Probably not what you think I mean.
Let’s deal with the obvious problem first.
Goddess is a rather loaded word.
It arrives carrying spirituality, femininity, mythology, sexuality, worship, empowerment, divine feminine Instagram accounts, flowing dresses, moon cycles, and quite possibly someone selling you a crystal.
I know.
I used it anyway.
Not because Goddess Philosophy asks women to believe they are literally divine.
And not because I think women need another idealised version of womanhood to spend their lives trying to become.
Quite the opposite.
The Goddess, as I use her, is a symbol.
And symbols are allowed to be complicated.
SHE IS NOT THE PERFECT WOMAN.
There is a version of the Goddess that would be very easy to create.
She would be beautiful.
Sensual but never needy.
Powerful but never difficult.
Soft but never weak.
Confident but never arrogant.
Sexual but somehow always in exactly the correct way.
Maternal when required.
Independent when fashionable.
Emotionally intelligent.
Spiritually evolved.
Financially abundant.
Probably hydrated.
Absolutely exhausting.
I have no interest in replacing one impossible standard of womanhood with another wearing better jewellery.
The Goddess is not the woman who finally gets femininity right.
She is not the reward waiting for you at the end of sufficient self-improvement.
She is not Woman: Premium Edition.
SHE IS EMBODIED DIGNITY.
When I use the word Goddess, I am pointing toward something much simpler.
A woman whose humanity does not disqualify her from dignity.
Her body belongs.
Her intellect belongs.
Her sexuality belongs.
Her uncertainty belongs.
Her ambition belongs.
Her tenderness belongs.
Her anger belongs.
Her contradictions belong.
Her capacity for reason belongs.
Her intuition belongs.
Her desire belongs.
Her limits belong.
Her responsibility belongs.
Her right to change belongs.
Nothing about being fully human makes her less worthy of inhabiting herself.
That is the Goddess.
Not a woman who has transcended her humanity. A woman who no longer treats her humanity as the problem.
WHY A GODDESS?
Because symbols do things ordinary definitions sometimes cannot.
A Goddess occupies space.
She possesses gravity.
She is not apologising for existing before the story has even begun.
Historically and mythologically, goddesses have represented everything from fertility and sexuality to war, wisdom, death, motherhood, destruction, justice, love, sovereignty, rage, creation, and transformation.
They are rarely one thing.
Neither are women.
The symbol gives me somewhere large enough to hold contradiction.
And I needed somewhere large.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT WOMEN BEING SUPERIOR TO MEN.
Goddess does not mean better human.
A woman's dignity does not require a man's diminishment.
Her sovereignty does not become more meaningful when his disappears.
Her freedom does not depend upon his subordination.
If liberation requires simply reversing who gets to dominate whom, we have not escaped the architecture.
We have changed the seating plan.
Goddess Philosophy is interested in sovereignty precisely because it belongs to persons—not because one category of person deserves more of it than another.
FEMININITY IS NOT AN ENTRANCE REQUIREMENT.
You do not need to become softer.
More receptive.
More sensual.
More maternal.
More graceful.
More mysterious.
More traditionally feminine.
You do not need to wear dresses.
You do not need to enjoy being pursued.
You do not need to want marriage.
Children.
Men.
Sex.
Domesticity.
Leadership.
Submission.
Independence.
Any particular relationship structure.
Or beige linen.
Especially not beige linen.
None of these things determines whether you belong to yourself.
Femininity may be deeply meaningful to you.
It may not.
The Goddess is not keeping score.
AND YES, SHE CAN WANT THINGS.
This matters.
There is a strange tendency to make empowered women strangely desireless.
As though liberation should eventually produce a woman who needs nothing, wants nothing, depends on nobody, and can assemble all furniture without assistance.
But desire is not automatically dependence.
Need is not automatically weakness.
Receiving is not automatically submission.
Giving is not automatically self-erasure.
A woman can want love.
Marriage.
Sex.
Children.
Money.
Beauty.
Success.
Protection.
Devotion.
Solitude.
Power.
Pleasure.
A quiet life.
A very loud one.
Possibly all of them before lunch.
The question is not whether her desires pass somebody else's test for sufficiently liberated womanhood.
The question is whether she can encounter those desires honestly enough to decide what she wants to do with them.
SHE IS ALLOWED TO BE WRONG.
This may be my favourite part.
The Goddess can make a terrible decision.
She can misread someone.
Stay too long.
Leave too soon.
Trust the wrong person.
Distrust the right one.
Become convinced of something that later turns out to be nonsense.
Very Goddess of her, actually.
Dignity does not depend upon omniscience.
Sovereignty does not mean always choosing correctly.
Wisdom does not mean reaching a point at which reality can no longer surprise you.
A philosophy that only preserves your dignity while you are making excellent decisions is not offering dignity.
It is offering performance-based membership.
SHE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE HEALED FIRST.
There is no final version of you waiting somewhere beyond enough therapy, journalling, shadow work, meditation, self-development, nervous-system regulation, or excellent boundaries.
Those things may help.
Some may help enormously.
But your humanity is not a renovation project you must complete before you are permitted to inhabit the building.
You can still have wounds.
Patterns.
Fears.
Blind spots.
Grief.
Needs.
Unfinished business.
Most humans do. Suspiciously widespread condition.
The work is not to become untouchable by life.
It is to become increasingly capable of meeting yourself honestly within it.
THE GODDESS IS NOT AN IDENTITY YOU HAVE TO EARN.
You do not graduate into Goddesshood.
There is no certification.
No initiation.
No hierarchy in which sufficiently evolved women eventually receive upgraded seating.
You don't need to call yourself a Goddess at all.
The word is mine.
The life is yours.
Use the symbol if it gives you language for something you recognise.
Discard it if it doesn't.
Because the moment Goddess becomes another identity you must perform correctly, it has failed at the exact thing I created it to protect.
The symbol should make more room for the woman. Never less.
SO, ARE YOU A GODDESS?
I don't know.
Do you want to be?
More importantly:
Does the question help you see yourself differently?
Because I'm considerably less interested in convincing women that they are Goddesses than I am in questioning all the ways women have learned to disappear from their own lives.
The Goddess is simply the figure I chose to stand at the centre of that inquiry.
Not above humanity.
Not beyond it.
Right in the middle of the mess with the rest of us.
And perhaps that is what I mean by Goddess after all:
A woman who does not need to become less human in order to consider herself whole.