tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12218155231917371182024-02-20T12:05:11.753-05:00Origin of SexismA Thought AdventureAriadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-85462304007619833742017-05-08T16:52:00.001-04:002017-05-08T16:55:42.182-04:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">40+ </span><new 13="" 2016="" ch="" font="" version=""></new></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> beyond these causes, I see the ultimate source of sexism in our misinterpretation of human nature at the time in our evolution when we developed consciousness. </span><br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "symbol";">·</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My journey back in time and across the earth in
search of the origin of sexism has tracked it down to a universal and literally
stone-age-old misinterpretation of human nature. It dates from and lived in a matriarchal social
order. Because we didn’t grasp that male and female, represented
by mind and instinct, make up the two halves of the psyche (and therefore are
two sides of the same thing), we fatally upset the balance between them. This
imbalance manifests first /was first implemented/fostered by the goddess religion‘s downplaying
of men’s role as fathers. It then continued to be upheld by the patriarchal
social order’s subsequent devaluation/oppression of women.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Snared in a
straitjacket of sin and guilt we learned--and have never since unlearned--that
the only thing entitling us to live a decent (if never happy) life is going
through, in one form or another, the ordeals of sacrifice, suffering and death. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"> As a result, the purpose of having a conscious mind/implications of consciousness/ never became
clear to us and </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A
major reason why we haven’t managed to build a more equitable society is, I
suggest, that both sexes apply an equally distorted view of the other. Patriarchy’s
sexism, or overt discrimination against women, has all the time been
counterbalanced by a reversed sexism, or covert discrimination against men.
Because the psyche is made up equally of a male and a female part/principle,
men and women exercise as much power in society. What happens if society
prevents one sex from wielding its power openly, is simply that it takes its
power underground where it works on sabotaging society’s professed goals.
Patriarchy reduced woman to the role of wife and mother and forced her to lead,
on the surface, a dull, voiceless and plantlike existence. Women’s power, which
could only be exercised through sex and motherhood, therefore developed in the
dark, where values antagonistic to the patriarchal ones could freely proliferate.
It is the unchallenged exercise of this hidden female power that provides men
with an ongoing incentive to wield coercive power over women, and this is how
the vicious circle of strife between the sexes keeps going.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> /shouldn’t this sum-up come earlier? At
start of Part III?/<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">*Although
the feminist movement has alerted us to the wrongs done to women and started to
correct them, we have so far ignored the wrongs done to men. But if our goal is
an equal society, we must look both sets of gender-biased attitudes squarely in
the eye and promptly admit that we all harbor them (though we have largely
repressed and rationalized them)--for only then do we have a chance to uproot
them. Modern psychology tells us we have to face our hidden emotions and re-experience
them before we can establish healthy relations with ourselves and others. But
this we must also do collectively. Society is like an individual who has never
worked out his relationship with his parents: it is still beholden to its
ancestors, i.e. to the values inherited from them, including its outlook on
man. Collectively we take on guilt for the trauma we once suffered, and, not
knowing any other way to get rid of it, we transfer our guilt to someone or
something in our present life that has nothing to do with our original trauma</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">./I’ve said this before/ </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">(continues on p. 161)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">*If
we learn to see ourselves, or parts of ourselves, as evil we start hating it
and since what we hate is a part of ourselves, we become destructive. We can’t
eliminate aggression and anger, but we can learn to see them differently. We
must be friends with our aggression, it is a resource to tap into, to protect
human growth, a will to communicate. Be happy for your anger. Let it out,
understand it and canalize it, because it is only when you rationalize it away
that it will make you sadistic./<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">our
robust resources for battle and putting up, because it, which prevents us from
direct and rousing contact with each other. Battle is what we need because
there is no other way towards full status as human beings but to put up a fight
against the many obstacles that exist (the belief we have to be forced against
our will, reason, our whole arsenal of thought, will, feeling being one of the
worst) and eliminate them. Confrontation on all levels as a principle of life,
mutual exchange, as the hotbed/breeding ground/soil in which the human tree can
grow and ripen. Man as man’s rejoicing, his wellspring and creation.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">I
think it is about time we realized that there is nothing holy or larger than
thou about any religion or philosophy; they are all products of the human mind
and more or less fallible. The reason we let them stand above us is that they
have always been upheld by worldly authorities whose vast physical powers have
scared us into silence. Yet now when we are so much freer, so much more able to
live with uncertainty and when nothing stops us from putting our trust in
ourselves, we are still lost. Judging from the catastrophic increase in
physical, psychosomatic and mental problems in the modern “godless” world, we
seem to lack the appropriate strength to make it without authorities and feel
neither safe nor capable enough on our own.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">One of
the reasons, I suggest, is that we simply don’t know who we are. So busy have
we been following orders that we have never done our first duty, which is
exploring ourselves, learning to respect what our strongest drives are and to
carefully develop them. It is inside us that our motivations can be found and
it is them we should follow, not ideologies, philosophies or any norms that are
imposed on us from the outside, and which claim to be unchangeable. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">For if
love, as I believe, is part of the instinct for self-preservation, we have a
bottomless need for love—and as much for giving it as for receiving it--in a
sense, we are destined to love each other. It is only when we can’t love
ourselves that we can’t love each other, and when we can’t satisfy this crucial
double need that we redirect its uncanny power towards destroying the very
things we do love: ourselves, each other, nature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">For us
love is, I suggest, an inborn pattern preparing us to act and react in a
“species-specific” way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Most
important of all, let’s not forget that we choose our life. /Regardless of the
culture we live in and how we were brought up, as adults we are responsible for
how much of it we embrace and allow to influence us and how much of it we
discard and find substitutes for. By all means, let’s not/ So that we don’t
/get to the point when we/ say at the end of our life (as the man did in
Tolstoy’s novella <i>The Death of Ivan Ilych)</i>, “What if my whole life has
been wrong?” But rather, with Henry David Thoreau, “If you advance confidently
in the direction . . . uncommon knowledge.”/something is missing here/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">/Or,
as French writer Gustave Flaubert wrote in a letter to his friend and colleague
George Sand, “Spend! Be profligate! All great souls, that’s to say all good
ones, expend all their energies regardless of the cost. You must suffer and
enjoy, laugh, cry, love and work, in other words you must let every fiber of
your being thrill with life. That’s the meaning of being human, I think. . .”/
or else quote DHL/<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">I
suggest modern society as a whole has /indeed/ reached a crisis, tottering as
we are on the brink of self-annihilation as a
species—whether through nuclear, chemical and biological holocausts or through
environmental catastrophes such as the pollution of air, water, soil and
climate.</span><br />
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-14415885228346822432016-04-09T23:05:00.000-04:002016-06-29T15:30:15.507-04:0041. Conclusion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgEpyy5Qy0Jbebqyt_dkxNZYrhnpY7j5SRuW_VpZi21plwHNDu_GSNvwkfEhukG_TgJJteuDA4O17x3Tm5HyLAh-kEhOiG4vLNad-7vZnxyEpeuKZlU5rvyea8nyLjHUden6qG4JZdhucr/s1600/on+your+mark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgEpyy5Qy0Jbebqyt_dkxNZYrhnpY7j5SRuW_VpZi21plwHNDu_GSNvwkfEhukG_TgJJteuDA4O17x3Tm5HyLAh-kEhOiG4vLNad-7vZnxyEpeuKZlU5rvyea8nyLjHUden6qG4JZdhucr/s200/on+your+mark.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On your mark!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We already live in a time when the gender roles are in flux. The concept of femininity has been expanding for several decades and the concept of masculinity has reached a crisis. Humanity marches on and old verities don't apply anymore. To be born in the body of one sex no longer means that you have to live in any particular way. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As old boundaries are loosening, and how to live is becoming a matter of individual choice, one thing becomes clear: it's on ourselves we need to turn the spotlight. Because it's the thoughts, feelings and attitudes we are least conscious of that most need changing. (A free test of our unconscious biases is </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">available on www.projectimplicit.com ).</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many people deny that sexism still exists. One reason may be that they don't even know they are sexists. Few of us really </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chose</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to become that way, we just grew up with it. Having come to believe that women are inferior to them, men more or less take for granted that being sexist is the normal and natural way to relate to women. And women who resent the inferior position of their sex take for granted that being sexist in reverse is the normal and natural way to relate to men.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not that we </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">want</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to be this way, it just has become a habit so ingrained as to seem like a substance in the blood. But it is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in our blood! Only in our heads. And these we can turn around. So if we really want to change that habit, what we need is really effective methods. For starters maybe confronting the uncomfortable truth that because of our upbringing (plus unfamiliarity with the contents of our unconscious) we have indeed all, women and men, been grossly unfair both to ourselves and each other.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a man this could mean seeing that the real reason why he hits his wife is not anything she does or says, but an anger at her sex born of his unconscious fear of female power. For a woman it could mean becoming aware that the deepest reason why she always finds fault with her husband is not anything he does or doesn’t do, but a generic anger at the male sex.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But let's give ourselves some slack. It's not our fault that we were born and bred in a sexist society. That children must take over their elders’ view of the world is an inescapable part of the human condition. As is the fact that it takes at least a quarter of our lifetime to form our own view--and even longer to assert it. So let's just accept this. Then go on to forgive ourselves and each other for the past realizing that we simply couldn't help it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As adults, however, we </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">can</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> help how we act, because we can decide if we want to stay in the worldview we've inherited, or to modify it or discard it. Everybody has the inner resources to do so, although the outer conditions may not be accessible to everyone everywhere. (As for instance in </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.2; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">places where having a mind of your own means imprisonment or death). At the same time we can't </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.2; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;">defend our present behavior by referring to how we were brought up or what was 'done' to us in the past. Once grown up we act as we choose to act, consciously or unconsciously. To passively follow a prevailing pattern is a choice too.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="157" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/KzQQc651M4kLrsDxjI6G_fe1O9DK_ygOdcf_kRIxIzv14MK9dulotMsMro3HadiB-SB5n62Gyj162RR1xq4-BoqW5_-SMGj75ibj3Ir_37QTOVJKB_STcUzmm-YJ9y-Vp4m94tzE" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="427" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Get set, go!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Before discussing what constitutes a healthy non-sexist behavior we have to answer a key question. Why do we hold on to the tragic old misconception of what it means to be human that was implicit already in the world's first organized religion and which is still haunting us today? Keeping in mind that the way we see ourselves is the way we look at everybody else, hasn’t the time come to produce a fairer, more constructive description of ourselves?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let's face it: we were not meant to be perfect nor do we need to be. Life for us is a never-ending experiment, trial and error, a road not yet taken, bound to be lined with mistakes. But mistakes are not wrongs. They are steppingstones to new insights, chances to learn new and better ways.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So let's throw out the window all the negative baloney we're jam-packed with: you can't, you shan't. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre-wrap;">you're wrong, you're not worth it, etc. And in with affirmations, like we deserve respect, we deserve happiness, it's the birthright of every human being to thoroughly enjoy life.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Human beings want to live as the animals do, from inside out following their own species-appropriate kind of life. If held up to impossible standards like perfection, we will react with righteous rage and destructiveness. As will any elephant forced to walk on a tight-rope! Einstein put it this way, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life thinking it is stupid."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Writes Tomas Tranströmer in his poem </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Romanesque arches,</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Don't be ashamed to be a human being, be proud!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You'll never be complete, and that's as it should be."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What then </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> healthy non-sexist behavior? A topic worth brainstorming about! Perhaps something like emotionally adult behavior? One that displays a fair balance between the male and female components of the psyche--harmonizing feeling and thinking, passion and reason, spontaneity and reflection. In more concrete terms: being able to live with uncertainty, comfortable in the knowledge that there are no pat answers or any truths that last forever. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe establishing a reasonably stable center inside oneself so as to allow—even exult in—continuous change and growth. Also flexible enough to admit when we are wrong and, instead of indulging in guilt for some mistake, going on from there to make a better choice next time. Or as the embroidery says on a cushion in the home of one of my friends, “A woman who can’t change her mind probably doesn’t have one.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conflicts will never cease coming up—for they are natural ingredients in human interaction--but we can change the way we look at them. Especially if we use one of the superb human assets, our sense of humor, and especially if we direct it at ourselves. One day, I'm convinced, we'll not see conflicts as incentives to hostile encounters but as invitations to stimulating contests and new chances to probe our resources. To become, in the words of American psychologist Abraham Maslow, "everything we are capable of becoming." </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I predict a future, however long in coming, when we regard the use of force as lunatic behavior; when, rather than project our discord onto others, we start by tracing its causes back to ourselves and the circumstances that formed us. When we realize that the only important thing is what's going on in our mind and become open to another way of seeing. This is what the spiritual movement </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Course in Miracles</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> talks about, for by 'miracle' they mean a shift in perception.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or as Fridtjof Nansen, Nobel Prize Laureate in 1922, said (according to the magnet I bought at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm), "The impossible is what takes a little longer."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But what am I saying? Am I some kind of Rousseau who believes human beings are naturally good, just perverted by culture? Another Pollyanna who thinks we can live without pain and suffering? Isn’t it rather natural to feel guilty and sinful at times, and aren’t there values and goals worth sacrificing for?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course it's appropriate to feel ashamed if we've done what we know we shouldn’t have (whether we want to label it 'sin' is a matter of taste). And some sacrifice may indeed be needed for tasks worthy of pursuing--like setting aside our comfort and waving farewell to rationalizations and defenses. What I want us to steer clear of is the metaphysical overtones to our guilt, the doomsday atmosphere created by overlords we think we must pay fealty to. We're not to blame for half the things we accuse ourselves of (though maybe for some others!) nor are we responsible for having been brainwashed at a time in our personal life (or in history) when we'd not yet come into our own.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our only allegiance is to what we know within to be the right way; and if we need the guidance of </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre-wrap;">some religious belief to find it, that of course is a choice. The essential thing is to act at nobody else's </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre-wrap;">urging but our own, since we alone are accountable for the course of our life. The work we must do is with ourselves. It's about unmasking our own self-deception. I don’t know if we can eliminate suffering, but I'm sure we can learn to live with considerably less of it than we do now. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In case we’re afraid to challenge established ways of thinking, let’s recall Nelson Mandela’s words when he was inaugurated as president of South Africa, “The need to subordinate ourselves is not only an outdated response to fear but a way of escaping from responsibility, a wish not to face the iron law that we, and only we, alone or in groups, are the creators of our life and our world."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rather than a Rousseau or a Pollyanna, what I think I am is an existentialist. I believe we are responsible for the choices we make, including what we do with the contents of our unconscious. Optimist as I am I predict that the time will come when we realize that we only see enemies in others because we're not friends with ourselves, and only need power over others because we don’t have power over ourselves. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can change. Some have done it and more will follow.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the end</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">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.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the full blog click </span><a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #993322; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">originofsexism.blogspot.com</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.333333333333332px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-49208839206092384582016-03-27T12:53:00.001-04:002016-08-10T13:42:27.539-04:0040. Wrapping up<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaPgT4Rrn-DaXttQDFmiNEhd4Ebk2y_77AXQ4D1hFaJDAFsCsZyG3O0Y-JdCZecpYzyCK8pXivXcG9lViuSE75Bdm8U9DQJLQ_mhq6bNVqqd2aoWgfNOdRealZR7iwieQjX3iWrzDeb1xO/s1600/yin_yang_dragons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaPgT4Rrn-DaXttQDFmiNEhd4Ebk2y_77AXQ4D1hFaJDAFsCsZyG3O0Y-JdCZecpYzyCK8pXivXcG9lViuSE75Bdm8U9DQJLQ_mhq6bNVqqd2aoWgfNOdRealZR7iwieQjX3iWrzDeb1xO/s200/yin_yang_dragons.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So why did I go on this lengthy journey through time, across continents and cultures, questioning, analyzing and speculating? I wanted to understand why we live in a sick society and in particular what prompts the universal practice of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">misogyny</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-e21bbd3b-49ac-59bb-eb71-5b024853d6f3" style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Lewis Mumford's book </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Condition of Man </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I read the following</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “People whose course of life has reached a crisis must confront their collective past as fully as a neurotic patient must unbury his personal life: long-forgotten traumas in history may have a disastrous effect upon millions who remain unaware of them.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That society has reached a crisis seemed to me beyond doubt, tottering as we are on the brink of self-annihilation, whether through nuclear, chemical and biological holocausts or through environmental catastrophes like the pollution of air, water, soil and climate.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can it be, I asked myself, that society's destructive behavior patterns are the effect of long-forgotten traumas in our collective past? So that the reason we keep repeating these patterns is that we haven’t unburied their underlying traumas? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Backed by Freud’s idea of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">repetition-compulsion</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I then postulated that if a society never examines, and manages to exorcise, the mental shock dealt it by some frightful events early in its history, there is a risk that the morbid behavior it gave rise to recurs in generation after generation. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I embarked on my theory of a Malevolent Matriarchy because I</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">became intrigued with the ritual of male sacrifice in the goddess cults of the early farming communities; not only because this weird phenomenon is depicted in mythologies all around the world but because the belief system that created it still keeps its grip on humanity. I see in this once widely practiced custom the long-forgotten trauma buried under sexism.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A brief summary </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of my Thought Adventure or theory of The Origin of Sexism</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The reason we live in a misogynist society is that men suffer from </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">an inferiority complex vis-à-vis women </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for which they compensate by oppressing women. This complex goes back to prehistoric times when the female ranked higher than the male; first because of a superstitious belief that she produced children by magic; later, because in the early farming villages males were sacrificed to a Great Mother Goddess, women ruled and men were oppressed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I postulate that for most of our history as a species humanity lived under some form of matriarchy or mother-rule. By this I mean that, for sheer survival reasons, life in the human group centered around mother and offspring. At the dawn of consciousness when women's monopoly on parenthood was threatened by the discovery of men's role in procreation, the benevolent female reign turned into a dictatorship.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But as consciousness kept evolving and villages grew into cities that depended on large-scale work by males, men turned the tables on the matriarchs. The anger that their inferior status had amassed in men now exploded in various forms of</span><a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/09/4-male-inferiority-complex-i.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">exaggerated aggressiveness</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, or the overcompensation characteristic of the inferiority complex. They stripped women of power and introduced a patriarchal rule as oppressive of women as the matriarchal rule had been of men.</span></div>
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</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Question: Why is misogyny still around? If it was an inferiority complex incurred in a previous matriarchy that made men oppress women, why aren't men rid of it by now after reigning supreme for about six millenniums?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are three main reasons:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Men don't know that they suffer from this complex</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. After seizing power they quickly buried it in their unconscious, rationalized their fear of woman as 'woman equals evil' and topped it with a doctrine of female inferiority authorizing them to put women down. But forgetting one's feelings doesn't erase them. Since men never examined theirs, they never got rid of their complex--nor of the incentive for devaluing women. And ever since, not realizing that they keep compensating for feeling inferior, men have believed their actions to be proofs of male superiority.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Women reinforce men's inferiority complex</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. To compensate for being deprived of a voice in society they built a shadow society of their own in the home, and created an enhanced mother role that gave them permission to put males down Of these acts of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">misandry</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the most detrimental to masculine wholeness is reducing fatherhood to at the most an auxiliary role in child-rearing. Because this </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">parental inequality</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prevents them from having an impact equal to women's on the hearts and minds of their children, men are robbed of their full share in what may be the most consequential of powers--that of shaping the fabric of tomorrow's society.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Question: But how important is parental inequality? Do men care?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though some fathers may not be aware of being discriminated against or are too timid to assert their paternal rights, more and more of them are today demanding equal parenting. But to accept such a concept will take time, because the sum and substance of it--that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the paternal role is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as indispensable as the maternal</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the raising of children </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> therefore </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">demands as much time</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--calls for a radical transformation of the entire social structure.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3) The third major thing that keeps the male inferiority complex alive is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the bias against the male sex </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to be found </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> universally accepted </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">definitions of masculinity and femininity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Womanhood is everywhere seen as innate in a woman, but a man can only gain manhood through his own efforts. Men are denied the safety women have knowing that their value as human beings is intrinsic.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As to the origin of this bias I put my bet on the matriarchs. Who but they could have had the audacity to stamp the male as less favored by Nature or not as grounded to the earth as the female? That we haven't corrected this nonsense is just one example of how stuck we are in the quagmire of obsolete ideas. We remain glued to past thinking all the way down into prehistory.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Question: But aren't men blissfully ignorant of this bias against masculinity?</span></div>
