“Patriarchal societies are founded upon a crime. This crime is not the murder of the father, as Freud would have us believe. It is the rape and scorn of the mother. This is the unconscious horror that each girl-child inherits and, unlike male “castration anxiety,” rape anxiety is all too often reinforced by the daily reality of the act and threat of rape. (Men’s so called “fear of castration” is simply a fear of losing command over women in patriarchal society, which equates domination of women with “manhood.” If Western males have any legitimate fear of castration, it derives from the act of circumcision, which is a terrible thing to inflict on a male infant; but this custom comes from the Father God of the Bible, it doesn’t come from women or any Great Mother religion.) Living constantly under the steel roof of patriarchy’s criminal misogyny, women are forced to bend to, and accept, on pain of ever-reverberating punishment and terror, men’s paranoid projections. Women, as long as we fear punishment for our powers, and as long as we are economically dependent on men, must accept that our bodies are unclean and deficient. Under patriarchy, the mother is feared and hated, quite crazily, both for her power and her weakness; everything a man cannot courageously accept about himself is projected onto his mother, or wife. Or onto any random woman walking down the street.” –Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother
“Patriarchal societies are founded upon a crime. This crime is not the murder of the father, as Freud would have us believe. It is the rape and scorn of the mother. This is the unconscious horror that each girl-child inherits and, unlike male “castration anxiety,” rape anxiety is all too often reinforced by the daily reality of the act and threat of rape. (Men’s so called “fear of castration” is simply a fear of losing command over women in patriarchal society, which equates domination of women with “manhood.” If Western males have any legitimate fear of castration, it derives from the act of circumcision, which is a terrible thing to inflict on a male infant; but this custom comes from the Father God of the Bible, it doesn’t come from women or any Great Mother religion.) Living constantly under the steel roof of patriarchy’s criminal misogyny, women are forced to bend to, and accept, on pain of ever-reverberating punishment and terror, men’s paranoid projections. Women, as long as we fear punishment for our powers, and as long as we are economically dependent on men, must accept that our bodies are unclean and deficient. Under patriarchy, the mother is feared and hated, quite crazily, both for her power and her weakness; everything a man cannot courageously accept about himself is projected onto his mother, or wife. Or onto any random woman walking down the street.” –Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother
Comments
Post a Comment