Why Some Men Want to Control Women's Wombs

Why Some Men Want to Control Women’s Wombs

               With over seven billion people on the planet, why should a small group of conservative men worry so much and spend so much money to influence people and to change state laws in order to control whether women can decide to be pregnant or not?

               I have a strong feeling that the women who support limiting women’s access to medical abortions have no idea about their gender’s history or why our culture still projects a bias in favor of all things masculine, and still views women as less valuable, so needing to be controlled, than men.

               Originally, early humans had no real understanding that sexual intercourse created pregnancy.[i] Ample evidence, such as the fact that there are more female figurines from pre-history that exhibit amplified sexual parts than there are male ones, suggests that early humans found child birth magical, so that they probably believed women were also magical, or at least more highly spiritually connected to Mother Earth (who also regularly gave birth). Great arguments have been made that the first divine “creator” believed in by humanity had direct ties to this magical quality of giving birth—of creating life out of seemingly nothingness. Human beings understood the importance of the mother, extending that role to their divinities in various forms of Mother Goddesses. We still reference Mother Earth or Mother Nature, which also reflects our ancestral religious beliefs.

               While often suppressed or outright denied, ample anthropological and archeological evidence supports the fact that most early clans were matriarchal. Even at the time period often called “contact,” the Iroquois Confederacy was run by the clan mothers, who selected the men who traveled to the confederacy council meetings to protect each clan’s interests in the overall confederacy. Women owned the land, and lived communally in long houses, which daughters inherited to pass on to their own children. The only thing men owned were their weapons and their clothes. The Cherokee, who had female sachem or chiefs long before Wilma Mankiller took on that role, report that their ancestors laughed when some of the first Europeans asked to meet with their leader because, when the Europeans were taken to their leader—a woman—they refused to meet with her, insisting on meeting with the “head man.” The Cherokee laughed because the Europeans were too daft to recognize a leader when they saw one.

               Many scholars argue for the existence of a Mother Goddess and the supposed divinity of women by analyzing myths from various cultures. Donna Rosenberg, in her World Mythology, points out that, in the myth of the Enuma Elish[ii], the god Marduk’s victory over his mother, Tiamat, “represents that of a new male-dominated patriarchal religion over a female-dominated matriarchal religion in which Tiamat was the Great Goddess or Mother Goddess” (4). In order to justify this matricide, the creators of this new masculine-oriented myth had to make Tiamat seem evil. Like Shiva, the Hindu god of creation, Tiamat’s ability to destroy that which she had made was inflated in the new patriarchal views, to justify the supreme male god’s dominance. Readers should note, however, that Tiamat’s original role as “the deep”[iii] salt waters had enabled her to work with her husband, Apsu, who personified the sweet (fresh) waters to create the heavens and the earth. In Marduk’s mythologer’s revision, however, Marduk splits his mother in half, using half of her body to create the stars, and turning “the other half…into the earth” (Rosenberg 10)--Mother Earth.

               Classics scholar, Sarah B. Pomeroy examines similar “divine evolution,” as Hesiod apparently thought of it, although probably not in those terms, (2) in Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. For Hesiod, who was already living in a patriarchally dominated culture, “the divine progression from female-dominated generations, characterized by natural, earthy emotional qualities, to the superior and rational monarchy of Olympian Zeus” was a natural course of events (Pomeroy 2). As Pomeroy notes, Zeus is the Greek god who “denies power to females, even taking away their sole claim to consideration as bearers of children when he gives birth to Athena through his head and to Dionysus from his thigh” (2). In fact, Greek goddesses were various levels of incompletely realized women, in order to make them less dominant than the male gods, who are allowed every freedom possible, especially sexually. All we have to do is note the number of goddesses on Olympus who remain “virgins”:

Three of the five Olympian goddesses are virgins. Athena is warrior, judge, and giver of wisdom, but she is masculinized and denied sexual activity and motherhood. Artemis is huntress and warrior, but also a virgin. Hestia is respected as an old maid. The two nonvirginal goddesses come off no better: Aphrodite is pure sexual love, exercised with a pronounced irresponsibility. Hera is wife, mother, and powerful queen, but she must remain faithful and suffer the promiscuity of her husband. (Pomeroy 8)

Pomeroy points out that these idealized goddesses were a way for Greek men to control real women’s behavior[iv] because “a fully realized female tends to engender anxiety in the insecure male” (8). Can you imagine a woman who is a warrior, judge, huntress, mother, wife, midwife, sex kitten? Sounds exciting, doesn’t she? Every woman on the planet has the ability to be all those things, if she wants to.

                So why do some people want to limit women’s rights? Why are they afraid of recognizing that we are equal to men?

