“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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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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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.

The post On the Gender Frontier appeared first on Digest This.

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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