WHY AREN'T WOMEN BORN WITH BUILT-IN LOCKABLE ZIPPERS?
This question really isn't as odd as it sounds. Human evolution is an ongoing story of physical and mental adjustments that have come about in order that we might survive as a species. Our minds and bodies have adapted to their environments. Or; when bodily adjustment is impractical, impossible or just too slow; we have adapted the environment to suit us.
For example: the standard explanation for our development of an up-right posture and, two-legged locomotion is that it freed the hunters hands to throw missiles at their prey. Making for more efficiency in the battle against starvation. Our body changes weighted the odds of survival in our favor, but it also slowed us down. To compensate for the limitations of two skinny legs we rode faster animals with smaller brains and invented the internal combustion engine.
The stitching up, slicing off and locking down of female genitalia has been a cross-cultural occurance for at least three millenia. Egyptian mummies show evidence of clitoral incision. Pre-Islamic Arabs, Aboriginal Australians, African Catholics and 20th century American doctors have all practiced female genital mutilation of one form or another.
Approximately 130 million women and girls worldwide live today with some form of genital 'adjustment' that has been inflicted in the name of religious observance, conformity to social mores or even preservation of the victim's health. The mutilation effectively ensures that a woman has only one sexual partner; her authorized and legitimate husband. It is estimated that the number grows by two million every year.
In societies where actual physical mutilation is a thing of the past female sexual activity continues to be regulated by prejudicial laws and customs that enforce standards of 'purity' and impose harsh penalties for any infringement.
IN THE MIDST OF ALL THE SUFFERING THAT THESE STATISTICS REPRESENT IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THERE IS ANY JUSTIFICATION FOR THE SEEMING BARBARITY?
Like our bi-pedalism and horse riding could this simply be an adaptation in the cause of human survival? A kind of necessary brutality to compensate for nature's failure to provide a fleshy zip?
At the heart of such a proposition lies the assumption that unbridled female sexuality is a threat to the continuation of the human race. That woman, unchecked, will be the death of us all.
On a purely pragmatic level this argument reeks for three reasons:
1. A woman who
enjoys sex is far more likely to have lots of it and thereby up her chances
of conception.
2. A woman who
controls her own reproduction is more likely to conceive when her body and
circumstances are able to nurture a healthy baby. Weighting the odds in
favour of survival for herself and her baby.
3. A woman who
has sex with more than one man provides the opportunity for several sets
of genes to survive; thus enriching the human gene-pool.
Consider too the
harmful physical effects that so many forms of control have upon women;
lessening their viability as reproductive 'units':
A 1992 study showed that in Sierra Leone 83% of all genitally mutilated women needed medical care at some point in their lives for problems related to the mutilation.
In one study of 33 women from Somalia who had undergone sexual surgery, all had extensivly cut during childbirth to allow their babie's heads enough room to emerge. All 33 had a second stage labour that was five times longer than normal. Five of their babies died and twenty one suffered oxygen deprivation due to prolonged and obstructed labour.
Less immediately obvious are the harmful effects on human reproduction and genetic survival that social dissaproval of 'uncontrolled' women has upon their children. Effects that directly decrease the children's chances of survival to adult fertility. The stigma of illegitimacy and single-motherhood made maternal infanticide "the most common crime" in Western Europe from the middle ages down to the end of the eighteenth century". In modern day America poverty ensures that 24.5% of single mothers have little or no prenatal care.
ALL IN ALL IT IS CLEAR THAT THE STRICTURES PLACED ON FEMALE SEXUALITY DO NOT IMPROVE THE ODDS OF SURVIVAL FOR THE HUMAN RACE. THEY LESSEN THE CHANCES OF PRODUCING MANY, HEALTHY OFFSPRING.
If a fleshy zip is not biologically necessary why is it that diverse cultures have, for centuries, sought a man-made equivalent?
WHO OR WHAT IS BENEFITING HERE?
By enduring the controls inflicted upon them women gain a measure of social approval. They aquire a place within society that is relatively safer than being an unprotected outsider or an reviled outcast.
On a personal level
a man would not appear to benefit from his mate's suffering, illness and
lack of sexual pleasure. However there are two gains to be had for men from
enforcing female fidelity with punitive measures:
1. An assurance
that his children really have sprung from his seed.
2. A weakened and
dependent mate who is less likely than a stonger woman to challenge his
shortcomings and authority.
Unless all men can be categorized as insecure sadists who are pathologically obssessed with paternity this does not seem to be a rich reward for the loss of a healthy, equal partner.