               According to Evelyn Reed in Woman’s Evolution, the Romans followed the Greeks in their misogyny, but pushed the practice even further by deciding that women did not have a role in the creation of children at all. Just as Zeus took over the power of procreation, the men of Rome believed they were inserting homunculi—miniature adults who just had to grow--into their sex partners (Reed 430). Reed very carefully documents the changes in our understanding of family units from the earliest matriarchal clans, where children and property both descended through the mother’s line[v], through changes in perception so that gifts to a woman’s family prior to marriage shifted from being seen as outright “gifts” to being perceived as a “bride price,” with which a man paid a woman to bear his children. Whereas originally men were only on the periphery of the family unit, seen as a visitor, but not as a blood relative of the children, after human beings learned that men, too, participated in begetting children, men sought to “own” those children and the woman or women producing them, so women were forcefully transformed over the millennia from being the heads of households and whole clans to being chattel and mere vessels for men’s progeny (Reed 430-432).

               Do American men still see children as their property? Do Americans view women as less than equal to men in order to justify controlling women's bodies?

               When it has been convenient for the men, such as during slavery when they did not want the children they fathered on their slaves to compete with their “legitimate” children for inheritance, men have seen children as belonging solely to their mothers. From the Roman era to the Victorian era, however, if a woman wanted a divorce, the husband automatically obtained the right to keep the children.

               Slowly over the last century, more women have won the right to keep their children in divorce courts, so much so that many men complain that divorce laws are now skewed in favor of the mothers.

               Could it be that these same men want to force the women they impregnate to bear their offspring, whether the woman is ready, willing, or able to do so, so that they push for anti-abortion laws so vehemently?

               If that is the case, some will argue, then why are there so many “deadbeat” dads who refuse to pony up the money necessary to ensure their children are healthy, well-fed, and well-educated?

               Perhaps there is a larger social agenda that we cannot quite make out yet pushing the conservative males (and females who support them) to funnel so much time, energy, and money into opposing a woman’s right to choose whether or not to be pregnant.
               But we still have to ask why so many religious conservatives dare to use their religious views to dictate to the rest of us how to live? We live in a democracy--at least that's what we tell the rest of the world--but how can that be when so many seek so stridently to control women's rights?

               Could it be that these ultra conservative men and women, like ancient Greek men, still fear fully realized women who are capable of making their own decisions and of living life the way they choose?

Works Cited

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken Books, 1975. Print.

Reed, Evelyn. Woman’s Evolution: from Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975. Print.

Rosenberg, Donna. World Mythology, 3^rd ed. Lincolnwood, IL: NTC Publishing Group. 1999. Print

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[i] Think about it. Would you know sex caused pregnancy, if someone had not told you?

[ii] The Enuma Elish is one of the earliest known written myths about creation, and probably dates back to at least 1900 BCE (Rosenberg 3).

[iii] Tiamat was originally the goddess of the deep salt waters, but later is envisioned as a terrifying dragon or serpent. Both of her images appear in the Christian Bible in the book of Genesis: the Judeo-Christian god “moves across the face of the deep,” which exists before he becomes conscious, and it is a serpent, long associated with women because of the fact that when they shed their skins they appear to give birth to themselves, who convinces Eve to take from and eat of the forbidden fruit. Tiamat, it would seem, symbolized both the mysteries of creation and of the evils of temptation, but we should note the clearly sexual act alluded to in the first reference which enables the Christian god to create the earth, and the fear of sex (snakes are also phallic symbols) initiated by women in the latter reference.

[iv] Such stereotypical behavior surely engendered what is now considered the “Madonna/Whore” syndrome—where people view women as either mothers, prostitutes, or naïve virgins.

[v] Even ancient Egyptians still followed this matriarchal practice. In the First Egyptian Dynasty, approximately 3150 BCE to 2900 BCE, two of the pharaohs were clearly women, Djer/Djet and Merneith. Most people abuse the term "pharoah," implying it means "king," but like many American Indian terms for "chief," no gender is implied. The tradition of only allowing pharaohs to rule who were related to or were royal females lasted for several dynasties, and all pharaohs claimed to be blessed by or a beloved of Ma’at, the original Mother Goddess for the Egyptians.

For Those Naïve Women

I have met many women who firmly believe that abortion is murder. Absolutely nothing I say to them about how Mother Nature aborts 3-10% of all zygotes and fetuses because there is something wrong with them, or about how much more humane it is to abort an unwanted child than to have her or him suffer from lack of love or nurturance, ever convinces them otherwise.

They’ve seen the videos the anti-abortionists show, but never question how they got those videos, or if they are even real.

The anti-abortionists are clever folks because they have learned how to manipulate the uninformed emotionally through videos, billboards, and arguments about murder.

Never, however, do they admit that the people who want to maintain women’s rights to choose whether or not to be pregnant also believe that abortion is the last resort choice for any woman. But it is, and always has been, a choice.

Making abortion illegal will never change whether or not women choose to have abortions.

