How about those Williams’ sisters! And, how about the women at the Olympics bringing home the metals!?
As we look around us, the women of the planet seem to be breathing new blood into the planet as a whole and for women in particular. We women are not only coming in first within our own ranks, we are breaking the records set by men. And, how often do we hear these women say that they are not so focused on “beating” the others, they are focused on doing the very best that they can and then pushing themselves to their highest potential? Interestingly enough, it seems that when Michael Phelps matured a bit and quit focusing on “competition,” he did better.
It is also interesting that when Venus and Serena’s father saw the possibility of future champions in his daughters, he did not “do it” in the old “tried and true” White Male System/racist/elitist way of doing tennis. He chose not to join a club (who knows if it would have been possible!), start them young and hire a renowned trainer. He could not and he did not want to conform to the ways and standards of conventional tennis. He trained them in public tennis courts and he was their trainer/manager. They did not have white privilege or male privilege in a sport that had excelled in both. Billie Jean King and others had paved the way for women and there were none who had paved the way and changed the rules for race and sex and cultural elitism in a sport that had been devoted to all three.
These two girls (and I, at 82 and being a woman, have the right to call them “girls” even if male commentators do not. It’s just like, in my experience, blacks can lovingly call one another “niggers” when no white person should, would, or can – and get away with it. When White people do it, there is either no love or a lot of “wanta-be-ness” or both. It’s like a white man saying to me, “You are just like me,” which some white men or black men might think is a compliment. Well, most women do not think it is a compliment. As I have said, it is an insult) have challenged much of the “this-is-how-it-is-done’s” in many ways.
So, in some larger perspective way, what Venus and Serena and other women are doing in sports, is what women all over the world are doing in diverse areas. The time has come.
We are bringing the uniqueness of who we are as women and who we are culturally, emotionally, intellectually and instinctively to “change the game.”
Some of us are doing this instinctively without awareness and others are acutely aware that we have something different to bring to the table or the court because we are women and we are ready to “bring it.”
In There Will Be a Thousand Years of Peace and Prosperity and They Will Be Ushered in by the Women, I have attempted to look at the past and the waves of feminism in the Western culture and the world to see where we have been, where we are and the essential need to help shape where we are going as women, as a human race and as a planet and the absolutely essential role that women – strong clear women – play in this evolutionary process.
It is our unique gifts that the planet needs right now and this book helps us understand why we have not brought them forth and helps us delineate what they are. As we are clearer about the systemic issues that have caused the mess we are in as a human race and a planet, we will be able to see that the non-use and under-use of women’s natural specific gifts can contribute to the solutions we must evolve out of new knowledge.
This process of change can be seen in every corner of the society, and as our concern and resolve to contribute our unique contributions as women strengthens, the larger systems will change.