the compassion anthology
  • About Us
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Staff
    • Exhibit Photos
  • Letter from the Editor
  • Poetry
    • Amirah Al Wassif
    • Zakia el-Marmouke
    • Rachelle Parker
    • Michelle Messina Reale
    • Todd Davis
    • Lori Levy
    • Tim Suermondt
    • Amy Small-McKinney
    • Chad W. Lutz
    • Brenda Yates
    • Carolyn Martin
  • Fiction
    • Leo Tolstoy
    • Leslie Contreras Schwartz
    • K. Alan Leitch
    • Laton Carter
    • Dave Barrett
  • Essays
    • Cathy Warner
    • Serenity Schoonover
    • Review of the Movie What Do You Believe Now?
  • Art
    • The Masters
    • Amantha Tsaros
    • Christopher Woods
    • Ann Marie Sekeres
  • Archives
    • Spring 2019, Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2018 Letter from the Editor
    • Summer 2017 Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2017 Letter from the Editor
    • Summer 2016 Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2016 Letter from the Editor
    • Summer 2015 Letter from the Editor
    • Winter 2015 Letter from the Editor
    • Spring 2015 Letter from the Editor
    • Exhibits/Fundraisers 2015
    • Poetry, 2019 >
      • Robbie Gamble
      • Robert Okaji
      • Nicholas Samaras
      • Gabriella Brand
      • Sarah Wernsing
      • Jen Karetnick
      • Cindy Veach
      • Seres Jaime Magana
    • Fiction, 2019 >
      • Ruth Mukwana
      • Andrea Gregory
      • Olivia Kate Cerrone
      • Rebecca Keller
    • Essays, 2019 >
      • Review of the movie GIFT
      • Jalina Mhyana
      • Stephen Dau
      • Alexandra Grabbe
      • Olive Paige
    • Art, 2019 >
      • Krisztina Asztalos
      • Rute Ventura
      • Laura Gurton
    • Winter 2018 Art >
      • Dawid Planeta
      • Liliana Washburn
      • Ellen Halloran
    • Winter 2018 Fiction >
      • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
      • Herman Melville
    • Winter 2018 Essays >
      • Nikki Hodgson
      • Ciara Hall
      • Sara Roizen
      • Review of Claudine Nash's The Wild Essential
    • Winter 2018 Poetry >
      • Parker Anthony
      • Crystal Condakes Karlberg
      • Julia Lisella
      • Cynthia Atkins
      • Claudine Nash
    • Essays Summer 2017 >
      • Interview with Gail Entrekin
      • Patricia Reis
      • John Nelson
      • Mary Baures
      • Monette Bebow-Reinhard
      • M.J. Iuppa
    • Fiction Summer 2017 >
      • Jean Ryan
      • Daniel Hudon
      • Ray Keifetz
      • Anne Elliott
      • C.S. Malerich
      • Sascha Morrell
    • Art Summer 2017 >
      • Sara Roizen
      • Jill Slaymaker
      • John Mark Jennings
      • Janel Houton
      • Brandon Gorski
      • Tara White
      • Nancy Dudley
      • Elisabetta Lucchi
    • Poetry Summer 2017 >
      • Megan Merchant
      • Joey Gould
      • Claudine Nash
      • M.R. Smith
      • Kim Aubrey
      • Vivian Wagner
    • Winter 2017 Poetry >
      • Dan King
      • Kathleen Byron
      • Sam Bresnahan
      • Olivia McCormack
      • Danny Romanovitz
      • Kyle Quinn
    • Winter 2017 Art >
      • Elliott Grinnell
      • Olivia McCormack
      • Brendan Brown
      • Lauren Waisnor
    • Winter 2017 Essays >
      • Kathleen Byron
      • Eddie Marshall
      • Sofia Colvin
      • Ishita Pandey
      • Mohsin Tunio
    • Summer 2016 Fiction >
      • Jyotsna Sreenivasan
    • Summer 2016 Art The Women Artists and Writers Exhibit
    • Summer 2016 Poetry >
      • Colleen Michaels
      • Jennifer Markell
      • Tara Masih
      • Holly Guran
      • Heather Nelson
      • Bahareh Amidi
      • Alison Stone
      • Julia Travers
      • Amy Jo Trier-Walker
    • Summer 2016 Essays >
      • Olivia Kate Cerrone
      • Katelyn Gilbert
      • Kim-Marie Walker
      • Bahareh Amidi
    • Winter 2016 Fiction >
      • Blue Vinyl, Green Vinyl
      • The Cresting Water
    • Winter 2016 Art >
      • San Giovanni D'Asso Landscape Paintings
      • It's All About the River
      • Jellyfish Sculptural Drawings
    • Winter 2016 Poetry >
      • Poems from Songs in the Storm
    • Winter 2016 Essays >
      • The Gleaners
      • The Aliveness Project
      • Named
    • Summer 2015 Fiction >
      • The Cloak
      • Sanctuary
    • Summer 2015 Art >
      • Environmental Art
      • Compassion in the Midst of Violence
      • Burn Myself Completely for Him and Souls
      • Eye of Oneness
      • Stepping Forward
    • Summer 2015 Poetry >
      • Poem With a Question From Neruda and INDICTMENT
      • The Humans
      • Afghan Boy and other poems
      • Reparations
      • Transference and other poems
    • Summer 2015 Essays >
      • The Ineffable Aspects of Forgiveness
      • He Was Better Than I’ll Ever Be
      • A Voice in the Desert
    • Winter 2015 Fiction >
      • White Heron
      • Freeing a Little of the Madness
    • Winter 2015 Art >
      • Cascade of Care and Life
      • Sentience
      • A Paternal Instant
      • Aurora, Paloma, and the Melangolo Tree
      • Seated Pose
      • Antigone's Map
      • Ladder
    • Winter 2015 Poetry >
      • Dissolution of the Soviet Union
      • Nicknames
      • Stopped at a Light,
      • Why mate for life? Red crown crane
      • The Prisoner
      • Stigmata
      • "Oh don't," she said. "It's cold."
      • Convene
    • Winter 2015 Essays >
      • The Forgiveness Project
      • A Stranger on a Subway
      • A Journey to Compassion
      • The Question of Compassion
      • Reflections on a Childhood Deforested
      • Click, Click, Click
photo from rankandfile.ca
The Compassionate Side of Feminism
 
