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... was the cunt. And by cunt I mean the entire female
reproductive system since it is unhelpful to wield the anatomist’s knife and
divide that apparatus into its constituent parts. When looking at origins, both
personal and communal, that is the one known fact. We were all conceived in the womb of a woman,
grew and were nurtured there. In the
cunt we developed from an undifferentiated group of cells into the living
breathing creatures that we are. From
the cunt, normally through the muscular contractions of the mother but often,
especially nowadays, with the help of a surgeon’s knife, we were born. Regardless of the exact details of our
delivery, in the cunt we were made. I
cannot stress this enough. However deep
we dig into embryology, however much we know of the cultural traditions
surrounding conception, gestation and childbirth, all that knowledge is created
and stored in brains that were formed within our mother’s cunt. It is the source of our entire being. Contrary to the Gospel of John, it is by, and
in, the cunt that all things are made.
And, in English, cunt is the word which, like God to the
Jews, must not be spoken. It is
taboo. Vilified it may be, and cunt is
still more acceptable as a grave insult than it is as an anatomical term, but
its taboo nature provides strong evidence of sacred mystery. For men, and I am one, the mystery is
deepened. We came from a cunt but we do
not possess one. We are outsiders to
the sacred mystery. We look on but
cannot participate in the strange and cyclical nature of the lives of
women. Like our genitals our experience
is teleological – we think in a straight line – from beginning to end. From Alpha to Omega. Genesis to Apocalypse. It is also
fundamentally dualistic. Women are, and
always will be, the other that we are not.
And never can be. We can, should
we feel the need, through surgery and hormones alter the outside of our bodies
to correspond to the gender we feel ourselves to be but even then cannot
replicate within ourselves the full experience of being a biological woman.
Men are estranged.
They are split off from their source.
Deep down, we are aware of this and resent it deeply. It is impossible to determine just when and
where human beings became aware of the male role in reproduction but we know
there are still cultures surviving where this role was unknown until very
recently. In their book, Sex at Dawn Christopher Ryan and Cacilda
Jethá [1]
cite anthropological studies of many societies in which it is believed that the
input from multiple men is required. Even
here in the scientific West, the exact roles of egg and sperm were unknown
until very recently and we still have much to learn. Of which I will be writing later. And even the scientific facts as we now
understand them have no real impact on our emotional responses. We see women’s bellies swell; we can maybe
put our hand on them and feel the kicking.
We know that inside that dark and
wet space a baby is developing. Our real
part in the process, however, was brief and long ago. However much we may love
our children they have ever been apart from us and never a part of us. Barring the occasional hospital mishap, the
maternity of a child is certain. Prior to
genetic testing, the paternity has always been a matter of doubt. Hence laws
and customs have arisen in many, but not all, cultures which aim to eliminate
the possibility of alien seed. An aim
that no society, however, severe the consequences may be to the women who
“stray”, has ever achieved. Or can ever
achieve. It is an impossible goal. And, deep down, we know it to be.
Nevertheless, there is much importance in our culture on
“bloodlines”. Many books have been
written, for example, concerning the possible bloodline from Jesus – whose own
ancestral bloodline forms a major part of this book. The most popular, albeit by far the least
valuable, of these being, of course, the execrable Da Vinci Code. Such
bloodlines, however, are absurd since they are only concerned with the father
line. It would only take one woman in
this line to have “played away” for the entire bloodline to come to an abrupt
end. The chances of such an adulterous
liaison having occurred sometime in a long line of mothers are beyond my power
to calculate but they seem very large.
Matrilineal bloodlines, however, make perfect sense.
Much of our culture, therefore, is based on an absurdity.
From the monarch to the serf patrilineal descent forms the basis of inheritance
law. Many companies style themselves to
be So-and-so and Sons, more in pious hope than certainty. All this is not to denigrate and condemn
women, as so many have and still do; it is simply a recognition of reality. It
is the knowledge of that reality that has led men to segregate and control
women. To list all the ways this has
been would be beyond the scope of this book although there will be many
examples herein. There is no blame
attached to any particular man, although the injustice and cruelties are
egregious and continuing. Blame is not
the point. The problem is structural and
so must the solution be. Furthermore,
the structure was designed and built by men – albeit with the collusion of
women. We, in the West, are currently in the process of tinkering
with the structure and making it more “woman-friendly” but this does not address the fundamental
issue. We may be adding more toilets and
crèches so that women can occupy a more equal place in the workforce but that
does not mean equality since in order to succeed in that workplace women must
adopt the rules that men have imposed to suit their own needs.
In order to discern the nature of the structure it is
necessary to begin at the beginning. We
have not evolved from apes. No, we ARE
apes. No cosmic hand fashioned us from
clay and set us up in dominion. Whatever
dominion we may have has been asserted by force. We have killed or displaced other species in
order to achieve the dominant position we now hold. The history of humanity is a history written
in blood. It is also, however, a history
written in music, dance, painting and poetry.
It is a history written in the search to understand the patterns of the
universe we inhabit. It is a story,
above all, written in love and co-operation. For without the last two qualities we would
never have spread from our African homeland.
We do not, however, generally erect statues to commemorate
the achievements of people working collectively and co-operatively. Such statues are built to honour the warrior
– in whatever field. And such statues
are mainly men. There is no statue to
those who conquered fire, first learnt to make pots, cook food, dress skins or
weave cloth. They are forgotten, and yet
human expansion would have been impossible without them. On the other hand, Admiral Nelson, to take
one example, is honoured extravagantly in the centre of London yet his major
contribution to history was killing human beings more efficiently than others
of his time. From the viewpoint of the
imagined Martian, who has contributed more to human welfare?
(this is an excerpt from the book on which I am working)
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