Faithful Oppressions By Alexis Umowski

Faithful Oppressions

Some Observations of Female Sexuality

By Alexis Umowski

Before the rise of the first male-oriented monotheistic religion, Europe was likely ruled by a matriarchal religion that was peaceful and loving of the creative and spiritual arts. Women, perhaps, were the key to all the mysteries of the universe, but men provided a necessary balance with their vigorous nature. But in a series of acts against the Great Mother, different sets of Indo-European invaders over time who were greedy and war-hungry decided to exorcize the Goddess under their new regimes; under new reign there would naturally be new religion. The transition, for the most part, was a gradual one based on a growing desire for recognition, but each generation of leaders and conquerors followed suit, gaining more power, and then male superiority.  Many shifts in human consciousness can be attributed to this. As the first innovative invaders introduced their patriarchal culture on the conquered peoples, myths about brave warriors killing serpents, a symbol of goddess-worship and female sexuality, started to appear widely. Once the equality of the sexes became imbalanced, it became even easier to further the difference between the sexes as time passed, however unintentional it might have been. Before successfully "conquering" the Goddess, she was broken into lesser deities dependent on greater gods.  The usurping of the throne of the Great Goddess was supposedly finally accomplished later by the Hebrew, Christian, and Muslim religions (and all male-based monotheisms) that followed the first desires for masculine superiority. One God outweighed all the alleged “seductresses” that were left-over fragments of the past.  As female goddesses faded into the background, women in society followed suit, their sexual and mystical natures suppressed. Male-dominated, monotheistic religions have had a profound, harmful effect on women's lives up to and including the present day because of this shift in balance.  It is important to note that no one group, god, or sex is responsible for these negative occurrences that can only be attributed to our loss of the Goddess--the psychological effects and responsive actions have been devastating. Although men have also suffered her loss, I believe women have suffered more heavily. The injustices that women continue to suffer may have started within the “sacred institution” of new religion, but they have infiltrated all aspects of life on Earth.  Once the Earth Mother was forgotten, and we no longer had her guidance, the reign of reckless exploitation of all things feminine began in the development of modern civilization.

The first injustice to befall upon women is in losing their place in religion. Whereas women give birth to men, the story of Adam and Eve intends to prove the opposite.  Women are supposedly made from men, by Adam’s rib.  Christianity also re-labels the all-powerful Mother Goddess as a woman chosen by God to bare his son.  The Virgin Mary is given no choice, but expected to be the oven for holding God’s son. And, as an underlying principle, all men are considered the sons of God, and thus all women must be the ovens for their husbands’ seed. By this logic, women exist only to produce more men, as with some Islamic communities (where women are often blamed or beaten for birthing a daughter instead of a son).  It is for this reason that the Catholic Church seeks to prevent effective contraception.  Their policy of banning abortion also rapes a woman of her rights to her own body. The Vatican and Evangelical Christianity also put much pressure on the United Nations, preventing funding for health and population control programs in developing countries that have abortion and contraception clinics. Catholicism also opposes the availability of objective information on sexual activity, contraceptive methods, and pregnancy counseling because it threatens man’s purpose to be plentiful for God. Ironically, they argue that by keeping women in the dark about their other options, that they are doing the right thing. They believe the threat of pregnancy alone should deter women from unprotected sexual intercourse. Counseling is also considered a threat because it makes all choices, including abortion, acceptable. Catholicism is at the forefront of a continuing battle against women's rights to choose early safe termination of unwanted pregnancies, even if the woman had been raped. In total, millions of women have died world-wide from late/septic abortions, self-performed abortions, during child-birth, and other pregnancy-related deaths that could have been prevented if they were allowed to make their own decision from the start.

