In the 1830s a group of women in New York began an equal rights movement originally aimed at the abolition of slavery. Women, whose opinions were customarily ignored, found that without the right to vote their voice would not be heard. This movement stalled in 1861 with the beginning of the Civil War when the feminists were asked to instead focus their energies on the war effort. After the Civil War was over, the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment which secured the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens were passed. These Amendments represented huge forward movement for the Negro cause. However, the rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment were secured only for men-not women.
Until the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments women's suffrage was merely an idea that was discussed. Women themselves were afraid that they would not be taken seriously. When these Amendments were passed referring only to men, the women's suffrage movement became a reality. A new generation of suffragists took over after the turn of the century. These women were far more visible in their efforts to secure their right to vote, organizing demonstrations and parades and even hunger strikes. The results of their efforts was jail time for many. Although the Masculine authority considered these efforts to be nothing more than feminine hysteria, these women persevered and gained the right to vote on August 26, 1920.
The women's rights movement made a resurgence in the 1960s. Just as the Sacred Feminine who revealed Herself, went back into hiding, then reasserted Herself again ever more forcefully, women again told men they wanted equal pay, equal treatment in the home and in the workforce, an equal voice in the eyes of society and the law. Women were no longer satisfied with being only housewives and mothers, defining themselves by their relationships. The assumption that they should work only as secretaries, teachers or librarians was no longer acceptable. Women were capable of managerial positions or becoming doctors, lawyers, government officials or whatever they desired. The Goddess having revealed Herself as the fresh and innocent Maiden/Virgin and as the nurturing Mother, now asserted Herself in Her most extreme aspect-the destructive Crone.
The women's movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s can only be described as extremist. Women who had been abused and ignored in the home, in the work place, even in religious institutions, took this opportunity to vent their anger. As these radical women's libbers burned their bras, refused to shave their underarms and legs or to allow a man to open the door for them, the movement came across as anti-family. Women were told that they were prostitutes if they married and married women should refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands and that if they did, they should never lie beneath him. In their efforts to be equal with men, women tried to be more like men. They denied the feminine aspects within themselves-the nurturing, mothering aspects, their sexual selves, their intuitive, creative selves-in order to be heard and taken seriously. In the process they created in reverse the things they were reacting against. The needs that all men and women have for nurturance and love that are fulfilled by the family were ignored and even violated by feminists who used the women's rights movement as a forum to vent their rage at injustice and abuse from their own personal pasts.
At the same time so many feminists were espousing a man-hating, anti-family philosophy, many women became disillusioned by religion's manipulation of their sexuality and left the church. Yet the women's movement was possibly the greatest single effort at moving the planet from patriarchal authoritarianism to creating a new equal partnership paradigm unlike anything humanity has experienced before. The goals of the women's movement-the humanization of women and self-actualization of the creative human spirit-would liberate not only women but the human species.
The gay rights movement, having also begun in the 1950s alongside the civil rights and women's rights movements, gained momentum in the 1960s, the 1970s, and into the 1980s. All three movements struggled with internal conflicts that threatened to defeat their purposes from within during those decades. Some gays and lesbians used the movement to vent rage both at outsiders who had persecuted them as well as at each other. Yet leaders of all of these movements as well as leaders around the world would come to see the necessity of working together for the good of the planet.
Every time one of these movements stalled due to the individual issues of their members, a greter challenge presented itself on a global scale. As the year 2000 approached, humanity faced the Y2K challenge. The threat of computers crashing around the globe brought people together who before would have ignored each other or refused to work together. On September 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the United States, there was a global outcry at this brutal act. People everywhere knew that no one is immune to this kind of destruction. The Crone, through chaos and destruction, is determined to reunify the planet.
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