“The belly of women has always been a magic and demoniac mystery. It makes children and loses blood, it gives pleasure and imprisons. This area of women that produces orgasm and from where children come out possesses the fantasmatic power to destroy and to devour, like the corrosively acid vagina imagined by so many men that are afraid of such a feminine power.” [Cyrulnik, 2001]
The distribution of power between men and women is a game of balances – or should I say, of imbalances – that is the result of a long evolution, tiny tip of an iceberg deeply buried in our history, of which only a meager 0.1% has emerged to the light of human conscience.
What we do know about Paleolithic communities does not sustain the idea of a weak and dependent woman, a picture that has more to do with a retro-projection of our patriarchal vision of the past than with any reality. In fact, nothing authorizes us to suppose that the woman of that time was submitted to the man.
Generally considered as “egalitarian,” the economy of most hunter-gatherers’ communities actually was in the hands of women since their work provided about 70% of the food supply and calories of the community. Not only was the nutritional contribution coming from the hunt most irregular, but hunters had often swallowed their take before returning to the camp.
Besides, women, having to care for children, stayed near the camp, whereas men were gone sometimes several days in a row in pursuit of game. Forming the base of the community, women knew how to organize the camp. The primary significance of their economic and social role gave them an authority that grew stronger through time. In the absence of men, the defense of the camp was incumbent on them, and they survived through strategically organizing the protection of their interests.
Such an organization has been found in communities that have kept a matrilineal structure. In these, power – whether economic, legal, political or social – is transmitted down the mother’s line, such as is seen by the Ashanti of Ghana, the Iroquois, the Athabascan, the Haida or the Hopi of North America, the Nayar of India, the Minangkabau of Indonesia, or the Mosuo of China. Other examples have been noted by various explorers, travelers, and ethnologists. Describing the Montagnais and the Naskapi Indians of Canada, Paul Le Jeune, a Jesuit stationed in Quebec in the seventeenth century CE, remarked that the women of those communities possessed a significant power. He was notably offended by the way they voiced their opposition to men, and by the language they used, as coarse as that of men. Taking no account for their economic and social structure, this priest tried to convince the men of these tribes to make their wives more obedient.
For the Iroquois (North America) and for the Madi of Sudan, women played an influential political role in the community: they decided if and when to go to war or when to launch a campaign of reprisals. They could also name or dispose of the chief.
In Australia, Phyllis Kaberry reported to have seen numerous women attacking men with a tomahawk, and even with a boomerang. During a journey in New Guinea, Luigi d’Albertis noted that “In some villages, they [women] exercise much authority and supremacy. In war, they are respected even by the enemy. From what I have observed, I am inclined to believe that a community partly composed of women would never be attacked by another tribe. Women, in short, act like a banner of peace.” [Albertis, 1880]
Finally, in the Trobriand Islands, the generally balanced distribution of power between the sexes led sometimes to excess: “All districts in the Trobriands have the economic custom of female communal labor in the weeding of gardens. Since it is a tedious, monotonous activity, which requires little skill and not much attention, and can be best enlivened by gossip and company, the women work together at each garden in turn, until all the village plots are weeded over. As in all other exclusively feminine occupations, it is bad form for any man to come near them while they are working, or to pay any attention to them save on a matter of business.