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</b> <br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They may not be conscious of it but since it's the root cause of their inferiority complex, this unfair estimation of their sex is what impels men to overcompensate. In their race to prove a usefulness equivalent to women's innate value, patriarchy's men applied the power of their newly awakened conscious minds to show they could build civilization. At the same time they withheld that power from women and thus for eons denied society the potential contributions of half of its human population.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ultimately, I track down the origin of sexism to</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> our misreading of human nature</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at the time when we developed consciousness. Because we didn't grasp that mind and instinct (symbolized by the male and female principles) make up the two halves of our psyche, we fatally upset the balance between them. We never learned to construct our behavior in harmony with the laws of nature.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We cut off the conscious mind from its vital link to the instincts and allowed it to operate in a vacuum--much like a director who, convinced that he knows better than the playwright what the play is all about, compels both actors and audience to go along with his own far-fetched interpretation.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But since ignoring them did not make the instincts disappear, they got to work undermining society's conscious goals. An extreme example of such a split on a national scale was Nazi Germany. In her memoir </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The War</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, French author Marguerite Duras writes that despite being ”one of the grandest civilized nations in the world, the age-long capital of music,” Germany “systematically murdered eleven million human beings with the absolute efficiency of a national industry."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Contributing to our staying sexist (and to being prejudiced in general) is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">misanthropic view of humanity </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that has held us</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> hostage throughout history. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sin and guilt, expiable only by obedience to various authorities are still staple ingredients in the state of consciousness of peoples everywhere. The lot of humans is to live in constant fear of punishment for wrongdoings that our very nature was designed to make us commit. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hold this offensive and totally arbitrary outlook on humanity responsible </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for the mess the world is in. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think that what has led us to take destructive and self-destructive behavior for granted is that we accept the insane idea that suffering,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">including sacrifice and violent death, is not only inevitable but our just deserts. We blame others to throw the burden of constitutional guilt off our shoulders and ease the chafing feeling that we are never right, never good or lovable enough. This is a</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> defeatist view that also fosters self-righteousness and social hypocrisy. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can’t be honest, we dare not show who we are, not even to ourselves.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So it’s only against the backdrop of the pre-patriarchal matriarchy’s oppression of men--and the fear of womanhood it planted in the male psyche--that we can understand the phenomenon of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">misogyny</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Likewise, it’s only against the backdrop of the subsequent patriarchy’s oppression of women--and the repressed anger it accumulated in women--that we can understand the phenomenon of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">misandry</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">T</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">oday, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gradually though not universally, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it'</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">s becoming accepted</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that the sexes should enjoy equal rights (which would express </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the built-in balance of power between complementary forces of nature). Yet</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> despite much brain wrestling almost no </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">real, tangible gender equality manifested in actual living conditions has yet materialized, And why? Because we are still mired, women as well as men, in these two types of sexist behavior.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What then are we to do if we want to erase sexism in all its shapes and forms? For some reflections on this, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">see the next, and last, post.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the full blog click </span><a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #993322; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">originofsexism.blogspot.com</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 13.3333px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-66114811747784258562016-02-28T23:51:00.000-05:002016-04-09T23:27:11.010-04:0039. The Libido<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We all</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> know and</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> accept, I think, that our</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> <b>sexual drive</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b> </b>is a constant presence in life representing a primal urg</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">e to live on every possible level. That the libido </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><b>plays </b></span><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> part </span></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><b>in all we do</b> including problem-solving and constructive thinking, providing the</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> kindling on the fire that makes successful business deals, legislative bills and peace accords. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I also think we</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> know that children are sexual beings already as babies and that, to ensure their sexual and psychological maturity, we </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">must respect </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">their auto-erotic needs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">That's why <b>I call the taboo</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">patriarchy imposes </span><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">on </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">free and unconstrained</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> sexual activity </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">one of the worst crimes committed </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">against </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">humanity</span></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">. The repercussions on society</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">of polluting </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">this fountain </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">of simple and </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">easily available </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">joy </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">are so manifold that it's hard to take stock of them. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">But maybe the most seminal effect is the difficulty the sexes </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">have</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> to form whole and </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">satisfying relationships with each other.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">I have suggested that <b>men have a twofold </b></span><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">fear of woman--</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">in her capacity <b>as both</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>authority figure and sexual being</b>, And <b>I have described</b> the universal</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> phenomenon of <b>misogyny as born of</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b> a hostility to the </b>entire <b>female sex </b>that this fear had fomented in men; a hostility <b>so momentous </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>as to</b> <b>corrupt </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>men's</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b> natural instincts</b>. I'll now take a look at male sexuality</span><br />
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<u><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Male sex</span></u><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So far</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> there hasn't been much public discussion about male sexuality.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Because it's relatively easy for a man</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> to release his sperm,</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">it's been taken for granted that this also gives him an orgasm. But research shows--and many men know--that <b>there is </b>indeed <b>a difference between </b></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>orgasm and evacuation of sperm</b>.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <b>Men can release sperm </b></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>without experiencing any</b></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b> lust</b> or very little (and sometimes feeling flat-out displeasure). They can also have non-ejaculatory orgasms, which are less intense and pleasurable but which </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">can be quite enjoyable for older men</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">, according to </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Shakti Amarantha </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">in her article </span><span style="font-style: italic;">E</span><span style="font-style: italic;">jaculation</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i> vs Orgasm. What's the difference? (Thought Catalog).</i></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"<b>Orgasm</b>," she writes, "<b>happens in the brain, ejaculation in prostate and urethra.</b> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> brain scans, orgasms look like an epileptic fit--an electric storm that sweeps over the brain," </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Although a good amount of research has been done </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">on male orgasm </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">since Kinsey's first studies in the 1950's, "there is still much we don't know or understand," writes men's health expert Jerry Kennard in</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: times, 'times new roman', serif;">about.com/abouthealth</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">More is known about female orgasm than male.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">In his article in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Den manliga Orgasmen</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">, ed. Tor Nörrestrander, the Danish physician and sexologist </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Preben Hertoft</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"> says that <b>being able to </b></span><span style="text-align: justify;"><b>have an orgasm </b></span><span style="text-align: justify;">has</span><span style="text-align: justify;"> got </span><span style="text-align: justify;">nothing to do</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">with </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">technique or finding new stimulation. It <b>has </b>only </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>to do </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>with a man's </b>personality<b>,</b> in particular his<b> ability to enjoy intimacy</b>. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">Because</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">being able to </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">experience intense pleasure at the</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> release of sperm </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;">is</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"> a matter of <b>feel</b>ing <b>secure enough to </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>let oneself go</b> and about enjoying the dependence on one's partner <b>without fear of losing control</b>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've found <b>no statistics on </b>how common <b>the lack of </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>orgasm</b> is<b> in men </b>during sex </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">with women</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, But some studies indicate it's more frequent than expected.<b> Can </b>the very scarcity of such information be linked to <b>t</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>he </b>current <b>pressure on men to 'perform</b>?' So that </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the anxiety </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">caused by </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">this pressure may actually<b> </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>prevent them from even taking pleasure</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>into account</b> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>when measuring </b>the degree of </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>their sexual satisfaction</b>?</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>Is it possible</b>, in other words, <b>that</b> to many men</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> what counts </b>for sex to be </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">successful<b> </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">is not </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">how </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">pleasurable it <b>is</b> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">but <b>simply that they can do it</b>--and rate as </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">good performers?!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>If </b>this is<b> so, it sheds light on </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">f</span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ear of intimacy and commitment,</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> </b>problem common in men </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(though by no means only in them), </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Because <b>if we had believed</b> that</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>the typically male angle on sex</b>--getting laid as fast and as often as possible--</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>sprang from a </b>macho </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>need to dominate women</b>, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>we may</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> have to</b> reconsider. A</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">nd <b>ask</b> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>instead if </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>it doesn't spring</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>from</b> <b>a wish </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>to</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> </b>avoid women, to<b> f</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>lee</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <b>from</b> dependence and closeness--</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">in essence from <b>their own need of women</b>? A <b>proof,</b> it seems to me, <b>that</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b> </b>the age-old but unacknowledged<b> male fear of womanhood</b>, the creator and foundation of </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">the male inferiority complex, <b>is still alive</b> and kicking.</span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sexual attraction</span></u><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some people wonder</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">what will become of the</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> sexual attraction </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">once</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">the sexes </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">realize how alike they are.</span></b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Will </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">open display of men's </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">feminine side and of women's masculine side</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> take away the </span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">thrill</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> of the differences, </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">the mystery of the otherness?</span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">If, as the French say, the psyche </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">is indeed genderless</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (<i>l'âme </i></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>n‘a pas de sexe</i>), isn't the body too?</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span><br />
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<b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">I think</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"> the effect will be just the opposite</span><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">.</b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"> First, once both men and women feel </span><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">that </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">their 'bisexual' </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">psyche is accepted, the less reason they will have to resent and envy each other. Second, <b>only when </b>they can be wholly themselves, <b>free from old restrictions, will the sexes</b> be able to <b>fully appreciate</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;"><b> the real differences between them</b>. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">And the real differences are physical. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Why haven’t we invented more </b>imaginative and <b>refined ways to savor</b> everything that’s delicious about <b>the corporeal presence of the opposite sex?</b> Like how men and women look, sound, smell, dress, move their bodies </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">and</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> handle </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">objects</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">—all the things the French refer to when they exclaim, </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Vive la différence</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">! </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Ways other than having sex I mean. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">H</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">opping</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> into </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">bed with everyb</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ody we are sexually attracted to can be just </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">a bit crude, don't you think, and tiring too, not to speak of impractical? </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But <b>s</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>houldn't there be alternative modes</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> of enjoying our libido needs</b>, some</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> middle way between infidelity and no sex at all?</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> Because t</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">here's no reason we should </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">shut down all sexual feelings except those we have for our spouse or significant other. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">In our modern </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">world where working men and women constantly intermingle and there’s plenty of room for sexual interplay,<b> why not practice </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>more of the old</b> </span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;">sophisticated</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>art of flirting</b>, the </span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;">tried and true</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> form of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">lovemaking that stops short of intercourse? Why not <b>make sexual love also a</b> delicate <b>game </b></span></span><b style="font-size: 12pt;">to play in the mind-</b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">-yes, in glances, words and laughter too, but primarily in fantasies and dreams that mesmerize and satiate the soul! </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Of course </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">to allow</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> ourselves to exult in the attraction we feel for others </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">and others feel for us <b>we must first </b>have learned to </span><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">look </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">at</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">our sexuality </span></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>without a hint of</b> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">sin or <b>shame</b></span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">, </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and to</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>treat it </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><b>with </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>respect</b> </span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>both </b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">a source of<b> joy and</b> as our <b>responsibility</b>. It may take long to get there depending on how far behind we are and how much we want it, but get there we will!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Let me now sum up this </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">blo</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">g, which has been an outline of my theory of how the sexist society began and why we still live in one. </span><i style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">See next post. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><b style="background-color: white;">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.</b></i></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the full blog click <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/" style="color: #993322; text-decoration: none;">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></span></b></i></i></span></span> </span></span></div>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-17029703666759512592016-02-19T21:38:00.000-05:002016-03-11T17:46:46.306-05:0038. Fatherhood <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">During the decades we have debated sexual equality few things have amazed me more than that <b>no one has </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"><b>challenged woman's near-monopoly on parenting</b>. If anything is a sign of the sluggish state of our collective consciousness, it's that we don't question the altogether arbitrary idea turned truism that women are better suited than men to care for children. However true it is that only women can bear and nurse babies, <b>where's the proof that </b>after weaning them <b>women are more apt than men to nurture the children </b>and that kids are better off this way?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"><u><a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/10/8-parental-inequality.html" target="_blank">Human vs animal parenting</a></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; text-align: left;">We could say that for the human species </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; text-align: left;">reproduction</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; text-align: left;">doesn't stop with birth, since the product, the infant, is so far from ready to function on its own. </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"><b>B</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"><b>ringing children into the world,</b> then, <b>is just the beginning of human parenting</b>; <b>a </b></span><b><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">mere prelude</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"> </span></b><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"><b>to the many years</b> of arduous and unremitting work </span><b><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">it takes t</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">o prepare them</span></b><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"><b> for adulthood</b> in an ever-changing and steadily more complex world.</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"> M</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">om and Dad must not only t</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">ransmit values and morals</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"> (preferably by example) </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">but also </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">encourage </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">the kids</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"> to </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">think for themselves</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">. </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">A</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">s distinct from</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"> their animal counterparts, </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">human parents </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">have a </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">two-fold task: first help</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">ing their young to fit into</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">their cultural </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">environment </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">and then to </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">gradually modify it</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">As I see it, when <b>handing men a
constricted paternal role </b>(typically one of wage-earner and disciplinarian without much room for emotional closeness to their children), </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">society dealt a severe blow to their sense of wholeness. Because not to allow men to</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> freely develop their emotive intelligence <b>is</b> to block them</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> from using the entire range of their humanness; i.e., <b>to </b></span><b><span style="font-size: 16px;">cheat them</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>of a vital part of their manhood</b>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But in so doing <b>we also cheat ourselves</b>. Because, in my opinion, <b>a chief reason why </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>we remain on an adolescent level</b> of emotional development </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>is</b> that </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">we spend our formative years with <b>to</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>o little </b></span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>experience of</b> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">true fatherliness--</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">or </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the nourishing presence </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">of a <b>steady fatherly concern</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. This, I argue, is chiefly why we're incapable, as a </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">collective, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">of establishing fair and equal social systems and, as individuals, of living the full </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">and well-rounded life that is the </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">birthright of every human being</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><u>The parental roles</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>It's </b>therefore <b>high time we open a discussion about</b> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">what we mean by 'fatherly' and 'motherly' and </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">what <b>the parental roles</b> ought to be. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Not </b>in terms of <b>making a strict division</b> between dad’s role and mom‘s role, <b>but </b>rather<b> to clarify why two separate roles are needed </b>and what effects we want them to have. How do we best define these terms so that they cover the masculine and feminine principles of the psyche that they are based on? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Might </b>for instance <b>a
motherly task be encouraging children to BE-</b>-stay true to their inner selves, affirm
and embrace life as it is (as Fromm suggests in his book </span><i style="font-family: 'times new roman';">The Art of Loving)</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">?
