Female, Male (1)

How did it all begin? What was the first cause? Did it have to do with the essence of
things, or was it an accident of human history? How is it that, as far back as anyone
can remember, all human cultures and societies have always established relations of
power that almost systematically work to the disadvantage of women? We can
obviously cite odd examples of matriarchal societies or of women who enjoy freedom
and power, but, like it or not, they are notable exceptions rather than the rule. Some
conclude from this, on the basis of their interpretations of the teachings of their own
tradition or religion, that this is the law of nature, or even of the essence of things.
Others try to understand the social dynamics and logics which, at a very stage,
inscribed relations between men and women within the logic of a relationship of
power and domination. Between these philosophical, ideological and sometimes
religious extremes, most men and women have changed as they respond to their social
history and environment. It is clear that women have gained some rights. It is equally
clear that men have lost their traditional points of reference, and there is no denying
that great changes have taken place. But certain questions remain unresolved, as do
certain inequalities, tensions and doubts: the situation is far from perfect whatever the
societies irrespective of whether they are in the North or the South, rich or poor,
secularized or not.
The trauma is long-standing. Most Creation stories describe how man was
created first, and how woman was then created to be his companion or helpmeet. The
stories or texts are sometimes clear, but in some cases these truths were established by
male interpretations. We find the same constant in the social and political realm.
Although there was a multitude of pharaohs and kings, only ten or so were women,
and in most cases the public role they played amongst their people was quite
secondary, or even non-existent. Women’s fate was the same amongst the Incas,
Mayas and Aztecs: they were wives, mothers or servants, cooks and housekeepers,
though some were held in high esteem because they were weavers. Amongst the
Aztecs, midwives also enjoyed special status: they helped in giving life, and took in
and protected women and girls and then released them from the throes of childbirth.
The real relationships and symbolic representations are always the same: female roles
relate to service (and are usually, though not always, seen as secondary or inferior)
and other specific functions relating to life and the sacred. The latter confer upon
women a distinction or particular power within a social and cultural order that is
highly masculine and very patriarchal.
It will be recalled that there was no female presence in the philosophical
circles of ancient Greece. Socrates’ wife was at his side when he was condemned to
death and drank the hemlock, but that was the exception to the rule. In those circles,
they spoke about women, they philosophized about love, which, as in The Symposium,
was seen as a form of sublimation that transformed the attractions of the body into the
beauty of Ideas, but the ambiguous image of femininity remains: for the philosopher-
hunter who was in love with truth and absolute beauty, woman was at once a stage, a
quest and a symbol. She represented a stage within the transcendence of the body, a
quest for a love that had to become more profound and a symbol of human experience
and initiation. But in terms of their being and personal aspirations, women were still
‘absent’. It goes without saying that women were acknowledged as having a certain
power, but men did not trust that power and tried to control it as best they could:
women’s bodies were the source of life and were therefore indispensable, but those
same bodies also had the power to seduce, to subjugate reason and to bind men to
their animal destiny. Greek and Roman mythologies depicted this type of ambiguous
figure with the goddess Artemis, also known as Diana and Hecate. Having witnessed
the pain of childbirth, she never wanted to marry, remained a virgin and represented
the huntress – surrounded, strangely enough, by the animals that were her natural
prey. By day, she protected fertility, virgin purity and life; by night and by the light of
the moon, she took her revenge, inflicted death and turned into a witch. She had two
faces, but one unfathomable and fascinating power.
In his quest for truth, Socrates likens his dialectical method to childbirth.
Maieutics allows the philosopher to become a midwife of the mind who can help his
interlocutor give birth to ideas he did not know he had. The philosopher was to ideas
what the midwife was to children, plus the lofty spiritual elevation and minus the
pain. The corporal essence of life could thus be reappropriated through access to its
higher intellectual and spiritual meaning: woman belonged to the body, but the
philosopher belonged to the mind. But that very comparison reveals something about
the mysterious power of women, which is at the origin and heart of life. And besides,
the supposed nobility of the midwife who brought life into being could not exist
without the prior acceptance of women, their bodies and the desire and sexuality that
gave life. Women’s other power – that of seduction, passion and instinct – revealed
man’s fate and unveiled the nature of his tensions and contradictions, together with
the implacable pain that still he had to endure. On Mount Olympus, the three Morae
(fates) spin, or more accurately weave, the destiny of men by the light of the moon –
night, once more – and have a power that is at once invisible and yet so obvious.
Earlier, the Hindu and Buddhist traditions had already reached the shore of
these paradoxes. Although present throughout the Hindu pantheon, woman remains a
mystery. She is at once the path and an obstacle, and woman’s primary qualities in
everyday life are her fidelity and abnegation. The pain of childbirth that is associated
with giving life (and living) is also the most explicit parable for the cycles of bondage
and suffering that have to be overcome in the Buddhist tradition. Recurrent motifs and
symbols appear in one tradition after another, in one culture after another: life, the
body, instinct, fate, purity, seduction, desire and suffering. The stories told in the
Torah and the Bible are no exception: Eve is associated with temptation and the
forbidden fruit. She seduces and is seduced, experiences cycles of impurity and gives
life. She is so noble but suffers so much when she completes the sexual act through
organs that convey both the intensity of desire and the shame of natural needs. We see
once again the power of darkness; it is disturbing and, ultimately, stronger than all
orders and all rules. In his historical novel The Sorceress the French writer and
historian Jules Michelet describes the stages of the woman-sorceress’s ascent to the
heart of the night, ‘by the light of the moon’: black masses, counter-power and real
power. Man owns the day, but she owns the night. Man sustains an apparent order that
is historical and fragile; she possesses the invisible desire that is essential and
invisible. Man has the power of the master who is nothing without his slave; she has
power of the slave who is a free being without the master. Thanks to this inversion of
realms, woman acquires a knowledge that brings her close to the devil. Nietzsche
shared this intuition when he asked in the preface to Beyond Good and Evil:
‘Supposing truth to be a woman – what?’1 and speculated that she represented both
the mysteries and the dangers of knowledge. The forbidden fruit belonged to the tree
of knowledge, and it was the devil who tempted the woman to taste it. This is a
terrifying revelation: woman is life, suffering and knowledge or, more precisely, she
is the suffering, seduction and knowledge that are the essence of life. The social body
may well subjugate her, but everything suggests that she possesses its heart. She has
two faces, and is the paradox of a contradiction, just like the two Quranic characters:
Bilquis, Queen of Sheba, with her noble and exemplary wisdom, who wields political
power over men, and the passionately mad wife of the master of Joseph (Yusuf), who
is seduced and possessed but still remains the mistress of all wiles. This is a difficult
relationship, and these relations of power and fear are as old as the humanity of men.
It is a matter of understanding, controlling and sometimes dominating, in the full
knowledge that the essential secret remains intact: the secret of woman’s indomitable
power and inalienable freedom. And then what life actually offers her must be
organized in society.

1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990, p. 32. ale