The Komen debacle and the attacks on Planned Parenthood are part of a long, long fight to dominate women and reproduction.
It may have not always been that way. Ancient artifacts are of pregnant women, such as the ancient Venus of Willendorf.
Women were obviously very important: they made life!
There is some evidence that people were not sure of what role men played in the creation of children. Hera, now known as the sister-wife of Zeus and the queen of Mount Olympus, probably evolved from an older goddess. Before it was determined that men also played a role, the earlier version of Hera conceived by touching a lettuce leaf. (More beneath the squiggle.)
Although there is plenty of debate about whether or not there were matriarchal societies, there’s better evidence that many societies were at least matrilineal. Women may have not ruled, but they were the vessels of inheritance. Mary Renault’s The King Must Die is based on this. There are plenty of myths in which you catch glimpses of this. Helen of Troy was first (and last) queen of Sparta – despite having two brothers, and the man who married her became its king. Penelope, the long-suffering queen of Ithaca in The Odyssey, had to fend off drunken suitors who wanted to be king themselves. As she had both a father-in-law (Laertes) and a son (Telemachus), it seems clear that the inheritance was attached to her person, and not following the male line. We can see hints of this in many other stories: Hippodamia, Atalanta, and Jocasta, to name a few.
Nevertheless, gradually or suddenly, sons were considered far superior to daughters. This may be partly due to something inherent in the Y-chromosome, because we’re still seeing this today. Not only is there blatant infanticide in India and China – of baby daughters, of course – there’s evidence that men stay in marriages where their wives have sons, and are more likely to leave when their wives only produce daughters.
Of course, there may have been some justification for this in olden days, where might really did equal right and defending your home and your city was very important. Furthermore, so many women died in childbirth that they may have not had the chance to grow old and wise. And men, who at the age of thirty would often marry fourteen-year-olds, may have had some reason to look upon their wives as silly little things.
Whatever the reason, men were convinced that they were far superior to women, and lamented the fact that they had to go to women to get more sons. In their frustration, they did what they could to give the power to Zeus. I mean, Zeus, the greatest male of them all, couldn’t be outdone by women, could he? He couldn’t let them have a monopoly on childbearing, could he? So we have two stories:
The birth of Athena. Zeus learned that if he had a son by his first wife, Metis, that the son would overthrow him. He took this prophecy seriously because he had overthrown his father, Cronus, who in his time, had overthrown his, Uranus. Now, Zeus’ father Cronus tried to stop the prophecy from coming true by swallowing his children as soon as they were born.
Zeus went one better. He must have heard about the prophecy shortly after getting his wife Metis pregnant. He invited her to play a game with him, in which they changed themselves into different animals and beasts. At some point Metis changed herself into a fly – and Zeus swallowed her. For some reason Zeus’ swallowing of his wife didn’t seem to cause the same outrage that Cronus’ swallowing of his infant children did, possibly because even then we had the same “It’s OK if you’re Republican” double standard, although back then it would have been known as “It’s OK if you’re Zeus” – which in a way was understandable, as criticizing the guy with the thunderbolts was imprudent, to say the least. In fact, Zeus’ swallowing of Metis was touted as a good thing, as she was a goddess of wisdom, and she imparted advice to him from within.
But, as we pointed out, Metis was already pregnant. Now, the immortals were really immortal – being swallowed did not kill them, although it must have been a serious inconvenience – and so Metis gave birth somewhere inside Zeus some time later. The child of Metis and Zeus refused to remain in such cramped quarters, and so she started banging things around, giving her father a wicked headache. Finally another of Zeus’ children, Hephaestus, the god of the forge, picked up an axe and opened his father’s skull with it (remember, gods could not die, so this was an act of mercy, not murder). Out sprang the goddess Athena, apparently in full armor, “born” from her father.
The birth of Dionysus. Zeus, despite being married, could not help himself around pretty females, whether they were mortal or immortal. He and most males had no problem with his wandering eye – remember, “It’s OK if you’re Zeus” – but at least one person disliked his infidelity. That was Hera, Zeus’ sister-wife, also the goddess of marriage. She did not take her anger out on Zeus – well, she probably did, but as he was the guy with the thunderbolts there were limits on what she could do to him – but she could harass his lovers.
Semele was a princess of Thebes. Zeus seduced her, telling her he was the king of the gods, and soon Semele found herself with child. Enter Hera, disguised as an old crone. She befriended the knocked-up princess but scoffed as Semele confided that her lover was actually Zeus. “Make him prove it,” Hera advised. “Make him swear an oath to let you see him in his glory.”
So Semele – obviously not the brightest of princesses, even if she was pretty – made her lover swear to keep a promise, and then demanded to see him in his glory. Zeus, being the god of oaths – evidently breaking your word was one of the few things that was NOT OK if you were Zeus – had to keep his word. He took his tiniest thunderbolt but it was still too much. His divine presence, revealed in all its glory, burned Semele to cinders. But Zeus was able to save the unborn child by sewing him into his thigh. Eventually, Dionysus was born.
But even if Zeus was able to claim giving birth twice, this was not available to mortal men. They might fantasize about having children themselves, but as long as this remained a fantasy, women were necessary. And so the resentment continued.
Some women might wish that men, too, could share in pregnancy and birth, as it’s not always a pleasant experience and used to kill us off regularly. However, I think that if women were only optional in the reproductive process, we would have been killed off a long time ago.
A second question was: who is the father? This was a serious question, persisting throughout the ages. I remember reading a play by August Strindberg (and I can’t remember which one) in which one of the characters obsessed about this. A man could never be completely sure that his children were actually his children, and not some other man’s. The question “who is the father” is no longer relevant, of course. If a man wants to know he can always arrange a paternity test.
Nevertheless, the problem isn’t just whether or not a child is one man’s or another’s. The problem is that many men do not want to let women have the choice – the power to have a child or not – because this is not something that can be outsourced (not yet, anyway) to men. Many men resent the monopoly women have on this.
And that is a large reason underlying the attacks on women’s reproductive rights. Obviously some women have bought into this as well, but I think the resentment has been around for millennia. This is not a new fight. And it’s a fight that each generation will have to keep on fighting.
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Note: I think about Greek mythology all the time. I even write about it, which is why I keep seeing parallels and patterns. More here.