Honoring the Feral Queen

Maybe this concept has always existed and the internet just makes it easier to find, but there’s such a thing as “Wife School.” Here’s the opening paragraph of a Guardian article about it:

“A thirtysomething woman with the easy smile of your favorite neighbor sits in her earth-tone living room, natural light washing over a gray couch so long it could easily fit four children. The woman speaks of a friend, a married mother, who was frustrated that she had to constantly remind her germophile husband to wash his hands. Hearing this, the woman cautioned her friend: ‘I think it would be better for your entire family to get the black plague and die … than for you to continue treating your husband like a toddler by reminding him to wash his hands.’”

Wife School molds women into smiling, attentive, submissive wives. Contrast that with another form of femininity, that of a feral queen or a dark goddess. In Hindu traditions, Kali is one such deity. She is associated with death and destruction and is often depicted with a sword in one hand and a bloody head in another. So, not meek and submissive then.

I should mention here that it would be easy to flatten Kali into a violent goddess, but that would be a caricature and not the whole truth, according to one author. Kali had multiple sides to her – fierce, protective, a divine mother, a dissolver of illusions. She’s multifaceted, just like women are.

We do a disservice when we try to pigeonhole anyone into a certain role. I think that’s why I like the idea of the “Feral Queen.” I don’t have anything to link to, no literature to pull from, but to me, the feral queen is a wild, uncontained woman. Someone who lets all sides of herself be known – not just the nice, polite ones. She sets boundaries, she expresses her authentic self, and she’s unafraid to fight for what she believes in. During this time when women’s rights are being stripped away left and right in the U.S., we don’t need more meek, submissive women. We need more feral queens, more dark goddesses.

There are some spiritual traditions that place men above women. I’m grateful that mine is not one of them. My spiritual teacher is adamant that men and women are equal. He said, “Until recently, there was a defective idea in all the corners and amongst all the groups of people on the earth, that males are blessed beings, and not females. In your family life, you know, you feel that the parents cannot have any sense of disparity in their mind regarding their sons and daughters. Both are equally important, both are equally loving. I said my sons and my daughters are just like two hands of mine. They are just like wings of a bird. A bird having one wing cannot fly.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to fly and I’d like society to fly. I don’t have any interest in reverse patriarchy with women treating men the way they’ve treated women. I have zero desire for men to suffer the way women have for centuries. I don’t want us to keep flapping around with one wing. I’d much rather that all genders learned to work together in harmony. And to me, that doesn’t happen unless we each learn to honor the feral queen within all of us.

I dream of a world where we understand no one is superior or inferior to anyone else. A world where we stop training people to be weak and submissive. A world where we recognize society works better when we’re all treated as equals. A world where we honor the feral queen.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.