<b>And might encouraging them to BECOME</b>--use mental concepts, master new things
and change other things--<b>be a fatherly task</b>? </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">To work, I<i> </i>think<i> </i>the parental influences must </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">complement each other,</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> one pointing inwards, the other outwards, because </span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>what makes it </b>so <b>hard for us-</b>-women as well as men --</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>to grow up </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>is</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> <b>not </b>getting <b>enough input from both parental sources</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;">. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Whichever way we define the parental roles,
<b>the end in view must be that children learn </b>enough from both to become able<b> to
use</b>--and value as highly--<b>both sides of their psyche</b>. It doesn’t matter whether
father plays a 'motherly' and mother a 'fatherly' role since each parent is capable of fulfilling either function. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">By the way, s</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ome
of the best ‘mothers’ </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">(e.g., in the sense of being patient, attentive, non-judgmental)</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> that </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I've met in my life are actually men.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u>Parental equality</u></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>The</b></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>underestimated father </b></span></span></span><b style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">role is </b><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>a major ingredient in the male inferiority complex</b>, and therefore an important</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> catalyst of men’s animosity toward women. To me, <b>men's derogatory attitude toward the maternal role (</b>the only thing women can do)</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b>is</b> nothing but <b>an example of 'sour grapes</b>.' Since becoming mothers (and wielding their</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">special power) is out of reach for them, men choose to depreciate the entire female sex.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>I </b>seriously <b>doubt we’ll </b>ever <b>see the end of sexism until we </b>stop denying and instead emphatically<b> affirm two crucial--</b>and embarrassingly obvious--<b>truths.</b> One, that <b>the male is born with </b>as much of <b>a paternal instinct </b>as the female is with a maternal. Two, that <b>fatherliness is </b>as <b>indispensable </b>as motherliness <b>for the proper growth of human beings.</b> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>If we affirm these truths</b> and if men make the paternal presence in their kids' life (from birth onwards) as active, palpable and unfailing as the maternal presence</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">, then <b>gone </b>with the wind <b>will be every reason </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>for men to resent the power of </b></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><b>motherhood</b>. Because now fatherhood will have the same power, and Dad will be as influential as Mom in molding the</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> hearts and minds of his kids.. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">And in the wake of this wind <b>gone will </b>also <b>be</b></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><b> a main incentive for misogyny</b>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Let me now sum up this blog, which has been an outline of my ideas about the origin of the sexist society and why we still live in one. </span><i style="font-family: 'times new roman';">See next post</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the full blog click <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/" style="color: #993322; text-decoration: none;">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></span></b></i></i></span></span> </span></span><span style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"> </span></span></span></span>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-45662992420877766482016-02-15T11:10:00.001-05:002016-03-11T15:18:02.989-05:0037. Womanhood<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I started out this blog by arguing </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">that <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/06/2-on-equality.html" target="_blank">equality </a>between the sexes is a dictate of ‘natural law.’ As opposite and complementary forces of nature, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">men and women represent two sides of the same physical phenomenon, homo sapiens, and to define that phenomenon in its entirety we need to take both into account. I concluded that <b>the sexes </b></span><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">exercise an equal amount of power in society </span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">(regardless of whether they are granted equal rights </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">or not), and that <b>women</b> therefore <b>are as responsible as men for its sexist bias</b>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u>Western culture</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Womanhood's</b> systemic i<b>nfluence on our view of manhood isn't much</b> talked about or <b>analyzed </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>in the West</b>. As if we were more reluctant here than elsewhere</span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> to admit </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">the power women have</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> to shape our outlook on the world. Yet</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"> there is <b>one</b></span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"> interesting </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>post-Freudian theory </b>(</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">put forward by </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">psychologists like Erik Erikson, D.W. Winnicott and others) </span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">that </span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;">no longer </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">t</span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>races men’s struggles with manhood</b></span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">to </span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;">oedipal traumas and castration fears but </span><b><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">to</span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the relation between mother and son</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But <b>instead of exploring the role of nurture</b>, <b>i.e.</b>, the individual <b>mother's relationship to her son</b>--and </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">holding out hope of</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> finding the cause of men's fear of intimacy--<b>this theory puts the onus </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>on nature.</b> I</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">t declares that <b>it's harder for a boy than for a girl t</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>o grow up because</b>, unlike her,</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> he can't acquire an</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> individual identity </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">by simply reinforcing his </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">early symbiotic union with mother. Since<b> he is born male</b> he must break that same union and create a masculine identity all by himself. Which supposedly explains men's regressive, so-called Peter Pan syndrome, or wish to remain in the blissful primeval oneness with mother.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Here again we have </span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;">an example</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> of</b> <b>the</b> preposterous <b>view</b> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">of the sexes </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">we inherited from the matriarchs: </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">that masculinity is not a congenital characteristic in males</b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> the way femininity is in females but a quality men must develop, and prove worthy of, through their own efforts. A view that ranks men as Nature's stepchildren at the same time, admittedly, as it also offers them a chance to develop hero status. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back-piercing to please goddess Kali</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 16px;"><u>Eastern culture</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Other cultures are more outspoken </b>about the power women exercise<b> </b>and its consequences for men. <b>The theme of the evil mother </b>(who holds back food and/or tempts her son sexually) is universal but, </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">as Doniger O'Flaherty puts it</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">,“<b>seems especially prominent in India.</b>“ </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The goddess <b>Kali only</b> loses her demonic characteristics and <b>becomes kind and gentle in exchange for</b> absolute <b>male submission</b>; or as G. Morris Carstairs puts it in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">The Twice-Born</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, “only when one has surrendered one’s manhood and become a helpless infant once again.” A</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">ccording to </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Doniger, i</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">n both old and contemporary local </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Indian</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">mythology, tales abound of “male devotees who cut off their own heads in an act of devotion to Kali.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Because <b>Hindu culture</b>--in which androgyny is a powerful theme--<b>puts great stress on virility</b>, there’s much anxiety about it among men not only in India (where men‘s attachments to mother are unusually strong) but also in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">According to Carstairs, <b>Indian men regard women,</b> especially their wives, <b>as more libidinous than they</b>; if men can’t satisfy them, women become witches who may send the men to hell. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>A belief,</b> writes Gudhir Kakar (in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India)</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">,<b> that makes many men</b> adopt “an <b>avoid</b>ance behavior in <b>sex relations</b>” causing women to extend a provocative sexual presence towards their sons. <b>And</b> <b>that</b> in turn<b> produces “adult men who fear sexuality with mature women.</b>”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">From Gilmore we learn that although manhood has an androgynous quality </span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>in Chinese</b></span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b> art and religion</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>, the stress is firm on a real man to have a ’manly temperament’</b>--be decisive, strong (both physically and mentally), never complain or cling and be devoted to work. <b>A</b> pronounced <b>fear of losing manhood lies behind a </b>male<b> psychosomatic disorder </b>in China and Southeast Asia, called </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>koro</b>.</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. Symptoms are anxiety, palpitations, trembling and intimations of impending death. Prominent is a belief that the penis is shriveling or retracting into the belly.</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">S</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">o again, sisters, who besides ourselves do we think we’re kidding when playing the game of victims sacrificed on the altar of</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> all-powerful men?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">To more fully understand the impact the female half of humanity has on the male half, </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px;">we need to look more closely </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">at men's role as fathers, in particular</span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;"> at </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">the father’s place inside the family. A place that I argue has </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt;">been as overlooked and undervalued as woman’s place outside the family. </span><i style="font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 12pt;">See next post.</i><br />
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<span style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><i style="font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><b style="background-color: white;">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.</b></i></i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the full blog click <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/" style="color: #993322; text-decoration: none;">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></span></b></i></i></span></span> </span></span></div>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-73509043573362849392016-02-11T17:43:00.001-05:002016-03-11T14:56:19.018-05:0036. Manhood<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC5sN1OW1ihc7CNGHwD_8MbZwXEGVqToNIsFrYSuywy93HVsunaUXs8Q94t4OQr3KhPF0_vGZYSEiRDd-yoYhfiy33tIVxsIB0zyA09ZFjdgg0FW0pTfyMqI7uTewFJQAKbnrdicwY5Rgo/s1600/Barack+Obama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC5sN1OW1ihc7CNGHwD_8MbZwXEGVqToNIsFrYSuywy93HVsunaUXs8Q94t4OQr3KhPF0_vGZYSEiRDd-yoYhfiy33tIVxsIB0zyA09ZFjdgg0FW0pTfyMqI7uTewFJQAKbnrdicwY5Rgo/s200/Barack+Obama.jpg" width="172" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYNUrnGeVltWYbccQydIr6BEdMbQx3yiVzeMdAdBh70YXBSIk7LapkfhtnZvxWWwpLjFdLWBNd3Vn0w7SVQd7osQhmMWGiYr9XWaZcm29kzLUMH-7goNfWwoe5rkNpObCq9v-O1Pe8Y6Fw/s1600/South+Africa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYNUrnGeVltWYbccQydIr6BEdMbQx3yiVzeMdAdBh70YXBSIk7LapkfhtnZvxWWwpLjFdLWBNd3Vn0w7SVQd7osQhmMWGiYr9XWaZcm29kzLUMH-7goNfWwoe5rkNpObCq9v-O1Pe8Y6Fw/s200/South+Africa.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px;"><b>Isn’t it amazing that politicians who change their minds </b>or hesitate about what course to take <b>are </b>being <b>accused </b>by many <b>of weakness and loss of prestige</b></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px;">? To such people the most admirable quality in a leader appears to be the capacity to be so dead sure of oneself as to inspire fear. I thought any reasonably mature person realized that cocksureness spells self-importance, closed-mindedness and error of judgment. That <b>good decisions are born of scruple and doubt</b>, agony and struggle--<b>anything at</b> <b>all </b>t<b>hat fosters inner deliberation and reconsideration</b>. And, consequently, that the really admirable quality in any decision-maker--i.e., in any adult human being--is the courage to admit uncertainty yet have the resolve to defy it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">If anything should be the
subject of vigorous debate, it’s<b> the meaning of true manhood,</b> which <b>is a topic
</b>hopelessly <b>trapped in clichés</b>. A debate based on the
undeniable fact that <b>the sexes have all the human qualities in common</b>--intelligence in varying degrees, courage and cowardliness, aggressiveness <b>and</b>
protectiveness, etc.The sexes</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">may (or
may not) express these qualities differently, but since both <b>are equipped with the same human psyche</b>, no quality belongs to only one sex. </span><br />
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<u>The psyche is bisexual</u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">As Martine Rothblatt points
out in her book <i>The Apartheid of Sex, A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender</i>,
<b>there are only a few</b> “immutable and irreducible” <b>sex differences, all having to
do with reproduction</b>. Persons producing more male than female hormones are
male, and vice versa. These dissimilarities are <b>reflected in</b> their <b>bodies</b> and
the claims these make on them, <b>but not in</b> a <b>brain</b> sex difference. And
since the different behaviors of the sexes mostly stem from their having been
socialized differently, nothing prevents them from</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> unlearning them and
choosing behaviors that suit their individual personalities better. As gays
do, e.g., when adopting the fashion of the opposite sex.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Because <b>at the dawn of
consciousness </b>humanity became so enamored with their newly discovered, so-called <b>‘masculine’</b> mental powers <b>and</b> looked down their noses at the ‘<b>feminine’</b> instinctive <b>powers</b>, the two <b>never managed to form </b>what could be called <b>a healthy symbiosis.</b> Note that the word ‘<i>symbiosis</i>,’ which has come to stand for an unhealthy
dependence between individuals, really means “the intimate living together of
two dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But today we know, thanks to modern neuroscience, that <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/11/20-growth-of-consciousness-in-mythology.html" target="_blank"><b>everybody‘s brain</b>, men’s as well as women‘s, <b>has both a left </b></a></span><a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/11/20-growth-of-consciousness-in-mythology.html" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-size: 16px;">and a right</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span></b></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/11/20-growth-of-consciousness-in-mythology.html" target="_blank"><b>hemisphere</b></a>. One thinks in logical step-by-step sequences and is responsible for language, the other thinks in images, grasps the totality of a given situation and is responsible for artistic creation. Each brain half feels, thinks and remembers in its own unique way, and, according to measurements of their rate of metabolism, both are doing the same amount of work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Yet we haven’t fully fathomed that, despite being opposite, <b>the</b>se <b>two brain halves are complementary</b> <b>and</b> that <b>it’s up to us to integrate them</b>. That before making decisions <b>we must </b>listen as much to information coming from the right as from the left side of the brain. <b>Learn to identify the</b> famously misnamed <b>female principle </b>(like intuitive knowledge, passion, creativity) <i>NOT</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> with women but <b>with instinctive stuff; and the </b>equally misnamed <b>male principle</b> (like logical reasoning, objectivity, reflection) </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">NOT </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">with men but <b>with mental stuff</b>. <b>To grasp</b>, once and<b> </b>for all, <b>that both sexes have both principles</b>. Because once we do, we’ll see how much we have in common and how little reason there is for the sexes to </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">distrust</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> and disparage</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> one another.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u>Manhood</u></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Some cultures have understood this better than others</b>. The Greeks see a metaphor for the
psyche’s diverging trends in the two gods Dionysus, the pantheistic
god of nature and emotion, and</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;">Apollo, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the Olympian god of order and intellect. Writes
Camille Paglia in her book </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Sexual Personae</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, "The quarrel between
Apollo and Dionysus is the quarrel between the higher cortex and the older
limbic and reptilian brains." <b>The
Chinese see all contrasts (</b>good and bad, high and low, male and female)<b> as
false </b>distinctions <b>since</b> they can’t exist without each other; and so, <b>when
driven to extreme, each of the polar forces in human nature</b> (called </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">yin </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">and
</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">yang) </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">naturally <b>flows over into the other</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">n Gilmore’s universal
survey </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Manhood in the Making</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">two cultures </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">stand out from the rest in that they lack sexual differentiation and
role-playing. Masculinity is not a matter of concern to either the Tahitians or
the Semai people of central Malaysia. They practice no warfare, devalue
ambition (because the economy is cooperative) and men show no interest in
defining themselves as different from or superior to women. Tahiti men are no
more aggressive than women and just as soft or maternal; </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">bravado of any sort is antithetical </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">to the moral systems of </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Semai men.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 16px;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">So to find qualities that
define true manhood, what about trying out the human ones? <b>Maybe a Truly
Manly Man is</b> simply <b>a Truly Human Human Being of the Male Sex</b>. An
individual, <b>a unique living being</b> equipped <b>with a potential whose unknown ingredients
are</b> his, and <b>only his</b>, to probe, develop and put to use. Perhaps someone like the
whole-bodied and ‘whole-souled,’ loose-limbed and free kind of male that Carl
Sandburg conjures forth in his mischievous poem </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Wildernes</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">s? </span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">"O, I got a zoo, I
got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart -
and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a
father and a mother and a lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to
God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and
kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.”<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="font-size: 16px;">But how can we discuss the concept of manhood without taking into account how it's affected by the concept of </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">womanhood?</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><i style="font-size: 16px;">See next post.</i><br />
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<i style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></i><span style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><i style="font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><b style="background-color: white;">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.</b></i></i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the full blog click <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/" style="color: #993322; text-decoration: none;">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></span></b></i></i></span></span> </span></span><br />
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-8603858059654411422016-02-09T17:55:00.000-05:002016-03-11T14:32:08.240-05:0035. The Lopsided Definition of Masculinity <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Why have we failed to give
masculinity a definition as simple and unequivocal as the one we've given femininity? Because as a society we're stuck in an underdeveloped stage of
consciousness. We don't grasp</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> that <b>how we define something </b>(or look
at anything) <b>is always</b> a choice, <b><i>our</i> choice</b>, whether we've made that choice consciously or unconsciously. We don't quite</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> realize yet that <b>society is a living, changing entity, and</b> that </span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>it's </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>our job to</b> regularly <b>revise </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>its assumptions</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">--</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">rather than regard</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> them </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">as divine decrees or</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">truths carved on stone.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">A major element in this failure is
the iron-grip <b>our ideas of manliness</b> have on us, especially but not only on
men. I asked earlier why men put up with the <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/06/5-male-inferiority-complex-ii.html" target="_blank">self-destruction </a></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">involved in so much of what they do. The answer is that </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">few things scare men more than</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> being seen as unmanly, a risk they run if </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">not living up to</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><b><span style="font-size: 16px;">a set of </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">rigid and unforgiving </span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>masculine norms</b>.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>At the center </b>of these norms</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">--which </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">smack of antiquated fighter ideals like toughness, belligerence, detachment--</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>is the egregious</b> but deeply ingrained <b>lie that to be a man is to NOT be like a woman</b>. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I remember coming</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> across old men in my childhood </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">who thought it below their manly dignity simply to feel content and satisfied. "Thrive?" </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">one of them said,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> "That's what potted plants and domestics do!"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>The idea that violence is associated with</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> manhood</b> goes far back in history and <b>may be one of the hardest to erase</b> when replacing the old concept of masculinity with a more modern one. In <i>Power and Innocence,</i></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"><i> A Search for the Sources of Violence, </i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">psychologist Rollo May writes</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;"> about how the experience of violence puts men in contact with deep and powerful emotions. “In the most primitive way possible, it makes us feel, and thus know, we are alive.” And in his memoir </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">Fire Shut Up in My Bones</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">, Charles M. Blow describes violence as the <i>lingua franca</i> of male communication, something you must learn to endure and administer if you are a man.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify;">. </span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>Be rational rather than emotional and always</b> be <b>in charge</b> <b>are</b></span><b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span>demands</b> made <b>on men i<span style="font-size: 16px;">n </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">m</span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>ale myths and hero stories</b> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">the world over. </span>In the Western tradition,
from Jesus to James Bond, the hero often goes on a long, dangerous journey, <b>The goal he pursues</b> absorbs him so completely that it alienates him from his
surroundings and <b>makes him solitary</b>. Examples are Odysseus,
Faust, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Superman and</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">maybe the most
well-known modern icon, </span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">James Bond; f</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">or him winning is a necessity and losing
spells irrevocable ruin. In the relationship between man and woman one always
dominates and the other is the object. We find <b>no story </b>here <b>about how to coexist with an equal by developing true mutuality</b>. The same idea of
manhood--albeit without the rugged
individualism and sexual boastfulness--</span><span style="font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">can be found also in China, India, Japan</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAbmahFKncBSjZZXP_Kg1e9G9SJ3eKIPapRnrU1akKXbaSE3Ne6k7p7r80rXWvi8n8FMLIIdT9BTJQRgRgCyZcuBVV1JdiXfTeeAQ5S5NkzKFPb6qBX370XO23fXAJ6g91Z4EDCCyRDKoY/s1600/james-bond-logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAbmahFKncBSjZZXP_Kg1e9G9SJ3eKIPapRnrU1akKXbaSE3Ne6k7p7r80rXWvi8n8FMLIIdT9BTJQRgRgCyZcuBVV1JdiXfTeeAQ5S5NkzKFPb6qBX370XO23fXAJ6g91Z4EDCCyRDKoY/s200/james-bond-logo.jpg" width="190" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">James Bond<br />
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</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The female counterpart</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Though this role model no
doubt answers to a positive need in <b>men</b> to be useful in the world, it also
demonstrates that they <b>must expend </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>unconscionable energy </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>to keep the instincts
at bay</b> and raise walls against people, especially women. </span><b><span style="font-size: 16px;">What </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">these stories</span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b> show,</b> <b>in essence</b>, <b>is </b>that<b> </b>when his restless activity speeds the hero away from the intuitive and feeling part of himself--as represented by the women in the stories--all he does is<b> </b>struggle against himself. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">I</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">there</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">fore see them as metaphors for <b>men‘s failed pursuit of a complement to their rationality</b>, i.e., </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">the lost half of themselves</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>A good illustration of
what’s required of men is Rudyard Kipling’s poem <i>If--</i></b>. Although it seems to advise some 19<sup>th</sup> century
colonial officer-to-be</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> how to </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">interact with other men, most of it is actually common
sense. For instance:</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">be fair, don’t give tit for tat, stay calm, trust yourself, be brave,
don’t give up--things that are </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">just as applicable to people in general, women as well as men</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. It’s only <b>in the last stanza </b>when <b>he glorifies emotional
detachment</b> (<b>and</b> holds out <b>its reward in unlimited power)</b> that Kipling applauds the numbness to natural human responses that are typically linked to manliness:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">If neither foes nor loving friends can
hurt you,</i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> If all men count with you, but none too much,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> If you can fill the unforgiving minute<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in
it,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> And--which is more--you’ll be a Man, my son!<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">In fairness, when humanity
first woke up to a conscious apprehension of the world (which I connect with the
last matriarchal reign), men may have felt that suppressing their softer, so-called`
feminine side protected them from painful memories of matriarchal oppression.
