When I heard about the extraordinary exhibit of 250 artifacts from prepatriarchal “Old Europe” (c. 6500-3500 BCE) that will be shown at 15 East 84th St, NYC—the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW)—until April 25, I wanted people to know about it. For those of us who are familiar with Old Europe and its monumental implications for women, it becomes a matter of: when can I get to NY? But for anyone who doesn’t—and that’s probably most of us—why should she bother to fit it into her busy schedule?

Rest assured that I wouldn’t be making a big deal about this exhibit if it were just about recovering more pieces from the past that enrich the Old Story—which is the direction in which the NY Times and the archaeological establishment would point us. It’s much more than that. It’s about undoing the erasure of women, gender-balanced social worlds, the sacred conceived and imaged as female, and of scholars who dare to see and tell Another Story. It’s about countering the erasure of those whose research threatens the monopoly of the patriarchal story and its alleged innateness and universality. It’s about forestalling the co-optation of the most powerful paradigm-breaking case yet unearthed.

As Mary Daly used to say, by distorting and disappearing our past, they have ravaged and purloined our present and our future. Disappearing acts have gone on for millennia, and they are going on right now, right in front of us. They can be blatant and concrete, as in the absence of women on our currency, our stamps, and the paucity of female statuary in our public life—a situation Lynette Long has recently taken on. They can be as elemental and profound as changing cosmological deities and their stories from female to male—a transition that the late Paula Gunn Allen tracked in numerous Native American traditions, and observed is still taking place. Disappearing acts can be far more devious, complex, and multi-layered as is the case with bringing these Old European artifacts forward.

The well-presented, beautifully-lit exhibit of artifacts on loan here from museums in Bulgaria, Romania, and Moldava gives visibility to the physical residues of Old European cultures. It is not to be missed. At the same time, the cultural meanings and political significance of those artifacts are being distorted and disappeared by those who have framed and interpreted the exhibition in its catalogue, wall panels, and lectures. These same biases are reflected in the NYT article that alerted many people about the exhibition, thereby beginning to shape the lens through which they see it.

Reading that article or the wall panels at the exhibit, you would never know that the Lithuanian-born archaeologist Marija Gimbutas was the one who had discovered and named Old Europe, excavated many of its artifacts, and brought forward many more that had been languishing in the back rooms of Eastern European museums (she could read about 20 languages). You would never know that it was she who recognized that these artifacts belonged to distinct-yet-related cultures in southeastern Europe—thus giving rise to the umbrella term Old Europe. You would think that the current crop of (predominantly male) archaeologists came up with this idea all by themselves.

Reading the NYT article or the wall panels at the exhibit, you would never know that her recognition of their distinctive commonalities arose via their marked contrast with the weapons-focused artifacts of the Indo-Europeanized cultures that replaced them and in which she was a world-class authority. You would not have a clue as to why this Old European civilization was “lost.” You would think that it had been “rescued from obscurity” by the male archaeologists who put together the exhibition rather than by Marija. You would never realize how these unnamed archaeologists are advancing their own careers by appropriating parts of her work that they can safely reframe and slip into the Old Story.

You would never know that Old Europe points to Another Story behind the patriarchy. Instead, they slide it into their one and only Story—the Androcentric Story, in which all societies and cultures are assumed/projected to have been formed by men, about men, for men, and organized around hierarchy and domination. Take one example.

As you enter the gallery that displays some of the gold artifacts found in a cemetery at Varna (a mid-fifth millennial trading center on the western edge of the Black Sea), the very first wall panel slips in the phrase “Old European chieftains” to identify those buried with the biggest stashes of gold ornaments. The curatorial archaeologists who framed the exhibit are not at all shy about assuming that only chieftains could warrant such gifts in the afterlife. Such boldness contrasts sharply with how agnostic the wall panels are on many subjects, especially with regard to how this civilization came to be “lost.”

It is instructive to note what they dance around (the role of external groups, especially the “steppe elements” putatively equated with the Indo-Europeans, in disappearing Old Europe) and what they conveniently treat as fact: male centrality and hierarchy in Old Europe—despite all the evidence against the existence of chieftains, hierarchy, and domination, and favoring matrilocality, matrilinearity, and gender balance. Such evidence is trumped by unstated androcentric assumptions: gold jewelry found with men = prestige items = hierarchy = domination = male authority. When women are buried with gold jewelry (as some were) or ceremonial ornaments, the assumption is that they were trying to look attractive to men, or that they were a big man’s wife—not that they were honored as clan mothers, wise elders, or priestesses.

