Miriam Does What She Does Best, Which Is Rambling About a Book
While doing research for my thesis, I’ve come across a book called The Alphabet versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain. It’s only marginally related to my topic, which is a shame, because my fingers are itching to give this book a well-deserved bashing. And since I won’t be able to do that in my thesis, I’m going to do it here. I suffered through over 400 pages of this book, so now I’m going to make you all suffer by making you listen to me complain about it. Hah!
There were tons of things I found annoying in the book, a lot of which are things that probably nobody but myself is going to care about. But here I’m going to focus on mostly the feminist-related gripes I had with it, delving a little into ableism as well, since that’s also something that strikes rather close to home for me. Also, you know, intersectionality.
Disclaimer:
There are probably some factual errors in the book, but since I’m not a historian, I can’t find them all. Throughout most of the book, I kept coming across points that conflicted with things I knew from other sources. For example, Shlain says that the only gospel-writer whose identity we know is Mark, who interviewed an aged Peter, whereas I had been led to believe that John was one of Jesus’ original apostles, and so was Matthew (I think), Luke was a travelling companion of Paul’s, and Mark is the one we know nothing about (though the name suggests that he was a Roman). But of course I couldn’t be sure that my sources were right and his were wrong. And who’s to say that I wasn’t just misremembering or misunderstanding something? It wasn’t until Shlain said something about how it’s possible that many of the healer women accused of witchcraft might have been adherents of Wicca that all his credibility flew out the window.
So, my point is if there are factual errors in, say, the way Shlain describes religious rituals of ancient peoples, I wouldn’t know it. I can only work with what he gives me and interpret it based on his descriptions alone.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to the book itself. The basic premise of it is that there is a conflict in the brain between left-brain values (logic, linearity, the hunting instinct) and right-brain values (emotions, a holistic view, the nurturing instinct)*. Since the left-brain values are more connected with the masculine and the right-brain values with the feminine, when the left brain is given more weight in a society, misogyny will follow. The alphabet, being an extremely left-brain concept with its linearity and abstractness, is the cause of the devaluation of women in so many societies. Shlain tracks this by demonstrating that people stopped worshiping goddesses at around the same time the general populace became literate.
I don’t buy this.
I’m even less of a scientist than I am a historian, so I can’t really argue with the whole left-brain, right-brain stuff. It simply doesn’t ring true to me.
But instead of talking about all the things I don’t know, let’s take a look at those pre-literate, goddess-worshiping societies that Shlain says are so female-empowering. Since women can give birth, those cultures connected the feminine with nature and life and so worshiped a Great Mother. They glorified the female body, especially when pregnant.
To be honest, I’m not really comfortable with this.
There are many parts to my personality. I am rebellious, yet kind. I am book-smart, but lazy and clumsy. I am silly and irreverent, but I am also spiritual and sincere. I love books, and hate sports. I have many friends. I have lived in four different countries, and have travelled to many more. I also happen to possess a uterus. Why should that last sentence be used to define me more than any of the others? I’m not objecting to people worshiping fertility goddesses per se. I’m just saying that if women are connected to nothing other than fertility, then we have a problem. That’s like saying that our only purpose is to give birth.
To bring this point home further, later in the book Shlain mentions how, after taking up literacy, the Greeks demoted Hestia, goddess of the hearth, family and children, from their pantheon in favour of Dionysus. This is presented as a devaluation of feminine traits. While I agree that it is definitely sexist to devalue mothers and housewives, it is also sexist to primarily connect women with the hearth. I know the ancient Greeks weren’t good to their women at all, but at least they had a goddess of wisdom as well as a fertility goddess.
I’d be less bothered by all this if a woman had written it. Then I would have thought, “Well, I guess you find this empowering, but I don’t.” But since the book was written by a man, all I can think is, “Dude, stop acting as if you have any idea what women actually find empowering!”
He also makes a connection between the female body and fluidity. Diane Purkiss also makes this connection in her book The Witch in History. But whereas Shlain presents this connection as a good thing, viewing it as women being part of nature or something like that, Purkiss says that this was another thing used to otherize female bodies in olden days, especially those of accused witches. As in “Eww, women are gross with all their weird bodily fluids, as opposed to us men who are solid and sturdy.”** I’m more inclined to side with Purkiss on this point (or on any point, really), not just because she’s a woman, but also because I actually enjoy her books, and she isn’t constantly pissing me off. Bias, I know, but watcha gonna do?
