“Until the late nineteenth century the question of woman’s ability to profit from or even survive higher education was controversial. Vassar College opened in 1865 was often described by its first president as an experiment.… as late as 1871 an MD at Harvard Medical School published a book on the dangers of higher education for girls, he doubted the achievement was worth the cost from their psyche and procreative powers.”

From: Carl N Degler, In Search of Human Nature, Oxford University Press 1991

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So why my tears on Mother’s Day? Tears on Mother’s Day because I miss the way mom was to me in infancy, childhood, adolescence, college, and towards my marriage, children and grandchildren. I’m sure mom misses lots too.

Tears on Mother’s Day because I remember my wonderful grandma Annette Needleman, Auntie Rose Skurka, mother-in-law Mary Ferguson Shugart, and my mom’s sister-in-law Natalie Langner. What a blessing for me to be nurtured by such loyal, loving, smart, practical and faithful citizens of humanity.

We capitalize Mother’s Day, but we don’t capitalize sacred mother? What happened to female divinity? There’s evidence of mother God worship going on for tens of thousands of years. People stomped Earth mother worship out of existence comparatively recently.

Infinite divinity extends infinitely beyond our mammal genders. Now is a practical time to give up on male only club divinity. Women make up half the human family. Gender alliances need re-balancing in families, neighborhoods, nations, and globally. So let’s open every job group to all, for example let everybody share in human mothering. God knows we need as many nurturing mothers we can find.

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Virginia’s Question 4/26/13

“Why is it taking so long for women to become real people?”

Allen’s response:

Well women are as real as clouds, trees, and men.

Answering One Question with Two

When will humanity’s genetically all-mutt races move beyond global traditions of destructive prejudice based on cosmetic factors to more constructive common ground?

And when will the destructive consequences of violently imposed anti-education attitudes, implanted by whip and lynching, weaken their hold on victims and perpetrators?  Simon Legree still haunts many lands today including our own. He says, “Boys, better not dream about bettering yourselves, quit dreaming and join my gang.” And he says, “Girls, know your place and do what you’re told or I’m going to beat and stone you!” Male violence against women is the Simon Legree of gender.

The History of Gender Suppression

The roots of gender suppression are hidden in history, though less hidden everyday because people are investigating this subject. Read my 8/13/2011 post entitled “Jobs and the Gender of Divinity.”

http://www.digest-this.com/jobs-production-technology-and-the-gender-of-divinity/.

I asked “If the role of women in the workplace and in heaven drastically changed after the adoption of plow technology, how will robotic agriculture and manufacturing affect the role of male and female workers in the 21st century?”

Virginia, you answered your own question: the emancipation of women remains “an ongoing process which has taken far too many centuries.”  Yet the violently enforced definitive confinement of womanhood continued (continues) for thousands of years longer than the systematic enslavement and deprecation of African-Americans, the consequences of which are still with us.

Thank you again for commenting.  Allen

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So, what do you think of the new chancellor coming in July 1?  A woman!  Seems long overdue in terms of gender, but maybe no one saw a qualified one before now — I’m not sure about that!

Allen (UNC 1962) responds:

God bless the new chancellor.

Our new state government shows signs of under-appreciating the value of this great university, which is practical analysis. Temporarily empowered anti-intellectual forces take the university to be a cultural enemy, while undervaluing the historic contribution UNC made and makes to North  Carolina’s reputation and success story.

How did the role of women in civilization come to be so rigidly defined? My guess is that for most of the past quarter of a million years, members of both genders did everything because communities were small and scarcity was common. Survival ruled. To suppress talent was an impractical option.

The division of labor associated with the rise of civilization probably fostered more rigid gender role restrictions. And the then ongoing epidemic of mother and infant birthing deaths, which ended recently, may have fixated emphasis on female reproductive responsibility.

The opportunity for women to be anybody is brand new. The emergence of self-definitive womanhood is one of the most critical new resources for civilized progress, far more important than oil and gas reserves or new technology. Self-definitive womanhood is going to play a leading role in “saving” civilization in the 21st Century.