But t<b>he distrust of womanhood </b>that followed has had disastrous consequences. It
<b>developed into a hostility to everything feminine </b>so profound and
all-encompassing <b>that</b> it not only distorted men’s relations with women but also
<b>cut men off from</b> a whole half of their own selves--and thus from <b>an important
source of true manhood</b>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">What then is ‘true manhood?’ To turn the searchlight on that conundrum, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">see next post</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><i style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><b style="background-color: white;">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.</b></i></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the full blog click <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/" style="color: #993322; text-decoration: none;">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></span></b></i></i></span></span> </span></span>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-63975001981830771012016-01-21T22:32:00.002-05:002016-03-10T16:04:54.771-05:0034. Male Timidity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">The question to ask is this: <b>why</b> after </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">thousands of years of </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">male supremacy <b>does misogyny remain alive </b>all over the world </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>today</b>? </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> <b>It seems to indicate that,</b> for all their efforts at counterbalancing it, <b>men continue to suffer from an inferiority complex </b>vis-à-vis women. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">And <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/09/4-male-inferiority-complex-i.html" target="_blank">the reason they can't get rid of it </a>is, as I suggested in the beginning of this blog, that they</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> have buried the memories of what caused it so deep in their collective unconscious that they have no memory of it. And</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> how can you get rid of what you don't even know exists? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: underline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What irks men?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>What</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> then </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>is it about women that men continue to resent</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and make women continue to pay for? Now that we know since long that man is as necessary for propagation as woman? Now that we neither worship goddesses nor practice male sacrifice anymore? Well, there are indeed other areas in life where the weight is lighter on the male </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;">than on the female </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">plate of the sex balance. </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>One </b>remarkable <b>example of the disparity between the sexes comes from</b></span><a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/10/8-parental-inequality.html" style="line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> </b>Gilmore's study</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> about cultural <b>concepts of masculinity</b>. There we learned that almost nowhere in the world is manhood seen as innate in a man the way womanhood is in a woman. Before a man can count on being considered 'a man' he must go through tests and proofs laid down by his culture. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">As I see it, this shocking discrimination against the male sex is an almost laughable relic from the matriarchal era. And I find it strange that men don't protest against it, <b>How can modern</b>, rational <b>men accept that their masculinity is</b> conditional--<b>something they must earn</b>, win, kill for? Instead of proclaiming, loud and clear, and as a matter of course, that Being Born Male equals Being A Man. Basta! </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>To understand </b>this passivity in men I think <b>we need to look at another result of the male inferiority complex,</b> a state of mind that's <b>diametrically opposed to</b> exaggerated <b>aggressiveness--namely </b></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>timidity</b>.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (Webster: </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">timid </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">= lacking in courage or self-confidence; lacking in boldness or determination). </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First let's realize that <b>power</b> has a negative side also for those who wield it. Fromm puts it this way in </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy: About Gender: w</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hile domination of one sex (or social class or nation) “leads to subliminal rebelliousness, rage, hatred and desire for revenge in those who are oppressed and exploited,“ it <b>also leads “to fear and insecurity in those who do the oppressing</b> and exploiting.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: underline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Male Predicament </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then let's take a good look at men’s situation in our male-dominated society. Though invested with a sense of privilege, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>a man </b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">must still follow directions imposed on him from outside. Because obliged to prove worthy of his rank above women he </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>is p</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ut </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>under constant pressure to keep up pretense</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">s. A pressure that's especially exasperating as</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">most men no doubt know-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">-from their life experience alone--</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that women are just as </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">clever, brave, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">able</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (or the opposite for that matter) </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as men</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. They also know that women have power and that it threatens them. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>But</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> since the prevalent male ideology can’t admit any of this, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>they must deny it</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, if on some level of consciousness men do know that their superiority is no more than a pipe dream in the male mind, we must ask how it affects them </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to have to pretend otherwise</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I suggest it </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">takes a toll</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that manifests, when not in explosive anger, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in various forms of timidity</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">--apprehension, procrastination, inactivity. Furthermore, <b>doesn't it </b></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>create</b> considerable <b>anxiety</b> in men <b>to </b></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>have to </b>routinely <b>navigate between</b> their <b>social</b>ly determined <b>roles and their own </b>inner <b>selves</b>? Doesn't it <b>make them unsure of who they are</b> both as males and as human beings.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>I </b>therefore<b> propose</b> <b>that an urge to flee</b> from anxiety <b>into mind-numbing insensitivity </b>is what <b>lies behind the negative qualities often attributed to men</b>--arrogance, overconfidence, emotional withdrawal. <b>And</b> I even suspect <b>that this is also why men die younger than women</b>. Because, if it's both deep enough and not openly acknowledged, this kind of existential anxiety is bound to kindle a fear that won't stop smoldering.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Can we wonder then if many men</b> lose track of their own authentic selves and <b>become consummate actors</b>? <b>If,</b> instead of the well-rounded human beings they could be--given a chance to grow from inside out--<b>they end up as hollow men </b>whose inner life is a wasteland?</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">For another pressure on men, the</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> rigid and unforgiving male role model, s</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">ee next post.</i></span><br />
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-86257649662290569032016-01-07T15:08:00.000-05:002016-03-10T13:00:02.261-05:0033. Patriarchy II. Monogamy <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Besides organized war <b>the
most crucial social chang</b>e that patriarchal rule introduces is a reversal of the outlook on the sexes. This society’s ‘<a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/12/27-legacy-of-malevolent-matriarchy.html" target="_blank">ordinary’ state of consciousness</a>, or 'natural' way of looking at things, <b>is </b>shaped by <b>an
ideology of female inferiority</b> so uncompromising that </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">it</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">makes the subjugation of women seem natural. In their relentless pursuit of
male power, the leaders set up <b>rigid gender roles</b>. Men can play any roles, <b>women </b>only those that cater to male needs;
they <b>lack even the right to speak up for themselves.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In her book <i>The Creation of
Patriarchy</i> historian Gerda Lerner points out that the reason <b>women
</b>have been able to participate in the process of their subordination is that
they <b>are psychologically shaped to internalize their own inferiority</b>. Among the
devices securing their cooperation she mentions gender indoctrination (hammering
in women’s secondary status); educational deprivation (including knowledge of
women‘s history); restraints and outright coercion; discrimination in access to
economic resources and political power; distinguishing between women as
‘respectable’ or ‘deviant’ according to their sexual activities; and awarding
class privileges to conforming women.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The most effective tool in
bringing women to their knees is the institution of monogamy. </span><b style="font-size: 12pt;">Because its
</b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">express <b>p</b></span><b style="font-size: 12pt;">urpose is </b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">to produce</span><b style="font-size: 12pt;"> children of undisputed paternity, monogamy is for
the woman only</b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, not for the man. To her <b>marriage means being dominated by the
husband and,</b> like other pieces of property, <b>confined to the home</b>. In Asiatic
towns eunuchs keep watch over her; in Athens she lives in a separate women’s apartment
and only goes out in the company of a female slave.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">"To imprint the notion that a
woman is happiest when subservient to a husband takes years of stifling her
healthiest impulses," psychiatrist Helen Deutsch writes in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">The Psychology of
Women</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. She must renounce her own achievements, repress her initiative and
give up her aspirations (some of which she may not even be conscious of)--all things she cannot do without anxiety.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In his book <i>The Anatomy of
Human Destructiveness</i>, Erich Fromm reflects on how it affects
people to have to live severely restricted lives. “<b>Life</b> has an inner
dynamism of its own; it <b>tends to grow</b>, to <b>be expressed</b>, to <b>be lived</b>,” and, “<b>if
</b>this tendency is <b>thwarted the energy</b> directed toward life” <b>turns toward
destruction</b>. “Destructiveness is the outcome of unl</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ived life.”</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBpVjZ1mD7MxtvPQLH0DYnmdto9y301R01Gvn8sXFcVGiTAVF2k_KmuZ2EkR-ZGkQYFmUf4kgKRia2-JtesBN71bEhFeQKFM6Kut1oFbik4DSYK1ZxSgjmElgCFyRx2uvsfLVRPii8RHw_/s1600/Rape-of-the-Sabine-Women.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBpVjZ1mD7MxtvPQLH0DYnmdto9y301R01Gvn8sXFcVGiTAVF2k_KmuZ2EkR-ZGkQYFmUf4kgKRia2-JtesBN71bEhFeQKFM6Kut1oFbik4DSYK1ZxSgjmElgCFyRx2uvsfLVRPii8RHw_/s320/Rape-of-the-Sabine-Women.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rape of the Sabine Women<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u>Rape</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Engels believes women accept
monogamy to get protection against rape</b>, allegedly rampant at the time. Today,
when living in a world where sexual violence is not only endemic but widely
practiced with immunity, we know only too well that <b>rape </b>is as rampant as ever.
Judith L. Herman and Lisa Hirschman (authors of <i>Father-Daughter Incest) </i>argue
that this abnormality--rather than a deviance from an ethical family concept--<b>is a logical outcome of the way the patriarchal family is organized.</b> Because
monogamy is an institution invented to maintain the superiority of men, the
right to have “<b>sexual relations with subordinate women becomes a </b>jealously
guarded <b>male prerogative,</b> guaranteed by the explicit and tacit consent of all
men.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Does rape begin when men
learn that sex is connected to pregnancy, as some have suggested? Even if
making this connection may awaken the idea of rape, I don’t think it’s
practiced until the decline of matriarchy. British author Robert Graves
suggests that Zeus’s many rapes illustrate the Hellenic conquest of the goddess
shrines and the triumph of patriarchy over matriarchy. Considering how common
mass rape is as a war tactic, <b>it’s easy to link rape to warfare and to male
retaliation against women</b>. As Susan Brownmiller puts it in <i>Against Our Will</i>,
<i>Men, Women and Rape</i>, rapists have served “in the longest sustained
battle the world has ever known.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Does monogamy have an adverse
effect also on men? <b>During matriarchal times</b>, one thing <b>a man can take</b>
unequivocal <b>pride in is his capacity as love</b>r. He’s the bearer of the phallus,
the source of women’s sexual enjoyment and a prominent focus of joyous
celebration at the religious sites. <b>But once women can show lust only on
command</b> and are severely punished for any spontaneous display of it, <b>the era of
female eroticism comes to an end</b>. Gone is not only <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/11/22-role-of-sexuality-in-goddess-cult.html" target="_blank">the cult of the phallus </a>that was so prominent in the goddess religion; but also the widely
held conviction that sexuality free of any bonds is a state of psychic openness
to the divine, capable of pacifying an angry god and
averting illness or other misfortune.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u><br /></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>What happened to love?</u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I suggest monogamy makes a
mess also of the affective relationship between the sexes. Although we can’t
really know what place such a relationship has in matriarchal times, I suppose <b>the patriarchal husband stands to lose as much </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>as his wife </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>from the restrictions on female sexual desire</b>. For
if she is with him because she has to and not because she wants to, how
likely is he to get any of the things that count most in close relationships? Like
spontaneous affection, sincere appreciation, true respect--or even the really
satisfying, mutual kind of physical pleasure? Not to speak of unconditional love?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Because sex is
necessary for our survival, and plays into everything we are
and do, <b>patriarchy’s profanation of </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>sexual intercourse </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>amounts to a condemnation of
human nature</b>. That later the</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> Christian </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">religion</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> embraced it with glee means that t</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">he shaming and defiling of an essential human instinct became entrenched</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> in our everyday psychopathology. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Or as German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
puts it in his </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Genealogy of Morals</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, “Christianity gave Eros poison to
drink. Eros did not die of it, to be sure, but degenerated into Vice.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">To try to understand some of the
motives for these developments, let’s now look deeper into the Monumental Male Inferiority
or Mother Complex, which I consider the impetus and prime mover of patriarchy. <i>See
next post</i>.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>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.</b></i><br />
<span style="background-color: #e69138;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-75159932299307378482016-01-03T12:59:00.001-05:002016-03-10T12:20:35.494-05:0032. Patriarchy I. Warfare <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdxUqPTaH2hMe1YAZPnVcsyKpXQRQiuJqH0H19lk67bnf7k481SnoJ_bpQn7ONL8g_cBUU8bpwi9hs-LVg4FA7LCKIGOXq0SvE5j03vE45EroR7HHLKozlZy_BF48AqqgZcNzVteCUggPx/s1600/Mesopotamian+spearmen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdxUqPTaH2hMe1YAZPnVcsyKpXQRQiuJqH0H19lk67bnf7k481SnoJ_bpQn7ONL8g_cBUU8bpwi9hs-LVg4FA7LCKIGOXq0SvE5j03vE45EroR7HHLKozlZy_BF48AqqgZcNzVteCUggPx/s320/Mesopotamian+spearmen.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mesopotamian warriors</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">We don’t know when
patriarchal orders are first installed, only that they exist in some form
already at the beginning of recorded history and are characterized by
city-living. Although nobody knows when organized war was invented or why, it’s
a staple ingredient in patriarchal cultures; <b>the most striking feature</b> already
<b>in the Mesopotamian city-states is the constant wars between them</b>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Though ambivalent in that
it offered both freedom and compulsion, protection and aggression, the ancient
city was nevertheless, says Mumford, “the collective expression of a too
heavily armored personality” whose “extreme manifestations are now recognized
in individuals as pathological.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">By contrast, <b>in surviving
Stone Age cultures war is </b>nothing but <b>a ritual or game.</b> According to Gwynne
Dyer (author of <i>War</i>), it’s definitely not about slaughter and there’s
never much killing; nor is war ever a conquest to win territory, subjugate
people or destroy their basis for livelihood. <b>The soldier</b>, a professional
killer, <b>is a creation of <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/11/18-village-as-blueprint-of-civilization.html" target="_blank">civilization</a>.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<u>Does war have religious origins?</u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Several scholars see<b> a
connection between sacrifice and war.</b> <b>Mumford thinks war is an outgrowth of
ritual sacrifice</b></span><b><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">
</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">and</span></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">suspects
that beneath it lies “an irrational belief, still deeply embedded in the
collective unconscious (that) only by wholesale human sacrifice can the
community be saved.” He suggests that <b>raids to find victims for sacrificial
slaughter</b> turn into mass extermination and become a supreme sport of kings. In
some West African kingdoms (e.g., Dahomey) warfare is the principal way of
obtaining sacrificial victims; and so it is among the Aztecs, who need many
thousand a year because they believe the sun will die without meals of human
blood. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Since ritual sacrifice
requires an incessant supply of youths to butcher, it seems plausible to me
that men look abroad for victims. And <b>if the purpose of war </b>(or at least a
powerful incentive for it)<b> is </b>indeed <b>to maintain this custom, then </b>organized
war has a religious origin: <b>being a warrior becomes an alternative to being
sacrificed</b> and battle becomes a surrogate sacrifice. With time warriors form an
exclusive caste analogous to priests and in feudal times an aristocracy.
