Blessed is the Hag
I shit my pants last night.
It wasn’t even the first time. I begged Keith not to tell anyone about it - and now here I am telling the world.
Technically I didn’t even shit my pants. I wasn’t wearing underwear and I legit dropped a dollop of shit on the living room floor. I don’t know what happened. Something must not have agreed with me and I went from normal to “gotta poop” in a nano second, which isn’t enough time for anyone to get to the toilet - so I shit a bit on the floor instead.
Click poop for source.
All the cats came into the bathroom to check on me with this look of concern and horror. The poop goes in the water or in the sand - poop doesn’t go anywhere else in the house and the plop of poop on the floor was cause for concern.
“Would this be the new rules going forward? Are we changing the poop rules? It’s a bit too close to the eating areas. We have to have a conversation about the poop placement in the house. This is unacceptable.”
Then they all filed downstairs to reaffirm their dedication to pooping in the litter box no matter what the humans do.
This is The Hag talking
The Hag gives no shits, except for the ones she leaves on the living room rug.
I never would have considered writing this publicly 20 years ago, it would be too embarrassing and might make me “unattractive”. The Hag thinks this is the funniest fucking shit alive (pun intended) and laughs hysterically. The Hag doesn’t give a shit who knows because the Hag knows the truth.
Shit is universal - and we’re all going to shit our pants at some point in life.
The Hag is the great lie fed to women in our youth. We are instructed and watched and monitored and corrected and criticized and shamed into keeping the Hag at bay. We are taught that the Hag is to be scorned, rejected, reviled and avoided when the Hag actually represents our freedom. The Hag embodies our basic humanity. The Hag is coarse and flabby and unkempt and vulgar and rude. The Hag burps and shits and farts and laughs too loud and says what she thinks and is unafraid of being unattractive or unpleasing. The Hag is wanton and aroused and wants to fuck and has needs and embraces them and pursues them to fruition.
The Hag is responsible for her own orgasms.
The Hag is done with society’s shit. The Hag can see the lies and manipulations. The Hag is done trying to win points in a game designed to satisfy the desires of others. The Hag is done being small and quiet.
The Hag does not ask for permission. The Hag doesn’t wait to be acceptable. The Hag doesn’t care about being convenient or appropriate. The Hag is Unshushable.
“Cailleach (kali-UHch) is the Irish and Scots Gaelic word for Hag and it gives me life.”
The Hag is set up as the symbol for women to avoid at all costs. Not because the Hag is so terrible for women, but because men don’t have much to gain from having Hags around.
The Hag is not here for men.
The Hag requires men to come with self-awareness and question their own disgust. The Hag is not interested in attracting their attention or their sexual advances, so the Hag is only of interest to men who see women as actual whole human beings, not just pretty fuck holes.
That Fuck Stick French Boy
There’s a French author who so fully thought that it was still the 1970’s that he went on a national interview and said that women over 50 were invisible to him.
(Clearly a deep and nuanced human being.)
Women to this man are just incredible 25 year old bodies. When that body ages, she can be replaced by a newer model and she never has to be considered a multi-faceted human being ever again. Men like this never have to change or grow or self-examine or become self-aware or compromise or consider others. Men like this want their women to be empty vessels - incapable of insight or discernment; just incredible youthful bodies exuding adoring glances at the infallible menfolk.
Its bothersome that a response to this sexism is to convince men that ‘some’ women are still desirable at 50. They share pictures of Halle Berry and Jennifer Aniston and Julianne Moore as examples of women still traditionally desirable.
FUCK. THAT.
The Hag wants to throat punch.
I remember when I became invisible. Too fat and too old to be considered traditionally desirable, I heaved a sigh of relief. To become invisible was a gift of freedom. To cease being the object of male sexual attention is to release a burden that I didn’t even know I was carrying. Insidious and constant, a woman’s entire public life is immersed in a field of male judgement. At work, at play, at leisure - wherever there are men, there are appraisals of our appearance.
According to psychology, women outgrow the male gaze at 30. We stop seeing ourselves as objects and can begin to process all the trauma heaped on us in our misogynistic society.
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It’s exhausting.
As young women we are taught to play the appearance olympics. There is no opting out. All women are participants whether you want to play or not. If you’re not rating high on a regular basis the message is that you’re not attractive, not desirable, not valuable as a human being.
Most young women will play the game, for a time; how long often depends on how well we’re doing at the “sexually attractive olympics”. If we’re young and pretty and not too fat - there is probably a sense of worth in the feedback. If we’re young and a bit fat, or a bit plain, but we’ve got big tits - there is still some sense of worth coming back at us.
We know what’s happening.
We know how we’re being judged. We know we’re being appraised and we know what is and is not being appreciated. Unless the feedback about our appearance comes from a loved one who sees ALL of us - the feedback is hollow and unwanted.
It is unwanted.
Appraisals of our value based on our appearance are unwanted.
Invisibility is preferable to unwanted and unsolicited feedback about our appearance.
I know men think it’s a compliment.
Maybe they’ve even been told by some women that they like it and appreciate it. That may be the case - but in every scenario when you interact with a stranger or acquaintance or customer, client, coworker where you have NOT ascertained whether unsolicited comments about their appearance are welcome - your need to comment is not FOR THEM. It is for yourself.
To put any person in a position of being appraised changes the power dynamic where we assume a position of authority to judge value and worthiness. Men have been doing this to women for a millennia because the defacto position in a patriarchy is for men to have power over women. We judge what we have power over. We determine worth and value in what we have power over. Men judge women’s appearances in a play to assert power over them.
The Hag will shit in your fucking mouth.
No one has power over the Hag to which the Hag does not agree. The Hag doesn’t play the appearance olympics because there’s nothing in it for her. The Hag creates value for herself based on her own criteria of worth. Perhaps kindness or care or service or community or education or wisdom or leadership or fame or wealth or power or fucking or anything the Hag decides for herself is valuable will be where she places her attention.
If Beauty is Goodness what happens to The Hag?
The patriarchy was smart to get women to reject the Hag as early as possible.
The Hag is the enemy. The wicked witch, the evil stepmother - even if the female villain is beautiful on the outside, it is a mask for her true identity as the Hag.
Beauty is good, evil makes you ugly.
Leave it to Disney to deliver the trope. Old + ugly = sinister.
Ugly, undesirable, unwanted - the patriarchy convinced women to reject the part of themselves that embodies freedom and power. The part of themselves that delivers value that exists beyond the consumable, temporary bits of our womanhood, like youth and beauty.
Imagine a generation of women embracing their Hag while still in their youth? Imagine a generation of women using the power of their beauty and youth while being guided by the Hag? It’s uncontrollable. Unstoppable.
It’s what they’ve been afraid of all along - the Hag is not here for you.
She’ll shit on the floor if she wants to. And then she’ll tell everyone about it.
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Cailleach. The "Veiled One". She is the Witch-Hag-Crone-Land-Ancestor-Goddess of the Celts.
She is a Winter Witch goddess ancestor. In combination with Spring's Bríd, she shares the duties of caretaking the Land. They are sisters of light and dark, growth and stillness, all opposites held in one figure.