Yet it is the latter interpretation that fits with the traditional burial patterns of Old Europe prior to the acceleration of trade, the appearance of the Varna cemetery, the infiltration of “steppe elements” into the Danube Valley, and the appearance of defensive measures such as fortifications—all around 4400 BCE. Old European burials were communal, and grave goods symbolic of the person’s gifts and skills in the life just passed. Elder women were the most honored and clearly central to the symbolic and spiritual life of the community. By contrast, Indo-European burials were for individual men. Grave goods were his possessions for the afterlife; they sometimes included women, servants, and/or horses. The Varna cemetery appears at that transitional moment, and does not seem to fit either pattern.

Despite its not being representative of Old Europe, the curators not only use gold artifacts to map hierarchical assumptions onto Varna, but also project them back onto 2000 years of Old European development and fluorescence. They thereby conflate the social structure that they impute to Varna with the social structure of Old Europe of the preceding two millennia. By setting the parameters of Old Europe between 5000 and 3500 BCE and naming the exhibit by this period, the curators have conveniently blurred all that, mixing up traditional Old European patterns with those affected by the intrusion of expansionary elements whose values and social structures were their antithesis. The consequence (and the purpose?) of this conflation is to perpetuate the lie that all societies of any complexity are organized around male hierarchy and that its seeds are present in all societies.

To appreciate the enormity of what’s at stake here, I invite you to read Joan Marler’s summary of Gimbutas’ work discovering and reconstructing Old Europe (OE), and another about her interpretation of its demise and the prehistoric transition to patriarchy in Europe. Marler is executive director of the Institute of Archaeomythology, dedicated to developing interdisciplinary approaches to the study of prehistoric and present cultures.

The disappearing acts perpetrated through the OE exhibit are hardly unique. Another example is the archaeological team at a key Neolithic site in Asia Minor (Çatalhöyük). Marguerite Rigoglioso exposes the strategies and tactics through which they deny evidence of, and even the possibility of, prehistoric female deities and female authority, and try to marginalize and discredit Gimbutas and others who have the courage to name what they see rather than project a patriarchal pattern onto every prehistoric society.

Marler’s and Rigoglioso’s work helps to bring home an appreciation of the some of the layers and complexity of the struggle to reverse millennia of female invisibility and the intense political struggles over the all-important issues of patriarchal origins and its finite existence rather than its alleged innate nature. Male entitlement, sole male authority, and male control over women are not god-given or “how things are,” but integral to an historically finite, socially constructed type of socio-political system that’s been around for only a few thousand years.

Logistics: The ISAW museum is closed on Monday, open 11-6 Tuesday-Sunday and until 8 on Friday. It is housed in a lovely, six-story townhouse just off Fifth Avenue. It is handicapped accessible, with an elevator just to your left as you come in that takes you up the ten steps or so to the first floor where the two galleries are. Another elevator goes to all floors, including the basement where restrooms are located. If you drive into the City, street parking is possible even during the day, but you do have to slug the meter every hour. A quarter gives you ten minutes, so bring a roll of quarters.

Admission to the museum is free. On the first floor, there is an unattended coatroom, and three guards on duty. Cameras are not allowed. There is a guest book, and you can also get a form from the office to give feedback. Catalogues are kept in that office. The 4-pound, $50 “catalogue” is a beautifully designed, hardcover book produced in Italy, full of gorgeous photographs, letters from museum directors who loaned the artifacts, and ten articles by archaeologists. It is an excellent record of a once-in-a-lifetime exhibit, the mentality of the archaeological establishment, as well as of how the process of erasure works.

They do not allow chairs in the two galleries, but when you need to sit, there is a bench in the foyer that overlooks two spectacular pieces and has a map mural at which to gaze (which is in the catalogue as well). I was there around 5 PM prior to a lecture, and then again mid-morning into early afternoon. I saw a small but steady stream of quietly engrossed visitors—predominantly women, but many men as well.

The following is the opinion of the author, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The New Agenda.

