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...Early images of the female in form and idea were very different from
those shown today. In ancient civilizations (ca. 2000-4000 B.C.) archaeological
excavations have uncovered clay goddesses showing the female form as
round-bellied and big-breasted. 'Inscribed clay tablets, unearthed relics and
excavated temples tell of religious ceremonies celebrating the potent goddess
of love and fertility'. In early matriarchal societies – where women were
head of the family or children belong to the mother's clan – fertility, desire
and sexual response of women's bodies was recognized as a blessing from
the divine. In many early religions the mother goddess was the supreme
deity, while the male gods played only a secondary role. Pre-monotheistic
Jews and other tribes in their vicinity, worshipped both male and female
deities. The notable female goddesses included Astarte, Anarth, Asherah
and Sherah. Many of the mother goddesses gave birth to the story of
humanity through their ability to mix clay, flesh and blood and bring them
together as earthly and divine. Creation stories became birth chants for
mothers in labour, a contrast to the patriarchal versions of birth through
the Virgin Mary.
In a 7th century Babylonian text, the goddess Ishtar is described as a
person of power, a great priestess and a member of reigning aristocracy.
The goddess Isis arose as a powerful symbol in Egypt in the 3rd Century
A.D., and was appropriated and transformed by the invading Greeks and
Romans into multiple archetypes: Athena, the warrior; Artemis, the
huntress; Hera, the nagging wife; and Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
Over time Isis was tamed down by the Roman patriarchs to evoke
stereotypes of pure and passive femininity. Isis became beautiful and sweet
smelling, kind and nurturing and so eventually fitted into the role of
gentle Virgin Mary. The earth-mother qualities of Isis were appropriated
to the character of Mary; however, without the full breasted and round
bellied version and with hymen intact. Representations of Mary are mostly
without a male partner, as if 'his' role was too divine and mystical to be
seen coupling. The central assumption of the Virgin Birth – that Mary
had conceived without 'knowing a man' (that is, having been sexually
penetrated) — implied the superiority of virginity over marriage, and the
degrading nature of sexual relations.
Imagine how the ideal of purity for women has become a prescription
of celibacy for nuns and priests, and for married women, the expectation
of becoming the 'angel in the house': the domestic guardian of their
husbands' and sons' virtue. Thus, in the patriarchal and monotheistic
religions which replaced the earlier matriarchal systems, the fear of
unregulated woman as the tempter, seducer and 'master' of men meant
her demise as a powerful being – unless of course she remained pure –
that is, a virgin. Similarly, when a woman was menstruating she was deemed
'unclean' and was commanded to remove herself from the 'clean' social
male group, until her time was over. Her exclusion was enforced until the
time of 'cleanliness'.
By contrast, in earlier times icons of warfare and destruction were
feminine, for example, Innana in Sumer, Anath in Canaan, Ishtar in
Mesopotamia, Sekhmmen in Egypt, the Celtic Morrigan, Kali in India,
Pallas in Greece, and Bellsa in Rome. These ancient female deities had
equal control of both war and love. They were honoured with chastity
and promiscuity, nurturing motherliness, and bloodthirsty destruction.
Although honoured with these aspects their 'real' concerns were with the
cycles of birth, growth, love, death, re-birth. In the intervening time these
aspects have been appropriated, misappropriated, divided and taken on
by the patriarchy to argue for the superior status of 'Man'.
'Woman' was synonymous with such deified qualities as being the
guardian of the 'internal' human being through the elements of instinct,
feelings, intuition, emotion as well as birth, death, war, destruction, and
rebirth. Even the Dionysian rites were led by and for women. Dionysius,
along with Pan, Dumuzi, and Attis were gods of women. Because the
concept of the supreme Earth Mother was denied through the separation
of women from men and the arbitrary division of masculine from
feminine elements, gendered anger and hatred emerged as a consequence
of their fragmentation. Aspects of anger, hate, aggression, greed and
violence were therefore honoured in the masculine arenas of business,
sport and war while for women these aspects were demonised as mad,
indecent and deviant.
As matriarchal and pantheistic societies gave way to monotheism and
patriarchy, the carnality of the sinful body demanded the denial of the
flesh to reach a spiritual union with god. With this change the image of
the divine feminine was lost. The new moral order and the hierarchy of
legitimate authority under a paternal god or god-king placed men and
women in opposition, and confined them within the boundaries of lack
and excess. Woman was portrayed as an undisciplined uncontrollable
sexual source, her creativity and her fertility considered a threat to male
status, power and authority. Befitting her status as a disorderly and
transgressive being, woman was set at the bottom of the moral and familial
hierarchy. Her dangerous sexuality was to be conquered, controlled and
judged.
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In the 19th century women were not seen as a whole sex. Women
were fragmented, socially and physically and psychically cut apart. Since
women were regarded primarily as reproductive vessels, any 'sickness'
they experienced, for example, anaemia, hysteria, masturbation, epilepsy,
insanity, criminality, and spinal irritation, was treated on the assumption
that there was a problem with their reproductive organs. These problems
were dealt with in extreme measures in some cases by gynaecologists
performing the removal of ovaries, fallopian tubes or through dilation
and curettage, and female circumcision.
In order to control middle class women in their prescribed roles in the
19th century they were told many strange things. As women entered higher
education men were quick to point out that females who studied botany
would be corrupted by learning about the sex organs of plants and would
thereby be unfit to associate in 'respectable' company. Similarly, women
were also dissuaded from studying anatomy, as they would be declared
'unworthy of honourable wifehood'. Deterring women from knowing
about women's bodies meant that men had the knowledge and the right
to operate on their bodies as doctors with impunity. In this way power was
kept in the hands of the male and female ignorance became essential to
their prescription and diagnosis.
Margaret Sanger wrote about birth control in The Wife's Handbook
(1882), but her tenacious attempts to inform other women about their
bodies meant she was struck off the medical professional register. Founder
of the American Birth Control Movement in the early 1900s, she fought
against archaic legislation which prohibited publication of facts about
contraception.
Margaret Sanger expressed the post-Freudian sentiment 'no woman
can call herself free who does not own and control her own body'. Women
who owned the pervasive male-centred vision for themselves through
wanting to control their own bodies, were accused of 'penis envy' or
accused of chasing up phallus power. In reality, however, women following
Sanger's advice were proactive although male censorship reigned... back to top
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