As female monogamy has no evolutionary benefits and only very meager individual rewards why have successive generations from wildly differing cultures sought ever more ingenious ways to enforce it?
The answer lies beneath distracting diversities of time, place and method. But, stripped bare, the common factor that unites Egyptian pharaohs, medieval locksmiths and the child who is being genitally mutilated as you read this sentence is ........
A SYSTEM OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IN WHICH POWER IS HELD BY, AND TRANSFERRED THROUGH, MEN.
Patriachalism requires the safe transfer of position, property and power through the male line. A woman knows that she is irrefutably mother to the baby pushed out of her body but a man cannot be so sure of his offspring. Unless, that is, every precaution is taken to ensure that he has exclusive sexual access to the authorized breeder(s) of his heirs.
Patriarchy fundamentally discriminates against women: men hold position, property and power, commonly to the exclusion of women. This doesn't mean that women are universally powerless, but the limit or extent of their power is always defined and controlled by men.
Any system that excludes a large proportion of it's population from power must go in fear of the dominated group: they could rise up and demand justice. To reduce the threat of revolt, or even just to minimize destabalizing criticism, the dominated group must be kept in as weakened, divided and dependent a state as possible.
Women with physical, mental and financial autonomy, even the most biddable ones, threaten by their very existence. One way of eradicating the threat is to eradicate all women, but even for us humans that seems a little self-destructive. The next best alternative is to eradicate female strength and autonomy.
On every level then, women have to be zipped up, locked down and cut about for patriarchy to thrive. Where this is done through harsh laws and barbaric practices female disempowerment is painfully clear. In 'liberal' cultures where notions of free will and self-determination are at least nominally respected more subtle tactics ensure the requisite powerlessness.
Statistics show that you, the computer user, are most likely to be living under some form of western liberal democracy. If you're a woman you probably aren't wearing a chastity belt and 69% of you will have a job outside the home. You almost certainly have a bank account and the right to vote from age eighteen. A woman is the visible face of America's foreign policy and discrimination on the grounds of gender is illegal.
However, the freedoms that women have were hard fought and grudgingly conceeded. Western liberal democracy has patriarchialism at its roots and at its heart. Its very core is challenged by autonomous women and, despite appearances to the contrary, it has to be trying to diminish the threat . The visible freedoms that have been achieved conceal self-protecting attempts by the patriarchy to keep women in as weakened a state as possible.
When external restrictions on a dominated group are weakened then there are numerous highly effective methods of control:
1. Pretend to make changes in the power structure while continuing as before. Conceal duplicity under fine words and mickey mouse legislation while strengthening other bodies and social attitudes that uphold the status quo.
2. Make small concessions to the demanding group and defuse the immediate threat. Then, over a period of time, undermine changes by clawing back power. This can be done in numerous ways: failing to enforce legislation, under funding bodies that enforce the changes or introducing contradictory legislation, to list a few.
3. Ridicule the malcontents and their demands. Label them as hysterical, unreasonable and downright ugly. Such labels undermine existing members and make membership of the group unattractive to potential recruits.
4. Emphasize vested interests that the dominated group have in maintaining the status quo and how much they have to lose should anything change.
5. Foster divisions within the dominated group. Pit the vested interests of some members against those of the others.
6. Pretend that the dominated group are greedy and unreasonable because they already have equality. Make sure that a handful of the dominated group are in high profile positions and trot them out at every opportunity to prove the point.
7. Manipulate the group into regulating itself. Through media propaganda, ridicule, pseudo-encouragement and the pressure of social mores make them internalize restrictions and regulate their behavior to suit the dominant group.
8. Keep them in a permanently immature state of adolescent dependence. Insist on their inability to 'look after' themselves while emphasizing the benign care and paternal authority of the dominant group.
9. Make the status quo seem so inevitable and 'natural' that no possible alternative is even imaginable, let alone achievable.
WHICH ONES WORK BEST ON YOU?
Patriarchal bias saturates all culture as an unacknowledged assumption. It has been so universal as to seem a law of nature. But it is not inevitable. Like any system of social and political order it is transitory.
However, because patriarchal bias permeates everything - even the language we use to describe it- it's hard to grasp hold of. It's difficult to see how the system works upon us all; particularly in societies where highly visible atrocities no longer point the way.
Flickering shadows are hard to fight; so they need to be pinned down and fleshed out. To mount an effective challenge we must know how the system works - by exposing both its infrastructure mechanisms and its impact on an individual level. So, which ones work best on you?