When American feminists have broken their silence about the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, their reactions have tended to emphasize the commonalities in male violence against women across cultures and caution that it not distract our focus from this bigger picture. But in dismissing the importance of making distinctions among the cultural contexts in which such violence take place, are they playing into the hands of the politically correct crowd who don’t want us to talk about this subject at all?

What are the challenges for feminists as we try to navigate not only honor killings (as this beheading appears to be) taking place on American soil, but also the complex issues to which they open? Do they not point in two directions at once—the commonalities in male violence against women and their socio-cultural specificity? I suggest it is both/and, not either/or.

Assuredly, male degradation of and violence toward women is of pandemic proportions, and we must raise awareness and outrage in order to make unacceptable all forms of male violence against women (VAW). The media routinely erase that reality by locating the problem in the personal failings and pathology of individual men. But when at least one in three women in this country can expect to be sexually and/or physically assaulted during their lifetimes, some on a repeated or ongoing basis (as is often the case with the sexual abuse of girlchildren and the battery of women), it should be obvious that such behavior is neither exceptional nor deviant. If we are to change this behavior, we must first recognize that male violence against women is built into the structure of our asymmetrical sex/gender system even when it is not acted on.

(For the record, its structural nature in no way diminishes the accountability of men for their abusive and violent behavior toward women. It merely identifies the primary level at which the problem must be addressed.)

Yes, there are common denominators driving all male violence toward women. Male entitlement to appropriate, use, degrade, and discard women is part of that gendered structure, as is women’s de facto status as object, property, possession. Male entitlement is fed by a pornified misogyny which has innumerable channels of distribution, especially in our multi-media age.

Despite commonalities among all forms of male violence against women, we ought not simply disappear honor killings into the general VAW category by dismissing the importance of making distinctions that derive from their cultural or religious context. Why not?

Context Matters. When we say that male violence is all the same, we bypass the fact that it is informed by, and expressed through, specific cultural, societal, and religious contexts. Understanding behavior in its cultural context is one of the principles drilled into social scientists and ethnographers—with good reason. As Violet Socks writes in her February 19 TNA post, “We can’t stop honor killings unless we know why they happen—and I mean exactly why they happen. What are the social and religious codes at work there?” We cannot change what we do not understand, and we cannot understand something that we don’t discuss openly and honestly.

In her comments at TNA to Amy Siskind’s February 21 Daily Beast post, attorney Elizabeth Kates suggests one aspect of how this plays out. She has observed that the common thread among Western batterers is their “focus on themselves.” An individual sense of grievance and victimization is used to justify his behavior to himself while maintaining a belief in his own personal goodness. The honor killer, by contrast, does not feel he has to justify his behavior. He can perceive himself as a “neutral actor” doing something that in his social world is seen as “objectively necessary.” We need to understand such differences in order to address each of them effectively.

I would add that what Kates is pointing to in both instances is not reducible to psychological causation. She is pointing to sociological phenomena that manifest themselves through the structuring of men’s psyches and behaviors in their respective cultures. “Social structure” is not visible as such, but it is real, and it is powerful.

Drawing the Line. Second, If we lump honor killings in with all VAW, we beg the question of the exportation of Sharia Law to non-Muslim countries. (Most, not all, honor killings in the U.S. are committed by Muslims.) Not only are honor killings migrating to many parts of the world, but so also are demands for a dual legal system that accepts and glorifies rather than punishes the perpetrators. As we observe this process in Europe, we can be sure that these demands for a double standard in our laws are coming to a neighborhood near you.

This is a critical question for Americans, for women, for feminists—a question few of us ever dreamed we would be thinking about a decade or so ago during which only one American feminist voice, Phyllis Chesler, stands out for calling our attention to Islamic gender apartheid and its migration.

Sharia Law makes no apologies for absolute male entitlement to subjugate women and to punish them for infractions or alleged infractions of the shame-honor system—the social structure governing gender relations and sexual relations in Islamic and some other cultures. We need to gain clarity in our own minds and be able to articulate where the line must be drawn when religious fundamentalists, Islamic or otherwise, claim the right to practice behaviors that are antithetical to the premises on which we operate (at least in theory and in aspiration) and lead to harm against others—specifically against women.

