What a hoot! - feminism edition

Apparently something called "Woman Fest" was recently held in England.  Jan Moir was there to review it for the Daily Mail - and it's a laugh riot all the way.

‘Just go down there, walk through the giant vagina and you are there,’ she says.

Is she kidding? She is not kidding.

At the bottom of the hill there is, indeed, a V-shaped pink tent adorned with red fringing, complete with padded silk anatomical detail and open at both ends.

. . .

... we will be getting high on the power of song and dance, or indulging ourselves in myriad alternative diversions including tarot, acupuncture, massage, drumming workshops, basket weaving, campfire debates, shamanism, womb wisdom, ancient Swedish folk music and gong baths (a form of sound therapy using the metal musical instrument).

We will also be connecting to our wild feminine power by focusing on our yonis — yoni being a Hinduism for what Hyacinth Bucket would call our private lady parts.

. . .

There will also be yoni printing (oh God, surely not) plus various sinister sounding classes including Mothering the Moon Maiden, Sex Magic Rituals and a Shamanic Bee Smoking Ceremony. What?

. . .

In the opposite corner, a regular stream of women come in to kneel at a small altar, heads bowed in silent contemplation as they study what seem to be tiny missals.

Pray, what deity inspires such devotion among the sisters? Only when I get closer do I see that it is a phone recharging station.

Stretching up the hill are a collection of tipis and tents, including the Womyn Rising tent, the Woman’s Circle tent, the Woodland Tipi and the rather scary Red Tent.

Women who are ‘on their moon’ are invited to visit the Red Tent, where I imagine they spent hours shouting: ‘Who touched my camomile teabags?’ and ‘Stop looking at me like that.’

. . .

Yet I do wonder if all this focus on the yoni is entirely mindful and healthy? I mean, what would we call it if a bunch of men went off into the green wilderness to contemplate their penises for a few days?

‘We’d call it a golf weekend,’ says Coral from Wiltshire, who is sitting on a milking stool in the Sacred Garden.

Time for more enlightenment, so I join the Fool Expression class, held by Christie Holly Tree.

Twelve of us sit in a circle of cushions while she explains the concept. Something about the role of the jester in history and how it is a way to inner peace? This is hard to grasp and anyway, wasn’t the jester always a — whisper it — man?

All too soon, Christie puts on some plinky-plonky music and we all have to stand up and perform, letting our inner jester out. Oh God. I wobble about like a weeble, sometimes doing a flute-playing Jethro Tull on one leg. You can’t say I’m not trying.

Among my fellow Fools one woman is shaking her shoulders and making the kind of grunting noises you’d expect from a copulating mammoth. Kaftan-wearing Ollie, a plucky 71-year-old from Essex, is doing the twist.

Next to her, a woman in red velvet is on all fours, barking loudly. Another woman makes kitten ears with her hands and mews.

‘I was pretending to be my cat,’ she says later.

There is always one, isn’t there?

There's more at the link.

That's some of the best real-world comedy I've read in years.  Dammit, I'd pay to be there (or to bug it from a safe distance), just for the belly-laughs!

I can only say that I'm very, very glad that my mother and sisters were never numbered among the "sisterhood".  It probably made my childhood a lot safer!  Similarly, Miss D. would not fit in well at a gathering like that.  She'd be laughing too hard all the time!  (The same goes for most of our lady friends, of course . . . that's one of the reasons why they're our friends.)




Peter