James Lindsay Channels a Feminist and Things Get Kind of Weird: An Academic Hoax

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Series 1, No. 8, 1919.

Carol Miller, Ph.D., of the Portland Ungendering Research Initiative, doesn’t exist. The Portland Ungendering Research Initiative doesn’t exist. Carol Miller and her ungendering initiative are both the products of the imagination of James Lindsay, a male academic and author. Lindsay is part of a team that includes Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian, who recently revealed they were participants in a massive academic hoax critiquing what they term “grievance studies.” A full summary of the year-long project is detailed here:

Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship

Lindsay, channeling Carol Miller, wrote (in under 6 hours) a piece titled “Moon Meetings and the Meaning of Sisterhood: A Poetic Portrayal of Lived Feminist Spirituality.” The paper “explores feminist spirituality as a center of sisterhood.” “Moon Meetings” was accepted by the Journal of Poetry Therapy without any requested revisions. Sponsored by the National Association for Poetry Therapy, the Journal of Poetry Therapy,

is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal committed to the publication of original articles concerned with the use of the language arts in therapeutic, educational, and community-building capacities. Research (qualitative and quantitative), practice (clinical and education), theoretical, and literary studies are emphasized. The intended audience for JPT includes those in the allied helping professions; as well as those in literary/artistic fields with a concern for the healing/therapeutic aspects of the language, symbol, and story.

“Moon Meetings” tells the story of Carol Miller, Ph.D., who is reflecting on a broken marriage, subsequent divorce, and the unfailing support of her sisters, a group of eleven women who have supported her throughout this ordeal. Interspersed with the narrative are poems, written by Lindsay with the assistance of a teen-angst poetry generator.

But it’s not the poetry I found interesting–it is substandard drivel at best. What I loved about this piece were the characters and the rituals performed at each monthly meeting.

The Characters

(“We aren’t nice women. We’re fierce and free.”)

Carol Miller, our author.

Claire, whose husband Chad doesn’t appreciate her.

Mary, who provides the home for the monthly meetings.

Kahren and Freedom, who both brew beer.

Zolli, Fern and Raven, who make wine.

Roonie, a crone (woman over the “sacred” age of 56) who distills her own shine and is well versed in Hoo-Doo.

Sara, who mixes the ritualistic Blood Wine.

The Setting

The Womb Room, quaint and candlelit.

The Vulva Shrine, constructed inside the Womb Room and “covered in carven ornaments depicting or evocative of the site of womanhood.”

Monthly Moon Meeting Activities

Writing poetry and reading it out loud.

Dancing.

Laughing.

Crying.

Accessing female energy.

Commiserating about unworthy men, emotional frustrations and being controlled.

Celebrating womanhood, including menstruation and other bodily events.

Drinking “deep and long to our bleeding pussies before raising a second toast to the crones who bleed no more.”

Chanting to Freya, to Isis and to Diana, goddess of the moon.

Rituals, sometimes Wiccan, sometimes inspired by Ronnie’s Hoo-Doo. “They’re metaphors and symbols reflecting ancient wisdom and worldviews, celebrating the power of woman.”

Crone ceremonies held “in that liminal time just after Halloween but just before it’s really winter (Eller, 1995).”

A sample invitation to a Moon Meeting I created based on the scenario created by Carol Miller:

And best of all:
Improving the Vulva Shrine

“Presently, we have thirty-three and a half vulvas on our shrine, these mostly being made or found objects resembling or fashioned to resemble that most powerful center of feminine magic. The vulva is that which is lusted after and thus a blossom of power and intrigue, and it is that which opens to bring new life into the world, which is the deepest magic of human existence. It moistens to allow entry to the worthy who can arouse it and desiccates itself to prevent access for the unworthy who wish to. It also bleeds, almost like clockwork, month after month marking the end of every moon cycle that did not produce an offspring, making it an object of (male, thus cultural) abjection, horror, and disgust.

“The half a vulva on our shrine represents the newest addition, the unfinished thirty-fourth.”

In a climactic scene, so to speak, Mary brings a new vulva to add to the shrine:

“It was a found piece of split rosewood which Nature had contoured to a nearly perfect likeness of a gently sprawling pussy opened in awakened desire.

“Mary works wood in her spare time, though, and carved at it, accentuating its shape, fashioning clearer folds, fashioning a clitoris, carving wider the cleft evoking an opening to the worthy. She has it nearly complete, and this week she brought it for our help in finishing. One by one, ritualistically, we took our turns rubbing it smoother with fine-grit sandpaper, inside and out. We all took our turns touching it like the men in our lives won’t touch us or can’t.

“She plans to add a dribbling drop of art resin lovingly between the carven folds and running down. The sheen of her dew. A holy nectar.”

Filmmaker Mike Nayna is documenting this adventure:

Read the full papers and project fact sheet: http://bit.ly/2OsWnnH