These wars didn’t really sneak up on us, of course—the signs have been there all through the election, but perhaps women who value their rights will want to pay close attention going forward.
I’m still trying to process this one.
Breaking that highest, most difficult glass ceiling could have happened this
past week, but even though Clinton won the lion’s share of women’s votes (many normally Republican women, as well), those votes
just weren’t enough to overcome an abnormally high Republican male turnout,
accompanied by disaffected Bernie Sanders’ voters, and so on.
To be fair, women who rejected Clinton
to vote for Trump were not her only
problem—and the Atlantic cautions us therefore that it’s unfair to blame women for
Clinton’s loss. Still, in pondering a number of factors and astrological charts
in play on November 8th, I have to say that the gender dynamics of
this election deserve a deeper look.
For starters, there’s been more hatred
and vitriol spewed about women this past year than I care to catalog, and it
hasn’t all been from Trump-jazzed men. Some of the hateful rhetoric against
women unleashed by Trump’s campaign is being meted out by other women. Witness
today the bizarre case of a female mayor in Clay, West Virginia resigning over remarks she made on Facebook (yes, women can be
more venomous against their own than men):
“The mayor of a tiny
town in West Virginia has resigned amid a firestorm over racist comments about
Michelle Obama, according to the town recorder.
Clay Mayor Beverly
Whaling, who had commented approvingly on a Facebook post comparing the first
lady to an ape, turned in her letter of resignation Tuesday. Joe Coleman,
the town recorder, said Whaling’s resignation was effective immediately,
according to the Associated Press.”
The wellbeing of a nation is often
considered an extension of that nation’s chief executive—astrologically, the
national Sun—so it’s logical to see the wellbeing of its women in the executive’s
wife—here, the First Lady, or FLOTUS.
So, if Venus represents the nation’s
First Lady (the Moon would be reserved for the executive’s mother) and the
nation’s female population in general, this race-laced “mean girls” comment raises
questions about Venus’s role in our schizophrenic national psyche (see Nov. 12th post). Especially this week, in the wake of an aggressive
takeover of all branches of the government by the very alpha male Trump camp,
what can we expect for women’s issues and wellbeing going forward?
To be fair, 112 women candidates who ran campaigns this past election for
Congress and other State elected offices won—including
the first ever Somali-American
Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, elected in Minnesota despite Trump’s 11th
hour attempt to divide Minnesotans against their black, Muslim Somali
community. So that’s one statistical bone to chew on. Without a lot deeper dive
into each candidate’s background and history, however, it’s hard to say whether
typical women’s issues like reproductive freedom benefitted from these numbers or
not.
As we can see with former Mayor Whaling,
there’s no guarantee that women in power will support (or even respect) the so-called feminist agenda,
much less individual women in power. It all seems to depend upon the filters
through which we see the world, especially our view of a woman’s “place” in the
scheme of things. Clinton and her supporters felt strongly that that place was
in the White House, blazing new trails for women; female Trump supporters passed
over that opportunity for a confusing mix of reasons—from the alpha male
perspective, the election was a real exercise in gender-based “divide and
conquer.”
Maybe the charts we’ll examine ahead
will help explain why the lack of solidarity between women should be no
surprise—we are individuals, after all, and gender loyalty is just one of the
many challenges we have to navigate. A little historical background is in
order.
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The
ill-fated ERA and the infamous Roe v. Wade
Case in point, the 1970s Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA) that sought to enshrine women’s equality in the Constitution
(guaranteeing equal pay for equal work, equal protections under the law, etc.),
was both supported and fatally
undermined by women, the most damaging blows dealt by the women who followed the
conservative Eagle Forum’s founder, Phyllis Schlafly.
The ERA would “disadvantage housewives,”
Schlafly argued—an argument that unfolded in several directions, but Schlafly
seems to have viewed women as handmaidens who stand to benefit in a man’s world
if they simply don’t rock the boat. That the ERA would serve “career women” was
a loaded adjunct to that argument—conservatives were very suspicious of this
growing minority of women who wanted to forge more self-empowered pathways and
disrupt the status quo.