Now this communal weeding when practiced by women of the villages of Okayaulo, Bwaga, Kumilabwaga, Louya, Bwadela, or by the villages of Vakuta, gives the weeders a curious privilege. If they perceive a stranger, a man from any village but their own, passing within sight, they have the customary right to attack him, a right which by all accounts they exercise with zeal and energy. The man is the fair game of the women for all that sexual violence, obscene cruelty, filthy pollution, and rough handling can do to him. Thus first they pull off and tear up his pubic leaf, the protection of his modesty and, to a native, the symbol of his manly dignity. Then, by masturbatory practices and exhibitionism, they try to produce an erection in their victim and, when their manoeuvres have brought about the desired result, one of them squats over him and inserts his penis into her vagina. After the first ejaculation he may be treated in the same manner by another woman. Worse things are to follow. Some of the women will defecate and micturate all over his body, paying special attention to his face, which they pollute as thoroughly as they can. ‘A man will vomit, and vomit, and vomit,’ said a sympathetic informant. Sometimes these furies rub their genitals against his nose and mouth, and use his fingers and toes, in fact, any projecting part of his body, for lascivious purposes.” [Malinowski, 1929]
Though in a very peculiar way, this example highlights how economic function and power can be correlated inside a community [30]. [See Appendix Dobrizhoffer, Of men and women]
Outside the social and economic realm, the mystery surrounding their physiological attributes and their inescapability has endowed women with an inherent power: the blood they lose at the time of menses, symbol of death like all lost blood; the life they give, until very recently one of the great mysteries of our history [31].
This last aspect, we have already mentioned, has been an enormous source of frustration for our male ancestors, ignorant of their own procreative function. With the intervention of the spirits, their newly acquired role has somewhat straightened the balance of power that was until then in their disfavor. As for the imbalances deriving from other female physiological attributes, men will handle them in a very peculiar manner.
In a faraway past, and very gradually, women’s estrogen cycle became a menstrual cycle. The estrogen cycle, found among most primates, regularizes and concentrates female sexual receptiveness around ovulation, all sexual activity depending on it. The menstrual cycle, on the other hand, allows females to pair off at all times, regardless of their procreative cycle. Among primates, only the gibbon and the human female are submitted to the menstrual cycle.
Another specificity of woman’s sexuality is that her ovulation is ‘hidden’: she is the only one to possess this characteristic that makes her periods of fertility invisible, contrary to all other mammals whose females signal their receptiveness: heat, coloration and/or inflation of the genital parts. This absence of marker allows repeated sexual contacts, in total independence of the procreative cycle [32].
Women’s increased opportunities to pair off represented a certain advantage, if one considers the high rate of infantile mortality: of an average of six to eight pregnancies that a woman could have during her lifetime [33], only two of her children reached adult age [34]. Besides, a man who had sexual relationships with a woman was less prone to attack her children. With hidden ovulation, men did not have to take into account the state of receptiveness of their partner, but could have sex whenever they wanted, and not whenever she could.
In the ignorance of his procreative role, it was not in man’s best interest to restrict his options by imposing limitations on the field of his sexual activities through establishing an exclusive or monogamous relationship with a woman. On the contrary, the unlimited access offered by women has certainly marked the character of his sexuality, his impulses still being stimulated today by variation.
Freed from the estrogen cycle, sexual relationships between men and women have long been practiced under the sign of multiple polygyny, males pairing off with all available females, the number of their partners establishing their social status [see Appendix Lee]. Regularizing and limiting sexual activity towards a monogamous framework will not be the achievement of women, but that of men when they finally realize the function that nature has accorded to their sex, and will want to establish, to institutionalize fatherhood [see Part Three].
Not knowing what the function of menstruation was [35], most human societies have considered it, and still consider it today, as an extremely negative phenomenon. Men interpret it as a demonstration of women’s impurity, while women, just as ignorant, corroborate this ostracism with their passivity. However, things are not that simple. While men from all corners of the planet reject this entirely natural phenomenon as an impurity, a disgrace, a poison, a perversity, a calamity, the same men have introduced rituals for boys that imitate the very loss of blood they condemn in women. The ritualized bleedings performed on boys carry however no sign of disgrace, but are, on the contrary, regarded as proof of courage that confirms the strength of character of the male individual.
How can one explain a contradiction that is found throughout the millennia all over the world? Rather than an aberration, might one interpret this seeming incongruity as men’s determination to compensate for a lack of “natural” purpose with a “cultural” expression?
