I am forwarding the following on behalf of a dear
companion who is a paddler (tripping canoe, wild water kayak, sea kayak, sprint
kayak), the owner of a vegan food service, and, as far as I can tell, a wicce
of the White Goddess with neo-Buddhist leanings. In refutation to John
Winter’s examination of testicular navigation which he published on the paddlers’
mailing list Wavelength, she says:
John Winters has attempted to prove that women cannot navigate on the open
ocean. His analysis is centered on women frequently requiring directions
while driving in cities. This bears no relation to their ability to
navigate canoes and kayaks on open seas.
Women’s navigation is based on the pituitary stimulating hormones FSH and
LH. Secretion in sufficient quantities causes the development and continuance
of a secondary sexual characteristic commonly known to women as the navicular
gynoecium. Since this does not look like a breast, buttock, or other
piece of meat, it goes unnoticed by men.
Indeed, the only outward and visible sign of the navicular gynoecium is
water retention during menstruation. The reason for water retention
is twofold: first, it acts as a protective buffer against dehydration during
long open ocean crossings. Let us not forget the horrid fate of dear
Duncan Taylor as he drifted off from Mauritius. Second, it changes
the body's electrolyte balance to stimulate electrodynamic conductivity with
sea water. Quite literally, there is a bonding between woman and water
world.
Unfortunately, man has never been willing to admit, let alone examine, this
secondary sexual characteristic. The closest investigations to date
have involved studies of migratory birds, with conclusions tentatively looking
toward the interrelation between magnetic forces and an avian organ situated
near the pituitary. One supposes that if the paternalistic medical profession
ever turned its attention to the minutiae of the menstrual cycle, rather
than write off so many manifestations as hysteria, it might recognize the
existence of the navicular gynoecium and its role in electrodynamic bonding
with Mother Earth.
We now must look at why women usually prefer to ask for directions most
of the time, and why they often need to ask for directions in cities.
First, the electrodynamic bonding is not just with Mother Earth; it is with
all life, particularly with other women who are similarly experiencing water
retention. Communication with others is simply an example of bonding
initiated through the same electrodynamic forces which bond women to Gaia.
Second, it cannot hurt to ask for directions, and may help through the gaining
of related information resulting from the formation of social ties.
A good example is the difference in approach to arctic navigation between
Victoria Jason and Don Starkell. Victoria is a grandmother who used
her social skills to successfully and enjoyably complete much of the North
West Passage. In contrast, the aggressiveness of Don led to expensive
rescue efforts and the loss of body parts. Both paddled the same area
at the same time, even paddling together one season, yet the woman’s efforts
succeeded where the man's ended in tragedy. The same can be said for
the Hubbard expedition to interior Labrador, which ended in death when Leonis
followed his Peter up the wrong river and starved. His wife, wondering
how anyone could go so seriously off course, mounted her own expedition, based
on forming bonds with aboriginal people of the area, and comfortably completed
the route which had defeated her late husband. Bonding with others
often makes the difference between success or tragedy, and while the physiology
of bonding is based on the navicular gynoecium, the communicative element
must be practiced on an ongoing basis.
Third, the process of social interaction among women is not artificially
estopped as it is with men, for testicular navigation, rooted in the male
endocrine system, includes both increased aggression and, if you will excuse
the pun, linearity. Essentially, male navigation is not so much navigation
as a random colonization in which a great many males strike out with great
determination in random directions, with the net result being that most will
fail, but on occasion one will actually arrive at somewhere of interest.
In particular, the Franklin expedition, which ended in a mad hatter’s tea
party as the lead poisoned crew pulled a boat laden with silver dinner services
across the tundra, and the many following failed rescue attempts, one ending
in cannibalism, come to mind as examples of the growth of the cult of exploration,
in which male aggression and single-mindedness in penetrating the unknown
are held up as the epitome of voyaging.
Most notably, male explorers who take a less aggressive, more socially interactive
approach, are far less testosterone driven, and indeed exhibit considerable
evidence of a gonadotropic hormone balance more typical of females.
For example, the journals and writings of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton,
who explored much of the Sind, Arabia and Africa, and who translated the spiritually
erotic Kama Sutra and the seminal Tales of a Thousand-and-One Nights,
are replete with allusions to his sexual exploration of both genders.
One must ask if there was a correlation between his remarkable navigational
ability and his gender identification, and if society’s promotion of homophobia
as part of the ultra-male ethos is contraindicative to Ur based navigation.
Fourth, the reason that women often must ask for directions in a city is
due to industrial based toxins commonly present in the urban atmosphere impacting
on the female endocrine system. The industrial complex, which is dramatically
affecting the global climate, which is spewing toxins and carcinogens in unprecedented
quantities, and which is driving thousands of species to extinction, is also
debilitating female navigation through the disruption of gonadotropic balance.
The industrial complex is male based, and since the patriarchy neither knows
nor would care about women’s navigation, let alone the survival of Mother
Earth, nothing is being done to solve the problem. On the high sea,
away from many of the more concentrated pollutants, women’s hormonal systems
come back into balance; the pituitary stimulating hormones FSH and LH are
produced in sufficient quantities to support the proper function of the navicular
gynoecium. On the open ocean, away from the towering icons of industrial
masculinity, ejaculating their filth into the atmosphere, women are able
to navigate quite competently.
Finally, John Winters makes much of happy male explorers who navigated across
unexplored oceans to find new lands. I ask, what did they find during
their travels: not what they found on land at the end of their voyages, but
what they experienced while actually on the water? Aphrodite was born and
rose up out of the sea, but Odysseus, who spent the decade following the fall
of Troy quite lost, was just another sperm fighting to survive in the great
ocean of Gaia’s womb. The Nereid’s home was the sea, yet Odysseus’ crew
desperately tried to find a home far from the sea.
Even the patriarchal Christian tradition recognizes the difficulty males
have in becoming one with Gaia and her waters. For example, from Psalms:
“They that go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business in great
waters; these men see the works of the Lord: and his wonders in the deep.
They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man: and are at their wit's
end. So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble: he delivereth
them out of their distress. Then they are glad, because they are at
rest: and so he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.” In
this male based mythology men are lost and scared when voyaging onto the ocean,
and consider death a release.
Women’s relationship with the Ur, with Gaia, with air, earth, fire and water,
is not one of aggression and tragedy as it is for men. The patriarchal
discounting of female navigation is simply one more example in the present
millennium of repeated male attempts at subjugation of the ancient White Goddess,
domination of the physical world, and dismissal of spiritual being.