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Female divinity was driven from shared eminence in the Western world by around 500 A.D. How did this happen? The likeliest explanation is brute force. Consider that male domination of civilization may be a direct result of larger body size and physical strength. According to a U.N. report on the status of women in 2000, one in three females is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. Does this fact offer a fundamental clue about the source of earthly power?

Good News for Modern Man

Here’s the good news. Slowly but surely, women are gaining a fairer share of power in civilization. Many tribes and nations are moving closer to accepting the principle that the genders are entitled to equal rights and privileges before the law. Women are gaining ground in the leadership of government commerce and even religion. Consider the following list of currently serving elected national leaders:

Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany
Portia Simpson, prime minister of Jamaica
Julia Gillard, prime minister of Australia
Johanna Sigurdardottir, prime minister of Iceland
Christina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina
Yingluck Shinawatra, prime minister of Thailand
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia
Laura Chinchilla, president of Costa Rica
Sheikh Hasina, prime minister of Bangladesh
Dalia Grybauskaite, president of Lithuania
Kamala Persad-Bissessar, prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago
Iveta Radicova, prime minister of Slovakia
Atifete Jahjaga, president of Kosovo
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, prime minister of Denmark

Add to this list millions of hired and appointed women who lead globally and locally in every kind of human endeavor, famously including Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s democracy leader; Sonia Gandhi, leading India’s Congress Party; and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who we hope is helping to shepherd us into a global economic recovery.

In the past, Iceland, Ireland, Malta, Philippines, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Guyana, Latvia, Panama, Finland, Indonesia, Serbia, Liberia, Chile, Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Lithuania and Kirgizstan have all elected female heads of state. Five of the world’s most populated nations, China, Russian, Nigeria, the United States, and Japan, have so far not elected a woman president or prime minister.

Vote. Vote. Vote.

The world population of men and women is currently almost equal. How will humanity be affected as more women gain and exercise their right to vote? American women gained the right to vote less than 100 years ago. More women voted than men in the U.S. 2010 congressional elections (46.2 percent compared with 45 percent of eligible male counterparts).

Celebrating Gender Alliance

Human gender alliance is naturally grounded and barely subject to the shifting tides of cultural history. Two-gender strategy has provided millions of life forms with survival solutions for more than 100 million years. Gender alliance might be described as life’s most successful strategy in nature. Surely human conversation about gender is informed by the fact that more than a million versions of gender alliance exist in the world today. Gender equality is one of civilization’s revolutionary developments.

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For example, the Hippocratic Oath is sometimes quoted to justify a stance against abortion rights by the same people who are certain that faith in female divinity as expressed in this document is heretical. Indeed, this oath, from which anti-abortion advocates draw support, was created by people who worshiped goddesses. It states, “I swear by Apollo the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and judgment, the following oath and agreement.”

It’s still possible to find an occasional version of the oath including the word “goddesses” hanging on a doctor’s waiting room wall. Modern versions are likely to omit all reference to divine power. Faith in female divinity is still thriving among civilization’s 1 billion-plus member Hindu community, but references to female divinity were violently suppressed in the monotheistic Western world a long time ago.

Consider two speculative questions: What would Western civilization be like if masculine definitions of divinity had been suppressed, if female divinity was the only acceptable version? And why do people insist on assigning one of two biological genders to divinity?

The oath states, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.” The anti-abortion constituency insists these words represent an uncompromising stand against euthanasia and any type of abortion. Pro-choice forces point out that a pessary was one of many methods for ending pregnancy at that time.

Isn’t it likely that Greek physicians in the 5th century B.C. made medical decisions consistent with their training, values and the circumstances they faced with their patients? The oath states, “I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to others.” Some physicians may have taken this to condone abortions necessary to save a mother’s life, while others believed a pregnancy should never be interrupted, regardless of the circumstances.

The Hippocratic Oath, written in Ionic Greek approximately 2,500 years ago, demonstrates how issues we’re facing today resemble those faced by our recent ancestors. Nobody knows for sure who wrote it. A modernized version is used by a majority of U.S. medical schools. These oaths are part of civilization’s ongoing quest to establish and meet higher standards.

How contemporary are patients’ privacy rights? The oath states: “All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.”

Recognizing that physicians often have intimate, private access to their patients’ bodies and emotions, the oath states, “In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.”