Blood has always possessed a symbolic value. Blood is associated with life, suffering and death: when animals or humans lose it, their life dies out. It is the most important, the noblest, and the most mysterious substance in the body. The fact that women can afford to lose it without dying has long been a source of enigma and of jealousy, and will serve to build an exclusively masculine contradiction: on the one hand, men are going to treat women as impure during the periods when they lose their blood; on the other hand, they will impose on their own sex tests related to losing blood that will prove male courage and value.
Numerous societies have forbidden – and still forbid – all activity to women during menses. Taboos referring to this prohibition are innumerable. In New Ireland (New Guinea), one of the names given to menses is samsilik, meaning ‘sick blood’. Still in New Guinea, the young Huli men avoid sexual intercourse before marriage by fear of the damages that menstruating women can inflict on their masculinity. The initiation rituals that all married men receive will protect them from these dangers.
Several tribes of South Australia request that a woman having her period must isolate herself and should scream if a boy or a young man approaches her: if they happen to see her, their hair will turn gray, and they will become impotent. Other tribes like the Diyari think that if a menstruating woman bathes in a river, all fish die and the river goes dry. For the Aranda, a woman having her period must not touch the bulbs of the irriakura, the basic food of this people. A Wakelbura woman who is “unwell” cannot take the same path as that of men. If she contravenes this rule, she can be put to death. She is also obliged to isolate herself, because the man who sees her will die. When her period reaches its end, the woman is painted in red and white, her head is covered with feathers, and she can reintegrate the village.
In fact, many people have assigned magical powers to women because of their capacity to lose their blood. In the Marquesas Islands, men thought that women having their period could curse an object by placing it between their buttocks, or merely by pronouncing its name in front of their sex. For numerous tribes of North America as the Omaha and the Ponca, the menstruating woman must isolate herself in a hut or in a tent specially constructed for this purpose where she will spend four to five days. Ojibwa women had to be isolated and were not allowed to touch anything that could be touched by a man thereafter: the unfortunate man who would lay a hand on these objects could get sick, and even die. In one Canadian tribe, girls who began to menstruate had to spend three to four years in total reclusion: they were considered a danger for whoever would see them, even for those who would walk in their tracks. In another tribe, a menstruating woman who stumbled on arrows made them unusable, and could even provoke the archer's death.
Among the Zulu of South Africa, the girl who feels her period coming must protect herself from the look of men and from the sun [37]. She is locked in a hut for fifteen days. A similar practice is found by the Bushmen (South Africa) who risk being transformed into a talking tree if their eyes fall on a menstruating woman. For the Kikuyu of East Africa (Kenya), if a woman has her period in a hut that has just been built, the hut must be demolished.
Isolation is found by the Kalash of Pakistan as well, who believe in a strict separation between the pure and the impure. During their menstruation, women must live in the bashali, a house that is also used for childbirth and in which men cannot penetrate under any circumstances. When this house has to be repaired, the Kalash ask Muslim workers from outside the community to do the job.
Islam forbids women having their period from touching the Koran, going to the mosque, or participating in the Hajj [38]. A German text of the seventeenth century CE recommends that menstruating women avoid “touching and kissing children, touching dishes in the kitchen, approaching a barrel in the cellar, staying close to the shrubs in the garden, or looking at herself in a beautiful mirror.” [Bonnet, 1988] Even today, women having their periods are accused of making emulsified sauces fail, or of having a bad influence on salting, on wine making, or on the culture of mushrooms. In India, the practice of chaupadi, although banned since 2005, is still widely performed: menstruating girls, considered unclean, are banished from some parts of the house, are not allowed to touch kitchen utensils or to use the same water source. They may not go to school, and have to sleep in huts, in barns, in caves or even in the open, where they often get raped. [39]
The ostracism against menstruating women very often applies to pregnant women, as well as to those having just given birth. For the Guarani (South America), menstruating or expecting women, both dominated by malevolent spirits, are not allowed to participate in the preparation of curare by fear that they will waste the virtues of this poison. Legends warn the Guarani warrior that he must never allow a pregnant or indisposed woman to approach his weapons. Babylonian women who were “unwell,” expecting or had given birth were considered impure and capable of contaminating everything that they touched – food as well as men. By decree, it was forbidden for these women to approach the king.