Nowadays nationalism is a kind of religion. In Japan’s Shinto state religion
war is a sacred enterprise and the fallen soldiers are gods to be worshipped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">According to René Girard (in <i>Violence
and the Sacred</i>), “War and sacrifice serve the same end: to redirect
aggressive energy that is about to tear the community apart toward external
forces.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Without pretending to know
what sets the patriarchal states on a permanent warpath against each other, I
can’t help wondering if it isn’t simply the need for more targets to vent their
frustrations on than those on their own turf (like women).<b> Can hitting their
neighbors </b>serve to <b>detonate men’s inner arsenal of PTSD</b> (<a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/10/13-ritual-regicide.html" target="_blank">post-traumatic stress disorder) </a><b>urges</b>? And <b>if so, is this
why they dream up </b>what may be one of the most useful devices in all of
history--<b>the quintessential Human Enemy</b>? Few things seem to me to better
justify man’s inhumanity to man than concocting the idea that his fellow-man is
his foe--providing us as it does with <b>a
perfect reason to blame others for the destructive impulses </b>we can’t confront
<b>in ourselves</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">But <b>isn’t the impulse to
fight</b> part of <b>a basic instinct for</b> <b>self-preservation</b>? So that it’s only natural
to feel combative when threatened? <b>Certainly.</b> I also think that as people grew
more aware, both of the world around them and of their own subjective states of
mind, they probably became more easily provoked. <b>But that doesn’t mean </b>that <b>the
extreme brutality</b> emblematic<b> of civilization is </b>any way <b>‘natural’ or
unavoidable</b>. During the course of evolution the animals’ built-in action
patterns are being replaced in our species by the ability to choose how to respond
to perceived threats. <b>The way we act is always our choice and responsibility</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>War</b>, I therefore argue, <b>has
nothing to do with an outer enemy</b>--only with our own dark emotions and
motivations, which we prefer to project rather than pull up from our unconscious
and squarely look in the eye. Pogo got it right. “We have met the enemy, and he
is us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<u>War and manhood</u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Why does the insane idea <b>that
only mass killings can save society </b>remain a rationale for war today? To me
it <b>is an example of our society’s psychopathology-</b>-that we see abnormal
behaviors as perfectly normal. <b>And why </b>do we do that? <b>Because</b> in <b>patriarchy </b>the 'ordinary state of consciousness' <b>is based on the false idea of male superiority</b>--which in turn is a male substitute for matriarchy's equally false idea of female magic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Throughout history <b>wars </b>have supposedly served many purposes that <b>benefit men</b>. It makes them identify with
collective strength; provides a source of prestige; gives them both a bonding
with each other away from women and a semi-religious feeling of being part of
something larger than themselves. In a word, <b>war defines manhood</b>. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">In his 2003 memoir </span><i style="font-size: 16px;">Jarhead, A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and other Battles</i><span style="font-size: 16px;">, Anthony Swafford writes that from a very early age he understood “that manhood had to do with war, and war with manhood.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">But why must
manhood be defined as something outside of a man when womanhood is not defined
as anything outside of a woman? A question we never ask, because to do so would
be perfectly logical, sane and sound. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">For patriarchy’s most
prominent feature besides war: its curtailment of female sexuality, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">see next
post</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b><i>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. </i></b></span><br />
<i><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">For the full blog, go to: <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></span></b></i><br />
<i style="background-color: #c0a154; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.524px; line-height: 20.286px; text-indent: -0.5in;"><br /></i></div>
Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-68113240694479540012015-12-28T10:37:00.001-05:002016-03-10T11:32:22.722-05:0031. From Matriarchy to Patriarchy. II <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>To
some</b> scholars <b>the radical change of leadership</b> from female to male <b>expresses a change in
consciousness</b>. As people realize that
human beings are independent agents who can affect history, they begin to draw
away from the natural world and let male gods who represent new realities and
emphases take over.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Other
scholars see the transition </b>to patriarchy <b>as a result of the shift </b>from village
culture <b>to city culture</b>, i.e., in terms of gradual physical changes more than a
conflict between differing views. According to Jared Diamond (scientist and
author of popular science works), once farming is invented the long-term trend
in human society is toward larger, more complex units. As food surpluses lead
to increased populations, we go from bands and tribes to chiefdoms and states
and a permanent centralized authority. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Hunting--once </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">men's major contribution to the economy--</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">diminished when</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> farming took over,</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> But <b>as</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> the village </b>diversifies and <b>needs more organization</b> (e.g., large-scale labor to
build reservoirs, drains and sewers), <b>men’s work becomes more important</b>. And
with greater job specialization, better skills and tools, which bring with it
material, intellectual and artistic refinement, it becomes necessary to delegate
more responsibilities to men.</span><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMjzzwv5AeI2qXMz_2FTGptDQwAPbCX5hEBX3WFU9J2nc4aIlYB-zzELmdCVvcKCp0lNda-TJl5HljyVlBF6YHEhxUCVwKEGDXg0maEZeJboKAo_Tcdpgi3uIpnlvUGdWH6JVmkKsF7PjR/s1600/Ancient+Egyptian+Irrigation+System.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMjzzwv5AeI2qXMz_2FTGptDQwAPbCX5hEBX3WFU9J2nc4aIlYB-zzELmdCVvcKCp0lNda-TJl5HljyVlBF6YHEhxUCVwKEGDXg0maEZeJboKAo_Tcdpgi3uIpnlvUGdWH6JVmkKsF7PjR/s200/Ancient+Egyptian+Irrigation+System.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ancient Egyptian Irrigation System</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Mumford thinks </span>“the ancient city couldn’t have taken the form it finally did without </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">village’s</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">“whole range of technical inventions (</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">from stone and pottery utensils, cisterns, barns</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">and</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">granaries </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">to </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">houses, canals and irrigation ditches).” Yet to him the village is still only an</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">‘unfertilized </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">ovum’ in need of “a whole set of complementary chromosomes from a male parent</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">to bring about the further process of cultural development.” If this is a metaphor for the input</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">needed at this stage from the ‘masculine’ principle in the human psyche, or the conscious ego, I </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">totally agree. But it doesn’t explain why men monopolize the use of it. Unless we accept my theory that this was how they take over the power that used to belong to the matriarchs.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;">The way I interpret this development is that <b>with the breakthrough of consciousness</b> time has come for humanity to build a society based </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">on equality between the sexes. Now that a man is no longer only a son but also</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">a </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">woman's </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">husband and father </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">(and a woman not only </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">a mother but </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">also a </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">man's</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">wife </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">and </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">daughter), </span><b><span style="font-size: 16px;">t</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">he masculine and </span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>feminine </b></span><b><span style="font-size: 16px;">principles</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> in the </span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>psyche</b> <b>must</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b> be balanced</b>. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Something</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">happens, however, that seriously delays this onward movement and not just makes the changeover needlessly violent but also dooms the world to live, for thousands of years yet to come, in an egregiously unequal social system.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">What happens, I think, is that <b>towards the end
of the matriarchal era </b>women’s reluctance to share power with men grows into <b>a
form of megalomania or </b>a state of mind that Mumford calls ‘<b>spiritual inflation’</b>
and spots at the core of every civilization. I see it as symptomatic of an ever
widening gulf between the matriarchs’ worldview and the new one emerging. And
<b>the more the women leaders resist men’s efforts to secure their rightful place
in society,</b> <b>the faster</b> <b>men’s</b> long repressed <b>anger rises </b>to the surface--<b>until</b>
it reaches such a high pitch that the <b>men</b> resort to force, <b>overthrow the matriarchy and
establish patriarchal rule.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u><br /></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>Darwin and Freud.</u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Charles Darwin had a
hypothesis</b> <b>that early man</b>, like the big apes, <b>lived in</b> small groups (<b>primal
hordes</b>), each led by a powerful and jealous older male who forced the young
males to find females outside of the group. <b>On it Freud built his theory</b> <b>that
culture began with patricide</b>: the young men joined together, killed and ate the
primal father. But as they took his place and identified with him, they felt
guilt for their deed and soon restored the father figure by honoring him first
as a totem animal, later as a god.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s a theory<b> I think </b>we need to turn clear around: <b>patriarchal culture</b>, or civilization (not culture per se),
<b>begins with matricide</b>, <b>i.e.,</b> with <b>men killing the Great Mother cult </b>and taking
over the reign of the matriarchs. The person <b>they identify with</b> is <b>the
goddess’s consort s</b>acrificed on her altar, <b>whom they make into a father god</b> and
substitute for the ancient mother goddess. That there ever was such a thing as
female supremacy seems not to enter Freud’s mind. Because, although he
recognizes that great maternal deities “perhaps everywhere preceded the
paternal deities,” he admits he can‘t explain them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I trace <b>the ultimate reason
for the downfall of the matriarchy </b>to <b>its misperception of the role of
consciousness</b>. Once the matriarchs discover they possess a conscious mind, they
become so <b>enthralled with intellectual power</b> that <b>they stop
listening to their instincts</b> <b>and fail to </b>establish a <b>balance</b> between<b> the two</b>. A
balance I contend we still have not reached today.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Or as A.E. Watts puts it in his book <i>Man and Woman</i>: "When human beings acquired the powers of conscious attention and rational thought, they became so fascinated with these methods that they forgot all else, </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; text-indent: 48px;">like chickens hypnotized with their beaks to a chalk line. O</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">ur total sensitivity became identified with these partial functions so that <b>we lost the ability </b>to feel nature from the inside, and more, <b>to feel the seamless unity of ourselves and the world</b>.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Now over to patriarchy and a
look at its two major institutions, organized warfare and monogamy. </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">See next
post.</i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>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.</b></i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
<i><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the full blog click <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></span></b></i><br />
<br />
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-27718560493566419022015-12-21T11:53:00.000-05:002016-03-10T10:36:29.907-05:0030. From Matriarchy to Patriarchy. I <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOY7Aa-BK1Wm1DOdFiVdBBjiJxXundUiMFhvFhy0yrT33HbvXvxiquEf-Fdd8Ql3TBZ5gexryY_XCbF4CLJNPh8jID-Lh8svvZdsKQqEo8R9BCTMlyFvGWn7VHiIiL7VPlAqYzCTKQ_fq3/s1600/Aryan+invader.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOY7Aa-BK1Wm1DOdFiVdBBjiJxXundUiMFhvFhy0yrT33HbvXvxiquEf-Fdd8Ql3TBZ5gexryY_XCbF4CLJNPh8jID-Lh8svvZdsKQqEo8R9BCTMlyFvGWn7VHiIiL7VPlAqYzCTKQ_fq3/s200/Aryan+invader.jpg" width="135" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aryan invader, Sumer<br />
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<span style="font-size: 16px;">What brings about the transition from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society--one of the most decisive revolutions ever experienced by humankind according to Engels? Let's first see what we can gather from historical facts, myths and legends and then discuss how to interpret it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Around 1500 BCE <b>the Vedic
Aryans</b> enter India, destroy the higher civilization of the Indus and <b>initiate a
new age of male gods</b>. From both the Bible and the Greek myths we learn that
with the dawn of the Iron Age (c 1250 BCE in the Near East) <b>patriarchal warrior
tribesmen </b>radically <b>change</b> and even suppress<b> the old goddess mythologies</b>. They
come either from the Syro-Arabian deserts (the Semites) or from the plains of
Europe and southern Russia (the Aryans). Now <b>the Goddess is</b> either slain or
subjugated by being <b>raped</b>. Already in Sumer, the first of the higher
civilizations (c 3500-2350 BCE), the god Enlil rapes the goddess Ninlil.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">At about 1000 BCE, <b>the
Hebrews invert the</b> entire <b>symbolic system of the</b> primitive, <b>ancient </b>and
Oriental <b>mythologies</b>. The goddess Earth becomes the dust from which Adam is
made (Hebrew, <i>adamah</i>, earth) and the legend of the rib is a patriarchal
inversion of the myth of the hero born of the goddess Earth. Writes Camille
Paglia, author of <i>Sexual Personae</i>, “<b>The book of Genesis </b>is a male declaration
of independence from the ancient mother-cults. . . It <b>remade the world by male
dynasty</b>, <b>canceling the power of mothers</b>." she<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Portraying the story of Jesus
as a unique historic event is another biblical distortion, since the tale of a
killed and resurrected god has shaped virtually every civilization in the
world. In the Dionysian rites,</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">e.g.,</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">the Greek god Dionysus was torn to pieces as a child by the Titans and dies but rises again. </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">And, as Greek authors Pindar and
Euripides report, these rites are pretty much the same as those t</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">he Phrygians (a people in Asia Minor) </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">performed
in honor of the Great Mother</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">, </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><u>Gods take over the goddesses' power...</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Muslim god Allah is a
late Islamic masculinization of the Arabian Goddess Al-Lat or Al-Ilat,
formerly worshiped at the Kaaba in Mecca. In the Greek legacy, the <b>goddesses
who once reigned supreme become subordinated to</b> the Olympian <b>gods</b>. Hera, e.g.,
who was worshipped alone in the temple of Heraion in Olympia, is forcibly
married (to Zeus) and made the protector of marriage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>The earth-goddess Pandora,</b> whom</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> the Greeks sacrificed to, now <b>becomes temptress</b>
instead of inspirer. And <b>in the patriarchal version of the old Egyptian myth </b>of
Isis and Osiris, <b>Isis</b> gives up her dreadful aspect of matriarchal
dominance and becomes Hathor, the dutiful wife. She then <b>delegates her power to her son</b>
Horus and through him to the Pharaos of Egypt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>The Greek hero myths
personalize the conflict </b>between the patriarchal and matriarchal worlds <b>as
clashes between two </b>irreconcilable <b>kinship systems</b>. Clytemnestra’s murder of
her husband Agamemnon (for having sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia) is no
crime under the matriarchal principle, only a just retribution in the name of
blood-revenge. Under the patriarchal principle adopted by the Olympian gods
it’s OK for Orestes to kill his mother Clytemnestra. This is what </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Achilles declares i</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">n acquitting him:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> “<i>The mother is not parent of her so-called
child<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> but
only nurse of the new-sown seed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> The
man who puts it there is parent;<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> she
merely cultivates the shoot</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">”
(Aeschylus).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Although the goddess religion
survives long into patriarchal times, <b>a telling example of </b>what looks like <b>a
growing revolt</b> against it can be found <b>in the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh</b>
(from about 2500 BCE), which sometimes is called the world‘s earliest literary document.
Here the young <b>Gilgamesh</b>, king of Uruk, boldly declares that he <b>doesn’t want to
marry the Goddess</b> Ishtar, <b>since she'd </b></span><b style="font-size: 16px;">killed</b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> off</span><b style="font-size: 16px;"> </b><span style="font-size: 16px;">all</span><b style="font-size: 16px;"> </b><b style="font-size: 12pt;">her earlier consorts</b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u>...but not without struggle.</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Countless legends
from all over the world tell about the <b>hard work</b> it takes <b>for men to wrest
leadership from women</b>. <b>Common</b> to most <b>are stories of some shining hero who
conquers a monster</b> representing an earlier order of godhood. <b>As for instance
the victories of Indra</b>, king of the Vedic pantheon<b>, over </b>the cosmic serpent
<b>Vritra</b>; <b>of Yahweh over Leviathan,</b> the serpent of the cosmic sea; and <b>of Zeus
over Typhon</b>, half-man, half-snake and son of Gaia, the goddess Earth--the victory that assures the reign of the Olympic gods over the Titans. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>In</b> each of <b>these</b>--by Campbell
termed <b>‘mythological defamations’</b>--the role of demon, or anti-god, is pasted on
a figure from an earlier mythology; and from now on all that’s good and noble
is attributed to the new master gods. <b>The female principle is devalued and </b>(as
Jung indicates) when a power of nature is shut out, it always <b>turns negative,
even demonic</b>--a dangerous threat to the castle of reason.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Suddenly--though I suggest at the end of a long gathering storm--</span><b><span style="font-size: 16px;">woman</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>becomes</b> an object of the most ferocious anger and hatred. At the same time she descends into a kind of non-person, <b>subordinate to man on all social
levels in practically all cultures</b>. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">For some suggestions about
the motives for this spectacular change, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">see next post</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<i><b>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.</b></i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
<i><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the full blog click <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></span></b></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-64228225308189009862015-12-17T09:10:00.000-05:002016-03-09T20:45:37.783-05:0029. The Mythological Event Par Excellence. II <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPPUn0ukRZNM-gpxz9IRy4iKKupSMwznOAOgTvZzaAcRKzH6h3CTyjn6XBjMHXc723gV-9UbqbZGxLWnEecOyEry-1UOnQwDRodf67cK1UyNE-MV_Ew_15JCqrZl1KqDXESXXNuuqbzAu/s1600/Sacrificial+killing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizPPUn0ukRZNM-gpxz9IRy4iKKupSMwznOAOgTvZzaAcRKzH6h3CTyjn6XBjMHXc723gV-9UbqbZGxLWnEecOyEry-1UOnQwDRodf67cK1UyNE-MV_Ew_15JCqrZl1KqDXESXXNuuqbzAu/s320/Sacrificial+killing.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sacrificial killing</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">What I think t<b>he mythological event </b></span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>par excellence</b></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> tells us </b>is <b>that </b>the first sacrificial killing for the good of mankind made us aware, in one single instant, that death comes by way of murder but also leads to generation, and that <b>the plants man lives on derive from the murder of a god</b>. In every version of the myth <b>sex and death are linked to each other</b> and accepted <b>as an inevitable sequence in the </b>eternal <b>cycle of death and resurrection</b>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Only in Christianity is </b>man made guilty for the god's death, and only in the Bible is <b>the ‘fall’</b> of Adam and Eve <b>seen as a human mistake</b> that only God can rectify. <b>Eastern religions see creation </b><u>i</u>tself <b>as </b>a ‘fall’ in the sense of <b>an act of will-to-be-more</b> that’s absolutely <b>necessary for life to come abou</b>t.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u>The myth differs from the rites.</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">What about the differences between the ritual and the myth? For instance, if male sacrifice appears at the time of the breakthrough of consciousness, as I would have it, <b>why does the myth place the event at ‘the beginning of time?</b>’ I guess it’s because </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">in the human mind</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">time </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">doesn't start</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">until humanity first becomes aware of it, i.e., when entering the</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> conscious stage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Why</b> does the myth say people lived forever and had <b>no sexual organs before this </b>momentous <b>event?</b> To me, it’s a correct description of an era when-sex was not yet connected with birth, and people didn’t know how they came into being nor that they were going to die. And in retrospect this benighted era stands out as an archaic paradise, a ‘dream time.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Why</b> <b>did</b> <b>the food plants</b> come up <b>from the buried parts of the</b> murder <b>victim</b>? Because people believed that crops magically depended on the sacrifice of the god that represented vegetation. And <b>how come sex organs grew out only after they had eaten</b> <b>of </b>the fruits of <b>these</b> <b>plants</b>? I think it’s their </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">way of saying that they owe the gift of procreation to a god. This belief accounts for the sacral character given to sexuality in ancient times while also confirming that the price of regeneration is death. Sex may stand in the service of life but so does death, for both lead to birth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Why did the murder happen</b>? As far as I know, in no version of the myth is there a rationale for it. It’s presented as a fact, as inexplicable as it’s irreversible, probably because people find it too painful to face the part human beings play in this horrible event, and simply have to repress it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Why</b>, in the myth unlike in the ritual, does the murder take place before there’s any sexual act at all, and why <b>have</b> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">both the <b>goddess and the sacred marriage dropped out </b>of the picture? Again, because people needed to suppress unbearable facts</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, men not least who at the beginning of the patriarchal era wanted to forget the once absolute power of women--and even deny that it had ever existed. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Who committed the murder</b>? The myth doesn’t explain that either and probably for the same reason. In some Native American versions, however, the victim-to-be asks a family member or lover to commit the murder, i.e., he (or sometimes she) willingly sacrifices himself. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">But how on earth could people connect such natural human processes as sex and death with murder? To many preliterate peoples there are no natural causes, says Lévy-Brühl, because they attribute everything to interference from some mystic force, like witchcraft or spirits. And since they know </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">why </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">something occurs they aren’t interested in </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">how</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u>Sum up</u>, </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I propose that <b>the mythological event </b></span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>par excellence </b></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>describes the first male sacrifice</b>, <b>and</b> that <b>the shock </b>it inflicted <b>was so strong that people</b> everywhere <b>chose to bury </b>the circumstances around <b>it </b>in their unconscious. <b>The myth serves </b>the<b> s</b>ame function in our collective experience as the dream symbol in an individual’s life: <b>to </b>both<b> remind people of a crucial occurrence</b> <b>in their past</b> <b>and offer</b> them <b>a chance to come to terms with it</b>. Not only has the mythological event something true to say, it is indeed an important psychological truth.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">An</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> example of the remarkable
tenacity of </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">this universal myth is</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> the way Christianity re-enacts the </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">pagan</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">murder drama complete with cannibalism. <b>In the Eucharist</b> service <b>we find a
latter-day version of </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>the ritual </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>killing and devouring of a god. </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">For the congregation to <b>partake of bread and wine,</b> symbols of the flesh and blood of Jesus
Christ, <b>is to commemorate</b> t<b>hat the god died for them</b>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">But <b>this ritual also keeps alive the guilt </b>that clings to the believers
<b>for the god's death,</b> <b>and</b> in so doing <b>demonstrates that the </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>tendency t</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>o repeat the childhood trauma
that was never </b>made <b>conscious </b>(what Freud called the </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">repetition-compulsion </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">and
saw as one of the “fundamentals of human behavior”) <b>may apply</b> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">also</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>to </b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>society as
a whole</b>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Now
over to what finally brings the matriarchal era to an end. </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">See next post.</i><br />
<i style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">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. </span></b></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><b>For the full blog click</b></i><i style="text-indent: -0.5in;"><b> <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></b></i></span></div>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-14480997875058123642015-12-14T08:12:00.000-05:002016-03-09T18:20:16.562-05:0028. The Mythological Event Par Excellence. I <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I
now turn to what Campbell calls the “mythological event<i> </i></span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">par excellence</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.”
