The Natural Superiority of Women (56 page)

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Authors: Ashley Montagu

Tags: #Social Science, #Anthropology, #Cultural, #Women's Studies, #test

BOOK: The Natural Superiority of Women
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Women must cease attempting to define themselves in the image of men and masculine values. Women must learn to respect themselves as women, and not to think of themselves as inadequate men. Respect must be based on self-knowledge and the knowledge of the high privilege of what it means to be a woman. When women understand what it really means, socially and biologically, to be a woman, in terms such as I have set out in this book, they can then confidently move out into the world and assume their rightful place in it. Not having been trusted for so long, many women lost faith in themselves. Women need to recover that faith. Women need confidence in themselves and a fuller awareness of the responsibility that being a woman entails. In the second place, women must assume the obligation of fulfilling their responsibilities, not as subjects of men, but as equally important, if not most important, members of the community of humanity. Women are the mothers of humanity; do not let us ever forget that or underemphasize its importance. What mothers are to their children, and to others, so will men be to men. What man has made of man, he has tried to make of woman, but he has never quite succeeded, for the mother that is in woman will keep declaring herself. Women must assume the full birthright of motherhood. I do not mean that all women must necessarily become the mothers of childrenI use the word
mother
in a larger sense than that of the purely biological mother to refer to the woman who extends her love to embrace every person and all humankind, to those qualities that are exemplified by the mother's love for her child but that are also applied to all persons and to all humanity. Women are the carriers of the true spirit of humanity, the love of the mother for her child. The preservation and diffusion of that kind of love is the true function and message of women.
And let me, at this point, endeavor to make it quite clear why I mean the love of a mother for her child and not the love of an equal for an equal, or any other kind of love. Maternal love is the purest and at the same time the most proficient form of love because it is the most compassionate, because it is the most sympathetic, because it is the most understanding and the least censorious. Maternal love does not dispense justice; it neither condemns nor condones; it gives support while endeavoring to understand, and it never forsakes those who are dependent upon

 

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that love. Maternal love is much more than just, for it functions as if it were aware that justice without love is not enough. Justice is love digested through rational calcu-lation; love, more important, is justice adapted to the needs of the organism, and the maintenance of the organism then and thereafter in the warm ambience of its support. It is not like the justice that gets lost in the law. It is deep involvement in the other. This, surely, is the kind of love we would wish to see prevail between human beings, rather than the marketing kind of love that limits itself too narrowly and is conditional upon the fulfillment of certain strictly conventional conditions. Why cannot we love our fellow human beings as mothers love their children, unconditionally to love others more than we love ourselves? And why cannot we demonstrate this love without hesitation? Is there, would there be, anything wrong in loving our fellow human beings in this way? Indeed, I believe that there is not only nothing wrong with this way of loving human beings but that unless we learn so to love before much more time has elapsed we may not be able to love at allwe shall cease to exist. It is the way of love in which human beings may live most successfully and happily and in optimum health, and it is the evolutionary destiny of human beings so to love each other. I believe it is the unique function and destiny of women to teach humankind to live as if to live and love were one. Together we need to harness the unique energies of love to no less a task than the rehabilitation of our species.
Perhaps there has never been a time in the history of civilized humankind when all or most humans loved each other as mothers love their children. We can be certain, however, that in the long range of human history humankind has been slowly, painfully, and gropingly finding its way toward discovery of itself; toward a way of life in which human beings will love one another as mothers love their children, to love others more than one loves oneself. Virtually every religious and ethical system testifies to that fact, and as an anthropologist concerned with the study of human nature, I see it as one of the great goals toward which human society is striving. Hence the crucial importance of women in this evolutionary process, and the pressing necessity of becoming consciously aware of what has, for the most part, been attempting unconsciously to realize itself: the love of humans for each other.

 

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True love is not so much self-denying as self-sharing, so suffused with humility and unpretentiousness, but also with strength, that those who exhibit it are not likely to dwell upon its meaning. Women know what love is. Let them not be tempted from their intuitive knowledge by the false idols that men have enthroned for women to worship. Woman must stand firm and be true to her inner nature; to yield to the prevailing false conceptions of love, of unloving love behind the show of love, is to abdicate the great evolutionary mission to keep human beings true to themselves, to keep them from doing violence to their inner nature, to help them realize their potentialities for being loving and cooperative. Were women to fail in this task, all hope for humanity would depart from the world.
Some day after mastering the wind,
the waves, the tides and gravity,
we shall harness the energies of love .
And then, for the second time
in the history of the world
we shall have discovered ourselves .
Humanity has for too long been sidetracked from the principle of love, of gentleness, of cooperation, by which earlier societies managed to live more closely than modern socially disorganized societies have been able to do. This sidetracking was due, as we have shown in chapter 2, to the destruction of matrism (modeling on a mother-figure), and its replacement with patristic institutions by marauding patriarchal hordes who overran such societies. Every age is an age in transition, and never more so than the age in which we are living. I believe that it is the unique function and destiny of women to teach men to live as if to live and love were one. Not to produce a matriarchal society, but a partnership society.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academe
That show, contain, and nourish all the world:
Else, none at all in aught proves excellent.

3

 

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Appendix A
United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
Adopted November 7, 1967, in the General Assembly:
The General Assembly,
Considering that the peoples of the United States have, in the Charter, reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women,
Considering that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the principle of nondiscrimination and proclaims that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth therein, without distinction of any kind, including any distinction as to sex,
Taking into account the resolutions, declarations, conventions, and recommendations of the United Nations and the specialized agencies designed to eliminate all forms of discrimination and to promote equal rights for men and women, Concerned that, despite the Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenants on Human Rights, and other instruments of the United Nations and the specialized agencies and despite the progress made in the matter of equality of rights, there continues to exist considerable discrimination against women,

 

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Considering that discrimination against women is incompatible with human dignity, and with the welfare of the family and of society, prevents their participation on equal terms with men in the political, social, economic, and cultural life of their countries, and is an obstacle to the full development of the potentialities of women in the service of their countries and of humanity,
Bearing in mind the great contribution made by women to social, political, economic, and cultural life and the part they play in the family and particularly in the rearing of children,
Convinced that the full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world, and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women as well as men in all fields,
Considering that it is necessary to ensure the universal recognition in law and in fact of the principle of equality of men and women,
Solemnly proclaims this Declaration:
Article 1
Discrimination against women, denying or limiting as it does their equality of rights with men, is fundamentally unjust and constitutes an offense against human dignity.
Article 2
All appropriate measures shall be taken to abolish existing laws, customs, regulations, and practices which are discriminatory against women, and to establish adequate legal protection for equal rights of men and women, in particular:
(a) The principle of equality of rights shall be embodied in the constitution or otherwise guaranteed by law;
(b) The international instruments of the United Nations and the specialized agencies relating to the elimination of discrimination against women shall be ratified or acceded to and fully implemented as soon a practicable.
Article 3
All appropriate measures shall be taken to educate public opinion and direct national aspirations toward the eradication of prejudice and the abolition of customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority of women.

 

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