We find a similar situation in Bali (Indonesia) where pregnant or indisposed women may not take part in ceremonies. They cannot penetrate into the temple ground, not even approach the small private temple that the Balinese have on the patio of their house. During and just after their pregnancy, they may not approach a priest in order not to alter his purity. For the Huron (or Wyandot) Indians of Canada, pregnant women are the cause of numerous misfortunes: in their presence, the one who eats gets sick, while the state of someone already ill worsens. They especially embarrass the hunter since it is sufficient for them simply to look at a hunted animal to ensure that it cannot be captured anymore. On the other hand, their presence is required when extracting an arrow from a warrior's wound. For the Seminole of Florida and for the Inuit (Arctic), the pregnant woman must be isolated a few days before giving birth. She will leave return to her daily activities when her child is born.
Finally, the Old Testament prolongs this tradition of ostracism: “If she gives birth to a girl, she will be impure during two weeks, as in the time of her menstrual indisposition; she will remain sixty-six days to purify herself of her blood.” [Le 12:5]
Experienced as a punishment, a sin, or a shameful state that must be hidden, this anathema has had deep repercussions on women’s psyche: “When thirty-five, she finally understood why and how she menstruated. Until that time, she was persuaded that she had a ‘personal’ illness that could not be mentioned to anyone, not even to her husband.” [Chraïbi, 1972]
Rituals marking the girl's entry into the community of women take on various forms. The most frequent of them is female circumcision that refers, in reality, to a defloration – a ripping of the vaginal membrane – or to a real mutilation of the genitalia of the girl or of the woman. One can compare the ablation of the clitoris (excision) to a partial ablation of the penis, an intervention in no way analogous to masculine circumcision. Besides, the various mutilations applied to women – ablation of the clitoris, ablation or sewing of the lips, etc. – have for goal either to reduce their sexual impulses, or to guarantee the virginity of young girls or the fidelity of married women [40]. This guarantee, imposed and required by men, forms an integral part of the beliefs of the community, and is fully ratified by its women [41]. We are far from the initiation rituals that characterize masculine circumcision.
Other violent practices are part of an identical process, such as the incision of teeth, or of the lobe of the ears and lips that Mursi girls of Ethiopia undergo between their tenth and fifteenth birthdays. They make possible the introduction of disks and trays, characteristic attributes without which women are not recognized nor accepted by the community.
Contrary to rituals found all around the world that mark the accession of boys to manhood, very few rites celebrate the arrival of the girl’s first menstruation. Let us mention the rituals of the Dipo that the Krobo girl (Ghana) must accomplish after her first menstruation: moved to a place where no man can see her, she is instructed in the arts and crafts that all Krobo women must possess. At the end of her initiation, very richly dressed and ornamented, wearing the white tunic that confirms her virginity, she will be the center of attention in a big ceremony during which she will find a spouse, if she is not already promised to someone.
More festive, the Mbuti (Congo) mark the first apparition of a girl’s period with a real celebration during which the girl becomes the center of attention of the whole community. Colin Turnbull relates how the pubescent girl with a few friends moves to a house especially destined for this ceremony. Young unmarried men coming from neighboring villages wait for the girls to leave the house, and start singing and flirting with them.
Notwithstanding these very exceptional examples, the condemnation of everything that characterizes the feminine has been a universal rule, revealing the widespread imprint of ignorance and incomprehension. However, most contradictorily, men have taken over most of these distinctive aspects to empower themselves with a seminal role in the process of coming-of-age, both for boys and for girls.
