That is appalling. I’d heard of Red Tent before, and was surprised that it wasn’t a single-sex organisation, as it’s based around women’s cultural history of menstruation rather than affirming TW. But this culty stuff sounds like grooming, at least.
It is appalling.
The Red Tent movement is, IMO, an example of astroturfing and perversion of feminism.
In nation states where the cultures are highy misogynistic they use red tent related material to discredit feminism.
It is not hard for them to do this.
Pretty much all Red Tent meetups and organisations are involved in vile cultural approriation of indigenous cultures and ceremonies.
This is one sure fire way to identify the dodgy organisations, they claim to be ancient Native Amercian tradiaitons, often they have fake native medicine women involved or are groups with no native people involved at all. Occasionaly they will expolit a well meaning native elder for their own purposes.
They not infrequently hold sweat lodges, potentially lethally dangerous activities if not held properly by people who, in indigenous communities, are trained for decades and who make significant personal and financial sacrifies to serve their community in this way.
In indigenous communities medicine men and women do not usually provide therapy or personal transformation retreats. Sweatlodges are almost always open only to native people and never to outsiders.
In dangerous new age sweatlodges menstruating woman are encouraged to take part and even to have their own sweats. This would never happen in real sweatlodges. Ever.
This is not because menstruating women are considered dirty or polluted, there are other reasons. The website forum at www.newagefraud.org/smf is run by native people and is a helpful source of information.
Readers with strong stomachs can check out the videos on youtube, many if not all from women involved in the Red Tent movement, promoting face masks made from menstrual blood.
Obviously these videos can be used to discredit feminism.
It is one thing to break down harmful beliefs and taboos about menstruation. It is another thing altogether to promote a pseudo-spiritual movement based around menstruation.
Then there is the issue of "flow"
A lot of the New Thought movmement is concerend with "flow", menstrual flow, the flow of energy in the body, in corporations and in society generally.
There is a discourse that I have described before relating to unblocking stagnated / polluted energy from the body, from corporations and from society.
I believe that at some deeply conscious collective level we all can be manipulated by charming people claiming to remove badness, bring about "authentic" flow and freedom to the body to corporations and to society.
These discourses can be used to manipulate people, organisations and society.
Be on your guard.