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The Head of the Medusa — Chapter 2: Social crisis — men
and women at war
2
King Acrisius of Argos had a beautiful daughter named
Danae. The oracle of Apollo told him that Danae would one day have a son – a son who
would, so the prophecy foretold, kill him. Though the King loved his daughter dearly, it
seemed he had no alternative but to lock his daughter in tower of bronze so that she would
never be able to marry nor have children.
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It seems that our society is in crisis. It seems as if men and women are in a state of
war. They are divided as never before. The building block of human society, the family, is
under threat as never before. Divorce and family breakdown is an epidemic. The results of
this destruction, the crime, poverty and the lost opportunity cost society dearly. The
price paid by us, as individuals, is incalculable. We cannot lock our children in a tower
to prevent them from being exposed to the risks they will face as they grow to take their
place in society. Equally, our legacy to them must not be to deny them their chance to
make their own opportunities and make their own mistakes. Furthermore, we cannot control
them for selfish, personal reasons or even to protect our own lives as King Acrisius tried
to do, for one of the messages contained in this myth is that we cannot hold onto our own
lives by denying our children theirs. They are our future incarnations, but they are not
us. They carry our genes forward, but we ourselves cannot go with them. The best that we
can do is to provide them with stability, compassion and with love while we are still
blessed with their presence.
There was a time long ago when there was very little difference between the male and
female of the human species. However, the species was irrevocably changed by a series of
evolutionary milestones, with effects as far reaching as the triple developments of our
own era.
Nobody knows for sure what instigated these changes. Perhaps fluctuations in climate
were responsible or the discovery of more efficient tools and weapons. What are important
to us now are the results of these changes. Put simply, brain size of the human baby
increased considerably. This led not only to an increased period of pregnancy, but also
required the size of the female’s pelvic girdle to increase so she could physically
give birth to the more highly developed child. This, in turn, led to a shortening of the
forearm in women and consequently to a deterioration in their spear throwing abilities.
This meant that it was now predominantly the men who hunted for food, leaving the tribal
group and learning to co-operate in the silence of the hunt. Meanwhile the women, who
remained in the camp raising the children and supplementing the diet by root gathering and
berry picking, learned other skills. They learned very effectively how to communicate and
they began to see the camp or village as their territory. Thus, the gender roles were
diverging but, more than ever before, men and women were growing to be mutually dependent.
Under these circumstances, measures were necessary to reinforce the relatively monogamous
bond now forged between man and woman which was vital for the protection and survival of
both mother and child. To this end, women lost their facial hair and their breasts grew
into buttock mimics to ensure face to face intercourse – both factors that encouraged
a lasting individual bond.
So, humans broke with the rest of the animal kingdom, as the creation of life was
performed face to face and equal. This mutual dependence born out of a natural necessity
became extremely successful. It meant that initially, at least, children were
predominantly raised by their mothers, but in a greatly extended family group that offered
protection, support and the opportunity for education and the passing on of skills and
knowledge. Boys learned from men what it meant to be a man and girls learned from women
about their roles in the partnership. There was time and space for ritual and story
telling and perhaps natural religion. It was a very efficient way to live. Anthropologists
and Sociologists who study the few native peoples that still exist today were surprised at
the amount of time spent on apparent recreation - resting, dancing singing, making things,
laughing, telling stories and just being together.
The human family was a self-supporting unit within tribal society, which was essential
for its survival. Its structure and existence meant that the human race could progress.
The basic unit required for this was one man and one woman and so the concept of marriage
was born. Marriage - a contract underpinned by the spiritual cement of human life remained
basically unchanged until quite recently. It came into existence to strengthen the natural
bond between man and woman. It created a stable environment, a microcosm of the tribal
society itself in which to nurture, protect and prepare children for their role in that
society. It was the natural bond we call love.
In all relationships there is an element of power. On going studies of our nearest
relatives (the chimpanzee’s and other species of the great apes) show striking
parallels between their behaviour and our own. Power structures and pecking orders are
evident in our own lives, in our jobs, communities and families. Power is an important
function. It is natural, beneficial and essential as long as there is harmony in the
group. Power in harmony has great strength; power in disharmony can cause massive damage.
In early human society, it can be seen that women wielded an enormous amount of power,
over their men and the whole community. It is thought that many early human societies
were, in fact, matriarchal. Women may not have brought the bacon home as it were, but
their capacity to bring forth life into the world was revered, even worshiped. In many
societies, women were the priests and shamans. They were the healers and the caregivers.
Even today, holy men wear skirts and robes to symbolise this. Men may have had more
physical strength and skill, but it was women who really had the power in human societies
and in that respect, nothing has changed.
Western Judaeo-Christian culture has revered women and their role as mothers. The
Virgin Mary is even seen by some as the Mother of God – a direct successor to the
pre-Christian ‘Mother Goddesses’. This image or racial memory of the mother -
the Madonna - is so strong that it has perverted the view of the essential nature of women
to both sexes. It is almost impossible for us to even contemplate any criticism of our
mothers. They give birth to us. They force us, screaming into the world. They feed us from
their own bodies and nurture us. We cannot exist without them. It is even said that men
dying on the battlefield cry out for their mothers and never their wives. This image of
the ‘Mother Goddess’ has imposed a great burden on both genders, for we are not
gods or goddesses, we are people. |
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It is interesting to remember that in western cultures, a father ritually gives his
daughter away at her wedding. A mother, on the other hand, as every mother and wife know
and as every husband and son forgets to his cost, never gives away her son. Every mother
tells her son 'Big boys don't cry' and that he must behave like 'a man'. This is perfectly
natural if she wants her brave boy to go out and slaughter some ferocious wild beast or to
defend the tribe from attack, but this leads inevitably to the emotional castration of
men.
