INTRODUCTION

A PRECARIOUS HOUSE
OF STORIES

OVER THE PAST five decades I have researched proverbs, art, myths and other verbal genres that magnify the differences between men and women. These sources – many of which are thousands of years old – shed light on our conversations around gender today. For the most part, our myths are mainly concerned with justifying, or establishing, a patriarchal, hierarchical order. However, other genres, such as proverbs, art and folklore, struggle to address the precarious gender balance of power in society.

Comparing the cultural legacies of widely different people from around the globe, I discovered similar ideas and cultural messages – often with the same meaning and (mostly) similar form – expressed through different metaphors:

This is one of many examples. Such similarities cannot be due only to globalisation, as they originate from times and cultures without demonstrable contact. How is this possible? Our common patterns as human beings have to do with the shape and functions of the human body and its basic needs, such as food, shelter, safety and procreation, and with emotions such as fear, longing, joy and sorrow, experienced by us all.

I have always told my students: if you look only for differences, you will find only differences. If you look for similarities, they are in front of you. Instead of looking for what we share, conversations around human identity are inclined to blow up our differences. Today’s global order goes back to a house of stories, built on mythical foundations, by influential storytellers, who established a strong belief in the differences between sexes.

Since the beginning of time, human beings have devised images of themselves and embedded them in stories, songs and other forms of artistic expression. The nature of how human beings present themselves through such images has varied according to the interests of those involved and the contexts in which they lived. One of the main tasks of my field is to study the similarities and differences of how humankind presents itself in oral and written traditions.

Looking into the worldwide harvest of cultural legacies helps us to put our local views into a wider picture. To make sense of a patriarchal structure, and the ways in which it is sustained, we need to understand its foundations. This book takes a wide-ranging look at our global house of stories and ideas around gendered body parts and the power they wield. Awareness is a modest first, crucial step towards questioning our established views of the self and the other.

Humanity is divided by an ongoing history of exclusion, with devastating consequences. Nonetheless, small miracles happen. In spring 2004 I had a totally unexpected experience. After my book Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet came out, The Times invited me to write about the how and the why of this book. Titled ‘Beware of women with big feet’, the article went into my extensive travels and conversations with a large variety of people, first in Africa where I lived several years in DR Congo, later in other parts of the world. Following my travels, I spent years working on the collected material of more than 15,000 proverbs about women (and men), studying how proverbs have helped impose restrictions on women’s place and role in contemporary society.1

Two weeks after this article appeared as the leading Times Weekend Review article, a huge, mysterious airmail package arrived for me on the doorstep of my Leiden University office. It contained a number of impressive books of Arabic proverbs and a letter from the generous Saudi sender, living in Riyadh. He had read my article and assured me in his letter that, had he been in Leiden, he would have loved to have had a long conversation. Instead, to express his appreciation for the article, he had sent me this gift. This encouraging gesture from the other side of the world convinced me that patient research may build cross-cultural bridges.

The power of myths

Myths deal with crucial issues that affect society. We are enmeshed in traditions passed down from generation to generation, which connect us more closely to our ancestors than we may realise. They lay the foundations for human existence. As long as people believe in their own stories, the established order depicted in their traditions persists.

In this book myths, proverbs, popular culture and past philosophical and medical perceptions tell a pregnant story that throws new light on the female body, with the help of illuminating pictures. Cultural traditions from around the world reveal a desperate need for control over ‘her’, leading to extraordinary beliefs and practices, from fanged wombs to the so-called island of menstruating men. Similar patterns make us ask to what extent the male wish for dominance over the female body has been successful.

The first part of this book goes back to the enormous impact of myths, even today. It shares a history of creation goddesses, and how they slowly and surely made way for male creators. Part II goes into the enlightening wealth of stories and comments on the mysteries of the female body, from the hospitable breasts praised as the ‘hills of paradise’ to fear of the hymen, and the awesome power of the womb’s life-giving capacity.

In the third and final part of this book we are confronted with the consequences of globally developed hierarchies in human history: the continuing violence of physical power inspired mainly by mental insecurity and fear; the ongoing demonstrable preference for sons over daughters in many societies; and the vulnerability of those declared subordinates who risk ending up in contempt of their own appearance, thanks to compelling commercials and other influential media. Finding out how today’s widely held views came into being, and what they tell us about society in the past and present, will help us in taking new roads into the future.

Myths explain how, over millennia, female power had to be curbed. This was done through stereotyping women as capricious, unjust and demanding. Myths justify the notion that men were better positioned – and able – to run the world. Men’s theft of female power, also called the theft of ‘women’s secret’, is a striking motif in several parts of the world.

A Gikuyu story I was told in Kenya describes how women were once in charge. They were cruel, ruthless, and ruled like tyrants. The men did everything for them – they hunted, worked the land, cooked, cared for the children (in some versions they even breastfed the babies) and protected their families against enemies. The women handed out orders and did nothing. But no matter how zealously the men did their best to meet the women’s demands, they were exploited as slaves. The female rulers were never satisfied. No wonder the men resorted to a ruse: they agreed among themselves to impregnate all the women at the same time. And while the women were giving birth, their unjust regime was overthrown. ‘The men created a new order and strengthened their grip on society. Since then, justice and peace have reigned in Gikuyu society.’

This story gives the impression that matriarchal power was superseded by patriarchy; but matriarchy has never actually existed as a societal order. The existence of matriarchies, societies in which women are dominant, has been certain feminists’ stubborn wishful thinking. Convincing proof has never been found – though there are many (mostly negative or threatening) stories about societies that in the past consisted of women only, or in which women reigned.2

In his bestseller Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari concludes that biology makes lots of things possible which culture then restricts or forbids. That male dominance has developed almost universally cannot be a coincidence, he says, but he is unable to explain why this hierarchy remains so widely in force today:

Disappointing, really. In spite of the claim in the subtitle of his book – A Brief History of Humankind – the author is blind to the revealing light that myths throw on the origins of gendered inequality.

Myths devote a great deal of attention to the body, and link messages about sexual hierarchy in a community to origin stories about gods and the first people. Over time, the basic creative and life-giving functions of mythical goddesses have been taken over by gods imagined and addressed as males. Various deities are themselves more than one sex, or create for themselves supplementary bodily functions they missed for the purpose of creating life or to nurse their babies (the Hindu god Shiva did this, as we will see), something the monotheistic religions were keen to move away from. Many stories have been recast over time so that the male sex...