Conference on World Affairs

Overall Impression: I think all women panels are the best. I learn so much more. Of course maybe I listen better. Or maybe it is easier to listen better. In any case, this panel had plenty of great ideas and great perspectives.

Thereza Da Motta

A poet tends to look at things via what we can learn from them. "If you call us evil, then you are evil too." (This probably relates to that idea of, if you point a finger at someone look at where the other fingers are pointing.

Theresa raised one of the best questions of the conference. "How many women are necessary to make a great man?" (and vice versa, I would hope.) She studied Marco Polo and came up with about 30. I am just a mediocre man, and I tried to list women who helped me grow and could not fit them in the margin.

Limor Shiponi

Limor will accept that women are the root of all evil, if we will accept that women are the root. I liked that idea. Women start all good, so they can start all bad too? There was also a reference to the "Goddess Life" where we must acknowledge the evil part. The Goddess while mother and creator, is also a destroyer. (Found that on the web.)

She also told a story about how it is Middle Eastern women who oppress other Middle Eastern women. The men are all busy with their stuff. Women there cling to the situation as it is. If a woman can be great and free, then so can a man, and he might leave.

Emily Shihadeh

This woman is an absolute crack up. She kept getting off one liners in the warm up period. All were context sensitive so I cannot remember any good laughs. Picture a horny, stand-up comic, Jewish grandmother and you might get the idea. She mentioned a book she is working on, "The Day I Saw the Monster Weep: A Palestinian's Personal Holocaust and Resurrection." She sure puts a lot in her choice of words. Anyway I only remember two things she said. "Nobody is evil, but they do evil things." She also told a story about a recent lover who found a new use for Vaigra. He had a vial he carried around his neck with 1/4 of a Viagra tablet, ground into powdered form. Apparently putting this on his tongue enabled the effect to take hold in five minutes instead of an hour.

Mary Evelyn Tucker

Married to John Grim, a previously covered speaker, she also teaches courses in religions. She had a series of ideas to seed our thoughts.

• Evil has been identified with intellect. Women were taught to hide their intellect or they would never get a man.
• Nature has been viewed as a source of evil. Since women connect well with nature, they can be considered source of evil.
• Many religions treat women as second class citizens. (?) However in Japan, women control the finances, give allowances, and control the family. However the external view is very masculine.
• If she had other ideas they will be the first ones in my notes. I did not delineate when the speaker stopped and the question period started.

QUESTION PERIOD IDEAS

• Women are beautiful and the source of temptation, and hence the root of evil.
• Iran, despite its external appearance of oppression, burkas, for example, still has stores selling fashions for women to wear at home.
• Everything has a purpose. Sometimes we call it evil because we do not understand it.
• Cognitive Dissonance is two ideas in conflict. One woman said, "In Yiddish, it's all love." Men can give out two messages. Marry her in love, and still yell at her. Women can bear his child and tell him to "Fix the damn faucet." (And if these quotes and summaries seem strange, I am reconstructing bad notes six weeks later.) Anyway the idea is to study both backgrounds, his and hers. You need to know both stories to be able to appreciate each other.
• A lady in the audience raised the idea that men do not understand their sexual drives so they control women so they do not get tempted. If a woman is wearing a burka you can only fall in love with her eyes and ankles. Men do not understand the temptations women present, therefore women are evil.
• Evil is that which we do not understand, the unpredictable. There is safety in rules, lies, and control.
• Women kill their strong, men kill their weak. [Lots to think about with this idea. Even more if it is true, even in non-killing, social ways.]
• We are late arrivals to the story of the universe.
• They closed with a story of a man who came across a wall of targets, each with an arrow, dead in the center of the target. He came across a lady at a nearby farm and asked if it was her work. She said, "yes." He was amazed at her archery skill and asked how she did it. "Well," she replied, "I shot all the arrows at the wall, then I painted the targets around them."Moral: Find out what you do best and build around it.