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Prayer for You
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The Emergent Feminine
The Moon and the Misbegotten: Footbinding the Feminine"Healing must be sought in the blood of the wound itself..." --Nor Hall, Mothers and Daughters By Molly Dwyer, Ph.D. (candidate) Excerpted by permission from The Emergent Feminine: A Cosmological Inquiry into the Role of the Feminine in the Evolution of the Universe Years ago, I read a short piece by a contemporary woman novelist recalling how, as a child, she pretended to be Achilles doing battle in the basement with a water heater which she had cast in the role of Paris. Whenever I think of this anecdote, I see the basement of my own childhood home, and see myself, plastic sword in hand, doing battle with a water heater. I know it didn't really happen that way. I didn't turn our water heater into a Trojan, nor was I particularly obsessed with Achilles. In truth, it is more likely that a sudden intruder into my private fantasy realm would have found me scrambling across the back of our overstuffed sofa -- my surrogate for a desert sphinx -- calling out in the words of George Bernard Shaw's Cleopatra, "At last! I am a real queen!" Although these imaginary games may seem to reflect opposing gender influences, their underlying correlation, though subtle, is telling: in both cases, we see young women discovering their identity by incorporating images that have been mediated by the male sensibility. It may seem a small thing, but imagine for a moment that the only images of the masculine present in the celebrated literature of our culture had been forged from within the female psyche. Here is a thought exercise: Imagine if you will, that Achilles, Odysseus, Oedipus, Hamlet, Romeo, Lear, Arthur and Lancelot, or the men who people the novels of Joyce, Hemmingway and Dostoevesky, Kafka or Thomas Pynchon, et. al. -- in short, that the mythic and literary image of the male -- had been characterized by a hostile or condescending feminist hand. Imagine if the options young men faced growing up were either to identify with the females of their culture or to adopt the caricatures of their sex as presented by women, even sympathetic women, who, like Emily and Charlotte Brontë, brought forth the brooding but ineffectual Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester. Imagine if the men of history were considered irrelevant, and their works, like the writings of third century mathematical genius, Hypatia -- who has of late been credited with directly influencing the work of Copernicus -- were completely invisible, unknown, subsumed. Imagine that Aristotle's influence still lingered in that men were judged primarily by externals; that what was important, if you were a man, was how you looked, and that what you knew was not only secondary, but likely to be discounted if it had not already been determined important and/or true by a woman. Shaw's Cleopatra is little more than a child, not so distant from his more famously rendered Eliza Doolittle. The time and the setting have shifted; the storyline is a bit different. But the characterization of the feminine is very much the same. Cleopatra, who has no idea how to rule, no capacity for the subtleties of power, politics, or authority, is simply a beautiful young maiden awed by the sexual virility of Caesar, beside herself with petulance and pouty silliness -- insecure, impotent and, in her childlikeness, sexually alluring. There's nothing in Shaw's portrayal of Cleopatra to indicate that she, although not a celebrated playwright, was in fact an author. Chrysopeia(GoldMaking) is one of the Gnostic texts . . . that has been attributed to this famous "femme fatale." (Merchant, 1980, 17) "The woman I needed to call my mother was silenced before I was born," writes poet Adrienne Rich. (Perera, 1981, 7) And so it goes: In a recent interaction with a colleague, I mentioned that I was reading a book on women and the history of philosophy. "Must be a short book," he quipped with a droll smile. Academia, except in the most progressive institutions, seems oddly intent on marginalizing the contributions of women, still championing the tradition that European history is bereft of significant women thinkers. The women who, on occasion, rate a reference in the history of Western cultural thought are indeed rare. Most women either go unacknowledged or, like Cleopatra, are modified to conform to a predictable image. Not long ago, in a conversation with another colleague, I defended the relevancy of exposing Aristotle's attitudes toward women. My colleague felt such material was tangential to the understanding Aristotle and, for that matter, Western culture. There simply wasn't time, he told me, in a year-long course surveying the history of Western thought, to concern oneself with the more obscure and irrelevant aspects of Aristotle's philosophy. I left the conversation not only dissatisfied but with an urgent sense that, in fact, there is something absolutely essential to the comprehension of Western thought embedded in the manner in which Aristotle characterized and scientifically defined females and, further, something even more crucial about the fact that our cultural predilection to dismiss the feminine is still considered irrelevant. This may seem obscure, but it is an important point, a significant and pernicious expression of objectification, an example of what happens when a culture systematically disavows the subjectivity, the psychic interiority, the autonomous point of view of the Other -- in this case, the feminine. It is evident in the prevailing attitude of our postmodern technological culture, which assumes the Earth to be nothing more than a resource for the human species. It is present in our treatment of animals as food sources or objects of medical research, as equipment