In other words, physicians must avoid sexual contact with patients. How about religious officials?

The oath states, “I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.” Let specialists do specialized jobs. The ubiquitous “Best Doctors by Specialization” lists demonstrate professional commitment to this principle.

In a modernized version of the oath, Dr. Louis Lasagna wrote, “I will not be ashamed to say ‘I know not,’” and “Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.”

For the complete version of Dr. Lasagna’s oath visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html. A classical version of the Hippocratic Oath is also available at this site.

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Previously we wrote that civilization resembles a placenta, because it protects and nurtures life. The placenta is a temporary organ that transfers oxygen and nutrients from mother to child, removes wastes including carbon dioxide, and shields the fetus from the mother’s immune system. The placenta is rich in blood vessels and provides a reservoir of blood for the fetus, delivering blood to it in emergencies.

Civilization is an approximately 10,000-year-old social placenta sustaining us by transferring nutrients to 7 billion people. Healthy civilization includes toilets and green technology, which control and remove environmental wastes including carbon dioxide. Successful civilization protects us from natural calamities and societal collapse. Civilization truly is a two-way conduit between humanity and nature.

A reader responded to the previous post: “This analogy does not hold. The placenta is merely a conduit. Civilization not only sustains but also shapes humanity. The placenta plays no role in shaping a child.”

Recently researchers in Britain and the United States demonstrated that the placenta actually does play an active role in human development. In Scientific American, Claudia Kalb reports that “The placenta does more than nourish offspring in the womb – it actively shapes brain development, … actively protects the fetus and shapes neurological development. … It is the placenta – not the mother – that provides the hormone serotonin to the fetus’s forebrain early in development. … Placental abnormalities could directly influence the risk of developing depression, anxiety and even autism.” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fetal-armor

The nearly 4,000 placental mammals currently in existence include dogs, cats, elephants, whales, primates, cattle, horses, rats, sheep and humans. Genetic research suggests that the evolution of the human placenta can be traced back to the earliest multicellular organisms. We bear our young live after nourishing them for varying periods of time in their mother’s uterus. We are Mammalia.

The connection between humanity and the nutritional abundance of our sacred planet is as indispensable as the placental connection between a mother and her child.

Defend Civilization

The placenta has been described as the only disposable organ ever made. Civilization is also disposable. Numerous pathologies can affect the placenta, and numerous pathologies, including terrorism, racism, poverty and war, affect civilization.

A Declaration of Interdependence makes sense for 21st-century humanity. Just as the placenta secretes Neurokonin B to protect the fetus from attack by the mother’s immune system, humanity needs to expand and enrich the conduits of cooperation, protecting civilization from ourselves. If the connection between humanity and civilization fails, our descendants will have no more chance of survival than a fetus disconnected from its placenta.

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Billions of people confidently declare that God is their leader. Then what happens? Those billions of people make trillions of personal decisions every day. These self-leadership decisions are defining the future of civilization.

Men Still Rule

Advances in women’s rights are notable, but men still dominate human leadership. Globally, men hold more than 95% of civilization’s traditional leadership positions, in government, law, commerce, agriculture, education, medicine, military affairs, science and religion. Even in advanced societies, a woman’s right to vote, own property, inherit, get an education and run for office are recent developments.

God Save the Queen

This is why the recent decision by 16 commonwealth nations to change the law governing royal succession is not trivial. Up to now the crown could pass to a daughter only when there were no sons. Under the new law, if the firstborn child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is a girl, she is entitled to become heir to the throne. A firstborn daughter takes precedence over younger brothers.

So humanity moves one small step closer to accepting the equality of genders in leadership. Three cheers for the people who brought us the Magna Carta and the King James Version of the Bible, and who led the 19th-century suppression of human slavery. Queens Elizabeth I, 45 years in power, and Victoria, who reigned for 63 years, have long been counted among civilization’s greatest leaders.

Might Made Right

How did men get to be in charge? Most men probably believe tradition, law, custom and religion declare that they are meant to lead. Consider this simpler approach to answering the question: Might made right.

