To understand what made the
matriarchs sound the death knell for their gentle reign--and the Age of
Innocence--we must take into account an important discovery I suggest they make
at this time of rising awareness. One that poses such a serious threat to
female dominance, and is so decisive for the further development of society
that I’m astounded nobody seems to have paid attention to it--namely the
discovery of fatherhood. As far as I know, no one has undertaken to pinpoint
when in the evolution of our species this startling revelation hits home nor
tried to describe the impact it must have made.
Ignorance about men's role in procreation
Scholars seem to agree that
humankind is for eons blissfully ignorant about men‘s role in procreation.
Women are believed to conceive through some extra-human, trans-personal power;
animals can impregnate them (bird, serpent, bull, ram) or the wind, the moon,
ancestral spirits, demons, gods. Some think women give birth spontaneously
through their magical powers or else through something they ate: the Divine
Mother in Japanese tradition becomes pregnant from eating cherries, the virgin
goddesses and princesses of China by eating a lotus flower.
As clearly shown by the way
the world’s creation stories have developed, it’s only step by step, and
apparently against some odds, that men have been able to claim paternity. These
stories go from describing a world born of a goddess alone to one born of a
goddess impregnated by a consort. Then on to a world fashioned from the body of
the goddess by a male warrior, for example from the body of Tiamat--the mother
of gods and the originator of human life--by the Babylonian sun god Marduk. And
finally over to a world created by a male god alone (as in the Old Testament
where the god’s power is his word). And so creation, once the outcome of divine
motherhood, ends up being capitalized by the father.
 |
| Lingam, Polonnaruwa, Sri Lnka |
Freud (in Totem and Taboo),
Otto Rank (in Beyond Psychology) and Bronislaw Malinowski (in The Sexual Life
of Savages) all note that the relationship between the sex act and
pregnancy went unrecognized for long; they also think that this was active
denial and not mere ignorance.
I suggest it’s once people
have learned to domesticate plants that they realize, and also acknowledge, the
role the male plays in procreation. Because when they understand that putting
seeds in the ground makes a crop come up, it should be easy to make the
connection between male seed entering the woman's body and a new human being
issuing from it. I assume it is women who make this connection and that it
turns their whole world upside down.
Impact on relations between the sexes
Two things make the discovery
of paternity a truly mind-boggling event. First, just imagine how disappointing
it must be for Eve to find she can’t bear a child without Adam, and how
exhilarating for Adam to find he can create like a god! The birth of a child is
the down-to-earth effect of his act of impregnation, and nothing
capricious or supernatural. In a flash the very basis for female supremacy is
snatched away from under the woman, and the man, emerging as co-creator of
children, is catapulted to equal status with her.
 |
| Lucas Cranach, Adam and Eve |
Second, fatherhood is the dynamic factor in what may be the most fundamental insight brought us by our new faculty of consciousness: that we’re irrevocably set apart from one another. The metaphor in Genesis makes Adam and Eve cover up their private parts with fig leaves. Only when we comprehend that it takes two people of opposite sex to produce a human being do we see ourselves as separate individuals. This new awareness produces a radical change in the way the sexes relate to each other--and to the sexual act itself. (I also suggest it’s at this juncture that humanity initiates what’ll become a universal taboo against incest, a practice that until now may have been the rule rather than the exception).
For how the village women meet the challenge of paternity, see next
post.
I welcome feedback and would love for you to leave a comment. You can post a comment below this article or you can click on this article's headline.
For the full blog click originofsexism.blogspot.com
Thank you SO much for writing this. I independently came to the same realizations decades ago, and as a man. I believe the consequences for women were more dire than you suggest, namely that women went from goddess of life creation and profound human pleasure to ultimately becoming domesticated human copying machines, producing workers and warriors, slaves and cannon-fodder, for male supremacists and masculine supremacy, reduced mostly to their animal characteristics of breeding and child-rearing. Also, I think that animal husbandry (what a name!) contributed to men finally theorizing our own paternity, as part of the so-called "agricultural revolution", or as Daniel Quinn describes it, "totalitarian agriculture". From this perspective, it is men, not women, that drive overpopulation as part of demographic warfare against other male supremacist competitors. Anyhoo, great to see this spelled out better than I have myself elsewhere. I'm sharing it. Thanks!
ReplyDelete