A Female Led Community

Dear knight4princess

Your proposal that I should ask my wife Larissa and my sister Ida, with whom I speak many times every week, about what they recall from our Female Led Community is very good, but of course I already have talked a lot with them about what I write here.
It is obvious, that I need their permission to write and tell what I am telling here.
And it has nothing to do with the fact that I am living in a Female Led Relationship. It is simply because I not just tell about myself, but also about them.

Actually they both think that it is a good thing that I am writing here, and they incourage me to go on with it, because it gives us an excuse to talk with one another about the good old days.

You might wonder, why I have not told you anything about my wedding to my beloved wife Larissa, and of our life together with the four children we luckily got.

But later on I plan to tell you about all of this. Although it will be in another thread, because this thread is already long, and is only meant to describe the Female Led Community of our childhood.

I believe, that you have to know something about a persons background, formed in her or his childhood, in order to understand the adult person.
Perhaps it is my great interest in history that makes me think in this way.
But this is the reason why I tell you of Ida's, Larissa's and my childhood before I will tell you about our adult life.

 

I think it is time to tell you a bit more about Larissa.

Larissa was a very sweet girl a year younger than me. We had been close friends for several years, and when I was about 18 years old, she chose me as her lover, not just her boyfriend, as I had been for some time, which among us meant, that she wanted to form a more permanent relationship with me.

Larissa was a very special girl. Always sweet and nice to girls and boys alike, and always very considerate and ready to help if need be. She always brought us boys some refreshments when we were hard working, if she had some spare time. Especially on the hot summer days, where we really needed it. The same did most of the other girls, but Larissa was very keen on doing it.
And I always as a boy felt good in her company. She never tried to demonstrate her superiority to us boys, and she never looked us straight in the eyes as some of the other girls sometimes did, which we resented, as I have told in a previous post.
She was a very clever and emphatic girl, and she always seemed to know what I was feeling. I think that she was prior to her age, but the funny thing is, that as a boy of 14-15 years of age I never felt any embarrassing kind of inferiority when I was together with Larissa.
In the summer when I had just turned 16, I had a traumatic experience in which Larissa played a crucial role. After that the bond between us grew stronger, and we became close friends. And later on I was her boyfriend and as told I finally became her lover. When I was about 20 years old I moved to Larissa's mothers house to live with Larissa. And we still live together.

Larissa and her only one year younger sister Ophelia and their mother Jacinta originally came from Greece. Her parents belonged to a left winged group in their homeland, but in the year 1967 there was a right winged military coup in Greece, and in the aftermath of that coup the father of the family "disappeared", presumably killed by the secret police or right wing fanatics or something like that.
Jacinta managed to escape to Italy with her two little daughters, and they finally ended up in Denmark as political refugees.

Because Jacinta was well educated, and able to speak English, she soon got contact to left wing and feminist groups in our country. She was lucky enough to get a job, and in 1975 she and her daughters moved in as newcomers in our little community.
There was something very special about Jacinta, which at first was meet with some skepticism among the other women, but which soon was proved to be true, and afterwards much appreciated: Larissa's and Ophelia's mother Jacinta had supernatural powers. She could communicate with the divine powers, and she possessed healing powers. And Jacinta's daughters had inherited their mother's supernatural abilities and healing powers.
When they came to us, Larissa and Ophelia spoke fluently Danish, and their mother also spoke danish, although with an accent.

I clearly remember when I first saw Larissa together with her little family as they moved into their small house in our community. It was in the summer of 1975, and I and some of the other boys from our community were helping the newcomers move into their new house. We knew that they were from Greece, and I was rather surprised how fluently the two girls, Larissa and Ophelia, spoked danish. Larissa and Ophelia at that time were 12 and 11 year old, Larissa being a year younger than me. Being of Greek origin both they and their mother had dark hair.
Already the first day I spoke a lot with them, and I have to say that they both looked very pretty.
But what for me was more important back then: They also looked kind. And I in the coming weeks and months soon found out that they really were very kind, and I liked very much to talk with Larissa.

