written this incredible op-ed basically summarizing everything I wanted to say brilliantly. Before you leave a comment saying, “Well, women abuse men too!!!!!!!! We’re totally all the same you guyz!!!!!!!” please read this.
It would behoove everyone, before they decide that a larger phenomenon is responsible for their personal unhappiness, to really, actually, understand what that phenomenon is, and how it plays out in the lives of others.
A lot of that comes from culture (as you’ve so bravely mentioned) but from religion as well. Many folks, not just women, think that suffering and martyrdom is the key to life. And then, when they do suffer, it’s a deity’s fault.
Weird that they don’t take responsibility for a decision to suffer, no?
I’m not a feminist, finding myself somewhere in the middle. IMHO, men also have a sh*tty end of a stick. Women have all the freedom in the world to express themselves, emotionally, because it has gotten to the point where it is expected of us to be emotional, nurturing, fluffy creatures whereas men don’t have that freedom. But in the case of men, a nurturing or emotional quality equates to vulnerability (see also: wuss).
Or, at least not enough men know that they have that freedom. So they often wind up involved in obnoxious or violent, irrational outbursts because they have so much pent up stuff in their systems.
By no means am I including your attacker in my opinion, by the way. That wasn’t your fault– it was an eye-opener. I only offer a general outlook based on my observations of masculine and feminine operations. And you don’t strike me as the type who is willing to suffer
.
I think that many women are willing to suffer, though, because suffering earns them control or power in some way. Think about it. By remaining at the side of someone who disrespects them, willfully, they, in turn, think that that person will change for them.
I should know. There was a time in which I allowed myself to become a victim to my own family because I thought that they would change. My hope was unbreakable. There was also a sense of obligation, and I thought (as a former Cathoholic) that being a martyr or pillar to them would result in a “happy ending”.
I had the luck of a good friend who encouraged me to leave that house. And, one day, I did. My family would have fallen apart with or without me.
I get what you’re saying. And I’m so sorry that you had to experience what I believe to be an… assault and robbery(?).
But please don’t fall for the notion that being a woman automatically makes you a victim to society, culture, religion or anything else. It doesn’t anymore. Forgive me but… try to empower yourself. Try to remember all that made you feel powerful, once. Take a self-defense class. Regain your inner-warrior. It’s not easy. It took me four years. But it can be done. And I have faith that you, as the super-smart, amazingly creative lady you are, will empower yourself in less time than I did…
Hey Deb,
Thanks for your kind words. While I somewhat agree with you in regards to women having more freedom to express themselves emotionally, I still think that’s painting it with a pretty broad brush. Even within that set-up, there’s a certain point at which female emotions are considered unacceptable and excessive. (Uh, hello, 19th-century hysteria?) Not to mention that if a woman becomes professionally or academically successful, it is assumed that she has a certain “control” over her emotions, such that when she becomes genuinely upset over something that happens in her workplace or with another co-worker, crying or becoming visibly angry or excited can actually weaken her credibility. (“Wow, a woman crying. Original. Watch her.”) And not just in the workplace either- a lot of what you’re saying, that women are willing to suffer at home, is a commonly accepted stereotype. Sure, religion plays a part. Ethnicity plays somewhat of a part. But even so, the perception that women should be able to suffer is a product of heteronormative culture and nothing else. Another article I send you to: http://jezebel.com/5302917/guardian-writer-no-justice-for-women-who-retaliate-against-their-abusers
That article explains why we’re willing to let men off the hook who have irrational, violent outbursts. I can’t say what would have happened if George Sodini had lived to go to trial for these killings, but it’s highly likely that his sexual frustration would have been instrumental in his defense. And there are already tons of women-hating bloggers out there discussing the incident and making the argument that that level of sexual frustration in a man basically justifies the killing of women.
It’s not that I don’t think misogyny hurts men too. But the fact is, it hurts women more. And it seems like in every conversation about how misogyny really hurts women, someone inevitably jumps in screaming, “Well, it’s hurts men too!!!!!!!” Poor men. They have it so bad.