Intercourse outside of marriage is expected of any man, but women are labeled all sorts of unflattering things whether a woman has a sex-life or not. Sex may once have been celebrated ritualistically as a holy joining of equals, but it has become--in many cases--the reenactment of the first power-greedy invaders conquering the Goddess. There are very few parts of the world even today that consider sex as lightly as we do. In many places, the woman is still an object to be taken and dominated…trained like a beast of burden. Rape is frequently found in modern cinema. This, perhaps, is because it proclaims a desired position of power without responsibility—the ideal sexual encounter. The attitudes towards sex outside of marriage, for pleasure and not for procreation, is sinful, supposedly on both ends, but no one thinks badly of an adolescent boy claiming his manhood in this way. Society expects this of them, yet it is the girl who suffers the consequences as they are slandered, harassed, or has to deal with an accidental pregnancy. Sexual encounters also supposedly hinder sex education policy as they contribute to ignorance that leads to a teen-age pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and also possible infertility in women. This creates needless guilt and repression over bodily functions and sexual activity for women. These attitudes have devastated many lives.  Women throughout the globe who pick pleasure over procreation have suffered unnecessary gynecological STD-related illnesses because of the Catholic Church's ban on barrier methods of contraception. Some cultures go to great lengths to prevent pleasure, even if it means butchering the female body. The sex-related pressures on women in general have already caused not only physical health problems, but mental issues, psychological trauma and neurosis, eating disorders, guilt-based stress and anxiety, low self esteem and familial problems.

Genital mutilation of young women is one of the most abhorrent forms of tradition-based sexual abuse. Also called female-circumcision, the partial or total removal of sensitive outer genitalia, has been practiced for centuries in parts of Africa and France as preparation for womanhood and marriage. The theory in some cases is, that by removing the pleasure sensors of the female genitalia, that a wife would be less likely to have an affair because she won't feel sexual ecstasy. Extremely health-hazardous, it is also often performed without anesthetic under septic conditions by untrained, uneducated practitioners.  This procedure can cause death or permanent health problems as well as severe pain, both physical and mental. Ignoring these grave risks, participating cultures consider it an essential part of their ethnic identity, as well as a religious responsibility. Although the practice of unnecessary surgical procedures is obviously detrimental to anyone’s health and well-being, they refuse to acknowledge its severity in the case of women subjects.  Since it is performed on girls before adulthood, before their decisions legally count, circumcision should be considered a ritualized form of child abuse and violence against women—an overall violation of human rights. The moral debate over female-circumcision is comparatively recent considering hundreds of years of tradition. And yet, women are still forced to undergo such barbaric ritualistic procedures. Only in recent decades have activists and medical practitioners brought the health consequences of genital mutilation to our attention.  Although efforts are being made to eliminate this hazardous practice, it is nearly impossible to stop a barbaric tradition, especially if it doesn’t pose a threat to the other sex's well-being. Gender is not the real issue, the true problem lies in the resistance for cultural change--many groups stand by out-dated traditions just for the sake of preserving them.

In terms of education, many middle-aged women have never attended college (my mother included), but studied at a secretarial school after high school instead.  In the last couple of decades, however, women have dominated the college classroom.  It is very saddening that, until the recent age, women had been excluded from schooling after primary education, either by government law (still strong in some nations) or by social law (when parents forbid them the option to attend a women’s or public college). Imagine the infinite contributions women would have had to literature, medicine, and science had the female population never been excluded, which is more than half the world population. Much less time would have been expended in the glorification of the new God over the old, the starting of greedy wars, and in political genocides. Women provide a necessary balance to man’s many physical natures, and men do the same for women. Imagine if women were allowed to speak as complete equals in positions of power, which hasn’t happened perhaps in its entirety since the times of the Great Goddess. Many of man’s worst moments throughout history might have been prevented if women were allowed education and valued for their perspective on life occurrences. The purpose of collegiate education was initially a way to serve God (the Ivy League started out as seminary schools). How can women serve a God, then? The only way for women to serve God was supposedly by serving their husbands, a very saddening notion before the first female ministers. In Islamic countries children are still taught to know the Quran by heart, as in Africa where the Bible is taught throughout primary schooling. In America, although women dominate college classrooms at present, many do not proceed in their academic career because they are pressured to settle-down during or immediately after college--my close friends are no exception.  It is also rare to find women in college-level studies outside creative tracts or humanities; men still dominate medical and law schools.  This, in part, is due to academic elitism which wrongfully stereotypes women as less analytical and therefore not the intellectual equals of men. In denying women an education in some regions by authority or by verbal/societal interference, the first usurpers of long ago still maintain their desired reign over the old religion of women and the feminine Earth.