Politics can bring out the best and worst in people; it can divide families and forge lifelong grudges. It can also flesh out underlying stigmas, ones you thought were long dead. Recently I have been called a feminist while in a political argument with someone near and dear to me, and this person meant it as an insult. (“You’re a…you’re a…feminist!”)
 
Huh?
 
“Of course I’m a feminist!” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I assured this person that feminist does not mean man-hater. And then I paused for a moment. Why, in 2016, did I have to do this?
 
According to Dictionary.com, the word feminist means “[an advocate of] social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men.” I have no doubt that the person I was arguing with believes in gender equality—he may not be a Hillary supporter, but he’s not a male chauvinist. He just got the word wrong. Oversimplified. At least this is what I told myself.
 
My father was a feminist. He believed in me, empowered me to learn a primarily male vocation. He had full respect for my mother and empowered her too, to get an education. He believed my sister could hit a baseball just as far as any boy. My father—a man the family used to call “macho man” back in the day—coached and tutored his daughters as he did his son. He certainly didn’t fit the image of the bra-burning, picketing, fierce female that word seemingly invokes for some people.
 
Here’s the thing: the first feminists had to be fierce. They had to strike fear in the hearts of men (and women) to get the job done, to make gender equality a reality. Now, however, the glass ceiling has its fair share of cracks, so why does the word feminist still invoke the ferocity of the first feminists? Why does it imply man-hater to some people? Why are some people still intimidated? Is there still some deep-rooted sexism as part of their belief system?
 
People have their own experiences that fuel their belief systems; we, as humans, just tend to oversimplify things to our liking. That’s just the way we are. It’s important to combat this with education and open-mindedness, with the idea that life is a lot grander than we perceive it to be.  Yes, fierce goes with the word feminist, but let’s not leave it at that. Let’s remember that feminism is primarily a unifying force; let’s remember that it can be a compassionate force. Biologically speaking, compassion first began with females—mammalian mothers that gave birth to their babies (unlike reptilian mamas that laid their eggs and split).  It was at this point that nature called for nurture. It was the first form of compassion known in this vicious world of eat or be eaten.
 
Spiritually speaking, compassion is the most noble of our attributes, a divine gift from our Higher Power, whatever you believe it to be. The Golden Rule embodies compassion and is present in each of the major religions: do onto others as you would have done unto you. In seeing others as ourselves, compassion is the great equalizer.
 
Maybe you know this already. Maybe you also know that before the aggressive and violent patriarchal societies, there were kinder, gentler societies that lived fairly peaceful lives, societies that worshipped a goddess and honored the cycles of birth and death in the natural world. I’m talking about civilizations like the Minoans of ancient Crete who were excellent artisans and had gender equality as part of their legacy. Women were priests, artists, and rulers. The general population doesn’t know much about this, but feminists know.
 
Here’s another thing feminists know: it takes a village. It takes a village to raise a child, to give a homeless person a home, to help an addict recover, to help a sex-worker escape exploitation.
 
This is the philosophy behind our online exhibit Women Artists and Writers: Compassion, Creativity, and Courage. This exhibit does two things: “counterpoint the looked-overness” of female artists (to quote Hilarie M. Sheets from the NYTimes) and benefit the women of Amirah, a safe house for sex-trafficking survivors. If you would like to buy a piece, query us first with an email to compassionanthology@gmail.com; if the piece is available, we will give you the go ahead to purchase it through our donate button (see home page). Forty percent of all sales will go directly to Amirah.
 
This compassionate feminist philosophy also manifests itself in the poems, essays, and fiction included in the summer edition. Here you will read about shifts in consciousness from the skeptical to the compassionate, as noted in Kim-Marie Walker’s essay “On the Question of Compassion,” how Marathon bomber Jahar Tsarnaev is compared to a son in Heather Nelson’s poem “Prodigal,” the tenderness of mothering in Colleen Michaels’ poetry, the self soothing rituals of a female medic stationed in Afghanistan in “The Mirror” by Katelyn Gilbert, and a writing mentor’s courageous commitment to creating a safe space for Muslim feminists under the rule of the Taliban in “Creating Spaces of Nontraditional War Narratives” by Olivia Kate Cerrone.
 
I hope you find these works of art in our feminist summer edition of The Compassion Anthology as enlightening, inspirational, and a source of hope in this time of clear division and unrest.
 
Yours in creativity and compassion,
Laurette Folk, Editor of The Compassion Anthology

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