Women and Freemasonry today: Facing the Wall of Machismo and Sexism, an identity in search of recognition!
In 2019, the vast majority of Masonic lodges around the world prohibit the initiation of women! This is a retrograde, sexist and sectarian reality and yet it is real!
Although Freemasonry emphasizes freedom of conscience, claims the practice of Equality and Fraternity, advocates the search for Justice in all things, the Woman is practically ostracized!
In many lodges the male rule prevails even in the vocabulary! In many dressing rooms a castrating dress is imposed to hide any trace of femininity! Being a Woman and a Freemason is reserved for a minority who accept to see their femininity scorned in order to be able to practice Masonic rituals!
The woman in Freemasonry, when she is accepted, must accept to lose her identity as a woman and must "mold" herself in the male rituals of the initiate!
Double punishment in a way: not only is he refused Masonic initiation, but when he is accepted, a male model is imposed on him!
And in spite of all this, the Freemasons are holding on and some are asserting themselves!
Of course, some Freemasons accept to fit into the mould of conformism, to act as if nothing had happened and to hear the soothing words of the institution's self-proclaimed pontiffs!
As in secular society, women learn to bend their backs before one day daring to revolt to assert their rights and identities! In Freemasonry, this day has unfortunately not yet come!
It will take a long time before, on this Earth, Woman is no longer the slave of Man! Ah yes of course in 2018, nobody dares to use this word anymore and yet isn't reality of this nature?
Sexual slave, domestic slave confined to a maternal role, economic slave who is underpaid without any embarrassment, initiatory slave who is tolerated from the front and cheerfully denigrated in the phallocrat councils!
Freemasonry does not belong to males! It is a creation of Humanity! The essence of its project is to cultivate Peace and to seek the Truth! No one has the right nor the qualities to appropriate it exclusively! Only the ability to realize these values can give credibility to those who would like to claim them!
As much as the Masonic approach is rich in potential, so much so, today, those who are in charge of administering it and making it live, do not go to the end of their duty of equality!
Long live Universal Freemasonry! Long live gender equality! Long live the freedom to initiate! Long live March 8th, day of all women!
Tribute to Hubertine Auclert ...
The woman who is always the object of social suffering!
On April 10th we celebrate the memory of Hubertine Auclert (1848-1914)!
What a passion this life was! What an unceasingly stated demand for essential equality! What an advance on her time, including the feminists of her time!
Maria Deraisme was an awful "collaborationist" next to Hubertine Auclert for whom feminism did not need men!
Hubertine Auclert will remain a particular figure remarkable for her ability not to silence an essential demand, women's suffrage, even if at the beginning of the 20th century it was not even supported by the feminist movements as a whole!
But even Hubertine Auclert did not foresee that the suffrage granted to women in France after the Second World War would not be enough to preserve them from machismo and segregation!
If it takes resolute and committed women to defend their rights, it will still take years to convince the majority of women not to accept their condition as objects of social suffering!
This ability to accept half-measures, to bend their backs, not to dare to protest and to mould themselves under duress explains to a large extent the male insolence to impose its codes.
And unfortunately the female Masonic lodges are not especially at the forefront of this denunciation of female oppression. For in lodges women must also accept the male requirements that conceal both habits and rituals!
And woe betide those of us who dare to express the experience of female "modelling" with male esoteric fantasies: unless there are special circumstances, they will have to leave!
The genre in writing
Inclusive writing, epicene language, fight against sexual harassment, femininity revolts and that's good, no displeasure to macho and sexist who only know their egos from life!
In 2018, the GLFF jury awarded Eliane Viennot the Women's Rights Prize!
Anaesthetised by this denial of the feminine that still permeates many Masonic circles, many women's obediences and higher workshops, in Machismo and Sexism, it is comforting to see that the GLFF courageously assumes our right to demand the respect that is due to us!
Without putting the fight against sexual harassment and the fight for the recognition of inclusive writing on the same level, aren't these two sides of the same coin?
In this world where male violence can no longer give itself free rein to live its enjoyment, our rebellion is seen as incongruous, exaggerated, out of place!
And it would have been necessary for the Freemasons to keep quiet and accept?
It is over!
Gentlemen, take care and be respectful towards us!
The time for leniency is over!
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