I’ve made a conscience effort to truly contemplate and study the
story of women this month since it is nationally recognized as
Women’s History Month. I expanded my studies beyond just the
recent feminist history, which in my opinion is a definite
highlight of our history to this point, to include our history
since the start of written record.
However, this was not as easy as it would seem since the vast
majority of surviving records are his-story and are very short
on the details of her-story. In an attempt to keep women “in
their place,” those who have followed the Judeo-Christian
religions destroyed most records of the significance of women in
early history. This is clearly seen in the Bible when numerous
times the Jews are told to “completely destroy the nations” who
worshiped these other gods, of which many were actually
goddesses.
It’s significant, I think, that at one point in history females
shared the title of divinity with males – and at times reigned
as the sole divinity. This part of our history shows woman in
all her glory, not as the fallen creature of the Bible who must
forever submit to a subservient position to the man because she
supposedly ate a forbidden fruit and coerced him to do the same.
It’s time the truth was known. Not the presupposed “truth”
garnered from what we have always been told is reality. That
reality is severely lacking in the other half of the story. We
see reality as we have always been taught to see it. If someone
teaches me from young that a certain color is blue, and
subsequently others then reinforce that teaching in my family,
community, church, government, school, etc. – then I will
believe the color is actually blue.
But what if they are all wrong? What if blue is really yellow
but no one wants to challenge the errant teaching because the
one who said it was blue in the first place claimed to be
speaking on behalf of God? In the end though, just because
everyone believes this color to blue does not make it indeed
blue. In fact, it is still yellow.
That is exactly what has happened in feminine history. Only this
teaching has gone so long without being challenged, for fear of
being ostracized or even at times killed, that it is now
accepted as truth. In the process the real truth has been lost.
What is the real truth? What is reality? The truth is that “in
the beginning” woman was indeed equal to man. She was just as
intelligent. She was just as capable of dealing with life’s
hardships. She was man’s partner, not his property or his slave.
It wasn’t until she was denied basic human rights that she was
demoted from equality and it wasn’t until she was denied an
equal education that her intelligence was called into question.
What is the truth? The truth is that we have been taught that
yellow is actually blue. We have been force fed a lie to the
point we have hung our heads in original-sin guilt and accepted
our plight as second rate citizens – as long as men have granted
us at least that much. However, if that is all the fight we have
left in us, our future will look much like our past.
We are at a significant point in history. For the last century,
women in America have paved the road for us to work outside the
house, vote, and even have equal legal rights with a man in the
court system. Don’t take this for granted ladies, these are
rights we did not have just a few short decades ago. And just as
quickly as these rights emerged after thousands of years of
degradation, they can slip back into oblivion with just a few
court decisions.
Men have always been the ones to govern, but now we have that
privilege too. Yes, at this point it is still a privilege we
have been granted and can loose if we don’t take advantage of it
by being active in governance and the voting process.
Our history is veiled and our present is fragile at best. Let’s
make our future and our daughter’s future strong. Let’s equip
them with a history worth telling and a mentality of true
equality by finally standing against that old lie and teaching
them the real truth.