Seeing Red

Okay, it's pretty low hanging fruit but I'll pick this cherry anyway. Only a year ago Quadrant published an ill-conceived rant regarding where our taxes should be going, by current One Nation candidate for the Pilbara, David Archibald. I do wonder about the Quadrant editor sometimes. But not today. This is gold.

I heard it on the radio when I awoke at 2am and I knew my innocent sleep was over.
Archibald on a suggestion to the then PM Tony Abbott on how to save funds:

"The first that springs to mind is single motherhood.  These are women too lazy to attract and hold a mate, undoing the work of possibly three million years of evolutionary pressure. This will result in a rapid rise in the portion of the population that is lazy and ugly. We know what causes pregnancy these days, so everyone who gets pregnant outside of marriage is a volunteer.  This is an easy one for defunding."

Before I fell asleep I'd been reading about Lilith, Adam's first wife in Hebrew tradition, and Eve, and how they were connected. Of course Lilith objected to being fucked in the missionary position and for her crimes of insisting on equality (which she was accorded in Genesis 1) she was kinda morphed into a baby-eating succubus by whomever had a say in these things. Eve came along, created from the body of man and therefore subservient to him, albeit a sinner of the first order.

And this quote by Demosthenes from the fourth century BC:

We have mistresses for our enjoyment,

concubines to serve our person, 

and wives for the bearing of legitimate offspring.

Now someone should have taught all those single mothers this fact in sex ed classes at school. Preferably before they presented their 'lazy, ugly' and illegitimate spawn to an unsuspecting public. What I like about the Demosthenes quote is the possessive power in the language. 'We have', not 'Women are', or even 'they are'.

But there is also the splitting of roles and therefore womanhood itself that I find interesting. Mistresses are not wives. Wives are not for enjoyment but baby making, king making even. Legitimate heirs. Concubines serve. Know your place, woman. You cannot be all of these things and more.

David Archibald manages the whole Madonna Whore thing in his ludicrous statement. I don't think I'm being over sensitive when I hear underneath his words the accusation of immorality, predictably fired at the female party in the deal. Original sin again. Although he accords slightly less respectful language than an orator who lived six thousand years ago, he still manages to place women into boxes, or 'split' them up. Single mother. Married mother. This also happens a lot in newspaper articles about sole parents, descending to 'single mother' within the first paragraph. Good woman. Bad woman.

Similar to Eve being lesser than Adam due to the rib thing, there is an argument that by 'splitting' women this way, the female becomes less than whole and therefore never wholly equal to the male. In reality woman can actually be all of these things because we are actually pretty fucking awesome. A bit too awesome perhaps. Eva Figes wrote: '... because man has refused to abandon an inch of ground more than is necessary, having so much to lose, he has been afraid of the dominant power he has subdued, and recognised woman as profoundly dangerous.'

That be Lilith calling, I reckon.