a little thought to challenge a very big traditional narrative: women push babies out of their vaginas in a very painful, bloody process, that is prepared for by periods, another very painful and often underratingly debilitating process, every single month (that by the way, is not honored nor respected half as much as it should be by our society); men flinch and cry whenever they get a small kick to the balls. So let me ask: who is really the toughest? Women often raise the children, moulding and shaping their minds, educating them, both physically and metaphorically giving birth to our generation, our society, our culture. So let me ask: Who is really the most influential? Women feed their babies breast milk so that they can survive. So let me ask: Who is the real provider? Women house a baby in their womb usually for nine full months, ensuring at every step of the way that the fetus is safe enough to arrive into the world. A powerful maternal instinct often inspires the mother to ensure the safety of her child after it arrives into the world as well. So let me ask: Who is the real protector? A woman can do everything that a man can, and one thing that a man can't: bring a life into this world. So finally, let me ask: who really has the power?
Modern language often degrades and eliminates bodily autonomy from women in our discussion of sex. In language, the man is always the active component of the sexual act, with the man being "inside" the woman, and not the woman being "outside" the man. Women are almost always the ones "being fucked" and not the ones "fucking". (As a more specific example, one sex position is most often referred to as being the one "from behind" or "backshots". This is only the reality from the perspective of the man, who is "active", when this is not even the reality of the position. In a matriarchal world, we may even call this "from the front"). Books like the Kama Sutra show us that for every sex position in which a man is most in charge as the dominant "penetrator", there is one in which a woman is the one mounting, moving, squeezing. And yet, in modern Western culture, a subject and object are created through words, and women are almost always the object.
On top of that, the "heroic" phallic imagery that is presented to us in media, from the sword to the knife and the gun, constantly empowers men and is used to present a narrative in which women are always victimized, exploited, and dominated. But what about the ocean and the tides? What about the garrotes, the nooses, hole in the ground in which people are buried, shut away from life forever? What about the venus flytraps, the anglerfish mouths with razor teeth, the whirlpools? What about the void? The ultimate place where everything and nothing is found, where pleasure and pain reach their peak and bubble over into eternal nothingness, where identity is gone and nothing matters? Where everything is created and destroyed? Why do we not talk about this alluring, powerful, dominating "yonic" (resembling the vagina; opposite of phallic) imagery?
So, if I could leave you with one last thought: is the biological nature of a woman inherently not tough, not strong, not influential, not protective, not active, not dominant, not powerful...or is that a reality that is only created through our language? Through our symbols, through our narratives?