Another big issue at the time was
military conscription—few at that time could envision women being drafted, or
even serving in anything but support roles. It’s hard to reconcile the serious
gains that “liberated” women were making in those days with these conservative reservations,
but this resistance swayed several state legislatures that decided not to
ratify the amendment. It should also be remembered that by the time the ERA was
pronounced dead for lack of state ratification (1980), Roe v. Wade (1/22/1973)
had been passed by the Supreme Court.
Even though that 7-2 decision was based
on a successfully-argued privacy argument—that the choice to terminate a
pregnancy is a private matter between a women and her physician—Roe v. Wade has
seriously deepened the divide between women over the years. Not only couldn’t
we agree that women should be paid equally to men in the same positions, but we
still can’t agree about who should control what goes on in our uteruses.
We’re familiar with the 80/100 wage gap
between women and men (in equal jobs), but the complexities of the wage gap far
exceed that simple ratio, and the percentage is much worse for women of color. Incredibly,
any time the issue surfaces—as it did during Obama’s tenure—a certain number of
women line up to make sure that wage parity doesn’t happen.
The best Obama could manage was to pass
the Lilly
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, a federal statute that sought to reverse loopholes
in the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ability to protect minority workers from wage
discrimination. Though Ms. Ledbetter was a woman, this 2009 action didn’t help
women in general to any extent: in
fact, the American Association of University Women (AAUW)
estimates that we’re not likely to see full wage parity before the year 2152! That’s
assuming we haven’t bickered ourselves out of existence by that point.
On the issue of reproductive rights, the
divide between female factions is very much in play right now: Trump supporters
are expecting their candidate to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat with an
anti-Roe v. Wade super-hero, and those who want to block Trump nominations will
fight hard. It’s already on. So, how do we make sense of this astrologically?
Ladies,
choose your sides…
In looking at the chart for the Roe v.
Wade decision on January 22, 1973 (inner wheel, biwheel below), one of the key
factors that leaps off the page is that Venus conjoins the North
Node in Capricorn, even as it exactly opposes the Sibly Sun (Cancer, chart
not shown). No matter one’s view of the decision, American women (Venus)
had a date with destiny (Node) that day. Because Venus has
played such a key role in this issue, the point of that planet’s return to the
Roe v. Wade chart may tell us something important.
Significantly, this return is about to
happen this November 23rd, so let’s consider the biwheel between the
radix (natal) Roe v. Wade chart and this Venus event. No one is likely to
decide anything about Roe v. Wade that very day, but November 23rd appears
likely to set the tone for the battle everyone expects to happen in the coming
year.
Biwheel
#1: (inner wheel) Roe v. Wade Decision, January 22, 1973, 12:00 p.m. ST (no
exact time known), Washington, D.C.; (outer wheel) Venus Return, Roe v.
Wade decision, November 23, 2016, 11:10:32 ST, Washington, D.C. Tropical Equal
Houses, True Node.
Interchart
T-Square: Return Venus-Pluto conjoin RW
Venus-Node (all Capricorn) and oppose RW South Node (Cancer); this axis squares
Return Jupiter (Libra)-RW Uranus/Pluto (midpoint, Libra). Tremendous power over women (Jupiter square Venus-Pluto)
looks to be at stake here, which could certainly mean an attempt to overturn or
undermine Roe v. Wade. Significantly, this power-over would essentially impose a
religiously-held belief (Jupiter) about the issue of abortion
on millions who do not share that belief. Of course, Roe v. Wade doesn’t force anyone to have an abortion; those who have
religious misgivings are simply not allowed to impose their views on others who
do not. This has been the stubborn sticking point for this issue from day one.
Big money (Pluto-Venus-Jupiter) is also at stake for politicos driven by campaign contributions. The Supreme Court has fully enabled such entanglements with its Citizens United decision (2010), so it will be interesting to see how many billions are poured into this issue going forward. There are billions on both sides of it, so something to watch.
Neptune (Pisces) square radix Neptune (Sagittarius).
This “midlife crisis” transit certainly
speaks to the urgency so many millions—on both
sides of the issue—seem to feel about Roe v. Wade’s future. There’s a true
clash of ideologies (Neptune) at work, and there’s a fair
amount of Neptunian distortion and disinformation at work in the public
discourse. It probably is a good time
to revisit the decision and re-evaluate the decision’s original intent for coming
generations, but cutting through the rhetoric to reach the facts will be a
challenge. Any changes that result will likely reflect the mutable energies
below.
