Oluwabiyi Shittu, Period 1, 10/23/23

Oluwabiyi Shittu
Period 1
Literacy and Learning
10/23/2023

Learning about different religion’s creation stories included a discussion on the shared quirk on the part of the creation stories to blame women for man's faults. It is no secret that in archaic societies, women were often seen as inferior to men. They were barred from positions of power for cowardly reasons such as curiosity, impulsiveness, and incompetence. This control that was exercised on women by men was not due to actually wanting to control the woman, and rather was a means of controlling her womb, a feature that caused men to be suspicious of their partners.

Women were commonly seen as the life givers in society, as they literally gave life to children out of their wombs. There is nothing more special than the relationship between mother and child as you will always have a special relationship with the person that gave you life itself. The relationship with fathers however, was a different story. It is impossible to have the same relationship with your father as with your mother, as in archaic societies there was no way to verify relation to child on the part of the father. It is due to this suspicion and jealousy that men somehow felt the need to paint women as clueless and inferior in creation stories as a means to control women and their wombs. As seen in the creation story of Christianity, Adam and Eve were living in a perfect garden free from harm and danger, until Eve got too “curious” and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Women are quite literally painted as the reason why humans do not live in a utopia and are subject to suffering and pain. This exact same phenomenon can be seen in the Greek story of creation where Pandora is depicted as releasing pain and suffering and negativity into the world due to her “curiosity”. These creation stories paint women as irrational and controllers of emotion to give men a justification for their treatment of women. After all, how could you know that child was yours? This justification however was pushed onto women to cover up the faults of man. Men saw themselves as promiscuous and unjustly forced women to take the blame and resigned them to households and caretakers to satiate the fears of men.

These views have prevailed in society to this day and led to the modern feminist movement. When this movement began to gain traction, the same rhetoric was spewed about emotion and irrationality, and women rightfully fought back against these views, gaining many rights and continuing the fight for true equality. While the modern feminist movement has made many strides, rights for women are still a hotly debated topic in modern society. The removal of Roe v Wade and the right to abortions being guaranteed shows that Women are still continuing the fight for true equality in society