Then there’s the second point I mentioned. If we compare it to the Victorian view that a woman’s body is so shameful that talking about something as ordinary as your own pregnancy is scandalous, I guess the Neolithic fascination with and glorification of the female body is better. But the way Shlain describes it, it sounds as if pre-literate societies viewed women’s bodies as these mystical, magical, life-making objects. My body is neither mystical nor magical; it’s simply my body. From reading this, I got the feeling that the female body was like a strange amoeba under a microscope or a distant planet in a telescope, rather than something that half the population possesses. This is extremely otherizing, and shows that even in these pre-literate societies the default point of view was still male. After all, to women a female body is not Other. I am not Other, I am me. In fact, I am the only me I’ve ever known, so I see no reason why I should ever be forced to view myself as Other.
Moving on, here’s an excerpt from the book:
Inanna was the sexual partner in the Sumerians’ most important ritual - the hiero gamos, the sacred marriage. A Sumerian king’s chief religious duty was to consummate his vows to Inanna in the sanctified wedding chamber. Through this act, eagerly anticipated by all his subjects, a king legitimized his reign. A comely surrogate, chosen from the people, ensured that the king would not be disappointed. Sumerians considered this ritual essential to a successful harvest and it was also necessary to guarantee the fertility of human unions and animal matings. Not unexpectedly, the agricultural Sumerians revered the feminine principle… (p.48)
So, let’s see. All the Sumerian leaders were men. A beautiful woman from the people was chosen to represent the goddess, so the king didn’t have to suffer the indignity of shagging someone ugly, but the king’s attractiveness doesn’t seem to matter. There’s no mention of whether the surrogate wanted to sleep with the king or not. Yet Shlain presents this as a society where women had power over men, and this ritual in particular he presents as empowering.
Now we jump ahead a couple of centuries to make way for Judaism. When discussing Hebrew law, Shlain mentions that new brides had their heads shaved. This was to impede their sexuality, as long hair was symbolic for female sexuality. While that’s probably true, he goes on to say that feminine obsession with hair is genetic rather than being socially taught. I don’t believe that. I wear my hair short. I usually cut it myself, since that’s cheaper, so I actually apply scissors to what Shlain says I should subconsciously see as a symbol of my sexuality. I assure you that I am not castrating myself when I cut my hair. Especially since, while the main reason for me having short hair is convenience, I also happen to think I look more attractive this way.
Shlain also discusses how in Jewish culture Wisdom was often eroticized as a beautiful woman. I agree that this is problematic, but I’m not sure our reasoning is the same. I find it problematic because it turns the pursuit of wisdom into a solely heterosexual male endeavour. Shlain, on the other hand, writes: “In one of the strangest aberrations to occur in the 3,000,000-year-old human condition, men substituted dry scrolls in place of a woman’s beauty.” (p.119) I can’t even put into words what it is about this line that bothers me, but it really does. It makes me feel kind of icky, actually.
What shall we look at next? How about we play a game? Finish the following line:
Men enjoy looking at beautiful women because that is the way their nervous systems evolved. Women, too, derive considerable pleasure from seeing… (p.199)
Most of you probably guessed a variation of “handsome men” (some of you muttering something about hetero-normativity under your breath), but you’re wrong. The line ends with “other women”. I’m not sure what to make of this statement. Is he saying that women are just naturally more pleasing to the eye than men? That we shouldn’t complain about women being objectified in the media, since women (straight and gay and any other sexuality) enjoy looking at models in bikinis too, but not at half-naked men?
He then continues with:
A perusal of any women’s magazine confirms this fact today. A culture that denies women access to these images robs them of a potent source of self-worth. (still p.199)
Of course. All women who flick through magazines think, “Wow, it sure makes me feel empowered and full of self-worth to look at these women who are much more attractive than I’ll ever be, seeing as how you can’t photoshop real life! I’m so glad these images aren’t giving me any body issues!” I know I do that. Don’t pretend that you don’t.
