When God Was A Woman

The Devil is winning.

The Devil is winning because he has learned to impersonate God.

I'm going to tell you a story, without proof, without facts; a theory put forward by some archaeologists and anthropologists about the history of man before man had a history.
I'm going to tell you a story in short-form, and hopefully I will be using this blog in the days and months to come to flesh it out.

The Devil is winning; and this is why...

Archaeologist have, for the last 100 years, found small carved and molded figurines of women. Starting from 24 Thousand BC until 4 Thousand BC, these "mother goddess" figurines are found all over Europe, the Americas and parts of Asia.

They represent a time when the God as female was accepted, exalted and worshiped. Woman was the Goddess's equivalent representative on earth. The idea of a witch or female shaman sprung from early society's belief in the feminine as creator. It was a natural association. Woman gave birth to children. Her power was absolute. She was worshiped and revered. The first organized sedentary societies were matriarchal, Anatolia – Çatalhöyük, Pre-Minoan Crete, Neolithic Japan, Pre-historical Judaism/Semitic culture, Mehrgaŕh on the Indian sub-continent, the precursors to the Czechs and the Basques to name just a few examples.

But at some point man figured out woman was not all powerful; he became convinced that it was his seed which fathered children. He felt lied to, betrayed, a false power had been lorded over him. He was just as holy, as important and powerful, if not more so, than woman.

With this discovery the mystery and power of woman; of creation itself was broken. Around 7000-4000 BC Patriarchies broke out all over the world, and the Indo-European mindset of conquest and domination, of Social Darwinism began to rule the planet.

Woman was eventually relegated to second class citizenship, stripped of her magic and power. Witches, female shamans were hunted into extinction and her connection with the almighty was eventually negated, broken. Symbols once considered powerful were denigrated (Mary Magdalene is a great example, as she was turned into a whore through a concerted and sustained effort by the early church begun by Pope Gregory the Great on 14 September 591when he gave a homily suggesting she was a prostitute). Even within Christianity, while there were women bishops early on, by the 3rd century those forms of Christianity were deemed heretical and eventually wiped out at the point of a sword. A few fringe survivals of this idea (for example Montanism who recognized female bishops and presbyters) rose and fell through prosecution. The power and prestige of womanhood was not to be tolerated under any circumstances.

The matriarchy was dead.

Fast forward to modern day (there's much more to this story but I'm not trying to write a book).

Without Universal Suffrage this world would look very much as it did in 1800, except for our technological toys. Called the "First Wave Feminism" the first state to offer the vote to  "some" women was Pitcairn Island in 1838. the first nation to allow all women to vote was New Zealand followed by Australia shortly thereafter (both still colonies of Britain). In 1913 Denmark became the first independent nation to allow women to vote and run for office. Russia gave women the right to vote in 1918 and the US 2 years later in 1920. This was the beginning. With voting came great power. It was a woman, Pauline Sabin who began the effort to overturn Prohibition. It was the woman's vote that made it a reality in the 30's. It was the woman's vote that allowed FDR to win the Presidency 4 times. The power to vote, coupled with Rosie the Riveter started the comeback of the female sex here in America. While men were out in Europe and the Pacific Theatres of war dying to save the world from the Third Reich and Hirohito's Japan, women entered the workforce to make up for all those missing men, and filled highly skilled jobs. ".


In 1946, "Rosie the Riveters" who had built aircraft and tanks and munitions, metalworkers, iron-workers, highly skilled, paying jobs were back in the home or waiting tables at pay that wasn't anywhere near pre-war levels. The full-day nurseries and child-care centers which had sprung up all over the country dried up along with funding provided by the Federal Government During the war. Add to this the GI Bill and those hard-fought skills women had learned were being taught to the men coming home from war. By the early fifties they were trapped behind the growing suburban sprawl born out of the lack of city housing.

All seemed lost.

But then came rock and roll.

The loosening of sexual mores did not begin with Haight-Ashbury and the birth of the counter-culture. The sexual revolution began with the gyrating hips of Elvis Presley and his so called "black-music." The backlash against what everyone saw coming benignly manifested itself in shows like Leave It To Beaver; with a stay-at-home mom and 2 and a half-children as the perfect American Utopia. It's malignant version was the McCarthy witch-hunts against communism, (a philosophy which among other things advocated a certain equality among the sexes), and a more active, concerted and organized effort against blacks who were seen as another sign that the "natural" God-given power of white-males was in danger of being upended by a new definition of morality.

It is this "rock and roll" that eventually freed womankind...
...it was a woman's ability to fuck with impunity.

Look at all those young women in old footage of Elvis Presley in concert or the Beatles a few years later, screaming their heads off, parents nowhere to be seen.
No longer under lock and key, America was changing. Women had been unchained.
And although this fact created as much negative as positive consequences (for example out-of-wedlock births tripled from 1960 to 1970 in most states) when the excesses of the sixties shook themselves out, we were a much better nation for it.
Women were much better off for it.

Roe v. wade, and the pill allowed women to be much more than a prisoner to their uterus. They now had a choice as to when and how many children to have.

This changed everything.
They could "Plan their Parenthood". Get it? Planned Parenthood?
Anyway, the ability to plan allowed a women to decide for herself whether and when she would be a mother and whether and when she would work or be a stay-at-home mom.
Work was money.
The only road to freedom of action is a financial road.
No woman can be her own "man" without the financial resources for independence.

In 1967 15% of all US women had a full-time, year round job.
In 1977 that number was 20%
In 1987 it was 30%
In 2007 it was 47%

The ability for Planned Parenthood has allowed financial independence. Without this, a woman's finances are dependent on the finances and the largesse of the man she is coupled with.

I began this essay with the words "the Devil is winning."
Why?

It has taken the Devil 50 years to realize that a woman's freedom was born out of the sexual revolution. And now, with the help of God, or more like with the help of the Devil trying to look like he is God, Old Scratch is trying to put that genie back in the bottle.

And he has the help of the entire Republican party, and conservative Christianity behind him.

The War on Women is real
It's real and it's organized.
Across the country not only is the right to choose whether to carry a baby to full term or not under attack, but there is even a campaign against contraception.

Rick Santorum:
"One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.”
It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

How are things supposed to be? The way they were in 1949?

In 1965 Supreme Court’s ruling prevented Connecticut from banning birth control.

Rick Santorum's answer to this:
“The state has a right to do that [ban birth control], I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that," he said.
Rick Santorum came very close this year to becoming the Republican nominee for President.

He's not the only Republican espousing this agenda.

I'll say it again.
Freedom to have sex with impunity. Men have had it since before human beings wrote things down. Men have had the right to take what they wanted by force if necessary. In the US some states didn't outlaw spousal rape until the early 70's.
And now, belatedly, since the late 60's women have some power over their bodies as well, no longer being treated solely as a receptacle for sperm.

It's their choice if, with who and when and what that sexual union brings forth, whether children or not, whether in marriage or not. Whether while working or not.

One would think this right is permanent.
But the Devil is watching...
And so is the country's right wing...
...and they've begun to work together to build a time machine that will send us all back to 1949.
May God help us all if they finish it.