Finally, I certainly don’t believe that being a women automatically makes me a victim. I know what I’m capable of. I know the advantages I personally have. But the fact is, my taking self-defense classes and reminding myself how strong I am won’t necessarily stop another attack. The solution isn’t “women should take self-defense classes,” in which it’s up to women, once again, to modify their behavior and attitudes. The solution is “men should be taught that women are not moving targets/sexual objects/the reason behind all their misery,” whereby men have to acknowledge that an attitude shift is necessary on their part- whether they’re “capable” of violence against women or not.
I’m glad you were able to find the strength to get out of a difficult situation.
Hi Lucy – thanks for the visit to mine today.
So sorry to read of your traumatic experience.
I abhor misogyny, and ALL kinds of hate, too, though I’m not a feminist. You probably won’t agree with my point of view – it’s just that humans are humans are humans. There are unpleasant specimens in both genders.
I came to your blog from “Out The Comet’s Ass” blog (it’s in my list of links if you don’t know it).
The blogger there hs interpreted Sodini’s chart too. A commenter is bewailing the way women treat men – the opposite view to your own.
I’m not disagreeing with you, or him (I assume it was a him), just thinking that it’s a disease we all carry – the ability to hurt another of our fellow humans.
It’s a Mad World, Lucy.
Hey, thanks for dropping by. I read the entry in Out The Comet’s Ass (great), and the comment by the douchehound who sees the tragedy of a man going into a gym and shooting and killing innocent women as a validation of why it’s okay to hate women who reject him (puke). Way to really understand the implications of a terrible tragedy, loser.
It would be nice to think that “humans are humans,” but the fact is, hate happens because of differences in gender/race/economic class/religion, and it’s missing the point if you just say, “Hate is bad, we’re all people!” To really believe that without considering that everyone’s experience is shaped by larger hegemonic classifications of who they are is coming from a place of privilege, blindness, or both. If you as one gender/race/class/religion have focused hate for an Other of a different gender/race/class/religion, that isn’t human tendency. That’s social conditioning. And it’s wrong.
Lucy ~~~ I’m certainly not privileged, nor am I blind. One day, perhaps something will bring it home to all of us that we are one race. Until that day (in the very far distant future) we will remain stuck in boxes of gender/race/religion/class, with attendant difficulties, and miss the big picture.
First of all, I’m sorry if you took the phrasing of privilege or blindness to mean you personally. I get inflamed about this issue and I’m prone to hyperbole. Second of all, as it is right now, the bigger picture IS boxes of gender/race/religion/class, and it’s important to understand and deconstruct them so that we can move closer to everyone feeling like equals in the world. The problem I have with the notion that we’re all one is that it disregards and washes away very real persecution that various populations deal with daily, yearly, and for centuries. It’s similar to what I said to Deb above, about how jumping into a discussion of how one group is persecuted or oppressed and yelling, “WELL WHAT ABOUT [men/white people/Christians/another more privileged group]” or “Come on, forget gender/race/class/religion, it was just BAD that people DIED” seeks to invalidate the pain and frustration that the originally oppressed group feels. Misogyny, racism, classism and religious-based hate are issues that need dealing with RIGHT NOW- and as long as things like the Sodini shooting and the Skip Gates arrest and the Holocaust Museum shooting and their residual fallout keep happening, it will be nigh on impossible to deal with these issues without addressing the very real parameters of identity markers like gender, racial, class and religious identity.
Or here, let me put it another way, so you can better understand why this makes me so angry.
Suppose that a white person had gone into a public place (like Sodini did) where he knew there would be only African-Americans (in Sodini’s case, only women), and deliberately shot at them, killing three and wounding nine.
Would your stomach turn if people were crying left and right, “But black people abuse and terrify white people too! Let’s talk about that! It goes both ways!”?