Because in a way Larissa opened the world to me, so to speak. She told me a lot about Greece, because although she only was four year old when she and her mother and sister fled the country, she obviously knew a lot about her Motherland. I think that most of it her mother must have told her, but all the same it was very fascinating for me.
Here you should remember, that my family and the other families in our small Female Led Community never traveled abroad, so perhaps you understand why I felt that Larissa opened the world to me.
She also seemed to know a lot about Italy, the first country she and her family fled to, but where they did not stay for long. It of course was something she had from her mother, because Jacinta had friends in many countries, and knew an awful lot about almost everything.
Some years later, especially in 1977 and 1978 and 1979, Larissa and I in our spare time often made long excursions into the surrounding areas. We either walked or used our bicycles, depending on how long Larissa wanted us to go.

Now perhaps you think: Female Led and "how far Larissa wanted us to go"...but this had absolutely nothing to do with Female Led relationship. At least not in the normal sense.
The rather astonishing fact was, that Larissa knew all the attractions, all the village churches and their history, and the old houses and so on in our neighbourhood.
And she liked to tell me about it all, because she knew that I was interested in history.
Now you probably will ask: How come that Larissa knew so much about our region?
Because she was a foreigner, I think. And she thinks the same herself, because I of course have asked her.
Already as a four year old girl she was very conscious about the fact, that she had come to a foreign country, and that she was here to stay. Refugee children of course react differently in such a situation, but Larissa's reaction was to be very curious about all the new things. And as she grew a little older she simply wanted to know everything about her new country, which was so different from Greece.

She told me, that she had visited all the village churches and other attractions that she showed me and told me about, and she had had long talks with priest and other knowing adults, who told her all that she liked to know. And as Larissa back then with a smile told me: Most adult people are happy to talk to a young person who shows interest in what they themselves are interested in.

Although Larissa and I were close friends, it was by no means a sexual relationship back then. It later was, but not back then. As a matter of fact I told you, that when I was 16 year old - it was in 1978 - Hanne was the first girl I had a sexual relationship with.
Of course Larissa must have known it. The girls knew everything about us boys, as I have told. I remember, that only a few days after Hanne and I had had our first sexual intercourse, my little sister Ida asked me about it. She wanted to know all about it. How it had been, did it feel good and questions like that. She was only curious, and of course I answered her the best I could, but I had not told her anything about it, and yet she knew.
After we got married, I once asked Larissa if she had been jealous of Hanne and the other girlfriends I had at the time when we only were friends?
Not at all, she answered with a smile, from the first day I saw you I knew, that you some day would be mine.
Now, that is something people like so say, but with Larissa I am not so sure.
She really has supernatural powers, as I have told.

 

Dear Aral

As told in another post mom had told my little sister Ida to watch over, that I did not masturbate. And I really tried my best not to, because mom had told Ida and me what a shameful and disgraceful thing it was for a boy to do.
But nevertheless some of us boy sometimes would try to masturbate, when no women or girls were around.
Especially in the summer time, when we only wore our briefs, we could easily do it in the nearby wood without anybody seeing it.
I very seldom did it, because I felt that it would be to cheat on both mom and Ida.

I remember a hot day in the summer when I was 15 year old, where I really felt the urge to masturbate. So when I had done my work for that day I went to the wood, and sat down under a three and started to masturbate. But unfortunately enough, a little later Ida came strolling through that same part of the wood, and she saw me.
I was very embarrassed, and Ida looked very astonished and quickly went away.
I didn't finish my masturbation. I didn't feel like it any more.
It took me a long time to go home, because I knew that mom would be angry with me.
But when I came home, mom was in a very good mood, and didn't make me any reproaches.
And Ida didn't talk to me about what she had seen in the wood either.

When Ida and me were alone in our garden the next day, I asked her why she had not told mom about me?
She smiled, and answered me in the logical way, that was so typical for her:
"Mom told me to watch over that you do not masturbate in our bed at night, didn't she? But you were not in bed, weren't you?"
At that we both laughed.

But of course mom somehow knew, that I, like the rest of the boys, sometimes masturbated, although is was forbidden.
This was one of the reasons why she the next year encouraged Ida to pet me from time to time, so that I could get some sexual release, albeit under female control.

 

Dear Aral

We all have a dark side. I have a dark side and every woman and man, girl and boy have dark sides. That's only human. And therefore every society or community created by humans has it's dark sides too.
So of cause our little Matriarchy, as I often call it, also had it's dark side.
I just have not written about it on the Forum because I do not want to give the readers the impression, that our moms were monsters. Because this they were absolutely not.