At the time of his stay in New Ireland (New Guinea) during the last decades of the nineteenth century CE, the missionary Benjamin Danks observed that Siar girls were locked in narrow cages at the age of eight or nine until they reached the age of fifteen when they became marriageable. During this period, “spirits” paid them a visit by taking either a symbolic appearance – snake, moon – or a human shape. Spiritually as well as physically, the young girls were deflowered. In the vision of the Siar, this sexual activity caused the first period to appear, the male semen being converted into menstrual blood. Older women prepared the girls for this ritualized defloration by telling them that they will be taken by the moon before being taken by their husband.
For the Tswana (Botswana), the hymen is pierced with the help of a tuber. The defloration is done by one or several men who represent the spirits, as it is also the case by the Banaro of New Guinea. The Manus of the Admiralty Islands maintain that sexual activity provokes menstruation. They believe that the girl’s first period is due to the breaking up of her hymen, and that her following periods are provoked by men's insemination.
A similar point of view is found among the Warí of Amazonia who think girls cannot menstruate as long as they are virgin. For the Lepcha of India as well, girls mature through sexual activity. The fact that older men have sexual intercourse with eight-year-old girls is not condemned, but rather considered with amusement [43].
The same line of thought is found in numerous aboriginal communities throughout Australia: “We find it reported across the continent that female sexual maturity is attributed to the actions of men, either through intercourse, the performance of rites, or both.” [Merlan, 1986] The Walpiri, the Murngin, the Anbarra, the Tiwi, and many others think that men's sexual activity transforms girls into women, provoking the first menstruation and even the appearance of their breast and pubic hair.
Most initiation rituals marking the coming-of-age of girls lay in the hands of men who have assigned to themselves a crucial but very pleasurable role. In this way, they have become the agents who allow girls to become women, influencing a process that eluded them. Initiation rituals that boys have to follow in order to become men are another expression of this will to counterbalance women’s natural attributes.
We have seen the generalized and extremely negative attitude that men have towards menses. At the same time, in an apparent contradiction to their rejection of feminine blood, men have conceived rituals to mark the entrance of boys into the world of men that are mostly connected with blood.
Even more contradictory, these rites of passage signal the arrival of puberty for boys, whereas few societies judge necessary to mark this phase for girls. Clearly establishing the moment when boys become men, these rituals seem to have been introduced to compensate for the absence of signs that indicate this transition. For girls, on the contrary, this moment is unambiguously marked, the day of their first period signaling their accession to the world of women. As we will see in the following examples, masculine rites of passage have been introduced to compensate for this imbalance, bestowing on boys what nature has not given to them. To make the parallel with girls even more unmistakable, some of these rituals are going to imitate the bloody flow of menses.
Numerous tribes mark the arrival of puberty for boys by performing an incision on their penis, as that was still practiced last century in Australia and in New Guinea. Starting from the scrotum, an incision is made under the penis, sometimes hardly a centimeter long, sometimes on the whole length of the penis. The blood that flows out of the wound is regarded as a masculine menstruation, certain tribes going as far as to apply to their “menstruating” boys the taboos and restrictions they request from girls during their periods. The Washkuk (New Guinea) practice this incision with a sharp stone: the blood that flows out of the penis for the first time – and, more notably, for the last time – transforms the boy into a man, this “impure” blood allowing him to evacuate the feminine world in which he has lived until that day. A similar ritual imitating the first loss of blood by girls is also practiced by the Yurupari of Colombia.
Belonging to an identical register, masculine circumcision is practiced by many people around the world: Maya and Aztec, Tahitian, Diola of Senegal, Bovale and Zulu of South Africa – where boys practice this operation themselves – Gogo and Maasai of Tanzania, in Ghana, in Nigeria, in the Philippines, etc. [44]
However, the rites of passage are not always concentrated on the penis. For the Kikuyu of Kenya, boys become men when they drink the blood that gushes from a cut made in the arm of “nutrient” adult males. For the Colorado of Ecuador, piercing the nasal septum allows them to place the chonta, a piece of wood that signals the boy's new status. For Keraki boys of New Guinea, it is through homosexual sodomy that they become men.