It’s <b>a theme</b> revolving around a sacrificial killing for the good of humanity
<b>that shows up in myths all over the world</b> and in the most diverse cultures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>In
the dreamlike age at the beginning of time, when neither death nor the two
sexes existed,</i><b> a murder is committed.</b><i> The body is cut up and from the ground
<b>where the parts are buried food plants come up</b>. <b>On</b> <b>all who eat of </b>the fruits of
<b>these plants</b> <b>sexual organs grow out</b>. <b>This event puts an end to the earlie</b>r
paradise-like <b>era, because</b> <b>now life and death</b>, which <b>so far </b>have been <b>one,
become two and so do </b></i></span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>the sexes,</b> which have <b>also </b>been one.</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The
story is narrated in a slightly different way in different cultures. <b>What var<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">i</span>es</b>
among other things <b>is the kind of food plant that arises</b>; in an American Indian
myth it’s the maize plant, in a Polynesian the cocoa nut palm and in a Hawaiian
the breadfruit tree, etc. <b>But</b> they <b>all </b>amount to the same thing: food plants
<b>are sacred</b> <b>and eating them is</b> a way of communing with, and <b>partaking of, divine
life. </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">We
recognize parts of this myth from the Bible where, after eating from the Tree
of Knowledge, Adam and Eve realize both that they are mortal and of different
sexes. In Plato’s <i>Symposion</i> male and female exist as one being,
which--until Zeus splits it into two--has four arms and four legs, one head but
two faces. Similar myths can be found in China, India and elsewhere. <b>Throughout
the world terrible rites of cannibal communion enact the original event</b>
connected to this mythological theme. <b>They all include a sexual act, a murder
scene and a festival meal</b> and they all represent creatures coming into being,
living on the death of others and then dying and becoming food for others. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlGo8Mh-Q62ICOaqy7W09bLi6myXQWAzNMUk0B87arDt4qTI7rYehEea_nFG3bua9XHLFPltW8Jk69GZ-rse0PN2QtQz8NHrj4qv6rA9fui9qHBjdbwNAXOioU1Zt3FjrXRcT1mmy1th5X/s1600/Cannibal+Society.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlGo8Mh-Q62ICOaqy7W09bLi6myXQWAzNMUk0B87arDt4qTI7rYehEea_nFG3bua9XHLFPltW8Jk69GZ-rse0PN2QtQz8NHrj4qv6rA9fui9qHBjdbwNAXOioU1Zt3FjrXRcT1mmy1th5X/s200/Cannibal+Society.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cannibal Society Kwakiutl Vancouver Island</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u>But what is a myth? </u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Campbell thinks mythologies are built on shocks that occurred
in the past of peoples. Just as, according to Freud, the dream symbol refers to
some shock in the dreamer’s infancy, so do <b>mythologies refer to traumatic
experiences in the early life of humankind</b>. Anthropologist E. B. Tylor talks of
</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>myths of observation</b>; </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">they <b>contain</b> statements that could only have come
into the minds of the original narrators through <b>actual experience</b>--<b>although the
conclusions</b> drawn <b>may not be true</b> according to historical or scientific canons
of truth.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">One
example is the Chinese legend of the ancient sage who taught his people to make
fire by the friction of wood. Many cultures ascribe fire-making to mythic
heroes, so that story (though not real history) is no doubt a recollection of a
time when this was the ordinary way of producing fire. As Jane Ellen Harrison puts
it, “Mythology invents a reason for a fact, it does not base a fact on a
fancy.” According to Jung, “Every myth (is) an important psychological truth.”</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I
believe <b>the mythological event <i>par excellence</i></b><i> </i><b>is a myth of observation</b>, for unless there once was a real,
concrete murder followed by a burial, how could it have come up in the minds of
people all over the world? And <b>because </b>it’s essentially <b>identical with the key
event in the fertility rites</b> practiced in the earliest agricultural communities,
<b>I propose</b> that <b>it </b>actually <b>refers to the first male sacrifice </b>at the first
spring festival <b>in the first farming village</b>. Which also makes it <b>a traumatic
experience in humankind’s early history</b>, akin to a startling dream symbol in an
individual’s life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Anthropologists
distinguish between ‘<i>parallel
developments</i>’ (phenomena appear in many different places thanks to
spontaneous operations in the psyche) and ‘<i>diffusions</i>’
(phenomena spread from region to region through migrations and commerce). This
would make ritual regicide a parallel development and a ‘first’ in the sense
that it begins in farming communities everywhere, independent of each other (if
not at exactly the same time). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">So what’s the mythological event trying to tell us? <i>See next post</i>.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i><b>myth</b></i> (according to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary) =<b> a</b> usually traditional <b>story of </b>ostensibly <b>historical events</b> that serves <b>to unfold</b> part of <b>the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or</b> natural <b>phenomenon.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>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. </b></i><br />
<i><b>For the full blog click</b></i><i style="text-indent: -0.5in;"><b> <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></b></i></div>
</div>
Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-28884495169225180092015-12-10T12:59:00.000-05:002016-03-09T17:40:56.282-05:0027. The Legacy of the Malevolent Matriarchy <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqIJewPW-NGVtNcgMgwFySzpwM7OX9e0jR8DMszC9tJg__Di0-5Tn2rvd_gNRhbWtJ69M8kIWItjjzyvp1MmevAsfyi-08KMPlW_9NGwYwTfD0UcpxioyvdY7PyVgxHnOkGGRckE10ZDLd/s1600/matriarchy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqIJewPW-NGVtNcgMgwFySzpwM7OX9e0jR8DMszC9tJg__Di0-5Tn2rvd_gNRhbWtJ69M8kIWItjjzyvp1MmevAsfyi-08KMPlW_9NGwYwTfD0UcpxioyvdY7PyVgxHnOkGGRckE10ZDLd/s200/matriarchy.jpg" width="144" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">According to psychologist Charles T. Tart in his book </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>States of Consciousness</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, every culture identifies with <b>the ‘ordinary’ state of consciousness,</b> which <b>seems</b> like a </span></span><b style="font-size: 16px;">‘natural’ </b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">way of looking at things </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>because introduced </b></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>to</b> </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">people </b><b style="font-size: 12pt;">in childhood</b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. Usually chosen by a narrow élite to serve as a tool for handling a certain reality, the ordinary state of consciousness only develops a few human potentials. Tart compares it to a paradigm or super-theory in science (like Newtonian physics whose laws of motion ruled science--and our understanding of the universe--before the theories of relativity and quantum physics).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Therefore, <b>what we see as
real </b>and true <b>may have nothing</b> whatsoever <b>to do with our actual experience.</b> Or
as writer John Berger puts it in his <i>Ways of Seeing</i>, “The way we
see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.“ And <b>just as one’s self-image</b> may be <b>determined by a parental attitude</b> or a
significant occurrence in childhood, <b>so</b> I think <b>a society’s </b>entire <b>outlook on
the world may go back to some</b> <b>pivota</b>l prime <b>event or</b> action by its first
ancestors, or even by a single <b>influential person</b>, like the founder of a
religion or an important institution.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u><br /></u></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u>Identifying leading with oppressing.</u></span><br />
I propose that <b>the matriarchs </b>who make up the original Council of Elders <b>in the earliest agricultural village </b>are the ones who establish the world's first consciously conceived social order. In so doing they <b>lay the groundwork for humankind's first 'ordinary' state of consciousness</b> <b>and set the rules for</b> what people regard as<i> <b>reasonable </b></i><b>thinking and <i style="font-size: 12pt;">normal </i></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>behavior</b>.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Since its</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> most emphasized human potential </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">is obedience to
authority, <b>I see in</b> <b>t</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>he</b> <b>Malevolent Matriarchy</b> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>history’s first dictatorship</b>, in its
goddess cult<b> a conscious intention to deny men equal status with women</b>, <b>and </b>in
the custom of ritual regicide an effective means <b>to limit men’s paternal
role </b>to the physical act of procreation.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Moreover, because I assume that
<b>witnessing the first male sacrifice</b> is such a profoundly traumatic experience for
newly conscious man, I suggest that it <b>sows</b> in him <b>the first seeds of a</b>n
enduring <b>male</b> <b>fear of woman</b>--both as authority figure and as sexual being. A fear I
consider <b>extreme enough</b> <b>to </b>jolt men out of their healthy sexual instincts and<b> ignite the hatred of the female sex</b> that is <b>still ablaze in the </b>worldwide <b>practice of misogyny</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><u><br /></u></span></div>
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<u>Stunting consciousness.</u></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Beyond oppressing men,
however, <b>the matriarchs </b>also leave a heavy imprint on the population as a
whole. I think they<b> realize that</b> the ego’s capacity for <b>independent thinking is
a lethal challenge to them</b>, as to all power-holders, because of the germ it
contains of rebellion against the elders (and all authority and tradition). <b>Their
</b>overarching <b>aim </b>then <b>becomes</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> to halt the emergence of the individual ego
and keep the use of the conscious mind a privilege for the few. The ruling élite
therefore makes a determined effort <b>to cut shor</b>t in the many <b>the necessary
process of individuation</b> (the process by which individuals in society become
differentiated from each other).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">An infallible helpmate in trying t</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">o curb </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">the growth of a healthy ego </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">is organized religion thanks to the effective means it disposes to mold </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">people's minds. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">I consider the Malevolent Matriarchs' most important legacy to be</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">the </b><span style="font-size: 16px;">widespread </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">belief that </b><b style="font-size: 16px;">human beings are inherently flawed,</b><span style="font-size: 16px;"> and have</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;">to be saved by outside forces.</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> A belief that' <b>stems from</b> </span><span style="font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold;">t</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>he</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> <b>idea</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;">they implanted in us </span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>t</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>hat a</b> certain kind of <b>suffering-</b>-involving sacrifice and violent death--<b>is an inescapable part of the human condition</b>,</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">We also recall</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> that </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">the Mesopotamian city-states had </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a </span><a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/2015/11/18-village-as-blueprint-of-civilization.html" style="font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">deeply pessimistic outlook on humanity</a><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. So did the classical Greek writers who portrayed human beings as born to suffer and inflict suffering--</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>a notion </b>so widespread and <b>deeply entrenched</b> that it can be found <b>in arts and literature the world over.</b></span><br />
<br />
<u style="font-family: 'times new roman';">Sum-up</u><br />
<div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">What t<b>he malevolent
matriarchs</b> do, then, is not only undermine the male self-image but <b>lock the
entire population in a </b>completely arbitrary, deep--and <b>deeply
offensive</b>--<b>underestimation of</b> who they are as <b>human beings</b>. When you know that to be human is not simply to do things wrongly but to BE wrong, how can you even dream of </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">trusting your own intellect and judgment? </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>And because</b>, by and
large, <b>we still accept this </b>misanthropic <b>definition</b> of ourselves, <b>we</b>’ve come to
<b>take </b>destructive and self-destructive behavior <b>for granted</b>. On it patriarchy
builds the perverted belief <b>that murder in the form of war</b>--or the large-scale
killing of youths--<b>is legitimate</b>, a belief we’re still not ready to abandon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>If the reader thinks I've speculated enough by now and looks for more concrete underpinnings to my chief theory, let me now present a remarkable universal phenomenon that<span style="font-size: 16px;"> may indeed be the most convincing piece in the puzzle</span>. It also explains why I have insisted on <span style="font-size: 16px;">tracing the origin of sexism all the way back to prehistoric times.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> S</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">ee next
post.</i></span><br />
<i style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>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. </b></i><br />
<i><b>For the full blog click </b></i><i style="text-indent: -0.5in;"><b> <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></b></i><i style="font-size: 12pt;"></i></div>
</div>
</div>
Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-29818160231437970832015-12-07T09:41:00.001-05:002016-03-09T13:08:25.104-05:0026. Newly Conscious Man <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Awakening to a conscious apprehension
of the world </b>is no doubt a mixed experience. At the same time as their species
has mutated into a smarter, more complex form of life than that of all the
others, <b>our forebears must learn to use</b> <b>faculties</b> that up to now have lain
dormant (<b>like judgment, discipline and responsibility</b> for the choices they
make). Here they are, still part of earth and yet on a strangely elevated
plane, forced to listen to a different drummer--one that no longer calls them
to passive obedience but to sovereign action. And <b>only now does it strike them</b>,
perhaps with the force of a sledge-hammer, <b>how</b> utterly <b>dependent they are on
guidance </b>from outside.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The conscious mind also makes
<b>a rift in their sense of wholeness</b>. Becoming aware of their individuality, and
of two distinctly different sexual identities, <b>forces them to </b>leave behind
their vertical and childlike bonds with mother.They must now <b>establish</b>
altogether <b>different</b>, horizontal and more adult <b>bonds with their peers</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In Genesis, this is
metaphorically described as the Fall. Once their “eyes are opened” after having
eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve are expelled from
Eden. Quite comically, the authors of the Old Testament, who can’t see Nature’s
own plan in this event, make God into a petulant old patriarch, angry and
vindictive for being deprived of his dictatorial powers. (Something that
becomes even funnier when we realize that God is only a male counterpart to the
ancient Great Goddess, in whose name the matriarchs are speaking.)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<u>Need for guidance.</u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The time of miracles has
given way, once and for all, to the time of human trial and error, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">and <b>people </b>are bound to <b>feel
both doubt</b> <b>and conflict</b>. With their first glimpse of the inherent duality of
things comes the suspicion that something else may be hidden behind
appearances. Lost is all absolute certainty, vanished forever the conviction of
doing things right. I therefore think that <b>fear may be as normal in </b>the
psychology of <b>newly conscious man as in</b> that of <b>the child</b>: both feel small,
feeble and helplessly dependent.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Assuming that the process of
<b>becoming conscious is first accomplished in the leaders</b>, I think the population
at large only learns about it by watching them and their novel and fascinating
ways from afar. Even if the <b>ordinary man </b>is in awe of those favored few who get
the first chance in history to exhibit a definite will, set their own goals and
implement them, he most likely <b>prefers to stick to the old</b>, unifying <b>Mother
figure</b> whose omnipotence he questions as little as an infant does its mother‘s.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRJsRkM68xT6afuvtM7JLBylu2CK0WNY4otuqSGS8oD1RigLghRIDo2JMztMkb07d2fLAgeAGg3KRbfja1jA8LrauDxgFlb_QHCIFGUOOjFMPMmmpfjOY4k64x4NGj3mG1TsoI-1Jmy9y/s1600/Awe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRJsRkM68xT6afuvtM7JLBylu2CK0WNY4otuqSGS8oD1RigLghRIDo2JMztMkb07d2fLAgeAGg3KRbfja1jA8LrauDxgFlb_QHCIFGUOOjFMPMmmpfjOY4k64x4NGj3mG1TsoI-1Jmy9y/s320/Awe.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">But I also think that when
finding themselves alone and without guidance in an unknown world, <b>our
ancestors feel an urge to overcome separateness-</b>-to somehow make themselves
stronger by transcending their individual existence and achieve union with
others. <b>The birth of consciousness,</b> I therefore suggest, <b>is also the birth of
our need for love,</b> and the striving to fulfill this much overlooked--and as it
seems forever unmet--</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">need what history is all
about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Furthermore, I imagine that
their subjects’ absolute trust in them inflates the leaders’ egos and tempts
them to abuse it. <b>Instead of encouraging</b> the process of <b>individuation </b>I think
<b>the matriarchs</b> decide to <b>nip it in the bud</b>. And--alongside their own fear--this attitude makes <b>our ancestors</b>
<b>succumb to </b>what Neumann speaks of as <i>‘<b>uroboric incest,</b>’</i> or the tendency of the
budding ego towards voluptuous self-dissolution in the unconscious. Rather than
seize the opportunity to exercise a will of their own, <b>they</b> <b>choose to </b>return to
the womb and <b>be dissolved in the union with Mother.</b> (The <i>uroborus,</i> we
recall, is a circular snake biting its own tail, an image used in mythology to
symbolize wholeness, the first stage in the growth of consciousness.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The desire of the leaders to
deny their subjects the use of a conscious mind thus meets the need of the
subjects to shrink from the responsibility entailed in it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u><br /></u></span>
<u>A still unanswered question</u><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Can </b>the lure of<b> 'uroboric incest' be the
ultimate reason why</b> <b>we</b> still <b>hold on to the </b>childish <b>belief that</b> <b>a supreme parental personality keeps the
universe under control</b>--rather than impersonal physical forces? And that it's this parent who fulfills our wishes, not we ourselves? Can it also be <b>why</b> many in<b>
the 20</b></span><sup><b>th</b></sup><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> century West rushed into </b>totalitarianism (state communism,
fascism, nazism) at </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">the advent of democracy and the slackening grip of religion</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">? Were freedom and autonomy still so burdensome that they had to flee into <b>new dependencies and submissions</b>? And <b>is there even</b> <b>a
similar need</b> for outside assurances <b>behind</b> <b>the current rush to </b>immerse
ourselves in <b>new technologies and an unfettered consumerism</b>? You tell me.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">For a sum-up of </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Malevolent Matriarchy (which I guess lasted </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">anywhere from 3000 to </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">5000 years) and the marks it left not only
on the male psyche but on all humanity, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">see next post.</i><br />
<i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b><i><br /></i></b></i>
<i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b><i>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. </i></b></i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><b>For the full blog click </b></i><i style="text-indent: -0.5in;"><b> <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></b></i></div>