A key concept of the Matriarchal theory is, that it was women who created the earliest agricultural societies, because in the hunter and gather stone age the men had been the hunters, while the women gathered eatable plants and roots. Some of the women then gradually learned how to cultivate plants, and eventually how to cultivate fields, which they of cause owned, because the fields with the growing crops became their prime working place, so to speak, their men and sons only being their helpers. Fertility of both men, animals and crops was the all overriding concern for women and men in those age old matriarchal societies. And Goddesses, guaranteeing the fertility were the focus of worship and rites, performed by priestesses, So the theory goes. Shortly told.

In the middle and late 1970s, the women of our Female Led Community were very fascinated by the concept of the existence of Matriarchies, past and present.
But as I already have told, the fascination turned into fanaticism.

In their fanatical period in the closing years of the 1970s, our moms, many of whom were academics, read a lot of books about Goddess religions and ancient Matriarchies.
For instance they read "The White Goddess" and "The Greek Myths" by the famous English author Robert Graves, where he interprets many of the ancient Greek myths, especially those were Goddesses are involved, as being memories of life and rituals performed in the ancient Matriarchies, which supposedly existed in Greece and on Crete before the arrival of the Greek tribes around 2000 BC. (On Crete the Greeks didn't arrive before approximately 1500 BC, or perhaps a little later).
Another book which our moms read among many others was a book about matriarchal societies from 1930, written by the Austrian author Helen Diner (a pseudonym).

Now, both Graves and Diner, and other like minded authors too, wrote that circumcision of young boys had been an essential rite in the ancient Goddess religions.
This was of cause noticed by the women of our community, and on one of their Women's Meetings in the beginning of June 1978 they decided, that the teenage boys of our community likewise should be circumcised.
It was decided, that four of us boys, all about 16 years of age, should be circumcised by midsummer 1978. Because our mothers believed, that Summer Solstice had been a very important event in the age old Matriarchal calendar, a time to performe holy rites in honor of the Great Goddess, as I have told in an earlier post.
I was among the boys first to be circumcised, because I just had had my 16 year birthday on the 28. of May 1978. (Ida turned 13 on the 2. of June that same summer, where mom gave her the right to act as mom's substitute, as I have told previously).

Of cause we boys did not want this to happen, and there was much strife in our community because of this decision. All the adult males were strongly opposed to it, and some of them even left our community as a protest against it.

But the women knew a like minded doctor with a Jewish background. She was a Goddess inspired feminist to, and she agreed to perform the circumcision of us four boys.
So on an extraordinary Women's Meeting in the middle of June the women finally decided, that they would not give in to the protests among us boys and among the men of our community, and when mom came home that summer evening and told this to Ida and me, I really felt downtrodden.
Because I very much feared to be circumcised, even if mom assured me, that the doctor of course would use pain killers.
Ida on the other hand was exalted by the news. At that time she was very much taken in by all this Matriarchal stuff, and she therefore openly said, that to circumcise boys was the right thing to do.
I was really disappointed with her at that moment, I must say.

A day or two later Ida even took the train to Copenhagen to read all about male circumcision in the great communal library in Copenhagen.
But when she came back home, she totally had changed her mind:
She had found out, that this operation probably would be painful, even with pain killers used. And it could also be risky or even dangerous.
So now Ida was very much opposed to the idea of male circumcision. She argued much with mom about it, and she even went to the next Women's Meeting to try to make the adult women to change their mind in the last minute, but to no avail.
But Ida once more proved, that she really was my dear, clever and caring little sister. And as it turned out, in this case she was even wiser than the adult women.

My friend Knud, and Thomas and Torben and I were all circumcised that midsummer of 1978.
And although the doctor of cause used pain killers, it really was very painful.

If you want, I can tell more about it later on.

But I can tell, that no more boys were circumcised among us.
Because when it became known in our neighborhood, that four of the boys in our community had been circumcised, it caused a scandal. Our good relations with the people in the nearby village really were threatened by it.
Our moms therefore wisely decided, that they had followed a crazy idea - which unfortunately often happens for many idealistic peoples when they turn into fanatics - and they abandoned every thought of circumcising the rest of their boys.


PS: In Denmark only Jewish boys (and today also boys from the Muslim minority) are circumcised. In The United States it so far as I know is - or has been - customary also to circumcise non Jewish baby boys, but this has never been the custom in Denmark.

 

I forgot to tell, what the punishment for masturbation was in our community.

