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Shevolution

Inquiry into nature, like history itself, has been predominantly a male enterprise. While women made babies and kept the home fires burning, men went out, for better and worse, to discover and make the world. But the same side of the male mind that leads to technology useful for the domination of nature and other men led concurrently to the use and domination of the male resource and support most important and closest to home: women. The rebellion against the body and nature is enacted against woman too, through her historical enslavement and every subtle form of continuing misogyny. For, nature is the body of the world and the womb of culture, the matrix within which we make our human life. Woman is literally the first environment we know. On a profound level, the control of women mirrors the control of matter, as woman and nature are identified deeply in the human psyche. (Indeed, matter, mother, and matrix come from the same Latin root.) The technological stance reflects the reactive attitude of the male mind in defending itself against the feminine as the mysterious Other, a defensiveness reflected even in men’s attitudes toward lovemaking. If women accepted historically to make the best of their situation, it was no doubt essentially for the sake of their children. Population growth, however, has brought us full cycle. The world no longer needs an expanding population, and women are potentially freed, from their defined role as breeders and homemakers, to become emissaries of feminine consciousness and to focus their energies on the wider world’s problems. History may be calling for a more active role of women in political and economic affairs; far more importantly, it demands the feminine voice to define what politics and economics are to be.

RELATED TAGS: [male/masculine science, domination of/by nature, patriarchy/patriarchal civilization, misogyny, control of woman(en), The (mysterious) Other, otherness, historical role of woman(en), feminine consciousness/value, active role of women, masculine politics/economics/science, feminine politics/economics/science]


© Copyright Dan Bruiger 2008. All rights reserved.