Remember! by Mary Gelfand

“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that.
You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied.
You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember! ….
You say there are no words to describe it;
You say it does not exist.
But remember.  Make an effort to remember.
Or, failing that, invent.”

From Les Guerilleres, by Monique Wittig, mid-20^th Century French feminist writer

The first time I heard this quote from Wittig was in the mid-1990s when I took ‘Cakes for the Queen of Heaven,’ an introduction to feminist thealogy and the Great Goddess, created by the Women & Religion committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  Cakes was my introduction to Carol Christ, feminist thealogy, and the Goddess.  It changed my life forever.  I’ve been teaching this program for close to twenty years now and as my understanding of women’s history and the role of patriarchy in our suppression has deepened, I continue to find new resonances with Wittig’s words.

“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that.”  This statement is relevant to all oppressed peoples and especially to women.  History tells us that enslavement was a part of European culture long before Africans were kidnapped into slavery on this continent.  Enslavement of the defeated was a common aspect of war, dating back to Biblical times.  Many aspects of the feudal system dominant in western Europe for centuries were little better than slavery. 

We know from the historical record that some of the earliest laws passed in the ancient Mesopotamian city-states defined what women could and could not do, stripping sovereignty from their hands and placing it into the hands of related men.  “There was a time when you were not a slave” but that time is buried so deeply that it is indeed hard to remember a time when women were not subject to the whims and authority of men.

 “You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied.”  Can you remember a time when you walked alone, and were not full of fear?  Can you remember a time when adventures into unknown areas or darkness were not fraught with danger?  Perhaps those who dwell in the countryside are able to do that, but during the years I lived in a city, I walked alone with a constant awareness of where I was, who was around me, and what protective measures I could take if necessary.  My adult daughter, an experienced hiker and camper, recently complained that since her divorce she has no one to go camping with and is afraid to camp alone.

Sadly, most assaults against women come from intimate partner violence (IPV).  According to the NCADV (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence), a woman is at greatest risk of violent and/or sexual assault in her own home, at the hands of her partner.  Thus for many women, bathing ‘bare-bellied’ even when at home is not safe.   

“You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember! …. You say there are no words to describe it; you say it does not exist.”  Of course we’ve lost all recollection of it, try as we may to remember.  There are no words to describe it because women have been written out of the historical and mythological record, in intentional actions by male leaders.  Older Greek myths were modified to remove power from the Goddesses and accrue it into the hands of the Gods, reflecting in mythology the cultural shifts that were already taking place in the physical world.  Women were written out of the mythological record of the Christian Bible as well.  The Bible was compiled during the first four centuries of the Common Era.  Books were selected and adapted to affirm the narrative created by the church fathers and women had no role in their vision. 

We have been taught to think of Homer as the world’s first great poet—he wrote about the exploits of gods and heroes.  But few people have ever heard of Enheduanna, a priestess of Inanna who wrote around 2400 BCE, almost two thousand years before Homer.  Enheduanna wrote hymns of praise to her Goddess—words that were used to unite her people around that worship.  Yet, even in those distant days, the Goddess was taking on some of the more fearsome attributes of the god.

Not only have women been written out of the historical record, in Greek and Roman mythology, we have often been defined as monstrous.  In a fascinating book titled Women and Other Monsters:  Building a New Mythology, author Jess Zimmerman observes that female monsters are “the bedtime stories patriarchy tells itself.”  Female monsters, such as Scylla and Charybdis, Medusa, and the Sphinx often display qualities that are seen as heroic when displayed by men, such voracious appetites, great strength, seductive beauty, and secret knowledge.  But they represent things men most fear about women and thus when women display these traits they are monstrous.

“But remember.  Make an effort to remember.  Or, failing that, invent.”  Despite great efforts, I find I cannot remember.  So I am grateful to live in a time when archaeological research and the increasing number of smart women seeking to change the narrative are providing ample fodder for the last of Wittig’s statements— “failing that, invent.”   Zimmerman suggests that women might reexamine some of the historical monsters, uncovering the strengths they represented and claiming those strengths for ourselves.

Or failing that, Invent! This is my very most favorite part of Wittig’s statement.  Invent!  That’s an explicit invitation to create—to take all the most magical, mystical, and creative parts of myself and use them to develop a personal narrative that heals and feeds my soul.  An invitation to reject the cultural lies that patriarchy keeps whispering in my ear and replace them with stories I create with my community—stories that speak of our strength and power as women, our visions of the world we want to co-create, and the love and compassion we want to share with all beings.