If it would, then it should also be turning at this incident, instead of insisting that women abuse men too and that should be part of the discussion.
When the underprivileged rise up and resort to violence against the privileged, that is a different discussion ENTIRELY.
Okay, now end rage.
It’s okay – I realise that you have very good reason to feel as you do, and that my own views come from a place, if not of privilege, then from a place where I have never had to deal with the kind of experience you have. I guess that IS a kind of privilege.
While I understand your point of view that the current big picture is “boxes”, I cannot shift my own feeling that we need to try to move beyond it and appreciate that others, in other boxes, have their problems too.
I don’t know what problem the commenter at Out the Comet’s Ass had had, but it has left a very bitter taste for him(?) If we can’t solve the race/religion/class boxes, surely we can attack the gender one, which is closest to home, and at least start to see that problems do not go just one way – male to female.
If we can’t solve the race/religion/class boxes, surely we can attack the gender one, which is closest to home, and at least start to see that problems do not go just one way – male to female.
See, this is exactly what I was talking about.
George Sodini wrote a hate-filled blog about how “thirty million women” rejected him, repeatedly calling them “hoes” and “bitches.” One day he saw his neighbor’s college-aged daughter coming out of her parents’ house, but he didn’t recognize her, so he automatically assumed she was some slutty ho his older neighbor had fucked. That’s automatically how he saw all younger women. He relied on books like “How to Date Younger Women for Men Over 35″ written by proclaimed class-A misogynists, to help him improve his chances of getting a date. When they didn’t work, he went to a gym fully armed and SHOT AT INNOCENT WOMEN, KILLING THREE AND WOUNDING NINE. And he is dead too, so he will never, ever be punished for this hate crime.
How in any way does this situation call for a parallel discussion of women abusing men and “how the problems do not just go one way”? THAT IS NOT RELEVANT RIGHT NOW.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ. My eye is twitching SO. HARD.
Sorry, Lucy. All I’ll say on this is that George Sodini was a seriously unbalanced individual, and cannot in any way be compared to men in general.
No more from me, as I don’t want to upset you further.
I’m sorry if the self-defense class recommendation came off as a solution. It’s just a way to empower yourself. As I said, it took me a good, long four years to come to terms with my power post almost a lifetime of crap.
I’m not speaking of self-defense classes for women, by the way. Not “Girls Gone Brave”. I took up Martial arts beside men and women. (There are plenty of men who don’t charge at us
.) My sessions happened to include self-defense tactics which, although some were gross, were funny and useful in really eff’d up situtations. Somehow, I think that you’d get a kick out of the tricks.
I think that you, I and we’re all brave and should teach those who want to manipulate, bully or harm us that they might want to think twice about messing with us. That’s all. And, again, I’m sorry about what you’ve been through. It is traumatic and no one should have to go through it. And I’m glad that you’re writing about it because it helps so, so much.
Oh, no, I wasn’t personally attacking your suggestion, far from it. I LOVED kung fu and qi gong. I want to take them up again. In fact, I probably will, now that I’ll be living close to my old kung fu school again. It’s just that often, when you hear about the constant threats to women’s well-being by men, the solutions offered almost exclusively involve WOMEN being solely responsible for any change. So it becomes, for instance, giving women and girls self-defense classes. It doesn’t become, for instance, making it mandatory to sensitively educate men and boys about violence against women and how they can equally contribute in their own way to lessening the danger.
I’m all for doing anything I can to strengthen myself and other women. But I also want to see the same kind of sensitivity and effort and less privileged indifference on the part of men. That’s all. We’re good.
Phew. It’s so easy to misunderstand what someone writes on the web. I’ve received enough hate-mail in the past to know. Thank you
!
It’s unfortunate that a lot of this stuff actually begins at home. Like a little seed, how we treat others is planted into one’s head and then it grows and sometimes becomes like the monster plant in “Little Shop of Horrors”. Except that too many monster plants live in our societies.