• We need to draw a line when respect or tolerance for other cultures and religions turns into accepting practices which harm women.

• We cannot accept a dual legal system or cultural practices that subordinate or erase the rights of women to self-determination and bodily integrity.

The rubber meets the road here, folks.

Breaking the MCR Taboo. So what stops us from having absolute clarity that we will not accept a double standard or dual system of laws, and that we must have free and open discussion about Islamic shame-honor systems and their consequences? The politically correct orthodoxies of multicultural relativism (MCR) that have infused the consciousness of progressives—including most progressive/Leftist feminists.

Multiculturalism was intended as an antidote to racism and imperialism. Its relativism accepts all cultures as equal—especially if they have ever been colonized, and its people are people of color. Sounds good on first hearing. But here’s the catch. Subscribers to MCR enforce their orthodoxy by attacking as “racist” anyone who criticizes men of color or their male-dominated cultures.

MCR has two fatal flaws. It eschews standards for truth and ethical judgment—something we see reflected every day in the mainstream media, most of whom have abdicated the search for truth and holding public figures accountable to those standards. Edward R. Murrow would roll over in his grave at this abdication, and by the pretensions of one its most flagrant violators to co-opt his sign-off line.

The second fatal flaw is that it blocks women and their male allies from challenging the women-harming practices of non-Western, patriarchal cultures, including the shame-honor system that organizes gender relations in Islamic and some other societies. Toeing the MCR line not only means that race and ethnicity always trump gender, but also stifles feminists’ speaking out vigorously and unequivocally on behalf of women.

The new feminism must not unwittingly align with the politically correct thinking fostered and enforced by the Left, including Leftist feminists. Sweeping honor killings into generalized VAW falls right into that trap.

To stay out of the trap, we cannot be intimidated and silenced by the fear of being called “racist” or “anti-Islamic.” Being pro-women is not anti-anything-else. We must break multicultural relativism’s silencing taboo or it will break us.

The New Feminism—a Third Way. There is a way out of the self-defeating relativism that leaves women behind and subjugated. The new feminism must stand on the higher moral ground of universal human rights—formulated so as to include abuses specific to women, both in war and in peace. With firm ground under our feet, we can see the limits of relativism, and insist that women’s right to full humanity override all claims that legitimate men’s entitlement to subjugate women. Two cardinal principles would be that:

• Women’s rights to self-determination and bodily integrity are universal human rights.

• Our rights to self-determination and bodily integrity must always trump cultural and religious practices that harm women. Our rights cannot be subordinated to any brand of female subjugation.

Standing by this position reflects the new feminism’s being a creature of neither the Left nor the Right. The old feminism was demonized, caricatured, and ridiculed by the far Right, while establishment feminists allowed themselves to be incorporated into the Democratic Party. Women’s interests have not been well served by the male-centered priorities of either the Left or the Right. The new feminism must reinvent itself from its own roots, its own priorities, and its own perspectives, creating a Third Way.

© 2009 by Artemis March, PhD

I don’t think Hillary has ever seen herself as a movement leader. Not an MLK but more like LBJ, the insider who can get the nuts and bolts in place so that the outsiders’ dreams may become a reality. She has relied on her mastery of interdependent issues and coalition-building skills to gain respect—never trusting charisma or that she even had it. At the convention, she tried to get people to focus on the policies, not on her. It took Marcia Pappas to speak a truth I think Hillary never quite dared believe for herself: “I was in it for you, Hillary. It was about you.”

Besides, no one has ever been elected as an independent, not even Teddy Roosevelt who’d already done well in the top job. Like it or not, a woman candidate needs the backing and the infrastruc¬ture of one of those wings of the corporate party. If Hillary had ever entertained the notion that this grass-roots movement was going to carry her—well, more than a few peeled off and some say never again. Very precarious being Hillary. Very precarious being a woman in her position.

When die-hard supporters write about feeling betrayed by Hillary’s campaigning too hard for him, I think, oh, no, here we go again. The endless meetings we endured during the early 70s to deal with the “horizontal hostility” that we didn’t really understand or know how to handle—and still don’t. It’s so huge and so deeply ingrained. As women, we direct our aggression toward the safer target: other women. Even women who were abused often blame the mother who didn’t (or couldn’t) protect her, more than the father, stepfather, or boyfriend. That women disidentify with the caste of women, are divided from each other, and direct our anger toward one other is the make-or-break territory for feminism—and arguably the biggest barrier to electing a woman president.