and machinery, or as entertainment. It is evident, too, in the insight that led Louis Leaky to hire the now famous primatologist Jane Goodall to study chimpanzees in their natural habitat. Leaky sought a researcher who could "relinquish control." He chose a young, inexperienced woman, because he wanted someone who could tolerate an approach that allowed for "choice and the nurturing of a relationship on the Other's terms." (Montgomery, 1991, xvi) Goodall was "receptive" in the classic Chinese sense of the word. She approached the chimps in a way that allowed them to come forward on their own terms and reveal themselves. Leaky made a wise choice in Goodall; she was intuitive and empathetic. It is questionable whether a scientist shaped by mechanistic methodologies and Newtonian assumptions could have grasped what was necessary, could have exhibited the restraint and the open, spaciousness which allowed the chimps to enter into relationship. In the discussion of coevolution, one finds terminology describing the necessity of "vacant ecologies," open niches in the environment where new forms can find their footing. In fact, the Cambrian Explosion is thought to have been possible in its magnitude because multicellular life found such a vacant ecology and exploited it. The term vacant ecology needs to be associated with our understanding of receptivity -- what we've tended to call passivity. When Jane Goodall made psychic space for the chimpanzees in her consciousness, in her languaging, and in her assumptions, she was essentially presenting them with a vacant ecology, following Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock's advice and letting the material "lead" her. McClintock discovered one of the elements now understood to be responsible for sexual differentiation in haploid cells, that is, the existence of transposons, moveable genetic elements or "jumping genes." Known for getting "down in the cell and looking around" (Keller, 1983), McClintock's methodology was unique, and, I would argue, archetypally feminine in that she, like Goodall, was essentially practicing receptivity. McClintock worked by consciously choosing to "follow the material." In essence, she thought like a woman. As she explains it: You let the material tell you where to go, and it tells you at every step what the next [step] has to be because you're integrating with an overall brand new pattern in mind. You're not following an old one; you are convinced of a new one. And you let everything you do focus on that. You can't help it, because it all integrates. I feel that much of the work is done because one wants to impose an answer on it. . . . They [the researchers] have the answer ready and they [know what they] want the material to tell them. [Anything else it tells them] they don't want to recognize as there, or they think it's a mistake and they throw it out. (Keller, 1983, 179) We are, for the most part, engaged in imposing a flurry of techniques upon every situation in which we find ourselves. We rush to explain what we see, to prove what we know, to demonstrate our expertise -- in short, to control the situation. We have little understanding of what it means to exercise restraint, to allow what is present to emerge spontaneously of its own accord, to order itself. We have little grasp of what it means to learn -- especially from that which is subtle or elusive. In essence, we have silenced not only our mothers, but most of the natural world. In fact, we have silenced every voice except the one voice we must -- our own. Our dominant culture, through its privileged members, has declared its position objective, that is, central, neutral and universal. And, from that exalted position, it has disseminated a "sense of the world cut to [its] own measure and revealed in [its] own mythic figures" (Cavarero, 1995, 2), in short, a world with which it is comfortable. Western cultural elites (primarily men) proceed on the premise that they have the right to deny the subjectivity of what they call the Other. This is but one example of the sociological implications of our conviction that evolution is simply a matter of the survival of the fittest. It is one of the more striking implications of objectification: the subordination and subsumption of the subjectivity, that is, of the authentic self-governing existence of the Other. Objectification represents a fear of intimacy, because true intimacy, like true learning, is only possible when the Other is recognized, honored, valued. Goodall recognized the psychic interiority and intelligence, the sensitivity and internal coherence of the chimpanzee "worldview," of their reality. And since the publication of her findings, startling new and controversial evidences of the self-reflective awareness of chimpanzees -- these creatures we've been, and still are, subjecting to imprisonment and medical experimentation -- have surfaced. Not only do chimpanzees have family systems and emotions, the capacity to design tools, use sign language and comprehend simple numbers, they recognize themselves in their mirrored reflection, thus challenging most of our coveted definitions, if not of humanness itself, then, at least, of what we've labeled "conscious awareness." (Fouts, 1997; Montgomery, 1991; Haraway 1989) Women, who have been for many centuries now the recipient of much oblivious objectification, tend to value the personal and private, the unique over statistical average, the concrete over the theoretical or abstract. Feminist methodology allows -- even invites -- biographical and idiosyncratic detail. It solicits the discussion of what is apparently singular, thus allowing researchers to open themselves to subjective and qualitative interpretations. Perhaps women simply place a higher value on intimacy. It makes a certain sense: the female carries the next generation to term in her womb. One could