I hope you write more about this. I’m pretty sure that there are some workshops for men out there but they, like Anger Management 101, are only offered AFTER the fact. Never beforehand.
Can’t believe many of us still require a tutorial when it comes to common decency.
lucy i just found your blog recently. i’m sorry about your attack.
until women are able to walk outside of their own homes, alone and without fear, the need for the promotion of equality exists. period.
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We rectified Sodinis chart to give him ASC at 2 degrees Leo.
Which throws into focus his Yod. Which is Apex Aquarian Moon in the 7th house. Mars in Cancer in the 12th sextiles Pluto in Virgo in the 2nd.
I have a rather unique way of interpreting a Yod. I call it a Chariot. Apex being the horse while the sextile planets are the drivers.
I think Sodonis case is typical of Men with an unresolved Virgin Mother/Whore complex. His is an extreme case. But I think it lies at the heart of relationship problems and Patriarchal religions are to blame.
So Sodini’s horse (Moon) is an eccentric, oddball (Aquarius) moody child that is still very much attached to its mother (7th house) may have unusual ideas about partnership. Or mother may have been absent (aquarius) So very needy for what was lacking in childhood. This energy is what’s driving the Yod forward.
The drivers are a sensitive mars who is hiding himself and has buried
his sexuality. This all lurks in his subconscious (12th house) Interestingly black moon Lilith is locked up there also… So his sexual drives are hard to access and also in a very maternal sign. So Mars is not really comfortable there atall. A needy fighter and moody with it. His temper ebbs and flows, one minute driving the horse forward and other times getting defensive with it.
Nether horse or mars have the maturity to co operate so they are both like bickering children. They are both too needy and defensive to constructively debate and compromise with each other. They need a third person to mediate.
Driver 2 could’ve indeed been that person. But this driver is an obsessive pluto in Virgo in house of self esteem. Now if this Pluto is very evolved he will be confident and take control of the situation. But if not then this will act as no more than a provocative and stubborn bully fueling a needy mars that is full of childish rage.
So this horse is desperate to move to a loving, nurturing relationship to escape the bullying. A maternal woman who will fulfill the lack of mothering in his life. This Yod is emphatically pointing to a relationship. But his brazen drivers are undermining each other efforts to move the chariot forward in a way that will not scare potential partners. Instead the chariot moves forward in a kinda crazed desperate haphazard way.
He comes on too strong to women when obsessive dictator Pluto takes the reins, then maybe pull back abruptly and show some vunerability for a while when the sensitive, but still simmering with rage child comes out of its Cancerian 12th house shell. Its just too hot to handle for a potential mate.
So what happens if this horse just cannot move forward towards a relationship. The horse stalls and goes into itself and you can imagine both frustrated drivers beating the poor horse forward. But the horse can go no where. The raging marsy child and the bulling obsessive Pluto scream at each other in frustration. They start goading each other to extremes. There is nowhere for this rage to go but the horse who then becomes a metaphor for all women. Then left with each other, they can only kill themselves.
The reaction point for the chariot I called the whip. The thing that sparks the whole thing to fly. His reaction point is around 5 degrees Leo.
I note the Moon opposition Asteroid Lilith that occured at the time of the shooting was around 2 degrees of Leo/Aquarius. Lilith being in Leo. So Lilith was applying to his reaction point then. Ok it’s not as close as we would like. (3 degs) But lordy Moon Opposition Lilith, Virgin/Mother V Whore lying near enough across his yod axis like that. Pretty hot stuff I think!
Gotta mean something.
I wondered if he needed sex so much why he didnt just see prostitutes? But it looks like he was just too darn scared of them. Having a locked up Lilith in the 12th. He just desperately wanted a relationship. A mummy. He just wasn’t mature enough to handle a full on sexual relationship. I think he may well have been impotent. Firing that gun must have felt SO good to him. It’s just sad that his desperate neediness scared any potential mate away. Mars sextile Pluto IS incredibly sexy. All that sex inside an immature boy. Just imploded inside him.