Mother Jonesing

But is a yearning for a mother goddess implausible today?

Published on Vox Populi

“Hallowed landscapes lost their sacredness and were exploited as the local people became insensitive to the destruction, accepting it as a sign of progress.”

~ Wangari Maathai

Today, across Mother Earth, 122 million of her daughters are being denied their inalienable right to attend school, and this despite her ample wealth and resources. I find this particularly galling because it was education saved my sorry ass, of which Mother Earth played an integral part beyond my habit of drawing a bath from her to immerse myself in it. As an undergrad in my mid-40s, still scrubbing prison grime from my hands while wringing heroin cravings from my heart, I enrolled in an ecofeminism class. I chose it not out of necessity but rather to answer an internal need. Quite simply, the concept appealed to me – hardly surprising after a decade or so of revolving door incarceration in an actual monotheistic manosphere overcrowded with white supremacist Christian Nationalists, many of whom have apparently gotten loose.

Nor was it my first run in with overtly male deities. I had also found Catholic school dourly patriarchal, quick to anger and judgement. Father Karl indeed had the same alcoholic smell as my father, and the same quick backhand to the face. And when, as a young man, I was forced by the courts to attend religiously bent 12-Step programs, my cynicism compounded. Their insistence that I was powerless and, as such, needed the help of a higher power to kick heroin, even a higher power I invented, seemed counterintuitive.

Given this, the idea of a female deity based not in manmade cathedrals but rather outside, in a forest, say, was enticing, and this because it doesn’t get more clear cut than a prison yard. My interest in being nurtured by nature was further reinforced when books, my sole form of escape, provided me with The Clan of the Cave Bear and its Mother Goddess. Although pure fantasy, its author, Jean Auel, based her mythology on the Venus Figurines – a series of carvings depicting ample female torsos found scattered across ice age Eurasia; over 200 of these Mother Earth manifestations, with the oldest, the Venus of Hohle Fels, dating back 38,000 years.

But is a yearning for a mother goddess implausible today? Perhaps, but no more so than the androcentric religions we’ve zealously used – indeed, are zealously using – as justification to kill both Mother Earth and each other, the former at a cost of millions of slashed-and-burned square miles of both physical and mental nurturing. I also bitterly resent the fact that, historically, when female deities dared bare their ample breasts post monotheism, we tortured, hung, and/or burned them alive. And although the patriarchy has been forced to mellow some since, Trump seems to take a special delight in defiling Mother Nature, and which his God Squad affirms.

And speaking of God Squads, Boss Hogg Hegseth just recently implored, in the Pentagon, no less, his angry male deity to provide “clear and righteous targets for violence…. let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse that evil may be driven back and wicked souls be delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.”

Yes, like wicked-souled schoolgirls and staff sent to their eternal damnation by a Made-in-the-USA tomahawk missile on February 28, 2026 – 175 of them, leaving little doubt that he and his hawkish ilk are also sporting shit-eating grins that that the aforementioned 122 million girls are not in school, lest they accomplish something outside the ken of men.

But leaving aside for a moment all dead, mutilated, raped, pregnant, and/or child brides, a lot of insiders are getting rich on this war. Heather Somerville, in her commentary, “Trump Sons Back New Drone Company Targeting Pentagon Sales,” affirms this: “The deal brings deeper involvement by the Trump family into a multibillion-dollar sector that has new opportunities for growth following changes imposed by the Trump administration.” It’s no secret they’re cashing in on the president’s second term, but war profiteering is a new low even for them.

And if this isn’t enough, Daniel Howley states that “global AI spending will hit $2.53 trillion in 2026 and reach a staggering $3.33 trillion in 2027,” thanks to the current passel of tech boys. Meanwhile, in universities across the planet, their AI is burning critical thinking at the stake.

Both war and AI, of course, boast quick turnarounds on investment, unlike educating girls, or at least that’s what they tell themselves. The truth, however, is much more salient. The World Economic Forum notes “that investments made in education are directly responsible for half of all economic growth in the last three decades. And…. research suggests, if all girls had the chance to complete their secondary education, countries would gain between $15-$30 trillion dollars in lifetime productivity and earnings.”

Then there’s women smallholders, from which “The gender gap in agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa: Causes, costs and solutions,” cites: “An analysis in five sub-Saharan African countries reveals that closing the gender gap around access to education and land tenure could increase crop production by 19%, boost gross domestic product, and lift thousands out of poverty.”

But the worst part is that investing in girls education never even occurs to them. In fact, king tech boy Elon Musk “ended work on 13 grants, including an education program in Nepal to keep girls in middle school to avoid early, forced marriages,” a Times piece states, which underscores the fact that greed is perpetually blinding. Climate specialist Katherine K. Wilkinson, lead writer on the book Drawdown, confirms this when she stated simply in her Ted Talk that “just .2 percent of philanthropic funds go specifically toward women and the environment. Nearly 110 million dollars globally. The sum spent by one man on a single Basquiat painting.” Cue up the lesson in myopic irony here.

What really goes unnoticed, however, aside from a billionaire buying a Basquiat, is the wasted potential of 122 million uneducated girls. To get an idea of this squandered aptitude, consider for just a moment the handful of women who, historically, somehow beat the patriarchal odds and educated themselves: Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Hypatia, Hildegard of Bingen, Christine de Pizan, Marie-Anne Lavoisier, Émilie du Châtelet, Mary Wollstonecraft who begat Mary Shelly, Fanny Jackson Coppin, Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Vera Rubin, Katherine Johnson, Wangari Maathai, Dian Fossey, and Jane Goodall. Their contributions are incalculable because they had access to knowledge, which leads us back to the 122 million. Imagine their contributions? And yet what are (mostly) men investing the vast majority of capital on? Robots and war machines.

Nor is the above list comprehensive but rather a reminder of what a liberated girl’s mind, what actual intelligence, is capable of. It was indeed my own education which led to the above pantheon of Fertility Goddesses, along with the certainty that we should be putting our money where the girls are. Lastly, added bonus, educated girls are not likely to end the world as we know it, but are, in point of fact, much more likely to save it.

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Copyright 2026 Matthew