Well, Carolynn, I couldn't have said it more pointedly if my life depended on it. From all I've learned in school (and in the "school of life" as well), this is precisely why patriarchy has this tendency to "squash" the world of women. It's simple fear and anxiety, an anxiety that gave rise to various female-related taboos in so many different cultures around the world.
A long time ago (5,000 to 10,000 years in the past), many emerging societies were organized around matriarchic--or, at least, matrilineal--principles (as in many contemporary tribal cultures); it was obvious to people that female physiology was somehow linked to the natural rhythms of the life-giving earth. Women had the power of life itself. In Anatolia (Turkey), they found some of the oldest representations of the human image, as we currently know it, in the form of well-rounded, often pregnant, fertility goddess statuettes. The famous "Venus of Willendorf" is an example. About 4,000 years ago, in ancient Greece (Crete, actually), the principal depiction of divinity was a corseted goddess holding the "serpent of life" in each of her hands (the serpent, because of its obvious ability to renew itself by shedding its skin, often represented life and, especially, new life--hence its use in the caduceus, the symbol of the medical profession). In the Near East, you found Astarte, she of the thousand breasts. In India, around the Indus Valley, a culture nearly 6,000 years old gave rise to the Divine Mother... who's now known as Kali and is easily recognized by the necklace of skulls she wears (in deference to the fact that she who has the power of life also has the power of death). Almost everywhere in the old (and I mean, old) world, women (or, more accurately, feminine principles) were the source of much spiritual and social power.
Women's power came from the ground, from the life-giving soil (think of Persephone being delivered from the depths as the source of springtime renewal). Egyptian culture changed all that. The Egyptians were a desert people and, although they acknowledged the capital importance of the soil in their own sustenance (really, just a very narrow band of fertile land along the banks of the Nile), the one constant they saw as being able to give life or to mete out cruel death was the sun above them. The sun (or its light and heat) was the "father" that "impregnated" the soil so that life could spring. This "One God" in the sky was more powerful than anything else in their universe. The Egyptians, being sea-faring traders, disseminated their culture far and wide. The Greeks and Romans held commerce with them (Europe, by the way, owes the Egyptians the mouse-devouring and granary-protecting cat). The Phoenicians (Lebanon) also mingled with the Egyptians, as did the Philistines (Palestine) and the nomadic Hebiru tribes (Hebrews)--many of whom were taken as slaves in both Egypt and, later, in Babylonia (Iraq).
It was only a matter of time before the idea of an all-powerful "Sky Father" (which the Egyptians called Ra) began to supplant traditional feminine spirituality and female deities. Men had found a way to get for themselves power that was traditionally women's. Images of goddesses were destroyed and pulverized. Representations of the Divine Feminine were forbidden. This was happening everywhere. Even the early mosaics of Christian women praying, standing up, palms to the sky, their face blasphemously turned skyward to gaze upon the Source of Life, were unceremoniously destroyed by the early Church fathers. The world became male-oriented, and the transition certainly wasn't free of violence. Women were hencefoth relegated to the status of mere vessel or recipient of male power. Patriarchy inevitably arose from this.
You asked, Marda, well, there you have it.
Anyway, this is the current thinking in the schools. And those in the schools may not know their elbows from their knees. That's a possibility. But they've looked long and hard at this. Archeology, social anthropology, comparative religious studies, paleolinguistics, and sundry other disciplines have all been brought to bear on the issue of the origins of our current social arrangements. Personally, I think we're due for a bit of a pendulum swing, no?One of my favorite representations of the divine (that may also apply to our very human psychology) is that of the Hindu "marriage" between the male god, Shiva--he who gives form to the world--and his consort, Parvati--she who is the energy of the world, and without which Shiva is but an impotent and inert shell (I guess the idea that "behind every man there's a good woman" is as old as the world itself). Of course, Parvati, as the creative principle, the energy of the universe, needs Shiva's organizing and structuring essence; without it, the universe would be but a formless field of chaotic energy (when Einstein said that, "all there is is the 'field'," he was referring to his view that, really, this energy is all that exists, and the only reason we perceive it as this or that type of matter is that we, ourselves, our brains, are "organizing principles"). I think this image is as applicable to the relations between the sexes as it is "intrapsychically," i.e., to what goes on within our own minds. Anyway, these are just mythic images; they're only one way to look at the world. There are many others. Maybe one of them is better than others at explaining the rise of patriarchy. But I'm only 43 years old... I haven't looked at all of them yet.
Love,
CJ