We move through the centuries again, to the early middle ages:
From out of the pitch-black womb of the Dark Ages emerged the Age of Chivalry, in which the highest aspiration of a man was to protect and serve “the fair sex”. In Germany, Frauenlob, “women’s praise” informed the songs of the earliest minnesingers. In France, knights in chain mail pledged themselves to uphold the honor of the women in their kingdom. The oral code, which was preserved later in writing, urged men to “serve and honor all women” and “spare no pain and effort in their service.”
There have been other turbulent times in Western history, but none in which concern for women’s welfare was such an abiding priority. Despite the extreme disorder and gloom of the period from A.D. 500 to 1000, equality between the sexes reached near equilibrium. (pp.262-263)
Later, on page 273, Shlain even refers to this period as a time of “extreme feminism”.
Again, if I had to choose, I think I’d rather be treated like a delicate flower that needs to be protected than as a slave who needs to be subjugated. But that doesn’t mean that chivalry is in any way feminist, let alone “extreme feminism”. Extreme feminism would be if there had been as many female knights as male ones, and if they had pledged to protect anyone weaker than themselves, regardless of gender.
Shlain continues his equation of chivalry and feminism by explaining that the Arthurian legends represent feminine values. Now, I love Arthurian legends as much as the next fantasy geek, but I don’t see how they are particularly female-empowering. Okay, the main deity is the Lady of the Lake, so I guess that’s something. But most of the characters are still male. The most well-known female character in the legends is the rather passive Guinevere, who later betrays the king by becoming an adulteress. The most powerful woman in Arthurian myth is arguably Morgan LeFay, and she’s an evil sorceress.***
Shlain also says that the Grail myths symbolize the high regard for women in this age. The Holy Grail, being a vessel (a vessel that once contained blood, no less) is symbolic for the female body, more specifically female genitals. I’m not sure I buy this reasoning, but, okay, I’ll play along. What we have in the Grail myths, then, is a whole bunch of men (not a single woman), all pursuing a vagina. A disembodied vagina. Yay feminism?
At this point, I was getting really tired of the book, so I didn’t take as many notes. There’s some minor points I wrote down that I’m not sure are worth bringing up. For example, according to my notes, Shlain uses the phrase “female sexual power” at some point. I didn’t write down a page number, and I don’t remember what the context was, but my gut reaction to the phrase is to side-eye it hard, since it’s a favourite with mansplainers who claim that women do actually have more power than they claim. But, hey, maybe it did make sense in context.
The next point I find somewhat important comes on page 350:
The Europeans treated Native American women and the pristine New World landscape as wild enemies to be subdued and conquered; the rape of both was commonplace.
Please don’t use rape as a metaphor.
What’s this? He does it again on page 381? I hate this book.
Here’s another thing that bothered me that might be considered a minor point, but I think it’s worth mentioning, because it shows that the author clearly skews the facts in favour of his thesis. Whenever he’s talking about a historical figure whose accomplishments had much to do with writing and left-brain values, he goes out of his way to comment on their misogynistic view of women. But he doesn’t do the same for figures such as Sigmund Freud, whose accomplishments are connected with dreams and the subconscious, and so are more right-brain values. Freud, of course, was obsessed with penises, and so assumed that everybody else was as well.**** This meant that he characterized women purely by their lack of a penis, calling them “Lack” and “the Bleeding Wound” and accusing them of having penis envy and seriously, screw that guy! Still, because he promoted right-brain values, Shlain claims that Freud was one of the people who set the stage for the suffragette movement.
Shlain explains the rise of women’s rights in the twentieth century through the rise of the image with photography, television and computers, since that promotes right-brain values to stabilize the ubiquity of the left-brain values promoted by the alphabet. He says that it doesn’t really matter what the images are of, as long as they stimulate the right side of the brain. The same goes with typing on a keyboard, since you use both hands for it. In other words, watching television and using the internet makes people respect women more.