Yet none of these pragmatics captures my global response to these latest attacks on Hillary. The Right’s hatred and projections are predictable. The male-identified faux-feminists and the misogynist males of the Left who sank Hillary have shown their true colors this season. But when some of the faithful lose faith, it dredges up an ache in my soul. All that we have endured for five millennia merges with the spectre of this new movement (to which Hillary’s candidacy has given birth) crashing once again on the rocks of women’s internalized oppression. Our Warrior Queen was checkmated. Will her child slip away as well?

Yes, I know how awful it was for each of us to see her campaigning so long and hard for him (as she always said she would), but how much more dreadful for her to go through this!!  Knowing about the caucus fraud, knowing that the Party to which she was ever faithful never had her back, experiencing betrayal after betrayal from those whose careers she and Bill had made or had propped up—knowing all this and much more, she soldiered on with grace the likes of which I have rarely seen.

Her June speeches (and even her convention speech) gloriously buoyed us up while masterfully never conceding or endorsing him. I thought at the time, thank you, thank you for giving us this. You knew we couldn’t stand that right now. You kept faith with us. I wrote a piece that it was not Hillary’s job to unite the Party or win it for the loser, but I knew that if he lost, she would be toast. Scapegoating women is how men evade responsibility and justify their power.

How did she stomach what she felt she had to do—for her future, for our future, and in all probability, because of all kinds of threats? I think her choices were made for what she sees as the greater good of this country in these perilous times as well as for her own political viability. Do we really want to tear that down? Men (except those in ideological movements) don’t do that to each other. Shall we, who don’t have all the pieces, second-guess her?

Perhaps most galling of all, her post-primary choices mean that, although her campaign did lodge complaints about caucus fraud, she is not able to speak the truth about the primaries publicly. Nor, as I have written elsewhere, can she tackle the misogyny on her own because she needs a Greek Chorus to amplify, interpret, and spin with, for, and about her. Holding that silence is way beyond what most, and probably all, of us truth-tellers could handle.

Hillary doesn’t have the luxury that we do to be the principled outsiders naming the truth about the underside of her opponent’s campaign—the “real campaign.” It is vital that we all be the voice that she cannot speak. We must build a truth-based narrative about her, and replace the false dominant narrative about what happened during this campaign. A tall order, but essential to her future, the future of other women candidates, and our own.

Let us not turn our pain, disappointment, anger, despair, and heartache into attacking this extraordinary woman for the choices she made because they don’t fit our outsiders’ fantasy. Let us not participate in the scapegoating of female candidates—the behavior we have taken such exception to when done by others. Let us not do what women under patriarchy have done for their survival and crumbs for centuries—turn their anger horizontally rather than vertically—which keeps us divided and subordinated.

Let us train our fire where it belongs: the misogynist behavior of her abusive opponent, her Party, and the media, and the androcentric socio-political system which places women in impossible situations and pits them against each other. Patriarchy thrives on divisions it foments among women. Let us not fall prey to that. Let us catch ourselves when we fall into it, and do the hard work to stop it so that we don’t self-destruct as the Second and Third Waves did.

© 2008 by Artemis March, PhD

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elsewhere reference:

“Sarah Palin: A Rorschach for Feminsts” on The New Agenda

“Sarah Palin: A Rorschach for Feminsts” on No Quarter

I began asking myself, what is going on with feminists as they rationalize lining up with their misogynist Party/candidate while engaging with this new rorschach named Sarah Palin? How is it that feminists—the Americans most caricatured, distorted, misunderstood, and demonized by the Right and by the Left—are themselves caricaturing, misrepresenting, and demonizing a woman whose policies and beliefs offend them? Is it too much to ask that they at least get their facts straight, and not push rumors and unexamined claims as if they were gospel? How is it that Hillary supporters who have aligned with the DNC’s selectee are exhibiting some of the behaviors they formerly excoriated in Obama devotees (e.g., self-righteous judgmentalism, and the rejection, denial, or trivializing of information unfavorable to their guy)? Is it just too uncomfortable for them to bear the cognitive dissonance entailed by their second choice?

