Time To Change The Stories
it’s time for woman to be elevated to rank of god again
The stories we grow up listening to as children form the very foundations of how we view the world when we are adults. When the formative materia is a thousands year old compilation of stories where males play the lead(unless a woman is being made an example of or giving birth to a male child), it creates certain paradigms in society at large.
I espouse that an integral part of forming a new cultural structure will be to form new communal myths. Those myths would do well to feature Woman in all her forms, but most especially to feature her as standing shoulder-to-shoulder with that bearded guy in the clouds.
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This article was originally published on Substack. You can read the original here.
Audio Transcription:
I've been having so many conversations with women over the past few weeks about, of course, Cornell and what it brings up for each and every one of us. Each and every one of us. I don't know a woman who doesn't have a story. And as I think about change, can we change this?
I'd like to believe that the answer is yes, but I'm old enough, I've seen enough of these cycles to be calloused and jaded. And to think, you know, probably not. Probably not. Too many people benefit from rape culture, quite frankly, and everything else that surrounds it. I don't know. I don't know that we'll see change.
But do remain ever hopeful. So as I consider what it would take to change the all-pervasiveness of rape culture, because it's not just in America. It's not just settler colonialism, as some people want to say. It's all over. It is all over. Genital mutilation is part of these patriarchal rape culture systems. There's so many other things.
Purity culture goes into even my beloved ceremonial systems with the need to wear skirts that reach down to your ankles and cover your shoulders. So that the men don't get distracted while they're in their ceremonial process. God forbid, God forbid, women are just so powerful. Indeed we are. Indeed we are.
So, you know, I'm thinking about, well, what really, what is the foundation of the society of our culture that, um, enables so much of this. And I was having a conversation with one of my elders recently, and she's in education and comes from a different country and a different period of time. Different socioeconomic class than myself as well.
I was not raised very well off. I wasn't raised in total poverty, but I wasn't at the level that she exists at. And one of the comments that she made over dinner that had my tongue absolutely bleeding, but I also wanted to be respectful and take in the sentiment she was sharing.
We were talking about education, particularly, you know, primary elementary school education and the Montessori school systems apparently do not teach history. So as good of an education as one can get at Montessori schools, you do not learn history. And to me, that's unconscionable. Un-fucking-conscionable.
And part of it is that they just, there's so many arguments about what history we should teach, whose history should be highlighted, that they just bow out of the conversation entirely. And she said, well, you know, some cultures are more important to the evolution of humanity than others.
And while that comment raised my particular hackles and had my tongue bleeding, I also do understand the sentiment that so let's go to Greek culture, because that's where so much of our modern human civilization, what we consider to be civilized worlds, stems from Greek culture. Even the idea of democracy, even though we know, well, anyone who knows more than an elementary school history of this particular country understands that our Founding Fathers got some of their ideas for the Constitution and our version of democracy from the Iroquois. Hello! Yes, that is part of our nation's history.
However, the Iroquois were much more advanced in their version of democracy because everybody got a voice. Men and women and people who don't identify as either, everybody got a voice. And I don't know, I think that there were age restrictions, but I think that the age, you know, coming of age happens about 12 years old for girls and about 15 for boys. So I don't know if that's when they were able to participate in lending their voice to those tribal votes.
But in Greek mythology, if you remember back to your reading of Edith Hamilton, likely in seventh grade, if not before, maybe after, all of the Greek myths are rooted in rape culture. They promote rape culture. And then it's euphemized by, you know, Zeus came down and took on the form of a cow or a swan. And Persephone was stolen. But, you know, we women understand very well what was happening.
Oh, and Medusa, by the way, was raped, raped in the temple. And then she was punished and turned into the Gorgon and then she was beheaded because she tried to escape. She tried to hide herself away in a cave and men kept coming to harass her and she would turn them into stone even though that wasn't necessarily her intention. But they would not leave her alone and so she must have her head cut off. For being raped.
I say we need new stories. We need new mythology. And I challenge any storytellers in the world to start creating the new myths that our society will live by from here on out.
How do we shift the narrative? We change the stories. Literally. These are the foundations of our view of reality. The way that humans perceive reality is not the same across the board. I do believe in objective truth at some level. But there's so much power in our frontal lobes as humans.
This is apparently, supposedly what it puts us outside of the animal kingdom. I think it's bullshit. But the power of our frontal lobe, of the ability to shape and form abstract thought, it is powerful. It is a gift of ours. It is, as far as we know, unique to being human.
And so I say that we take advantage of that and rewrite. Rewrite the mythology. It's time that we have a female God who is at least as powerful as that fucking masculine God.
Okay, so I've had conversations with ex-evangelicals recently, and one of the things that one woman in particular was able to share with me is that if you're really reading the Bible, God is not always referred to as a man. What I would argue is that in the common nomenclature, he is thought of as a masculine entity. He is referred to as a man more often than not.
And not only that, but the entire Bible is a collection of stories about men. Whenever a woman shows up, it's because either she gave birth to a male child, she was used in some way by a man, or she's an example for the rest of women because she was a bad girl and she needs to be punished and demonized. In which case, it's just a collection of male empowerment essays.
And please, motherfucker, please. 52%, 51% to 52%, we are... The dominant sex in the species. It is time that we take our place in that role. Let's change the stories, ladies and gentlemen. It's time.