Even as a young girl, I
didn’t buy the whole story. I remember being about 11 years old and having been
raised in a Catholic Church, prepared for my First Holy Communion ceremony,
going to Sunday School and learning all manners of things they teach kids about
Jesus and the rules and God and Heaven and Hell. I had figured Santa Clause
out, looked up books in the library about sex and hated when my mom answered me
with, “Because God made it that way.” It was never enough. But the thing I
hated most was the way people talked about Eve.
My parents had a huge painting of The Last Supper on a
wooden board in their bedroom. Weird place to have this hanging around but it
was there and I remember being sick and home from school and studying that
painting. I loved it. I knew there was a woman in it and I knew it was Jesus’
lover. I never asked and never had anyone interpret it to me, but I just knew.
I knew something sneaky was up and they were telling secrets and the guy in the
corner was a liar. I knew there was something being hidden under that draped
table cloth, people playing footsies with each other. I could just feel it in
my young mind. The picture was sexy to me, in a weird way, intriguing,
mysterious. I knew there was symbolism that I think my genes understood but I
couldn’t put it into words.
Imagine my excitement as a young adult woman who had
already separated from the church and studied religions from all over the
world. I was a not so closeted but not really out of the closet pagan type, who
had just got my hands on this controversial book, “The DaVinci Code.” Oh How I
reveled in the conspiracy, how I felt like Dan Brown was telling a story I knew
in my heart HAD to be true, after all, history backs up so much of it. Common
sense tells you that his version is so much more likely than religious scholars
would have you know. Political warfare, men who were greedy and wanted power,
killing an important man who wanted peace and equality, and succeeding, but
leaving his wife, with child. Oh no, that was not going to work. So defamation
is the first course of action, ignoring, demonizing and continuing to repress
the voice of women who sought peace, logic, and harmony with their surroundings.
What more can be an enemy of men who are power hungry?
Of course it didn’t start with Mrs. Christ, and it
certainly didn’t end with her as Mr. Langdon and Mr. Sauniere reveal in The
DaVinci Code. So many cultures have sought to humiliate women, control them,
own them. So many still do. But the gendercide that has plagued this planet has
been fueled at such an intensity by the Church, to ignore it and act like it
never happened and deny the rights of women to restore their original place in
society is just one more way of continuing the mistreatment of them.
Above all things, women are the creators of life, the
very essence of our primal being, the need to reproduce is as strong as the
need to eat. I often wonder how many men would be inhabiting this planet if
women weren’t making babies and feeding people. In childbirth, women form the
very bonds that create a biological safety net to protect their children, our
future. They nourish them with their own bodies, if all goes well, for more
than 2 years from conception to weaning, and then continue to care for them and
not only take care of the young, but old alike as well as their husbands and
other relatives or members of their communities if they are able. It must be
terribly confusing to a man to see women give so freely of their bodies to
create and nurture life, such a selfless act in so many cases.
Birth is an experience that would prove to be one of the
biggest misconceptions amongst men over time. The Bible will explain the pain
of labor a price paid by women for their sin of temptation. I would like to
reinterpret that to be that the discomforts of labor, to bear a child is the
price paid by a woman who engaged in sex, which is a product (if we are lucky)
of temptation, and temptation is not all that bad. And in the book, “Medicine
and Society in France” by Forester and Ranum, they claim after being introduced
to a publication of theories by Dr. Engelmann that, “There has been a
widespread acceptance of the idea that the length of labor and the intensity of
the pain felt increases with the degree of civilization” and that child birth
was easier for women who were more connected to nature, such as those in some African
Tribes (there are many tribes that are just as repressive to the women, mutilating
their genitalia and considering them property) and how short and easy their
births were. It seems with shame of the body and of the act that brought the
baby to the womb combined with the fear instilled into civilized, God fearing
women, that only then did childbirth become dangerous and painful. There are
accounts from all over the world of women in matriarchal societies having
amazing births that are easy and hardly resulted in maternal or infant death when compared to
populations of people who are or are attempting to be civilized. Furthermore,
these matriarchal societies are often the types that are living close to nature
and practicing some form of Goddess Worship, honoring the sacred feminine and
exposing the life giving energies surrounding sex as sacred and honorable.
Calling temptation a sin and saying you shall be punished
for it or for causing it to others has created much mental anguish over
thousands of years. In an attempt to curtail sexual irresponsibility, the
Church has literally mutilated the minds and bodies of countless people, from
unnecessary circumcisions ( on both males and females) to brainwashing people into
believing that sexual feelings, the biggest instinct of our animal bodies, are
evil, to people being sexually abused by religious authority figures by
manipulating them to believe they are serving God by pleasuring their leaders. Instead of men claiming the power of self
control, it was easier to demonize women and blame them for the cause of all
things sexually desirable.
Besides the cultural repression of a woman’s sexuality
and her being shamed into a painful and dangerous birth history, the actual
proof that lies in the Malleus Maleficarum, or also known as the “Witches Hammer” is
enough to make any woman seriously question if we will ever know the true
nature of women. We have undergone such a blatant massacre (over 5 million
women executed for supposed witchcraft) and continue to scare into submission the
survivors. This book was published in 1487 by Heinrich Kramer and James
Sprenger and told the reader that “the Devil’s presence was strongest where
human sexuality is concerned” and of
course women were believed to be more sexual than men so they must be the cause
of it, even accused of having sex with
the Devil himself because they were so insatiable. The writers wanted the
readers to believe that women were weaker than men and so women with strong
personalities or who were smarter than the average women (or man) must be a
witch and must be tortured and killed. Even more disgusting was the ways in
which healers and midwives were targeted for helping other women and for
knowing how natural medicines worked to ease the ails of women. If a woman who
was “over used” by her husband, having too many children in succession and was
in danger of dying in childbirth, wanted to have an abortion or use birth
control, a midwife would help her and if found out, they would both be put to
death. In the time frame we are talking about, the Middle Ages and Renaissance
times, women were expected to lay with their husbands when ever called to do so
and they were forbidden to try to control conception, often having 2 babies in
one year. And during these time periods, women were often married by 16 years
old, suffering childbirth before their bodies were developed fully and having a
life expectancy of only around 35 years old. (Pomeroy)
In
closing I would like to bring all the info presented together to point out that
women suffering because of religious teachings has not furthered society in any
way. It has contributed to a
de-evolution of our species, been used as weapons in war and politics, has
weakened society and most of all has influenced human kind in ways that do exactly
opposite that was intended bringing us
closer to “Evil” than had we empowered, honored, and respected the women of our societies.
Supporting the life giving and nurturing population of our communities ensures
healthy humans. If babies are born to a broken mother, how will she then teach
them what they need to survive in this chaotic world? When looking at the
issues we are faced with today, in seeing the blatant disregard of life and
environment, I have to wonder if we participated in a woman centered culture,
if things would still be the way they are today.
Bibliography
Ehrenreich, Barbara and
English, Deirdre Withches, Midwives and
Nurses: A History of Women Healers The Feminist Press City University New
York, NY (no copyright date available)
Forster, Robert and
Ranum, Orest Medicine and Society in
France Selections from the Annales Volume 6 Published by John Hopkins Press
Baltimore, MD 1980
Gies, Frances and
Joseph Women in the Middle Ages: The lives of real women in a vibrant age of
transition Published by Harper Perennial, NY 1978
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Godesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in
Classical Antiquity Published by Shocken Books, NY 1975
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