Hahaha, bullshit! Of course it matters what the images you look at are showing. How are you supposed to learn to respect women when you’re surrounded by images of women reduced to sexual objects? To quote Jean Kilbourne in Killing Us Softly:
We all grow up in a culture in which women’s bodies are constantly turned into “things” and “objects”… Now of course this affects female self esteem. It also does something even more insidious: it creates a climate in which there is widespread violence against women. I’m not at all saying that an ad like this directly causes violence - it’s not that simple. But turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step toward justifying violence against that person. We see this with racism, we see it with homophobia, we see it with terrorism. It’s always the same process. The person is dehumanized and violence then becomes inevitable. And that step is already and constantly taken with women. So the violence, the abuse, is partly the chilling but logical result of this kind of objectification.
This book came out in 1998, so I’ll give the author a pass for not predicting the utter awfulness the internet has come up with in the form of YouTube comments and 4chan. But movies, TV-shows and ads that objectify and silence women already existed back then. And for the record, I don’t think those things are vestiges of old, dying sexisms transplanted to a new medium. I think the television and the internet have come up with whole new ways of being sexist. That means that they aren’t making our society less sexist by simple virtue of existing. The only way to make society less sexist is to use these media and others to inform people that changes need to be made, and that’s something the internet is good at, fortunately.
Right, so now the book is nearly finished. Shlain is gushing about how photography and television has made life so much better for women, and I’m still waiting for him to mention the way these can also be used as powerful tools for keeping women down. Finally on page 427 he says:
Many have expressed concern over the pervasiveness of sex in contemporary society. The rows of pornographic magazines in the corner convenience store seem to refute the idea that images advance women’s equality. The flood of smut is, however, but another indication that the right hemisphere is rapidly achieving freedom from the left’s priggishness. The repression of sexuality by the written word for the last three thousand years has created so great a longing for release that a marked reaction toward the other direction is to be expected.
No. No no no no no. If the mainstream porn industry was fuelled by a simple curiosity about sex, it would cater to women as much as to men. There wouldn’t be so much porn that is painful and demeaning to women. Porn actresses would be treated better on the set.
I don’t even know what to say. At this point I’m just flailing my arms around, going, “No! You’re wrong!”
And is this really the only mention Shlain is ever going to make of the objectification of women by the media in his supposedly feminist book?! That’s, like, feminism 101! That’s something that affects my life - every woman’s life - pretty much every single day!
But let’s forget about all that for now, so I can calm down enough to talk about ableism. Yay! This is from page 145:
The periods that historians most admire - Classical Greece, Imperial Rome, Renaissance Italy, and Elizabethan England - were born in strife and carried within them a vein of terrible madness. Indeed, whenever the alphabet appears, so too does madness.
I’m mad. Is that because I read too much?
Seriously though, he keeps using the words “mad” and “madness” throughout the book, which made me feel uncomfortable. I thought that maybe I was taking this too personally, since he clearly doesn’t mean “mad” as in “mentally ill”, but rather “irrational” or “cruel”. But then I read this article on Alda’s Tumblr and decided that, no, I’m not being over-sensitive. This is ableism, and I don’t have to take it. To quote the article:
Ableism is “otherizing” us. Ableism is using language that really has been used over generations to attack disabled people, to tell us that we are not normal and as such, we are less than human. And ableism is using that language without any idea what it has done, how many people it’s hurt, because society doesn’t want us to know how, in a society that’s supposed to have conquered discrimination the way we conquered countries, millions and millions of people were systematically threatened, bullied, and slaughtered. […] Ableism is using us as scare tactics, as examples of what you don’t want to be. Ableism is assuming that our lives are inherently less worth living than yours.
Speaking of ableism, he also uses the r-word at one point. I’m pretty sure it was already considered politically incorrect in 1998.
In conclusion, I don’t think any medium is intrinsically more feminist or sexist than any other. It all depends on how you use the tools that you are given.
This book, on the other hand, is sexist. I just want to say to the author: “Look, you’re a man. You’ve never been objectified. You’ve probably never been defined solely by your reproductive organs. You don’t know what it’s like to be otherized because of your gender. I know your intentions are good, but please don’t speak for us. You Just Don’t Get It.”
*This, of course, is reversed with left-handed people.
**Purkiss obviously describes this better than I do, but I don’t really want to spend too much time on this minor point. Do read The Witch in History. It’s pretty good.
***Admittedly, that doesn’t stop me from finding her kind of awesome.
****He also came up with the concept of projection. Irony!
x-posted to fem_rage