</div>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-64914757744716400702015-12-03T09:06:00.002-05:002016-03-09T12:07:44.213-05:0025. How could the Early Farmers Accept Male Sacrifice? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">So as not to spoil the spell, <b>the spirit of a religious festival requires</b> that the normal attitude toward the cares of the world be temporarily set aside. Says Campbell in his </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Primitive Mythology</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, the very purpose of participating in a ritual is to attain a mental attitude in which one is overtaken by the state known in India as ‘the other mind‘ (Sanskrit, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">anya-manas</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, possession by a spirit). I.e., a state of <b>being ‘beside oneself,’ spellbound,</b> or “overpowered by the force of a logic of ‘indissociation’--wherein A is B, and C also is B.” To our prehistoric ancestors such a state is probably familiar, but it also remains alive in some contemporary cultures.</span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwwqJwAQHIOD-BF3UYolfWIKBXvNce2eHC6DRCG0WSAPgcMGpsGf-0yp0GVV8iCCNeWFSSi3EMYXYVKNURnMledyJStQovAPwnDxhgOKXx5nPmVoZHQ_XjdNPqz1vJV3UF23Jew6RqLhJi/s1600/Religious+ecstacy+Whirling+dervishes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwwqJwAQHIOD-BF3UYolfWIKBXvNce2eHC6DRCG0WSAPgcMGpsGf-0yp0GVV8iCCNeWFSSi3EMYXYVKNURnMledyJStQovAPwnDxhgOKXx5nPmVoZHQ_XjdNPqz1vJV3UF23Jew6RqLhJi/s320/Religious+ecstacy+Whirling+dervishes.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Religious ecstacy in motion. Whirling dervishes</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In Eastern thinking <b>human beings aren’t seen as separate from the gods</b> so there’s no conflict between the two; gods are simply the mystery of the depth of one’s own being. The Japanese custom of <b>ritual suicide</b>, e.g., (which Campbell calls the ‘soul’ of both the Orient and the archaic world) <b>demonstrates </b>an eagerness to die that can only be explained as <b>the individual’s</b> solemn <b>identification with his socially assigned role</b>. And eye-witnesses of human sacrifice unanimously report the calm acceptance, even enthusiasm and pride, with which the victim walks to his death--as if it were a special dispensation of grace (compare modern equivalents like kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u>Religious emotion.</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">How can we possibly touch the quick of <b>a religious emotion as strong as this</b>? Maybe it <b>can be likened to the</b> unparalleled <b>intensity of our emotions as</b> small <b>childre</b>n. Our boundless trust in parents and elders (whom we saw as unconscionably far above us), our total helplessness over their commands and our utter terror lest they abandon us. Feelings many of us had rather forget! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Yet if we choose to remember, we may get a peek at how our agrarian ancestors feel <b>having not only to witness a deliberate murder </b>(a son’s ordered by his own mother no less, or a brother‘s by his sister) <b>but also to celebrate it </b>by participating in the sumptuous festivities that precede the marriage ceremony. I think it<b> is a tremendous blow to the </b>newly awakened <b>sensibilities of both men and women</b>; and that it frightens them out of their wits, enough to want to make off and hide in a hole in the ground--even if (or perhaps because) they believe the sacrifice is necessary and that the victim resurrects as a god. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>To handle a shock</b> of this dimension, </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">one way </b><b style="font-size: 12pt;">may </b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">well </span><b style="font-size: 12pt;">be to regress into magical thinking. </b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Cannibalism often accompanies the killing; and the wish to appropriate the dead person’s qualities is known to be the most universal motive for cannibalism. To believe the sacrificed person has some special powers would therefore be a perfectly logical choice for our ancestors, because to take part in the ritual meal would give them a chance to absorb those powers into themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>Another way </b></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>is to take on guilt for</b></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">being part of </span><b style="font-size: 16px;">the ritual killing </b><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(if only in the sense of not having prevented it). </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">St</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">ruggling to keep the cause of their trauma from becoming conscious, they c</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">hoose to see </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the young consort's </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">grisly destiny as somehow their fault</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>. </b>And <b>to escape</b> <b>from that </b>heavy <b>responsibility they </b>make another fateful choice: to</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> <b>sink back in the </b>previous <b>pre-conscious thinking patterns </b>of the ‘law of participation‘ (where everything is part of everything else to the point of identification). </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><u>Trauma and self-destruction.</u></span></span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">To me <b>this </b></span></span><b><span style="text-indent: 48px;">readiness</span><span style="text-indent: 48px;"> </span></b><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><b>to accept blame</b> (though they were blameless) <b>is the first masochistic symptom in history.</b> And <b>the need </b>ever since<b> to reenact the murder</b> <b>is </b>clearly <b>a compulsive phenomenon</b>, an effect of the serious trauma inflicted on humanity by the horrendous institution of ritual regicide and <b>a collective version of the disorder </b>Freud' <b>called 'repetition-compulsion.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 48px;">What I think happens as time removes us further and further from the initial event--and <b>as religion becomes more entrenched</b> in our minds--is that <b>we begin to accept responsibility </b>not just <b>for </b>the murder but for <b>everything that goes wrong</b>. Everybody ends up <b>thinking </b>that <b>to be human means </b>being born bad</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 48px;"> and <b>predestined to suffer</b> eternal <b>punishment for unpreventable sins</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">To better understand this development, let's try to transport ourselves into the mindset of human beings at </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">the earliest stages of consciousness </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">and see what it may tell us about the origin of the male inferiority complex</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. S</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">ee next post</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></i></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: medium;"><b>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. </b></i></span><br />
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-46873754559317440042015-11-30T09:39:00.000-05:002016-03-09T10:50:40.937-05:0024. The Role of Religion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">According to scholar of religion
Thorkild Jacobsen, <b>basic to all religion is </b>a unique experience of
confrontation with <b>a power not of this world </b>(the ‘</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">numinous</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">‘). And it’s
<b>the</b> positive human <b>response to this experience in thought</b> (myth and theology)
<b>and action</b> (cult and worship) that <b>constitutes religion</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>The essence </b>of both magic and
religion <b>is to coerce spirits</b> outside of man (to whom are ascribed powers
greater than his) <b>to fulfill man’s imperative organic needs</b>, such as food and
sex). According to both French sociologist Emile Dürkheim and Greek scholar Jane Ellen
Harrison (author of <i>Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion</i>),
religion is collective emotion; it springs from shared social interests and
activities, and its benefits are expected to affect the whole of the community.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>At first religion is</b>
neither spiritual nor individual but <b>an instinctive </b>and unconscious <b>attempt to
apprehend life as one and indivisible</b>; <b>only gradually </b>is it transformed and
<b>crystallized into gods</b>. Lévy-Brühl coined the term <i>participation mystique</i>
to describe how before growing an ego people live in a purely animal state of
non-differentiation (or total oneness with nature and the group). I.e., they
don’t yet see themselves as different from other persons or objects around
them. And because to them plants and animals are their equals (the natural
world and human society being one), they can actually help crops and cattle
grow by observing their group customs. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u>The power of superstition.</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">How do<b> the matriarchs
</b>persuade people of the benefits of their goddess cult? I think the strategy
they choose is to <b>reinforce two </b>old and deeply entrenched <b>superstitions</b>. The
first is that the <b>female regenerative functions are a wonder of nature.</b> It not
only associates woman with a special vegetation magic but also gives her an
extraordinary authority, including things like her right as high priestess to
sacrifice the life of the consort, be he her own son. Says Harrison,
“Matriarchy gave woman a false because magical prestige.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The second superstition is
the extremely ancient idea that <b>death leads to rebirth </b>(which also lies beneath
all later traditions of mysticism). The concept of the earth as a bearing and
nourishing mother is prominent in the mythologies of both hunting and planting
societies. Already the Neanderthal grave burials, from c 200,000 to c 75,000
BCE (which contain food and implements), show the grave as a return to mother
for rebirth. No doubt <b>a </b>way of reconciling ourselves to death, this <b>belief </b>is
now <b>twisted</b> by the matriarchs <b>to mean </b>that the <b>death of the fertilizing male is
</b>a <b>necessary</b> precondition <b>for new life</b>. But has it got anything to do with
reality?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb9cCaAHxtbJK7K8kfkBc44QSie4yFCRwQ_oTrUKb8HnwNEkeGMeM9SAiq-GANJzFaZi1sYDnftvJTB7C3ZhaNHhsfGgRgnm0aeSeb-Ygf0K60FCVq15k3g_4RX3Z7_CD96_idY49VeDm0/s1600/Statuettes+of+Worshippers%252C+Iraq%252C+2800+BCE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb9cCaAHxtbJK7K8kfkBc44QSie4yFCRwQ_oTrUKb8HnwNEkeGMeM9SAiq-GANJzFaZi1sYDnftvJTB7C3ZhaNHhsfGgRgnm0aeSeb-Ygf0K60FCVq15k3g_4RX3Z7_CD96_idY49VeDm0/s200/Statuettes+of+Worshippers%252C+Iraq%252C+2800+BCE.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Statuettes of Worshippers, Eshnunna, Iraq, 2700 BCE</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">This is, however, a time of
awakening consciousness and new ways of seeing things. <b>How</b> then <b>can the
matriarchs </b>hope to <b>win over people by choosing </b>rituals that so clearly belong
to <b>a pre-conscious way of thinking</b>? I speculate that they’re smart enough to
realize <b>they’ll have to frighten their subjects into submission</b>. And what could
be scarier than the terror struck by an élite who has the nerve to sanction the
methodical murder of men?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u>The human component.</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Do I attribute too much will
and determination to the women leaders? Aren’t they as confused and clueless as
the rest of the people in these times of seismic change? They probably are, at
least to begin with. But what I know for sure is that <b>all cultural phenomena
</b>(whether law, custom or religion) <b>are created by human beings</b>, more precisely
by those <b>with the most authority</b>. So, if women do indeed govern the world‘s
first settled community, then they are also the ones who invent its religious
rituals. <b>The matriarchs </b>before the dawn of civilization <b>are </b>just <b>the first</b> in
the long row of <b>tyrants </b>that history abounds in <b>who legitimize their dictates</b>
by presenting them <b>as divine will</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">As Campbell expresses it, the
ultimate origin of the ‘numinous,’ the creator and destroyer of all divinities,
is the human mind. Frazer puts it this way, “Gods are often merely men who loom
large through the mists of tradition.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Nevertheless, to take hold,
<b>mustn’t rituals invented by the few have </b>some basic <b>resonance in the many</b>? And
how is any belief or tradition<b> to survive</b> unless a majority agrees not to
challenge it and put it under the scrutiny of their own intellect and judgment?
For a possible answer, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">see next post</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></i></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></i></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i style="font-size: medium;"><b>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.</b></i></span><br />
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-91819460923740066292015-11-25T14:30:00.000-05:002016-03-09T10:12:45.831-05:0023. Men’s Place in the Goddess Cult <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">As to the young men who fertilize the Great Goddess, they’re all beautiful delicate blossoms, obliging, narcissistic, pleasing her by their physical appearance. Symbolized in myths as anemones, narcissi, hyacinths, violets, they’re devoid of strength and character and totally lacking in individuality and initiative. (A </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">pretty </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">striking </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">parallel with patriarchy’s feminine ideal</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">, wouldn't you say</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">?)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">According to Neumann </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">(in <i>The Origins and History of Consciousness</i>)</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, <b>the phallic youths are</b> not fertility deities only; they are <b>the vegetation itself</b>, "Their existence makes the earth fruitful, but as soon as they have reached maturity they must be <b>killed, mown down and harvested</b>." <b>Although </b>lamented over and <b>reborn as gods,</b> <b>they’re</b> nevertheless <b>only drones</b> serving the queen bee and <b>destined to be killed off </b>after doing their duty. The Great Mother portrayed with an ear of corn, her corn son, is an archetype that extends to the mysteries of Eleusis in Greece and to the Christian Madonna.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16px;"><u>'Comfort men' or eunuchs.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>These flowerlike boys</b> have no masculinity, consciousness, or higher spiritual self and <b>are identified with their bodies only</b>, the distinguishing mark of which is the phallus. As gods they appear in the form of dwarfs. Pygmies displaying their phallic character are worshipped in places like Cyprus, Egypt, Phoenicia. In </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, Barbara G. Walker reports that the choice of a king depends on the promptness of his erection upon the sight of the naked Goddess. In some places he’s killed if his virility fails him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>The</b> ministers and <b>priests of the goddess are often eunuchs</b>. As such, they needn’t die having already done so symbolically by renouncing their sex and assimilating themselves to women. In Syria, Crete and elsewhere the castrated priests use women’s clothing (compare modern Catholic priests) so as to carry the sacrifice to the point of identification. The male is </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">not only </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">sacrificed to the Great Mother but he also </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">becomes </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">a woman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">In Hindu mythology (but not in Tantric myths) the dominant woman is dangerous in two ways; one, as the non-maternal goddess who beheads her lover in a symbolic act of castration, dances on his corpse and impales herself on his still animate lingam; two, as the mother goddess whom the worshiper doesn’t dare to approach for fear of incest. On the human level, says Doniger, the two roles merge in the sexually aggressive mother who is “a persistent stereotype in conventional perceptions of Hindu family relationships.”</span></div>
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<u><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Doomed</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> by sex.</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia tell the myth of Dumuzi, the shepherd king of the city-state of Uruk. He reigns early in the 3<sup>rd</sup> millennium BCE and becomes divine by marrying Inanna, goddess of Love and Procreation, who in this poem expresses the inseparable bond between love and death:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4aS5-FNsTQJAbJczyUa6k20NC4z1yazlmDpepbu2KRAHECZEpk-Sby14PsCVfqq2fg0rUCrM2AJ30MK9XLRS3sfeabIGgXuac32a7wHIWXcgn3q-7qVQFrH1F-AuMIaRUm2GwvNYieex8/s1600/Kali_lithograph.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4aS5-FNsTQJAbJczyUa6k20NC4z1yazlmDpepbu2KRAHECZEpk-Sby14PsCVfqq2fg0rUCrM2AJ30MK9XLRS3sfeabIGgXuac32a7wHIWXcgn3q-7qVQFrH1F-AuMIaRUm2GwvNYieex8/s200/Kali_lithograph.jpg" width="147" /></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Hindu Goddess Kali dancing on Shiva's body<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i> </i></span> <span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>“Oh my beloved, my man of the heart . . . <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> My brother of face most fair . . .<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> I have brought about an evil fate for you,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> Your right hand you placed on my vulva,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> Your left hand stroked my head,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> You have touched your mouth to mine, <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> You have pressed your lips to my head.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> That is why you have been decreed an evil fate.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">What does men’s sexual slavery to the priestesses say about their status at this time? <b>While</b> <b>sexuality glorifies </b></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>woman</b> and brings immeasurable good to all life, f<b>or man </b></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>it 's a harbinger of</b> his demise; </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">his </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">very</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">instinct for survival is </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">transformed into a<b> death</b> wish. The best way to imagine ordinary men‘s life in this society may be to look at women’s life in patriarchy, and turn it clear around. Because just as femininity counts for little in a society where man is the model for human being, so does masculinity in a society where that model is woman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><u>Women were the first sexists.</u></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I therefore suggest that the early goddess-worshipping society is a female autocracy, and that <b>abuse of the opposite sex</b> (including discriminatory sexual stereotyping) <b>is an early female invention</b>. Which of the sexes that practices this kind of abuse from then on, and when, is a toss-up that depends on which sex holds most outer power in society. At this juncture in history it’s women, a few thousand years later men.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Now, if as I’ve said the goddess cult is a mere stunt thought up by power-hungry matriarchs, what remains for me is to explain how both the spectators and the victims themselves could accept and put up with it for so long. Let's start by taking a look at religion. </span><i style="font-size: 16px;">See next post</i><span style="font-size: 16px;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><br />
<b><i>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. </i></b><br />
<i><b>For the full block click </b></i><i style="text-indent: -0.5in;"><b> <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></b></i></div>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-14243316544368476762015-11-22T10:52:00.000-05:002016-03-08T18:00:21.447-05:0022. The Role of Sexuality in the Goddess Cult <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">According to scholars like Neumann and Campbell, at the time before birth is linked to sexuality woman’s fertility has nothing to do with sex; it simply stands for miraculous increase and mysterious renewal. As people start linking sexuality to fecundity, they lend to it the same aura of wonder. Sexuality is a force of nature, both earthly and divine, both personal and transpersonal, and the fertility rites are a glorification of it. <b>For the entire pre-modern world sexuality partakes in the sacred</b>; it can pacify an angry god and avoid illness or other misfortune. Sex with more than one partner, then, is a thing of value.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>The focal point of the cult is woman’s sexual activity</b> unrelated to monogamy and family, i.e., altogether separated from her reproductive capacity. An essential aspect of the goddess’s creative power is <b>her ‘<i>virginity</i>,’ or readiness to receive any man who stands in the service of fertility;</b> only in patriarchal times is the term twisted into a symbol of chastity. All magical operations by women have a sexual character: in rain–making ceremonies, e.g., nudity is required and in India naked women push the plow around the field at night.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<u>Sex a woman's badge of honor.</u></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Courtesan on Greek amphora</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">So strong is this emphasis on <b>female sexuality </b>that it <b>becomes celebrated for its own sake</b> and incarnated <b>by ‘prostitutes’</b> attached to the temples of the goddess. <b>Honored</b> in hymns, epics, myths, liturgies and lamentations <b>as </b><i>Ishtaritu</i>, <b>holy women of Ishtar</b>, or <i>quaditsu</i>, the sacred ones, these women are daughters or wives of aristocratic families among peoples living around Sumer (Hittites, Luwians, Hurrians and Semitic Amorites). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">In his classical work <i>The</i> <i>Golden Bough</i>, Frazer describes how the union between the goddess and her consort is joined by the real, though temporary, union of men and women at the sanctuary of the goddess. The sacred marriage ceremony is everywhere a joyous feast, preceded by lavish banquets accompanied by music, song and dance. According to Herodotus (who traveled widely in Asia Minor, the Near East and northern Africa) <b>nearly all peoples partake in rites involving sexual license</b>, which are meant to reinforce the fruitfulness of the ground and of man and beast. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>The active sexuality of the goddess is</b> seen as <b>a good in itself </b>long into the recorded era, <b>because it </b>humanizes men and makes them wise, <b>guarantees </b>the stability of the throne and <b>the survival of the social order</b>. The famous courtesans of Corinth originally serve a religious function, and a sacred brothel is attached to the temple of Dionysus in Sparta. Yet in the Bible sexuality freely enjoyed by both women and men becomes equated with idolatry, the worst of sins against Yahweh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">However, <b>the operative factor </b>in the ritual marriage ceremony<b> is</b> not the sexual but <b>the transpersonal</b>, the coming together of the two principles of female and male in holiness, <b>beyond the individual.</b> The particular woman, the personal incarnation of the goddess, is of no consequence; she’s totally unknown and remains anonymous. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">This makes the relationship of <b>the goddess</b> to her lover utterly impersonal (the love motif came much later). Originally she <b>is</b> not <b>concerned</b> with the youth at all but <b>only with</b> his phallus, which is holy to her. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">All phallus cults emphasize the same thing--the anonymous power of </span><b style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">the fertilizing agent, </b><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"><b>the phallus</b></span><b style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;"> that stands by itself</b><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">. And <b>the real issue</b> of her union with her consort <b>is</b> not the offspring, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">or even a bountiful harvest, but <b>the blessings it yields</b> for the whole community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.5in;"></span> <span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.5in;">For the role men play in the cult and what it may indicate about their standing in this society, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.5in;">see next post</i></div>
