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adrienne rich, baby parade, dale spender, Father of, fathered, gender scripts, harriet goldhor lerner, judy chicago, knowledge production, language use gender, media studies, mother of, mothered, Oprah, our foremothers, women and academic discipline, women and media, women studies, women's history, Women's History Month, women's honor, women's knowledge
“Because we are denied knowledge of our history, we are deprived
of standing upon each others’ shoulders and building upon each others’ accomplishments. Instead we are condemned to repeat what others
have done before us and thus we continually reinvent the wheel.
The goal of the Dinner Party is to break the cycle.”
Judy Chicago
If you don’t know what the Dinner Party is, google it. That’s not the subject of this article.
The Photograph above is the Baby Parade. Seek women’s history.
In working for awareness of WOMEN’S HISTORY, we need not only a recognition of women’s accomplishments, but we need to recognize how history, as a part of our consciousness and world view, operates in our social actions and relationships.
It came to my awareness that when we think of a Father to be honored historically we have endless ways in a complex and sophisticated system built over many centuries. We have an endless list of specific, individual men we credit by name and in detailed records.
But embedded beyond that in our educational institutions there are entire categories of thought and language that were built on the ideas originating with one man and a specific name given to such a category. For example, math or psychology. This man, in our inherited habit, is then given the title of Father to his category. We call it an academic subject or discipline taught in separate classes. Sometimes it is almost heresy to speak against this honored man as if it is a religion especially for dedicated followers. It is the high respect and honor that we inherited in established ways that exists.
There are very few, if any, academic subjects and disciplines that come to us with Mother and her ideas. Mothers and their knowledge was once learned outside of these men’s institutions. And There has always been resistance for women’s inclusion. In the United States, the acceptance of women’s need for education was won prior to the 20th century, but then followed by decades of stereotypes and medical and religious beliefs of men that women were incapable either because of their bodies’ ability to birth or because they simply were emotional, unintelligent, inferior beings. It was a common perception that women were not able to do the same activities as men and not able to think and act rationally for themselves. Men were perceived as authority and superior by gender scripts, roles and these very ideas and teachings created by men.
Still, by the 1960’s, women like never before were not only entering higher education institutions en masse but began creating their own knowledge and instructions as men had previously done. Women’s knowledge production began to be named and defined within one category, however, named ‘Women’s Studies”. Yet women worked within the already established subject matter and academic disciplines created by men, at first. Women also worked undefined as women’ studies. As things evolved women’s view tended to add unknown or devalued life experiences and views that tended to question, change and sometimes transform entirely the well established beliefs and ideas of men.
Women’s knowledge, in some ways, was somewhat disruptive of men’s based on differences that men do not experience as differences between themselves for various reasons. The resistance, to this day, remains and yet has changed over time. While lacking a full understanding of the necessity and importance of including Mothers and their ideas, women studies has given way to a sense of ‘including others’ and has at times been named ‘gender studies’ and a shift from the Foremothers’ work. With economic losses, women studies has suffered loss. Often perceived as unnecessary, women studies is controversial. The ideas that women, historically, are not important and have no important contributions remains strong. That their study is somehow flawed and bias whereas men’s is perceived as universally correct and unbiased exists. Perhaps it necessity is not understood properly, even moreso now it is important to learn because the world has changed for women.
The major institutions such as media, courts, legislation and government remain strongly based in men’s knowledge production alone for various reasons. Women’s knowledge production in established learning programs such as Women’s History or Women’s Studies is not seen as necessary requirement for news reporting or policy decisions or even studying women as a social group. Instead some of our institutions are established, purposely, to exclude information about women and repeat centuries’ old teachings even when such knowledge in academic institutions is inaccurate, fragmented and unproven.
I remind myself it took 300 years for the Catholic church to apologize to Galileo for his punishment for expressing his opinion that the earth was round. It took 100 years for slavery to get an official ban in the US after the King was removed but another 100 years for civil rights to actually be protested. In the same way, we’ve been given an education about our world in our educational establishments that doesn’t really exist. The world as young and middle aged, adult white male centered and oriented is narrow and is not how the earth nor it’s inhabitants operate. Only by forced compliance and a mental restructuring does it get perpetuated socially and always in need of maintenance. It’s not just women that need to be properly included and understood in perceptions that match physical functioning on the planet. There’s much more.
