All about lesbian: What does "Woman-Identified Sustainable Development" mean?

First, let’s take it apart:

What does “Woman-Identified” mean? I notice this distinction a lot when conversing with my 7-year old GrandDaughter. Because she is being raised in this, until recently, patriarchal world, her perception is most often male-identified. She sees all trees, puppies, plants, etc., initially as a “he.” In her experience, I am just the opposite. She says to me, “Grama, why is everything a She to you?” I answer her to say that it is because I am a womon, I have Daughters, I am a Daughter. I am most familiar with the world through a girl’s eyes. I image the world according to my female focus or world view.

My GrandDaughter, on the other hand, has not had the benefit of a lesbian lifestyle, as I have. I am a poet and I love wordplay. In my poetic mind, I am seeing little difference between the words Lesbian and Feminism. They are both, in practice and in deed, woman-identified or woman-focused. They are the closest thing to spiritual Truth that I have found in my lifetime. In fact, the definition of Feminism could be woman-identified solutions to world problems.

A poetic definition of Feminism which found its way into one of my poems a couple of years ago is, “The live and unfolding wholeness of divine human spirit.” This inspired definition includes both sexes, which I like because Feminism surely benefits men as well as women. Feminism gives all of us the benefit of an acknowledged common experience — whatever has happened to any one of us has surely happened to another person or many other persons, and that violations to our person have their roots in societal and cultural norms. Feminism also gives us all permission to be who we truly are without culturally defined roles to mutate or imprison us. I am a feminine woman who is independent, strong, becoming more muscled every day, and loves to sew, cook and take care of my “babies.” Myself being quite post menopausal, my babies are now adults — as well as the creative projects I birth, like designing websites, one of which I have created this blog for.

To continue,

What does “Sustainable Development” mean? The explanation I like to share is that sustainable development is what Peoples indigenous to the Americas call their spiritual way of life: “Taking the next Seven Generations into consideration in all that we do.” This is how they lived sustainably upon this continent for millennia longer than anyone has bothered to dig down deep to find evidence of. This is how we all lived upon this entire earth for millennia.

When I was volunteering as a liaison between Native Peoples and environment and development Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in the mid to late 1980’s, I came across a United Nations Environment Programme and its document named “Man and the Biosphere.” As I read over this well-meaning document, indeed the best that man could come up with at that time, I became entirely aware of how men were proposing to save the Earth by designing strategies that benefited men, not Mother Earth. Coming from a female, and vicariously, an indigenous perspective, it was not too difficult to discover this with much clarity. At that time, both women and indigenous Peoples had been left out of development discussions. And at that same time, we were both being invited into the talks. Hence, my invitation to participate. I remember one afternoon at an international gathering in Costa Rica, feeling overwhelmed with sadness at the realization of how these mostly male scientists sitting around the large circular table had divided up the world so severely that they were never going to see the wholeness of Her body Earth.

The Man and the Biosphere (MAB) logo at that time illustrates their patriarchal, or power over, understanding of how the world works very well. When I approached a Native American elder with the MAB document, he actually jumped back in his chair just seeing the symbology: three pyramids, one atop the other, inside a circle. It took me some talking to get him to investigate the document further to discover what I had found: The cause of indigenous Peoples’ human rights violations had their root in resource exploitation. And, that inside this document, and inside these NGOs, indigenous Peoples could find allies and strategies to support their previous 13 years work at the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

The world and Indigenous Peoples have made some progress with regard to environmental racism, sovereignty and treaty rights. Indigenous Peoples have become integral to U.N. environment and development strategies. What these NGOs knew that this indigenous leader and I were both just coming to see the full circle of, was that women and indigenous peoples were being invited at the same time for the same reason: to bring sustainable solutions to environment and development problems that the world’s scientists could not solve. In deed, we women and an indigenous world view bring the same thing: an earth/woman-centered viewpoint from which to begin every act. This woman-centered, or woman-identified as I like to call it, worldview, is how the world works, how nature and the biosphere proceed and interact with all that is. And it is how we, humankind, are learning to go forward, sustainably: In respect of Mother Nature, Mother Earth — and each other.

At that time, in the 1980’s, the word “sustainable” was very new to the U.N. I remember a man from UNEP (U.N. Environment Programme) coming into our discussions and saying that he did not know what we meant by “sustainable.” To me it was simple, it is the way we lived in peace through millennia, and before patriarchy. It was how Goddess/woman-centered cultures lived everywhere on Earth, with no signs of war found anywhere in any archeological evidence older than 3,000 BCE.

I guess I could say that “woman-identified” and “sustainable development” mean the same thing, except that I do not want to leave out the important role that traditional indigenous Peoples bring to the table. I use the word traditional to mean Earth-centered, based on a culture older than 3,000 BCE. Indigenous Peoples have their own struggle with members of their Nations who identify with the corporate and government (tribal government and U.S. government) entities that exploit them. Not all native people are traditional, and not all women are woman-identified. But, we are all beginning to see the connectedness and divine quality of our lives here on this amazing planet Mother Earth.

Bee well, Alethia