For the whole of human history, circumstance has forced men to take the role of
hunter, provider, defender and warrior. To fulfil these roles, he must learn to be
selfless. His own needs health and well being must come secondary to that of his woman and
his children. He must even be prepared to sacrifice his own life for them. He learns this
from the lips of his own mother, so how can it not be true? This is why men have fought
wars. The right to die to protect and defend society is exclusively male. Men are
expendable. They are programmed to be so. To enforce the deep conditioning that makes
someone willingly take on this dubious honour must surely illustrate the wielding of
enormous power.
The power that women have over men is total and always has been. This is not the
modern perception. Women, we are told, are a ‘civilising’ influence over the
‘barbaric’ male. We are now being assured that women have been oppressed by
these wild beasts for millennia. We are told that men are naturally violent and
emotionally unable to function without violence. We are told that this is how men wield
their power over women. As a result of this thinking, men are being purged from the lives
of their children. Women have campaigned powerfully and successfully for their
‘rights’ to ‘their’ children, so successfully in fact that the
definition of the family has changed to a woman and her children. Women instigate
three quarters of all divorces and are overwhelmingly granted custody of any children and
the marital home.
The traditional male jobs in industry are rapidly declining. The proliferation of
service, leisure and financial industries employing large numbers of women is adding to
the demise of the male breadwinner. So called ‘Affirmative Action’ programmes
and ‘Equal Opportunities’ policies have discriminated against men and in favour
of women in all walks of life. Ability, suitability and competence come secondary to being
of female gender(s) in the search for employment. The barriers that women claim deny them
equality are far higher for men in many areas and hostility and discrimination is
legitimised by false and politically biased studies and statistics. Women are still
reluctant to take on the dirty, dangerous jobs. Though they have bludgeoned their way into
the military, they do not expect (neither are they expected to) fight and die as their
‘equal’ male comrades are.
Education today is an ongoing process of forced feminisation. Men have been largely
purged from the primary education, the social care and child care systems. Even in higher
and further education, male teachers are becoming an endangered species. They are
extremely vulnerable to false allegations of ‘abuse’ and ‘harassment’
from students and female colleagues alike. ‘Women’s Studies’ or
‘Gender Studies’ courses spill over into the general curriculum, ostracising and
excluding men from the right to a real education. For a female student herself to become a
teacher of these ideologies is simple. Few of these courses require examinations of
competence. The process is self-selecting. Non-competitive, female friendly criteria now
allow the mediocre to excel. The premise that all men are evil is upheld by statistics,
compiled and computed from a ‘feminist perspective’ proliferating and
reinforcing the lies. History was once the study of the past. It included both men and
women. In many cases, it has now been replaced by ‘herstory’ – the study of
women’s history, seen from a single perspective – not an inclusive woman’s
perspective, but a feminist one. |
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Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to
generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times,
along with the use of fire, and the first crude stone axe.
—Susan Brownmiller ‘Against Our Will: Men, Women,
and Rape’
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When society is made to believe that all men are capable of the most heinous crimes,
then naturally, all men are suspects. Apparently reputable organisations reiterate the
view that violence and abuse are overwhelmingly a male problem. Given that boys have been
brought up predominantly by their mothers, and cared for and taught by female teachers,
what does this say about the power of women? Clearly there is an anomaly at work here, or
perhaps, dare I suggest it - a lie?
What are men doing about this situation? Surely, these brutal, violent, supreme
oppressors of womankind must have fought ruthlessly against this attack on their
supremacy? On the contrary, they have done nothing to stop the tide. In fact, they have
hastened their own obsolescence by their compliance with their attacker's demands. They
have been coerced into aiding and abetting their own destruction, just as they have been
trained to do by own mother’s selfish, yet natural power from the moment they first
struggled to walk.
It's fair to say that increasingly, many people today grow up in families that
interact only through power systems. A child is now more likely to be fought over like a
rabbit between two wolves than to be held secure between the love and security of two
natural role models. Is it any wonder that as an adult this same child can only function
through the constant struggle for power? Is it any wonder that their perceptions get
twisted? What is particularly bad is that many of them have now learned to perceive power
as love. Children growing up in such an environment perpetuate the cycle. This is not
helped by our culture's utter reluctance to discuss, define or even acknowledge love - the
very fuel of human existence. It’s said that Eskimos have dozens of words for snow
and yet we have only one to describe emotions ranging from personal taste to utter
insanity! What does this say about our ability to express ourselves through our language
– our ‘mother tongue’?
Our view of love’s nature and function has been warped not only by the decline of
religion and spirituality in our lives but also by the prostitution of the concept by the
mass media with its consequent assault on the heterosexual family. In the wonderful world
of ‘Women’s Studies’, love is deemed a manufactured emotion, a myth
high-jacked by men to snare and entrap. The oppressed female is a helpless draught animal
fit only for child bearing and hard domestic labour, goaded relentlessly on by a violent
patriarchy. This is of course, the exact opposite of what is clearly suggested by history
and anthropology. For a false emotional concept that feminists allege does not exist,
women seem to spend a large proportion of their lives in a constant search for this
illusive and reputedly poisonous elixir. Popular culture and the arts bombard us with
descriptions of love that lure us, often into blind canyons of despair. Yet we never stop
seeking this tarnished pot of gold. It is as if we know there is something beyond the hype
and the denial, which we can achieve. We are driven to constantly seek that which, in
reality, we cannot ever find by our own efforts. For in reality, love cannot be sought or
found, it can only be given to us. |
To Chapter Three |
Perseus' |
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Posted 2000 04 19
Updates:
2000 09 11 (reformated)
2006 10 31 (reformated)
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