The punishment for masturbation was the usual punishment for boys:
A stern reprimand and one or two stinging slaps to our face. Not more, and not less.
When I was a young teenage boy, mom once saw that I was masturbating. I was stupid enough to do it behind a three in our garden.
That evening I got a sound scolding, and two slaps to my face.
I clearly remember it. It was so embarrassing.

 

Dear Aral

(QUOTE) For circumcision in USA yes, I know. (QUOTE).

Actually I only wrote about the difference between the USA and Europe regarding circumcision of boys because otherwise readers who are living in the USA might ask:
"Why were those boys not circumcised already?".

(QUOTE) Also small difference between America and Europe was for looking at nudity. In old European culture is less of a problem for nudity than in American culture. America was more Puritan for this thing. Europe is full of nude statues and paintings. Also in the Vatican. Nudity in Europe was not seen as a problem. Therefore, people from the surrounding villages did not see in your community naked boys as a problem. It was okay. (QUOTE)

You are right.

Back in the 1970s it was quite common for boys - also for the boys in the village - to be shirtless on hot summer days. The difference between us and them was of course, that we had to only wear our briefs all summer long, because it was the rule of the women of our community, whereas they were free to wear whatever they liked.
But as I have said earlier in one of my post, this rule did not apply when we were outside our community. Then we wore normal clothes for the season.
For instance when we with some of the girls from our community took on a trip to Copenhagen we wore shorts and T-shirts unless it was a very hot summer day. Then we went shirtless, but so did many of the young guys in Copenhagen back then, and they often still do.

This does not mean that we boys didn't have any sense of modesty, because we certainly had.
I already have told that we boys often on hot summer days would take of our briefs when we were working outdoors. We did it in order to have the same colour all over our bodies.
But we always hurried to put our briefs back on, if we saw that some of the girls were coming.
(Ida and I have black hair like our mother, and we have a more or less brownish complexion all year round. Therefore I as a boy was called "the Indian", a nickname that I was very proud of).

After we were married Larissa told me how amazed she and her sister Ophelia were when they saw, that we boys, who were helping them move into their new home were almost naked, only wearing briefs. And they were even more amazed and astonished when they learned, that it was the rule of the women of our Female Led Community, that we had to stay in this way during the entire summer period. Therefore they every year looked forward to the summer time, Larissa told me. But she added, that she would not tell it to me back then when I was a boy, because she thought that it would embarrass me. She was right, but as I said:
Larissa never let me feel inferior, when I was together with her. And I liked her for it.

 

Dear Aral

I can assure you, that my circumcision experience was very intense.
I think that I in one of my posts said, that I once as a boy had a traumatic experience, and that Larissa played a crucial role in it.
It was my circumcision I was referring to.
On the other hand, the circumcision itself and the time after my three friends and I were circumcised was totally different from what we had expected.

Of cause all of us boys very much resented the fact that we were going to be cut, because we feared the pain and the humiliation which we were sure we would feel being circumcised by a female doctor.
And because our mothers at that time considered male circumcision to be an important Matriarchal ritual, our sisters and some of their girlfriends would also be allowed to be present at our circumcision, we were told. That would only add to our humiliation, we thought.

But when the day of our circumcision came, it turned out to be very different from what we had expected.

Torben, Thomas, Knud and I were not circumcised on the same day. There being only one doctor, who also had other work to do at her hospital.
By chance I was the first of us four 16 year old boys to be circumcised, and I will now tell you about it.

I knew beforehand that besides the doctor and my mom and Ida, also Ida's best girlfriend Louise together with her mother and Hanne, Puk and Puk's mother, who was a close friend of my mother, and Larissa would be present.
(Mom invited Larissa and Hanne because she knew that they were my closest friends among the girls).
In the days before I felt very embarrassed by the thought of it, and I even feared that I would have an erection, all those girls being present.

But when the feared day arrived, I didn't have any erection, and I did not feel the slightest bit of embarrassment or humiliation either. Because fear was my all consuming sentiment at that moment.
And the girls and women didn't smile or giggle. Quite the contrary: They all looked very concerned, and some of them even had a startled expression on their faces.
They clearly had great sympathy for me, and cared for me.
I immediately sensed, that the presence of the women and the girls was not meant to humiliate me, but to support me.

But I also sensed, that the doctor, who was a fairly young woman about 30 year of age, I guess, was nervous. And that of cause made me even more nervous.