anticipate a genetic predisposition for accepting a hazy barrier between self and Other, while at the same time attending to the need for the differentiation of the unique individual who issues forth. One could hypothesize a genetic capacity for recognizing interdependency. This is, however, a slippery slope: Darwin argued for an evolutionary dynamic he referred to as female choice, describing the evolutionary role the female plays by selecting her mate. Ultimately this became justification for male promiscuity and for expecting female chastity. It led to a proliferation of new "scientific" theories vindicating Aristotle's original contention that women were biologically inferior to men, demonstrating how biological function determines social roles. Biological determinism fails to acknowledge the cultural complexity of gender. By focusing on women's reproductive capacity and assuming reproduction and motherhood as a woman's chief raison d'ętre, female subordination can appear "scientifically" reasonable. Contemporary feminist-anthropologists are successfully challenging many of the basic assumptions and generalizations of biological determinism, and justifiably so. The Darwinian idea of survival of the fittest, which defines women through their maternal role, maintains that the feminine obligation to maternity is in the "best interests of the species' survival," and hence, genetically encoded. This thinking fails to acknowledge the way cultural influences are (have been) separating both sexes from their genetic nature. Further, as feminist historian Gerda Lerner points out, "the human brain develops for many years during the child's period of infancy and complete dependency, and . . . it is therefore subject to modifications through learning and intense cultural molding in a way that is decisively different from animal development." (Lerner, 39, 1986) Sociobiology is a recent and sophisticated manifestation of the traditionalist view. It's founder, E.O. Wilson (1975) has argued that such complex human behaviors as altruism, loyalty and maternalism are "adaptive" for group survival and hence "encoded in the genes." It is understandable why feminist theorists chafe: given the prejudices operative in Western culture, the exploitation of biological difference easily becomes yet another millstone hung from the necks of modern women, justifying the exclusion of women from a wide range of economic and political opportunities. The controversy around biological determinism is complex and beyond the scope of this paper. What can be acknowledged here, is, that there is a rich literature focusing on the necessity to distinguish between sexual attributes which are biological givens and gender identity, which is a cultural construct and product of historical process. Nevertheless, throughout the mammalian world, the female is the primary parent responsible for nurturing. And although my reasoning is obviously vulnerable to feminist critique in that it tends, on the surface at least, to support those sociobiological claims currently suspect, it is reasonable to speculate that the cultivation of intimacy may indeed be an evolutionary strategy introduced through the mother-child bond. As [mathematical cosmologist Brian] Swimme and [maverick theologian Thomas] Berry note: These qualities for intimate association with others, for sympathetic response to the needs of others, is shown especially in the child-parent relation as these exist in the mammalian world, particularly with the maternal parent, since the survival of the offspring depends directly on personal intimacy between mother and child. (1992, 156) Lerner acknowledges the same dynamic and takes the issue even further: The first characteristic distinguishing humans from other primates is the prolonged and helpless infancy of the child. This is the direct result of bipedalism, which led to the narrowing of the female pelvis and birth canal due to upright posture. One result of this was that human babies were born at a greater stage of immaturity than other primates, with relatively smaller heads in order to ease passage through the birth canal. Further, in contrast to the most highly developed apes, human babies are born naked and therefore must experience a greater need for warmth. They cannot grasp their mothers for steady support, lacking the apes' movable toe, so mothers must use their hands or, later, mechanical substitutes for hands to cradle their infants against them. . . . (1986, 38-9) Only the mother's arms and care sheltered the infant from cold; only her breast milk could provide the nourishment needed for survival. Her indifference or neglect meant certain death. (1986, 40) I would suggest that the problem with our thinking and our accompanying symbolism may not be the fact that women are thought of and represented as genetically encoded to be nurturing, but that the feminine has been housebound -- housebroken -- and in spite of her postmodern escape into sex object -- stripped of her genius, her history, her numinous fecundity. She has been denied her depth. In many of the ancient indigenous cultures, the sacred feminine was personified as a triple goddess intimately associated with the phases of the moon. Just as the moon transforms from one phase to another, the feminine expressed itself in a three-part harmony: the maiden, the mother, and the matriarch. The maiden was strong, willful and self-defined; the mother, the source of all nourishment; the matriarch, the sybilline holder of mystery, death and transformative rebirth. Awed by her own capacity to bring forth life, indigenous woman honored the feminine force; she honored her womb and her menstrual blood (which cycled in rhythm with the moon) and so, too, her breasts which miraculously brought forth nourishment. In ancient Egypt, the moon goddess Isis was the mother and giver of all life. She not only gave