Return Mercury-Saturn (Sagittarius)
conjoin RW Mars (and widely, Neptune-both in Sagittarius) and oppose RW Saturn
(Gemini). It’s worth
noting that these mutable aspects tie in pretty tightly with Trump’s natal Gemini-Sagittarius
oppositions (not shown), which likely reflects his freedom (Sagittarius)
to make Supreme Court nominations impacting this issue (Jupiter disposes Sagittarius).
These energies remind us also that it’s dangerous to view the Court’s likely
actions through a gender prism alone—the original court was entirely male, and
the vote supporting Roe v. Wade was a generous 7 to 2. There was a decided
liberal bias to the Court in the 1970s, and this bias is clearly endangered,
despite the fact that three of the eight
Justices on the Court at this time are women
(2 of them appointed by President Obama).
The legal mind-set (Mercury-Saturn) that the
Court is likely to bring to its re-evaluation of Roe v. Wade should be
relatively open and philosophical (Sagittarius), but the standing of
the decision’s legal precedent may be
challenged (Return Saturn opposed RW Saturn), and we know challengers will
probably base their argument on language (Mercury) that redefines the status
of a fetus as a full person, with full human rights. This also speaks to the
broad ideological arguments (Neptune) in play here.
Interchart
Grand Trine: Return Mars (Aquarius)
trines RW Saturn (Gemini) and Return Jupiter (Libra). This powerful air-sign configuration appears poised to unleash
revolutionary action (Aquarius Mars) into the judicial
discourse (Gemini Saturn-Libra Jupiter) surrounding the reproductive
rights issue. The outcome could feel decidedly authoritarian—Aries
Uranus disposes Return Mars and trines Return Mercury-Saturn, at the
same time it opposes Libra Jupiter.
It’s also worth noting that Return
Uranus opposes RW Uranus, yet another “midlife crisis” transit. Unfortunately,
this transit often inspires rash action that is deeply regretted later—the challenge
being to make needed adjustments without destroying everything positive about
the original situation. Importantly, Return Mars and Uranus are in mutual
reception (inhabiting each other’s ruling signs), increasing the
probability of rash action.
A
few additional points
When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, Saturn
(Gemini) formed a tight trine with the Uranus/Pluto (midpoint, Libra). We
were roughly 2 years into Pluto’s tour of Libra at that time, so
the issues of power, justice—and reproductive
control—(Pluto) for women (Venus disposes Libra) loomed very large.
Judging by the Return Venus-Pluto conjunction, this desire for control is no
less important today, but the square to these points from Aries Uranus and the semi-sextile
from Aquarius
Mars may present a daunting challenge.
Given the “yang” nature of Uranus
and Mars—especially
in mutual reception between the very masculine feeling signs of Aries
and Aquarius—we
may need to brace ourselves for a revolutionary-end run, designed to put women
back in that “place” the patriarchy and its handmaidens reserve for us. Is this what it means to "make America great again?"
Face it—if this election's misogynistic tone and the hundreds of reported hate
crimes against women that followed are any indication, there are angry men out there (and some women) who blame women's progress for usurping their power. If this dynamic is allowed to fester unanswered, we could see some unfortunate gender wars on the horizon. It would be disingenuous, for that matter, to say we didn't see the signs of gender conflict looming—these signs have been there all through the election, for those who were listening and watching.
Perhaps
women who value their rights will want to pay close attention going forward. There are better ways to use the energies in this dramatic Venus return, so let's pay attention to the warning shots!
Raye
Robertson is a practicing astrologer, writer and former university English
instructor. A graduate of the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.), Raye
focuses on mundane, collective-oriented astrology, with a particular interest
in current affairs, culture and media, the astrology of generations, and public
concerns such as education and health. Several of her articles on these topics
have been featured in The Mountain Astrologer and other publications over the
years. Raye can be contacted by comment here, or
at: robertsonraye@gmail.com.
© Raye Robertson 2016. All
rights reserved.
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