Our large, old dinning table, where I should lie down for my circumcision, was covered with blankets, because there would be blood, the doctor had told.
To assure, that I would lay still and did not move, my hands were bound behind my back and my legs were spread apart and bound to make them immovable, so that the doctor could work unhindered.
Despite the pain killers that I was given, when the circumcision began, it was extremely painful.
First the doctor marked where she would cut. Then she pulled my foreskin straight forward using some device to hold it straight which I don't know what is called in English. It hurt a bit, but the real pain came when she began to cut.
I had thought that it would be a single quick cut, and then it would be over with. But it took ages. Or so it seemed to me. I clearly remember the feeling of my warm blood dripping on the blanket, the intense pain and the cutting that seemed to have no end. I even believe she also used a pair of scissors.
I could barely stand the pain. But I would not cry and I would not scream.
The onlookers stood in total silence.
And Larissa was sitting on a chair right to the left of me.
She constantly looked me in my eyes, and I could not understand why, because she knew that we boys hated the staring gaze of a girl, as I have told.
I tried to look away, but she hold my head with her hands, forcing me to look at her.
"Se på mig, se på mig, bare se på mig (look at me, look at me, just look at me)" she whispered.
And as I did, I gradually felt that the pain resided. So now I suddenly understood, that Larissa was trying to help me. The pain did not totally disappear, but it was very much reduced.

I of cause felt very grateful to Larissa. I think she used a form of hypnosis and I later on asked her about it. She couldn't explain it, but she told me, that it was something her mother, who was a healer as I have told, had taught her.
During my circumcision I did not want to see what the doctor did. And as I have told you, Larissa made me look at her most of the time, and I felt it like she almost absorbed me, or rather she absorbed my ability to feel pain. I felt it, as if my penis almost got numb.
I am very grateful that Larissa was there, and that she did what she did. Because after the cutting of my foreskin finally was over, I even was sewn with needle and tread down there.
But Larissa got me to concentrate on her. Not on what was happening to my penis.
I didn't know that it would take so long or that I would have to be sewn on my penis. I believed that it would be a quick cut and over with, but after all I was only 16 year old.

But my dear little sister Ida knew, because she had read all about male circumcision in the Communal Central Library in Copenhagen, as I have told.
But she had not told me about it in order not to frighten me more than she already knew me to be.
Ida really tried her best to protect me and the other boys from the circumcision that she knew we feared after she found out what it was all about.
To me she thereby proved that she really was the young coming Matriarch that she so wanted to be:
A person who cares for others and who wants to protect the people she love.

After my circumcision was over with, the doctor placed a bandage around the tip of my penis, and shortly after I went to bed to rest and try to sleep. Mom said that I could sleep in her bed, then she and Ida would share our big double bed.
But much as I tried to, I could not sleep. And I also felt a kind of burning pain from the wound on my penis, that prevented me from falling asleep.
But then something very strange happened, which I still cannot explain.
Larissa came to ask me how I felt, and I answered that the pain had returned.
Without a word she than removed the bed blanket, and laid her hand upon my genitals. I felt the warmth from her hand, and the pain totally disappeared.
I have no explanation. Was she using hypnosis? I don't think so, because it was her hand that made my pain disappear.
As told I asked her about is afterwards, but she also could not explain it but only said, that it was a gift she had inherited from her mother.
But why should we have an explanation of everything?

The first days after my circumcision I as told wore a small bandage around the tip of my penis, which of cause allowed me to pee.
After some days the female doctor visited us again and saw that the wound was healing, and she removed the bandage.

But now, as the tip of my penis - I think you call it glans in English - was exposed (or naked, if that is a better word in English) all the time, it was very unpleasant for me to wear my briefs, because the sensitive skin of the exposed tip of my penis was constantly rubbing against the fabric of the briefs.
I clearly remember it. It was a very unpleasant feeling that I had never felt before.
Some evening I complained to mom about it, and Ida giggled and said, that then I could just take of my briefs and go naked.
It was the only time that Ida teased me a bit about it, but after all she was 13 year of age, so it was quite natural, I think.

I didn't follow Ida's advice. My modesty would not allow me to. And it was good that I didn't, because I quickly got used to have a circumcised penis, and the unpleasant feeling gradually disappeared.