What it will change is who can afford to get one, which means, in the very easy to verify mathematical scheme of things, that poorer women will continue to have children they don’t want or can’t afford to have, either physically, spiritually, emotionally, or financially. Or that these poorer women will, once again, be the ones who become sterile or even die from backstreet abortions.

In effect, the single minded goal to make abortion illegal by anyone is either a miscalculation on their part about what will happen afterwards, or a deliberate calculation—keep women poor and pregnant.

This frightening possibility—that these religious fanatics who want to impose their point of view about abortion on the rest of us—is becoming all too real, even without making abortion illegal.

One of my nieces, who is the daughter of a zealot sister of mine, chose to keep the baby conceived in a one night stand. The conception happened because she did not know the medicine the doctor put her on for a muscle injury would compromise her birth control pill. The doctor should have known better, but never bothered to inform my niece, or she simply chose to ignore the warning. She admitted that she finally decided not to have an abortion (see, she still made a CHOICE) because she knew her mother would be unreasonably angry with her if she did, and because, once she found out it was going to be a boy, she wanted to give her father the son he always wanted.

Personally, I find her reasoning appalling, not because she chose to have the baby, but because she chose to have it for other people’s reasons, not her own.

The pressure anti-abortionists have put on young women to feel even more guilt than they normally would have (and they would have felt a tremendous amount of guilt having an abortion) has created a whole new American culture—a culture based increasingly on single mothers.

These women are raising their children in the most selfish society in the world. While anti-abortionists rail against abortions, most do nothing to help the young women who become trapped in this nearly endless cycle of poverty. Instead, these same conservatives have limited the number of years these single parents can get any kind of social welfare, so that they can’t even afford to get a college education anymore, further preventing them from “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps,” as I’ve heard so many conservatives say.

I’m continually shocked (which shows my determined naiveté) when my students—18-29 years old typically—voice conservative prejudices against people who need welfare or who can’t afford to go to college. They always assume, like their parents probably do, that anyone who wants a good paying job can get one. They always assume that merely wanting something and putting some hard work into obtaining it always means they’ll get it. They assume success is just a matter of CHOICE!

Unfortunately, these young people are from the same generation that has produced the boom in unwed mothers. The fathers, it seems, CHOOSE not to be fathers. And the mothers, it seems, feel they have no CHOICE but to become mothers.

Why didn’t they use better birth control, some ask? Most of the same kids who grow up in conservative households choose not to ask for birth control because of fear of how their parents will react, so they are often the ones who end up getting pregnant. The intense desire to have sex, especially in the quest to become close to someone emotionally, usually comes with no specific planning on either gender’s part. Even if the males use condoms, the chance that someone has compromised the integrity of the latex (see my other posts) is great, which increases the already problematic unreliability of condoms.

Why aren’t they taking that “other option” anti-abortionists seem to think is an easy solution for these young women? Why aren’t they adopting out their unwanted babies? For the same reason they choose to have them to begin with—they sincerely want to do the “right” thing, and they have been told, by these same religious fanatics, that the “right” thing is the responsible thing. To them, being responsible, means raising the child themselves.

Who suffers from all this programmed choosing?

The unplanned children probably suffer most of all, but the mothers suffer, and, typically, her parents bear a large part of the financial burden, which often causes resentment from the child’s grandparents.

Or, as in my niece’s case, they resent their parents’ attempts to help them raise the child, so they completely remove themselves from their parents’ influence, until they need them. The resulting strain in familial relations will be felt for some time to come.

My niece, like so many unwed mothers, was not ready to be a mother. She definitely tries her best, but she still holds the conservative values of her parents and spanks her son when he misbehaves. His resultant anger—both from the spankings and her threats to remove valued objects from his use, as well as from his resentment at having to be shuttled twice a year across the U.S. to see his father, and also possibly because his mother, too, harbors deep resentments at having her singlehood compromised against her wishes—has made him a rather volatile young man.

The Vatican has, on several occasions, published edicts that predict what will happen to the world if women are given equal rights and if abortion is made legal. Their wildest claims were that 1. people would stop marrying, 2. women would all become lesbians (as priests, they apparently don’t understand women’s sexual needs at all), and 3. the world would plunge into chaos caused by the ensuing economic upset.

While their first prediction seems to be coming true, it isn’t. In reality, both men and women are making choices. The women realize they can survive without men, as much as they don’t want to. But they have also realized that they don’t have to put up with men who only have selfish desires. Government statistics show that fewer people are marrying, but that those fewer marriages are actually lasting longer.

More women have come “out of the closet” since many of the Vatican edicts were written, but lesbianism isn’t on the rise. It’s just out of the closet.

The economy, still largely dictated by men around the world, is still making the wealthiest wealthier and the poorest poorer. The main difference is that, now, among all those poor are millions of American children, born to mothers who “did the right thing.”