The Weaker Sex and Army of One

When Deloris Gillespie walked into an elevator, she was unaware that a man was waiting for her. With white gloves and a dust mask, he started to spray the 73-year-old woman with gasoline. As Deloris turned around and crouched, in an attempt to protect herself, the man continued to methodically douse her. He then pulled-out a lighter, ignited a rag in a bottle, and while backing out of the elevator, tossed the flaming bottle on Deloris who was huddled on the floor. Deloris was burned to death.

During a demonstration in Cairo, Egypt, military police charged towards fleeing protesters as the army surrounded and then stormed into Tahrir Square. One woman, wearing an Islamic headscarf, was grabbed and hauled down a street. The heavily armed uniformed band of men viciously clubbed and repeatedly beat and kicked her. At one point, they stopped and started to stomp on her semi-naked chest. As the men continued to yank her body along the asphalt, they beat her in the face with sticks.

After his pre-emptive war failed to find weapons of mass destruction, then-President George W. Bush promised equality and freedom to the people of Iraq. President Barack Obama has just hailed the U.S.-Iraqi War, and its lengthy and bloody occupation, a "great achievement" and "success." But for women, they remain victims of violence, trafficking and kidnappings, in some cases working slaves. Before the war, women in Iraq enjoyed strong protection and opportunities. Now, there are more than one million widows.

Anthropologists have found that early humans, who were hunters and gatherers, lived in small-scale social groups. These kin-based units included collective or common ownership of land and resources, reciprocity in the distribution of food, and political power sharing. Some agree too that both women and men participated in foraging and hunting for food. Such cooperation and collective values produced little division of labour between the sexes, including the absence of male supremacy over women.

Early human sites and settlements also reveal that it was natural for men to worship female fertility gods and pray to them. On the island of Crete, the Minoans worshiped a great Mother Earth Goddess who ruled over the other gods. Artwork depicts women as priestesses and in charge of shrines, aided by male assistants. There is evidence that the Minoans were peaceful and nurturing, since there were no signs of fortifications. Other Asian and Indus cultures worshipped mother goddesses and their life-giving principles.

Under such hunting and gathering or small societies, the need to carry children on the daily round of gathering and on the periodic moves of the whole camp had led to very low birth-rates. Women could not afford to have more than one child who required carrying at a time, so births were spaced every three or four years. But as the Neolithic Revolution supplanted the Palaeolithic Age, children, born of women, represented the future labour and military supply of the village as a whole.

War, virtually unknown in simple societies, became a more prominent feature as city-states evolved into nations and empires. The premium for military conquest and agricultural output was large families. Did this limit women, since they appear to be more vulnerable during child-bearing and the birthing process? By the time of Homer's Iliad and the Book of Genesis, a violent, warlike, patriarchal society had emerged. Whereas the Trojan War is defined by Helen, Eve tempted Adam and they were expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Western-based writings by males also tended to extol the virtue of violence on and off the battlefield and in war. Instead of hunting and gathering for the good of the family, a "warrior" and "killer" instinct developed, one that was extremely self-centered. The worship of aggressive and violent warrior kings, even the worship of war-like and genocidal gods, replaced mother goddesses and fertility. Adherence to death and destruction, along with violent sacrifice, overtook life and creation and peaceful nurture.

Do male Armies of One, individual or collective, that beat and kill women and produce widows, whether in New York, Egypt or Iraq, have a cruel and twisted primordial urge? Maybe they violently resent that women are primarily responsible for the continuance of humankind and its political and economical livelihood or that women are of immeasurable worth and hold a kind of divine status and knowledge. The psychologically and emotionally weak resort to war and bloodshed. Seldom is this observed among women.

Until the weaker sex, or men, give birth too, it would be wise to heed this ancient truth: "Where women, verily, are honoured, there the gods rejoice; where, however, they are not honoured, there all sacred rights prove fruitless."

Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)