Oddly enough, AFTER we four boys were cut, and our cut wounds were healed, we did not resent the fact that we were cut.
Quite the contrary, I have to say.
That we boys had endured the painful circumcision with calm and without crying or screaming made the girls admire us very much.
We became a kind of heroes, so to speak.
We had proved that we were tough guys, if I may say so.
We had believed that our circumcision would be a humiliating experience for us. But it turned out to be the opposite.

I think that I should add, that although the circumcision also was quite painful for Knud and Thomas and Torben, I think that it was not as painful for them as it was for me.
Because from my case the inexperienced female doctor had learned to use a greater amount of pain killers than she did with me.



Our circumcision may be looked upon as a kind of rite of passage to manhood.
So I think of it today, and so I also thought of it back then.
After I had passed through the ordeal, I have to add.

The problem is, that such kinds of rites belong to totally different kinds of pre-state societies, where it is all-important for the women of the tribe or the clan, that their young men are brave and can endure pain so that they will be willing to go to war and risk pain and even death to defend their families and their tribal community, if necessary.
Because in pre-state societies there are no state police or state authorities to protect you, if need be.
You have to protect yourselves. And the women in such pre-state societies therefore naturally prefer to mate with young men who have proved that they are capable and willing to do just that, because they don't fear any pain.
That, I think, is the rational explanation of such passage to manhood rites, which involve pain, and because our kind of society is so much different from the pre-state societies, I don't think that the pre-state rites make sense among us in our countries today.

But as I have told, the girls admired us circumcised boys, and we very greatly respected because we all managed to endure the pain.
Of cause we were still considered to be inferior to the girls, but not so much inferior than before.

I have not told about it before, because the last thing I want to do is to depict my mother and the other women of our little Matriarchy as evil persons, who liked to torture and humiliate their sons.
But as told there was absolutely NO humiliation involved when we four boys were circumcised. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Our mothers sincerely believed circumcision of teenage boys to have been an ancient Matriarchal ritual which would be to our benefit (which it was, because we got so much admiration from the girls because of it), and in their fanaticism they did not take into consideration, that this type of rites belong to a very different type of society and age.



The people in the nearby village were outraged, when their sons and daughters, many of whom were our friends, told their parents that four teenage boys in our community had been circumcised.
As I remember it, the ensuing scandal endangered our good relations with the villagers, and perhaps also the very existence of our small Female Led Community.
Because now it was proven, that we really were crazy people, wasn't it?
Our mothers therefore arranged a meeting with the villagers, where Torben and Thomas and Knud and I of cause were present.
We told the villagers, that we voluntarily had agreed to be circumcised (which was definitely not true), and that there was no pain involved (which also was untrue), and that we didn't regret it (which was true).
And our mothers told, that they had abandoned any idea of circumcising all their sons, and perhaps because the people from the village really liked Knud and Thomas and Torben and me they accepted our and our mother's explanations.

But my dear little sister Ida had been right all the time. And so had Louise, Ida's best girlfriend and Kund's little sister, who also was very much against the adult women's decision about circumcising us boys.

 

Dear spider203 and homebody

Thank you for your replies.

I fully understand spider203's reaction, because it sounds like an echo of the prevailing reaction among the adult inhabitants in our neighbouring village back then.

I don't write about the circumcision of us four boys in order to defend this deed. I hope I made it clear that I think that it was a wrong and completely unnecessary thing that the women of our community did to us, and the years where it happened I therefore always describe as the fanatical period of our little Matriarchy.
I only told you about our circumcision, because I was asked about it. And if you tell other people about a community, I think you also have to tell about the unpleasant or dark sides of that community.
If not you are similar to those old communist, who visited the Soviet Union in the Stalin Era or later on, and deliberately kept silent about the oppression and the poverty and the other dark sides of Soviet society, which they witnessed.

As I have told, after our circumcision Knud and Torben and Thomas and I were considered by the girls to be a kind of heroes.
But this clearly can be misunderstand.
Because I do not - and did not even back then - consider my self and my circumcised friends to have been heroes of any kind.
There are no heroes in this story. Only heroines.
Those heroines of course are Larissa, who helped me during my circumcision in the way I have told you about, and my dear little sister Ida and her girlfriend Louise, who both were so very much against that we boys should be circumcised. (Knud was Louises brother, remember).

How come, that my sister Ida - a 13 year old girl - was the only female in our community who took it upon herself to find out what circumcision of young boys really is all about, how it is performed and the pain and risks involved and so on?
Why did not a single one of the adult women try to find out about this?
They subjected us four boys to undergo something of which they knew nothing.
My dear little sister Ida found out, and she went to their Women's Meting to tell the adult women. But they would not listen to her. Why?