As to those pesky facts: Palin favors contraception. Despite Ms. Gandy’s claim that NOW would not endorse Palin because of her anti-abortion position, as governor and mayor, she never attempted to promote legislation that would weaken or alter abortion laws. Palin tripled (not cut) special needs funding, did not try to ban library books, and has not pushed creationism in schools, only opined that students be allowed to discuss it along with evolutionary theory. Contrary to Charlie Gibson’s inquisition and ABC’s egregious, libelous cropping and editing of not only his interview with Palin but also of the video clip he referenced, she does not see the Iraq war as a mission from God. She asked Alaskans to pray that what our troops, our leaders, and our country are doing there is part of God’s plan. Or, as Lincoln said, to pray that we are on God’s side. Many of our past presidents have expressed similar sentiments, and the world didn’t end.

Exactly how does trashing Sarah Palin—a savvy, self-made woman with whom so many non-elite Americans can identify—advance the feminist agenda? And how far has that agenda advanced these last 40 years? Sexism is still overwhelmingly invisible, misogyny (literally, hatred of women) does not constitute a hate crime, feminists are ridiculed rather than honored, and gender asymmetry is not even on the table. This appalling state of affairs testifies to the depth and comprehensiveness of patriarchy as well as to the limitations of extant feminist strategies.

In her September 19 and 24 letter to NOW PAC members, Ms. Gandy tells us that, “Palin dismisses talk of sexism as whining and says women just need to ‘work harder’ and ‘prove yourself.’” Certainly Ms Gandy knows as well as I do that women who break barriers often feel they have to ignore the sexism and garbage that is heaped on them. They cannot even name what is going on. Why not? If they do, they are called whiners and ridiculed for “playing the victim.”

Worse yet, this double bind is perpetrated not only by the usual suspects, but also by many leftist feminists and self-proclaimed “postfeminists” who denigrate real feminists who are trying to change the many ways women are brutalized by patriarchy. The intention and the result of this leftist/postfeminist ideology is to erase the harsh realities of sexism and misogyny, and deny the validity of women’s experience of them—and that is what I call anti-feminist as well as anti-woman.

The truth is this: A woman can’t deal with sexism solo. She has to have a Greek Chorus to amplify, interpret, and spin with, for, and about her. And, after 40 years, there is no Greek Chorus for women at the national level. Nada. Zip.

• There is no feminist voice in the Old Media, let alone a feminist perspective informing all the media. The media are totally androcentric in their framing of all issues. Women who are allowed face time either see the world as their male bosses do, or tread very carefully with their small departures.

• The DNC never had Hillary’s back, never became her Greek Chorus. They not only betrayed their best candidate in 75 years, but they also betrayed the many constituencies for whom she has a long record of fighting.

And here comes Ms. Gandy adding another layer: dumping on Palin for taking the position that female public figures are routinely forced into because establishment feminism doesn’t have her back, and have not been able to make it possible for her to do otherwise.

After 40 years, feminist organizations and spokeswomen have not been able to create a cultural context that would make it impermissible to attack women and perpetrate the kind of vicious misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton and now at Sarah Palin. It would be a tall order given that patriarchy has been organizing our social world and our culture for 5,000-6,000 years. The only good news here is that the behavior of the DNC has made it transparent to many of us that we’ll never get there by being an appendage of the DNC and held hostage to Roe.

If establishment feminists had any real clout with the DNC, Hillary would be taking the oath of office on January 20. Rather than attacking women candidates who don’t fit their precious self-image, leftist so-called feminists and those wondrous postfeminists should get over themselves. If they had done that a year ago, Hillary would be on her way to the White House, and we wouldn’t be in this mess of opting between which set of candidates scares us less.

Sarah Palin is a rorschach for the Left and for feminists. She has exposed the boundaries and implicit rules for inclusion in their clubs, thereby sparking a much needed dialogue about what feminism is and can be. She has thrown into relief the limitations of establishment feminist strategies, and blown open the door to alternative strategies. Sarah Palin arrived on the national scene at the moment when many Hillary supporters were recognizing an old political truth: If you can’t walk away from the table, you have no bargaining power. If you have no alternatives, you will get nothing but crumbs.

© 2008 by Artemis March.