Although many would disagree, when it comes to the law women suffer more prejudice and more severe verdicts than necessary.  Men, specifically adolescent boys, are expected to engage in some type of criminal behavior at least once in their lifetime, whether it is a very mild case of vandalism or gang affiliation--a very wrong stereotype. Point is, their actions when guilty are often dismissed as mild mischief among the masses, hence the expression –“Well, you know boys!” And, although it is statistically assumed that there are more criminals being put in male prisons, when a woman has committed a crime she is slandered and punished beyond reason.  The disciplinary stance of the so-called “respectable” conservative ethos, have shaped our penal system at all levels, with many references to “one nation under God” and “I swear…so help me God.” Once again, the male religion requires that women be dealt with through men as a medium of God. There are also still fewer female judges, but this seems to be changing especially in the last twenty years.  One area that women suffer heavily in is prostitution. Prostitution is usually a last resort for destitute women, and most women feel they cannot escape their pimps/madams without a near-death beating.  This is one such area that the law is insensitive about the mentality that condemns a woman to such as lifestyle. For other crimes, women’s misdeeds are often exaggerated.  In the case of Martha Stewart giving away information to her boyfriend about her company for stock-buying purposes, her debatably immoral act earned her months of televised disapproval and an exaggerated amount of time in jail and under house-arrest. Martha Stewart even commented on television something to the effect that the whole thing had been “blown largely out of proportion” simply because she is a powerful woman. A powerful man, she implied, would not have suffered the same sentence for committing the same trivial crime.

Sexual violence against women often occurs within prison walls, in hospitals, in the military, and inside their own homes, among many other places. Until domestic violence and rape were given any measure of severity, most women kept their abuse private, and some still continue to do so.  A man was allowed to chastise his wife within limits, which was not considered cause for police intervention. At every frustration in a man’s life, he could easily use his wife as a punching bag to work out the stress. Refuges for abused women were not widely available until the 1970’s, but nothing was really being done about the men who abused “their women”.  Rape was not punishable by law until recently. In Islamic countries, women are often abused for trivial reasons as “looking” at someone, refusing proposals, speaking, or looking too tempting. The hijab and niqab veils are designed to prevent men from being distracted by women when serving Allah. Women have also been stoned for adultery, when in fact they were raped. The notion of rape does not exist in such countries because they are obligated by law to “give sex” to their husbands when and where he wants, with no exceptions aside from the death-bed. Although some are polygamous, there are cases where husbands  “bear false witness” against their wives because they want a new wife. If a woman marries outside the permission of her family, her family may even—as a customary means to restore honor to the family—beat or kill her for dishonoring their wishes, which also supposedly dishonors Allah.

There are far too many ways women have been wronged since the rise of male-based monotheism. Although men too have suffered their own fair share, an entire year could be used to discuss the field of oppressed female sexuality and we still wouldn’t cover half of it.  Witch-hunts and the rape of the Earth (also called pollution, poaching and Global Warming), are among the worst on the list. For thousands of years since the birth of God, Women have been possessions to be bought and sold, to entertain and produce male heirs.  As such, women collectively have not been socially allowed their humanity and their sexuality since the time of the Goddess. Both men and women are responsible for this, for allowing the female half of the Divine to be forgotten. But, in the last few decades there has been a small glimmer of hope in light of feminist earth-based religions, eco-feminism and the neopagan movements. We have the start of a new feminine age at our fingertips. In order for this feminine age to come into full fruition a shift in consciousness must take place in the world once again—we must change the way women (and all people for that matter) and the Earth are continuously exploited for industrial gain. Humanity needs Goddess just as much as God. This shift will invoke the Goddess, rousing Her once more. The Cult of the Virgin in Latin countries is at an all-time high, and the modern, global woman is at a crossroads in her spiritual quest. She is slowly becoming conscious of her inherent deity, and as a consequent, she saves man from himself by preventing conflict and protecting the Earth.  “Going Green” is a perfect example of accepting the feminine, and nurturing or healing the damage done by the imbalanced masculine regime.  Hopefully, one day the balance will be restored.  The Goddess will set aside the past, and men and women will become perfect sexual equals once again.

© Alexis Umowski 2009