Because they had become fanatics. People who think that the world and the individual people in it at all cost shall submit to their ideology or world view, be it political or religious, without questioning, because to the fanatic her or his ideology takes precedence over individual people.
At first Ida was also in favour of the circumcision of us boys, because she as I have told was very much taken in by the prevailing Matriarchal ideology of our mothers at that time.
But to Ida, I as her brother and the three other boys to be circumcised were of far greater importance than abstract ideas about ancient Matriarchal rites and so on. Therefore she wanted to find out about it, and when she found out, she completely changed her mind, and did her utmost to change the mind of the adult women also, but to no avail.

Therefore Ida to me is one of the three female heroines of this case.
I very much admired Ida because of it. I knew that she was superior to me, but now I understood, that she even was wiser than the adult women.

I think that my admiration for my dear sister Ida shows through in my posts, but as told we from time to time also quarreled. And I have also told about how I let her down shortly before Christmas 1979, and how angry she was at me because of it. I don't want to give an idyllic image of my relation to Ida, or of our Female Led Community.

But, as homebody says, I feel no bitterness about how I was treated.
What is done can't be undone.

 

Dear Aral

The Female Led Community in which I grew up does not exist in the same form as back then any more. It was dissolved in the year 2007 due to the fact, that the young women and heiresses at that time did not want to continue the female founder's very frugal and collective based lifestyle. They therefore decided, that the property, which was owned by the women in common, as I have told previously, should be devided equally among them.
Some of the women from the younger generation then chose to sell of some of their land in order to get more cash money for their families, while a few others sold both their land and houses and moved to one of the nearby provincial towns with their families.
But even today most of us, who grew up in our old community continue to live according to the ideals of our mothers in our own families.
And as I have told you in a previous post, some of the boys from the nearby village as young adults moved to our community in order to life among us in Female Led Relationships with the wonderful young women from our community. And they still live in this way with their wifes among us.
So in my and also in their opinion the bright sides of our Female Led way of life by far override the dark sides.
We still have very close ties and relations to one another. And we still very much support and help one another, although the socialist inspired common ownership ideals have been abandoned.
We often have social family or group gatherings (I don't know the correct name for it in English) - our wifes see to that - but of course it is quite common for small groups of people who share viewpoints and a way of life, that differs from the majority society, to have a high degree of group cohesion and solidarity. So it is not special for us, I think.

 

Dear PawEee

Every society has it dark sides. Even a small community like our small community back in the 1970s.

And every society or community also have it's bright sides.

Among us we think, that there ought to be no compulsion, or physical threats or violence, involved in the loving partnership between woman and man. I am expected to obey Larissa, not because I fear her, but because I love and respect her and her natural born Female authority. And this I do, because I as a boy have been taught to respect women. First by my mother, and later on also by my dear little sister Ida, as I have told. They both on rare occasions, when I really deserved it, scolded me and slapped me to my face. But I still don't think that this was unjust or a sign of disrespect towards me.

Children are more or less immature human beings, who have to be raised by the adults to respect the rules of the community that they are born into. To correct, scold, reprimand and punish children who transgress the rules of society or of their family is common practice throughout the world.
I of cause know, that all of this is a banal truth.

I think that our mothers tried to punish their daughters and sons in a way they could understand, so to speak. And my wife Larissa, who have used the same punishing methods (although she seldom had to face slap our boys) confirms that.

When we boys in our small community quarreled - which we of cause sometimes did - we used to fight it out. We reacted physically. And as I have told, we could be quite belligerent when our friends from the nearby village or even worse our girls were moped or attacked by other young boys.
But when the fight was over, it was over. There seldom were bad feelings between us afterwards.

But when the girls quarreled among themselves, they never used physical force. They used the force of their words instead. They would form a clique, which by the use of slander excluded the girl or the girls, whom the clique members wanted to punish.
It had a much graver effect for the girl victims, than the occasional fights between us boys had for us.
This has nothing to do with the Female Led character of our community, because so most boys and girls react everywhere, I think.

So our moms and teenage sisters punished us boys by use of force, if need be, because we boys tended to be more unruly and immature than our sisters, and because this was the way we ourselves reacted when we were angry at someone. It was a language we boys could understand, so to speak.