During the past 200,000 years, men took over because human males on average are taller and heavier than females, with greater reach and superior upper-body strength. Might these powerful physical advantages have been the original cause of male domination subsequently institutionalized in tradition, law, custom and religion?

Violence Against Women

To what extent has violence against women, going back tens of thousands of years, contributed to male domination of human leadership? Most of the following conditions are commonplace now; this is not a theoretical list: “Sex-selective abortion; effects of battering; female infanticide; physical, sexual and psychological abuse; female genital mutilation; incest; child prostitution; dating and courtship violence (e.g., acid throwing and date rape); economically coerced sex; sexual abuse in the workplace; sexual harassment; forced prostitution; trafficking in women; partner violence; marital rape; and murders.”  See http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/digest6e.pdf.

Co-managing Humanity

It’s dangerous for a complex civilization of 7 billion people to depend on jungle-law hierarchy for leadership selection. Twenty-first-century civilization needs to recruit every person to become more fully engaged in constructive human leadership. Traditions that constrain the leadership development of any person because of his or her gender are outmoded.

This is not about which gender is boss.  The genders have been co-managing humanity since Homo sapiens’ first day. Gender alliance is our critical human relationship. The next queen of England will be one of billions of women who are rising to leadership positions in the second decade of the 21st century.

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Women in Saudi Arabia will be given the right to vote and run in future municipal elections, which are the only public polls in the country, the BBC reports. The BBC’s world-affairs correspondent, Emily Buchanan, says it is an extraordinary development for Saudi Arabian women, who are not allowed to drive or to leave the country unaccompanied.

King Abdullah, speaking at the opening of the new term of the Shura Council, announced that the changes will occur after the municipal polls on Thursday.

“More than 5,000 men will compete in municipal elections on Thursday – the second-ever in the kingdom – to fill half the seats in local councils. The other half are appointed by the government,” according to the BBC. “The next municipal elections are due in four years’ time.”

Don’t Feel Smug

Before feeling self-righteous about this momentous development, visit this women’s rights timeline site: http://www.legacy98.org/timeline.html

Reread the Declaration of Sentiments, signed by 68 women and 32 men in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Sentiments

Visit the informative Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, where many are deeply touched by the courage and intent of those who signed the Declaration. http://www.nps.gov/wori/index.htm

Remember that the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution wasn’t adopted until 1920, 72 years after the Declaration at Seneca Falls was signed. The United States will celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in 2020.

A Foundational Relationship

The two-gender reproductive strategy emerged in a blossoming of life forms approximately 140 million years ago. Our human conversation about gender is barely informed unless it takes into account that more than a million life forms have thrived and are thriving as two genders. The partnership of human genders is not a whimsical and superficial alliance subject to the shifting tides of cultural history. The female and male genders are the foundational relationship sustaining our kind and should be honored as such.

Biologically, human males are females are mostly identical. The majority of chromosomes they inherit are identical. Rapidly developing science is informing our search for a better understanding of their similarities and differences. For example, technologically empowered brain mapping suggests the genders sometimes process the same language in different parts of the brain. Yet the subject of gender goes far beyond the biological sciences.

Defined at Birth

The legal requirement that gender is declared near the time of birth, when medical staffs must define a newborn child as male or female, has tremendous implications in a person’s life. The decision, based on obvious differences, does not take into account complex biological chemistry, which may be ambiguous.

It’s a tragedy that from the moment of their birth, tens of millions of individuals are relegated to a life of active persecution and second-class citizenship. The culture and laws underlying the persecution of gender ambiguities ignore new science demonstrating the extent to which such ambiguities are present throughout nature.

The legal declaration required to be made at birth is momentous when being defined as male or female impacts a person’s rights, potential to acquire resources, and overall life opportunity in the human community. It’s tragic that the female gender suffers from a higher incidence of poverty worldwide, primarily because of historic exclusion from education and practical vocations to advance women’s circumstances.

Gaining Ground

There may be no tribe or nation that hasn’t moved closer to accepting the principal that females are entitled to the same rights and privileges as men. Widespread recognition that both genders are entitled to equality before the law is one of civilization’s recent revolutionary advances.

The alliance of male and female predates humanity and needs to become stronger and wiser than ever for our human life form to survive and prosper.

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