But my focus here is Women’s History. March. One month to focus on it has been designated.
The tradition of women’s history in a systematized way in major institutions to honor women and the importance of their ideas in understanding the world we live is not only not established but women’s work is usually coopted, and used very differently, merging in to the male centered flow, as it evolves into and is included in the established understandings created by men. In essence, women’s messages, ideas get lost and disappear as men’s work still takes center stage and, to a degree, only permit women who comply to such centering. Otherwise there is automatic ridicule, discrediting as so many of our foremothers’ have experienced. The honoring that should be there simply doesn’t exist. There’s more work to be done to have a fuller understanding of human lives on the planet.
Within women studies, there has been quite a bit of discussion about how women’s knowledge production is treated. Yet a significant portion of information remains marginalized, misunderstood, lost in movement to the next generation and often rejected in the same manner that has always existed. The result is, as Judy Chicago made clear, that women have to repeat what their foremothers had to struggle with rather than inherit and work on the backs of the foremothers. The honor is what is missing even when women’s work is used. It is the dishonoring of women’s work, their names, and details that allows women’s actual words to be used in a manner that actually unravels and destroys the work women have accomplished.
For a time, it was often said that behind every great man is a woman whose not getting named or getting credit. Piece by piece women are included these days like never before, however, precisely because women have entered in the system in ways not previously permitted. But there is not a system for women yet. The system remains established based on the categories well entrenched that are limited. Despite the work in educational institutions, major media plays a signficant role in keeping women out. While women are certainly involved in media, it’s important to note, that specific channels dedicated to honoring women and their academic work does not exist. Channels such as Lifetime or Women’s Entertainment are simply run on the same models that men have created.
Women have begun to establish their own media only recently. But the honor is still extremely imbalanced. Worse, the very established functioning akin to war called debates makes dishonoring an opponent the normal rather than debating with a goal seek the larger truth.
While things are changing in recent decades, in contrast to a total neglect for centuries, there are a few women that are honored as mothers of some creation, activity or event.
This topic is like opening a pandora’s box. There are many things to explore within it.
I leave you with this suggestion. Search on any search engine, the words ‘Father Of’ and see for yourself. Then search ‘Mother Of’ and see the difference. Explore and become aware of how fathers are honored systematically.
The words, Father Of, gives you an endless list of specific names. A Cap of How men developed the world of our ideas.
It is what is missing that we don’t see because it doesn’t exist in our awareness that it is missing.
If you google Mother of, it is much harder to find specific names. We don’t call Oprah, Mother of Talk Shows. The search results for Mother Of, instead, bring up a general category such as Mother of the Bride. Mother of Dragons or Mother of Pearl. Mother of Science is Philosophy While the Father of Science is Galileo. By the way, Mother of Talk Shows is the name of a british talkradio hosted by politician George Galloway. There are not specific names of women and their work. Although in recent decades there are exceptions and you may find a handful. However, this in contrast to centuries and an endless list of Fathers that young minds are flooded with to value while Mother of….is missing in our language use.
The list we have of Fathers and their work is our collective history that establishes the actions in our social world. The problem with this is while it is perceived as universal and comprehensive it is not. Once this is recognized that fathers have defined the world as male centered, in part, as if the whole, we can understand how our system of knowledge is inaccurate and incomplete in describing the world we live in and who we are.
Stay tuned and join in on Celebrating and Establishing more of women’s History!“
In her book, Women of Ideas, Dale Spender wrote about the experience in the 1960’s of uncovering information of women in centuries past she asked, ‘Why didn’t we know about these women? Was it possible that we were not meant to? And if women who raised their voices against male power became but a transitory entry in the historical records, what was to be the fate of the present women’s movement?
“When someone with the authority of a teacher,
say, describes the world and you are not in it,
there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium,
as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.”
Adrienne Rich
“What we learn about being a woman, being like other women
and satisfying male demand involves massive self deception,
concealment and self betrayal that breeds shame, alienation
and disconnection from our bodies/selves and even our place
in the life cycle.”
Harriet Goldhor Lerner
“Openly questioning the way the world works
and challenging the power of the powerful
is not an activity customarily rewarded.”
Dale Spender