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<i style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.5in;"><b>I welcome feedback and would love for you to leave a comment. </b></i><br />
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-82974923554432853852015-11-19T09:24:00.002-05:002016-03-08T17:38:59.547-05:0021. The Growth of Consciousness in Mythology II<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Once the ego starts to separate from the unconscious, we enter the stage of <b>the Great Mother archetype</b> (who later splits into <b>Good Mother and Terrible Mother</b>, the first kindly and bounteous, the second wicked and devouring). This stage <b>is</b> <b>first reflected in </b>the relation between <b>the Mother Goddess and her son-lover</b>. Although <b>the young man</b> is able to affirm his masculine otherness, he <b>is not yet strong enough t</b>o cope with her because he's afraid of cutting himself off from his union with her.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Caravaggio's Narcissus</td></tr>
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<b>Then</b> follows a transitional phase when <b>the ego germ attains</b> <b>a</b> certain <b>degree of autonomy</b>. <b>Examples are</b> the myths of <b>Narcissus</b>, the young man who falls in love with his own reflection in a pool; <b>and </b>of <b>Hippolytus</b>, who as he rejects the advances of his stepmother Phaedra (the Great Mother) is becoming conscious of his ‘higher’ (as opposed to sexual) masculinity. Symbolized by light, sun, eye, <b>this stage is a pre-condition for all self-development</b>, a first sign of ‘centroversion,’ the ego’s move towards self-formation (which Jung calls ‘individuation’). I<o:p></o:p>t’s not, Neumann insists, a sign of auto-eroticism unless it is prolonged.</div>
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<u>The Hero.</u><br />
But <b>only </b>after the third phase, <b>when the Hero fights the Dragon</b> (or other monster), rescues the Captive and raises the buried treasure of Knowledge, <b>are consciousness and ego</b> finally <b>established</b>. <b>The dragon fight</b>, which <b>symbolizes the slaying of the mother and the conquest of fear </b>(the latter is pictured as entry into the cave, descent into the underworld or as being swallowed), is central to the evolution of both the individual and humankind as a whole. Because <b>in killing the Great Mother the hero </b>destroys the image of the Terrible Mother and <b>saves a positive feminine element</b>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Being both a real woman and the soul itself, the Captive unites the hero’s ego consciousness with the creative side of his soul--his own feminine counterpart. And <b>the hero, now an adult male</b> and no longer a tool of the Earth Mother, <b>can join with</b> a woman his own age and kind, <b>a separate ego-conscious individual</b> and a spiritual being <b>like himself.</b><br />
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In some myths a friendly, sisterly female (e.g., Medea, Ariadne, Athena) helps the hero kill the monster. In the Theseus myth, the hero who kills the Minotaur finds his way out of the labyrinth thanks to the ball of thread that Ariadne has given him. In the hero myth of Perseus, Athena lends Perseus her shield in which he sees reflected the head of the Gorgon Medusa (the Great Mother). If he’d faced Medusa, she’d have turned him to stone, but now he can kill her and rescue the captive, Andromeda. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Hero slaying the Dragon and saving the Captive</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Perseus and Athena with Medusa's head</td></tr>
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Again, the hero’s masculinity (like earlier the Great Mother’s femininity) is purely symbolic because his fate reflects the personal development of both sexes, which is to conquer the inertia of the unconscious and identify with the independent ego. <b>At this stage</b>, then, <b>human beings </b>are no longer puppets of the unconscious but <b>have fully conscious minds</b> and can join with other fully conscious minds to strike out new paths.<br />
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In principle anyway. Because, as I see it, <b>we never grew into adult personalities</b>. Unable to establish the kind of equal social order that would characterize a grown-up stage, we <b>haven’t moved beyond the adolescent level </b>of emotional development <b>typical of the matriarchal era</b>. Or, differently put, we haven’t saved enough of the positive ‘feminine’ element to make it possible. <b>Thousands of years after coming of age as a species, we’re still </b>limping along in<b> a regressive society</b> weakened by a never-ending struggle between two kinds of discrimination: the overt by men against women and the covert by women against men. The <i>Adulthood of Humankind</i> that should mark the <i>Age of Consciousness </i>is still a mere figment on the horizon. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s now return to the malevolent matriarchy and dig deeper into why I see its goddess cult as a catalyst for the male inferiority complex. <i>See next post.</i><br />
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<b><i>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 <a href="http://originofsexism.blogspot.com/">originofsexism.blogspot.com</a></i></b></div>
Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-30462388105783194542015-11-16T10:00:00.000-05:002016-03-08T17:00:38.470-05:0020. The Growth of Consciousness in Mythology. I <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Neumann proposes that, just like dreams tell of the psychic situation of the dreamer, so do <b>myths typify humanity’s unconscious situation at different stages of its developmen</b>t. In his book <i>The</i> <i>Origins and History of Consciousness </i>he builds on a description and classification of myths to outline the archetypal stages in the growth of consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>The first, still unconscious stage</b> <b>is</b> the embryonic containment in mother and the childlike dependence on her, an early, beatific state, when the world remains undivided. It’s <b>expressed in symbols that represent the maternal womb </b>and display all the positive maternal traits (bestower, helper, she who fulfills). Among them are the round (circle, sphere, egg) and the pot (jar, bowl, vessel), for thousands of years worshipped as the goddess in her elementary character. But anything deep or big that surrounds and preserves anything small is part of this archetype: abyss, valley, ground, sea, fountain, lake, pool, earth, underworld, cave, house.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<u><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Every human being is both </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">male and female.</span></u></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">In all myths and legends<b> the unconscious is </b>symbolized by <b>the </b></span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>feminine</b></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> and</b> by </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>darkness</b></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>.</b> When <b>the ego </b>comes forth from the dark, it i<b>s associated with </b></span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>light</b></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> and </b>with <b>the </b></span><i style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>masculine</b></i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">. <b>The terms </b>masculine and feminine <b>are symbolic</b>, not personal, sex-linked characteristics. <b>Every individual is</b> by nature <b>a psychological hybrid</b>: passive, ‘feminine’ features are as common and effective in men as active, ‘masculine’ features are in women.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">(Let’s therefore remember that </span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>suppressing our congenital ‘contra-sexuality</b>’--e.g., by </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">identifying some human qualities with one sex only--<b>is a</b></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><b> violation of</b> the integrity of<b> the personality and something</b></span><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">culture </span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>created</b>,</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> not nature. It's an example of the arbitrariness of</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> those in power.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">One early symbol is the <i>Uroborus</i>, <b>the circular snake that represents the union of masculine and feminine opposites </b>joined in perpetual cohabitation. This idea <b>can be found in many cultures</b>; examples are Plato’s <i>Original Man </i>(whose male and female halves haven’t yet separated), the Chinese <i>T’ai Yuan</i>, the Holy Woman, the Great Original (who combines in herself the <i>yin </i>and the <i>yang, </i>the active-masculine and the passive-feminine powers of nature) and the Hindus’ <i>purusha</i> (the great hermaphrodite). But we come across the same idea also in the Revelation of St John, among Gnostics, in Navajo sand paintings, in alchemical texts and as an amulet among the Roma. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">For the emergence of the ego, see next post.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSJAM-i2Ksqe5u0PxlLH7T8XA26d82tcc1ZC-OsxdufnBzvuhbsE0-ZNncQelS47K9e_E1r3BpWDr3Xkq8onvxzVxk75FeP1_TMuumKkTSNopXhVFsfh_6-fc8lB2bWg8nanFlUc4Y8_Kh/s1600/another+uroborus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSJAM-i2Ksqe5u0PxlLH7T8XA26d82tcc1ZC-OsxdufnBzvuhbsE0-ZNncQelS47K9e_E1r3BpWDr3Xkq8onvxzVxk75FeP1_TMuumKkTSNopXhVFsfh_6-fc8lB2bWg8nanFlUc4Y8_Kh/s200/another+uroborus.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Uroborus (Greek <i>oura</i>, tail, <i>boros</i>, eat)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwvZ3ajdoR2yk2yBbbRg3Kb1ij6VNmt8p4ghg0BhP28bjs9Xo8W8PX14GuJ0QmOmrHqMf9VTLdDScFEKCnmirZTnHf1S4HzBq5yOJ1vFgFznVrbu0u937HYdJI-YQigmgizvW8QRtWDZul/s1600/T%2527ai+Yuan+Chinese+goddess.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwvZ3ajdoR2yk2yBbbRg3Kb1ij6VNmt8p4ghg0BhP28bjs9Xo8W8PX14GuJ0QmOmrHqMf9VTLdDScFEKCnmirZTnHf1S4HzBq5yOJ1vFgFznVrbu0u937HYdJI-YQigmgizvW8QRtWDZul/s200/T%2527ai+Yuan+Chinese+goddess.png" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Chinese T'ai Yuan, The Holy Woman,The Great Original</td></tr>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I welcome feedback and would love for you to leave a comment. You can post a comment below</span></i></b><br />
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-20490290759949273362015-11-12T09:30:00.000-05:002016-03-08T16:36:35.685-05:0019. Consciousness <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsDz5DxvQ8NKsTW_6iVx8D5Kee0VhjE8OqOEmIHREwDEpgofD55ZrMFajlUkIHu0hvt7n29ujcnhkoyaAoVFjNXKigLhffWGGR69SRf7rQkSt9f5BUMPppPMb6jeTcN511mnssiW40KvfS/s1600/Consciousness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsDz5DxvQ8NKsTW_6iVx8D5Kee0VhjE8OqOEmIHREwDEpgofD55ZrMFajlUkIHu0hvt7n29ujcnhkoyaAoVFjNXKigLhffWGGR69SRf7rQkSt9f5BUMPppPMb6jeTcN511mnssiW40KvfS/s200/Consciousness.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Jung pointed out that just <b>as
the human body has an anatomical prehistory of millions of years, so does the
psyche</b>;<b> and both</b> body and psyche still <b>display</b> “numerous <b>vestiges of earlier
evolutionary stages </b>going back even to the reptilian age.” For most of our life
as a species we live in an unconscious state, from which a conscious ego slowly
rises. With his concept of </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">participation mystique</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">, Lévy-Brühl has helped
clarify that <b>prior to the formation of the ego humanity lives in</b> an original,
purely animal state of non-differentiation (or <b>total oneness with nature and
the group</b>). People don’t yet think of themselves as subjects nor as
distinguishable from other persons or objects around them.</span><br />
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<u>The impact of consciousness</u></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><b>But </b>with<b> the awakening of
consciousness,</b> when moving on to assume an ego and identify a personality with
it, humanity encounters for the first time the possibility of a self-orienting
consciousness. As the conscious human mind--<b>symbolized by the ‘ego’</b>--pushes its
way out of the unconscious and up to a place in the limelight, a new and
potentially most powerful actor has entered the world theatre. One that‘s ready
at last to take on an equal partnership with the other lead player in the human
drama, the unconscious human instinct--symbolized by the ‘id,’ the Freudian
term for the source of psychic energy that’s derived from instinctual needs and
drives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Paleontologist Stephen Jay
Gould calls consciousness the greatest invention in the history of life,
because it allows life to become aware of itself. By enabling us to see things
objectively and in pairs of opposites, it <b>adds an entirely new dimension to
human existence</b>. From a non-conceptual and essentially childlike way of
perceiving the world, we now turn to an adult and highly discerning view--<b>one
that includes the </b>ominous <b>realization that we possess personal power</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Being the culmination of eons
of mental development (though it may have emerged suddenly), <b>consciousness
marks our coming of age as a species.</b> If up to this moment things have just
happened to us and we’ve been more or less powerless pawns on the chessboard of
an inscrutable destiny, we now rise in rank and become co-creators with
evolution. <b>Because how we evolve</b> as a species no longer <b>depends</b> merely on the
mutation of genes or natural selection but <b>also on culture, i.e., on our own
inventions</b>. We have, in a sense, acquired the power of gods. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">This is the point of no
return.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Mumford puts it this way in
his book <i>The Transformation of Man</i>, ”By means of his<b> culture </b>(man)
<b>wrought changes </b>in himself within a few thousand years <b>that </b>nature<b> would have
needed millions of years to accomplish by</b> the<b> </b>tedious process of<b> organic
evolution</b>.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<u>Before consciousness</u></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The arrival of consciousness
doesn’t mean that we</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">
</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">couldn’t <i>think</i> during earlier
non-conscious stages. We both felt, thought, made decisions, solved problems,
even made art. But rather than products of individual minds, these skills
emanated from a deeper psychic level that existed in us long before the
formation of the ego. What’s new at this stage is only being able to say, “I’m <i>conscious</i>
of doing all this. I <i>know</i> I’m a feeling, thinking, willing individual who
chooses how to behave.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Jung calls that lower
pre-conscious level <b>the ‘collective unconscious</b>.’ By it he <b>means a substratum
</b>that’s <b>inborn and identical in all people </b>and consists of <i>archetypes (</i>or
images and patterns derived from common human experiences) that come up in the
mind automatically and determine behavior independently of the individual’s own
experience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">According to Neumann<b> the development of culture depends on the capacity of the
conscious mind to absorb more</b> and more <b>of the unconscious</b>. Early man, who lacks
a self-conscious ego capable of reflecting, only perceives an unconscious
content in the form of <i>symbols</i>. Being spontaneous expressions of the
unconscious, symbols are elusive and have manifold meanings. But because <i style="font-weight: bold;">myth
</i><b>is </b>the language of symbol, Jung sees in it t<b>he original language of mankind and</b>
<b>the unconscious</b>, the natural way for the collective unconscious to communicate
with consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">For a view of how the growth
of consciousness is described in mythology, </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">see next post</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><br />
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1221815523191737118.post-50940918984656558182015-11-09T08:00:00.000-05:002016-03-08T16:25:48.604-05:0018. The Village as Blueprint of Civilization <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<u>Economy</u><br />
Whereas agriculture makes a complete break with the hunting-gathering economy, <b>the city’s economy is based on the same kind of agricultural output as the village</b>; (<i>city</i> = the concentration of people within a small area that leads to occupational specialization, improved skills and tools and large-scale organization of work, e.g., for irrigation.) This speaks for <b>a similarity in life-styles between city and village</b>, and indicates that the gulf between the nomadic and the settled societies is due to their sharply diverging means of livelihood.<br />
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Mumford, who thinks the passage from village to urban culture took thousands of years, assumes that the preconditions for the city‘s complex social cooperation (surplus food and manpower, forethought and moral discipline) slowly unfold in the village. To him, <b><i>civilization</i> </b>(from Latin <i>civis</i>, citizen)--a state of social culture generally defined by city living, a centralized government and written language--<b>is</b> as <b>inconceivable without the thinking patterns of the village</b> as it is without its economic accomplishment.<br />
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<u>Government</u><br />
The question, then, is: what took place <b>in the farming village</b>, the social stage that lies between the nomadic stage and civilization? <b>I postulate some kind of coercive social order </b>already at that stage <b>because </b>when we first come across civilization, <b>in the city states of Mesopotamia</b>, or Sumer, <b>such a rule is firmly in place</b>: dictatorship, social stratification, including slavery, and continual strife and war between the states. According to Mumford, exerting power in every form was the essence of civilization: "the city found a score of ways of expressing struggle, aggression, domination, conquest--and servitude." Our hunting and gathering forebears, by contrast, have relatively little social differentiation and specialization and no warfare.<br />
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Sumer has been extraordinarily influential in all Near Eastern cultures. When conquered by the Semitic Amorites-Babylonians (who in turn strongly influence their neighbors), its civilization is taken over lock, stock and barrel; religion, mythology, literature and educational system are almost identical. There are also striking parallels between Sumerian literature and that groundwork of Western civilization: the Bible.<br />
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<u>Law</u><br />
<b>In all the major early civilizations there exists a</b> principle, absolute order, or<b> law </b>(everywhere represented as female). In Sumer it’s called <i>me</i>, in Egypt <i>maat,</i> in India <i>dharma</i>, in China <i>tao</i> and in Greece <i>moira.</i> Described as irreversible and based on an eternal truth, this law consists of a set of rules <b>governing every detail of life.</b> The citizens must do labor for the élite and their families, give a daily sacrifice of food and wine to the gods in the temple and attend monthly celebrations, most importantly, the New Year festival culminating in the sacred marriage ceremony.<br />
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The priesthood has a monopoly on knowledge and creative thinking; bureaucracy, court of law, observatory, school and library are all run by the priests. <b>The view of man’s fate is tragic</b>: he’s created only to follow the orders of his gods. It’s always he, not the gods, who is to blame, which makes <b>submissiveness the greatest virtue</b>. In Hammurabi’s law code from c 1700 BCE Mumford finds a sadistic punishment similar to that of modern totalitarian states--an endless list of trivial offenses punishable by death (on the principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth).<br />
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<u>Religion</u><br />
<b>The patriarchal city-state worships a mother goddess </b>said to have once been of higher rank than the other deities (each household also has its own domestic gods). <b>An</b> often encountered <b>image on the cylinder seals of Mesopotamia </b>(which contain many of the basic motifs of early mythology) <b>is the ritual marriage between the god and the goddess</b> who have become <b>incarnate in the king and queen</b>. (see the picture on post 12.) Writes sumerologist Samuel N. Kramer in <i>The Sumerians, Their History, Culture and Character,</i> “The origin and evolution of this remarkable fusion of myth and ritual, of cult and credo, are obscure.”<br />
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I propose that,<b> in an embryonic form, the village </b>already<b> contains the oppressive institutions </b>typical <b>of civilization</b>. The <b>kingship starts out as queenship</b> and the <b>office of priest as that of priestess,</b> the village queen represents a kind of universal law, just as later the Sumerian king represents <i>me</i>. And out of it develops the social organization of the village, i.e., its government, religion, administration, education.<br />
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<b>The city-state’s autocratic government</b>, then, backed up by a powerful priesthood and a confining religious dogma,<b> is a logical,</b> though slow and gradual, <b>male extension of customs </b>that arise in a community <b>serving female interests</b>. The mentality of the village is essentially the same as that of the city, and the differences between them quantitative, not qualitative, more a matter of degree than of kind.<br />
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Before going deeper into my reasons for seeing the original farming village as a catalyst for the male inferiority complex--and hence for misogyny--I will now discuss consciousness, the evolutionary phenomenon that makes possible the remarkable development of our species. <i>See next post.</i><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYwC2bpg61Ys07KwCoRU_q5OgOZv3ocAUKE3DdsetChQQi0SZapRVLRFhBDPGGpat7FfwZ5NMBjfpVeydLj6Qo694LRYSM7Ab1gqlzaD2zOi5vmrscvEizn_l5cs2Yh4vVc3mdOCWYlqg1/s1600/Mesopotamian+city-state.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYwC2bpg61Ys07KwCoRU_q5OgOZv3ocAUKE3DdsetChQQi0SZapRVLRFhBDPGGpat7FfwZ5NMBjfpVeydLj6Qo694LRYSM7Ab1gqlzaD2zOi5vmrscvEizn_l5cs2Yh4vVc3mdOCWYlqg1/s320/Mesopotamian+city-state.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mesopotamian city-state</td></tr>
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Ariadnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00448929565283136903noreply@blogger.com0