Our sisters were punished by our moms with stern and shaming words, because it had the desired effect upon them.
I clearly remember how sorry Ida used to be long after, if mom had been angry with her and reprimanded her for something. I got a scolding and a slap to my face, and then it was over with. I didn't feel sorry for hours thereafter.

Of cause I do not want to say, that this is a better way to raise children than your method is, whatever it may be. I only say, that so it was and still is among us.

It is however my conviction, that boys need to learn to respect girls and women from early on, because this respect is not inborn in young boys.
The many appalling revelations of men's abuse of women in the wake of the Me To Movement bear witness to this.

You may find it unjust that I on rare occasions were face slapped by my mother, and later on even by my dear little sister, as mom had delegated the Female authority to Ida when mom was absent.
But so it was in all households of our Female led Community, and none - and I repeat NONE - of us boys raised in our community have ever as grown up men been disrespectful to women, and of cause we certainly have never tried to abuse them.
NOT because we are any better than other people - because this we are not - but because our moms and sisters taught us, that the most shameful thing a boy or a man can do is to use his greater physical strength to force himself upon a woman. It is degrading for her. But utterly shameful and disgraceful for him.

So I think that something good came out of our Female led upbringing after all. Odd as it all might sound.


P.S.: I haven't got more time right now, but I will answer spider203 later on.

 

Dear spider203

Actually some of us children from our Female Led Community went to college, and for instance my friend Knud is an engineer who has an academic degree.
And Knud is not the only one of us, who has an academic education.
You may ask how our mothers could afford to let some of their girls and boys have a higher education.
The answer is, that in Denmark all education is for free, and we even have state education grants. (Link:https://www.su.dk/english/state-educational-grant-and-loan-scheme-su/)
But as you perhaps know, we also have a rather high tax burden in Denmark.
I myself did not go to college. But to my great lock, approximately one years after Larissa and I was married I got a job at a library, a job which I very much liked.
A few of the girls from our community went to college too, but because they were the heiresses, most of them chose a vocational education, which they also could use for practical purposes.
Louise for instance is a very good and skillful ceramicist who has her own workshop, from where she sells her products.
And some of our men, who were boys back then, are artisans, and they are always needed. Not least in a self sufficient community like our Female Led Community tried to be back then.

Today I think, that the academic educations are a bit overestimated. At least here in my own country, where we educate so many young people at our Universities that some of them can't get a job matching their qualification afterwards.
On the other hand we have a shortage of artisans and skilled workers, and this really is a problem.

I myself very much appreciate the academics, because as a person interested in history I read a lot of books written by very knowledgeable and inspiring historians. I must say that I admire these learned men and women.
But I do not think, that people with an academic education generally are wiser than the common people.
An intellectual is not always a wise person. Far from it, I would say.

The decision of the women of our Female Led Community, many of whom were highly educated academics, to have us boys circumcised, could be an example of that.
Why was a highly intelligent, sensitive and compassionate 13 year old girl like my dear little sister Ida wiser than them, as she turned out to be?
Because, I think, the adult women had their basic knowledge from books, and were increasingly taken in by the feminist theories and Matriarchal ideology which they had read about in books, and that the German feminist, who were their close friends, had told them about.
Ida was also very much taken in by those ideas, but her basic knowledge was not based on books and abstract thinking, but on her daily life experiences with other peoples, both adults and girls and boys from our community.
She of course also talked a lot with the teenage children from the nearby village, curious and eager to make friends as she has always been, and had friends among them. After she had read about male circumcision at the Great Communal Library in Copenhagen she therefore even was able to foresee the uproar that the circumcision of us boys might provoke among the villagers. I clearly remember that she mentioned this risk when she argued with mom about it.
History seems to confirm, that a greater percentage of highly educated people than ordinary people who are not university students and do not have an academic degree, tend to support extreme ideological movements, be it on the far left (as in the 1970s) or on the far right.

I know, that in some small sub cultural groups higher education is frowned upon. For instance among Jehova's Witnesses. I know this for a fact, because in school I had a friend who actually was a Jehova's Witness. He was VERY good at English, and he later on wanted to study English at the University. But the pressure from his family not to do so unfortunately made him give up on his plan.
(He and I both belonged to an odd minority group, and therefore we had a shared experience and a mutual sympathy for each other).
But among us our mothers made no restrictions upon us in respect to which education we wanted to choose.