birth to the sun, she resurrected her murdered husband (her brother). So bountiful was her essence that the tears of her grief brought forth the life-giving floods of the Nile. Isis was but one of the many Mediterranean goddesses subsumed by the Athenian Greeks, her power as an overarching goddess shattered into a myriad of sub-personalities, who were either dependent upon males, subservient to them, or separated from them. Artemis is the virgin goddess directly descended from the early Greek (pre-patriarchal) triple-moon creatrix. She is still a virgin, but virginity no longer means one-in-herself and independent, one who chooses of her own accord when (and with whom) she will be sexual and when she will refrain. It now refers to chastity, to an intact hymen. Artemis is now a separate, solitary female, a protector of the wild things whose connection to the male has been severed, an isolated female who is given a "feeble, even ridiculous part in the Iliad" (Spretnak, 1992/78, 76) -- she who had been worshipped with wild and ecstatic dance -- a source of immortality, secret knowledge and inspiration, she who symbolized the moon in its crescent phase. What is of concern here is the incessant tenacity with which science has carried forward the metaphoric divisions between the standard, "active" driving male-force and the derivative, "passive" neutral, female background on which that active force enacts its essence. To illustrate, let us consider the passivity of the moon, because, as we have seen, the moon is a primordial symbol of the feminine. Newtonian cosmology teaches us that the moon reflects the sun's rays. The moon is understood as an object in atomist thinking, an aggregate of unchanging atoms. In this depiction, the moon is easily recognized as nothing but a dead object in the sky. Its major activity is to reflect the light of the sun off its surface. If this simplified image is examined more carefully, however, several things become immediately obvious. First of all, it becomes essential to review our understanding of an atom. Our language tells us that an atom, like the moon, is an object, but quantum mechanics has made such a definition untenable. Elementary particles "are not permanently existing objects but are events." (Swimme, 1996, 102) They do not travel in space, but rather exist, cease to exist and exist again in another location. "[P]articles and atoms are flashing into existence, surging into existence, and then just as suddenly they are dissolving from their place to surge forth in a nearby location." (Swimme, 1996, 102). Like our knowledge that the sun is not setting, but rather that the Earth is turning on its axis, this is a scientific understanding that has not penetrated our awareness. Scientists and educators seldom note the implications that such a shift in perception hold within it. And, indeed, we have little impetus to acknowledge the moon as an active occurrence when our interest in it is solely objective -- that is to say, when we either romanticize its presence in our poetry, literature, and entertainment or think of it as a potential resource to be mined for human benefit. Swimme is one of the few mathematical physicists who does not define the moon in Newtonian terms. "The moon," he writes, is not a dead object, but instead an ongoing scintillating event. It is false to think of photons as "bouncing" the way a ball would bound when thrown against a wall. Instead, the photons from the Sun "interact" with the particles of the Moon. As with every interaction at the quantum level of reality, the process of this interaction begins with the annihilation of the particles as they are absorbed into the all-nourishing abyss and is followed by the creation of a new set of particles. If this new set contains any photons, these photons are new. They did not exist in the previous instant but, rather, came forth out of the annihilating event of the interaction. Thus, it is not true to say that the photons of light arriving here from the Moon have just been bounced off the Sun. Moonlight comes from the Moon, for moonlight is created by the Moon. (1996, 102-3) Our historical insistence on the passivity of the feminine womb is oddly coincidental to our unmindful acceptance of the passivity of space and our lingering Newtonian comprehension of "the quantum vacuum," which renders it emptied and barren. Neo-Darwinian thinking tells us the environment and the biosphere are basically inactive backdrops for a genetic "arms race" and the evolutionary ascension of "man." Our contemporary myths regarding the entire, non-human world soothe us into believing that everything that is not human is but a passive resource which we can manipulate with audacious indifference solely for own (apparent) benefit. As with the sun and the moon, in each case, a subliminal, hierarchical duality is operative, one which can ultimately be associated with our mythic expressions of masculine and feminine. Excerpted from a longer piece, the beginning of which is found at: http://www.shavano.org/html/emerge.html#Abstract Molly Dwyer Ph.D. (candidate) is Vice-President of the Shavano Institute, and has co-facilitated gender work since 1998. An educator for 13 years, Dwyer won the 1999 Vickers Award of the International Society for Systems Sciences for her paper on the cosmology of gender, "The Emergent Feminine." She was a delegate to the 1987 International Women's Congress on Peace and Disarmament in Moscow. Dwyer has studied with cosmologist Brian Swimme, and is completing the Grof Transpersonal Training. She is adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and co-author of the forthcoming book, "Gender Reconciliation." http://www.shavano.org/html/emerge4.html |
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© 1995-2008 -- Rob Brezsny. All rights reserved
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