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Who’s Yo Momma?

The Female as represented through a Collective Male Consciousness

At first read, it’s easy to find these creation myths and founding textual

traditions sexist, to the female’s detriment. They suggest that females come

second to men, are best subservient to men, and are frequently the source of

humanity’s troubles in paradise. Even more disturbing, creation of humanity (ie

children) is no longer a feminine act, but rather the act of a greater masculine

divine force. But is that truly a fair understanding? Or is that a cursory glance at a

much more complicated relationship? After all, motherhood is an institution

extremely respected in multiple tales—both Gilgamesh and Achilles seek counsel

and assistance from their venerated mothers Ninsun and Thetis. And the sexual

power of women is a force to be reckoned with at the very least. On second read,

women appear empowered.

This dichotomy in the seeming diminution of women’s contribution and the

veneration of their strengths suggests a collective male consciousness grappling

with how to understand and accept women in relation to themselves. The stories

and the men in them appear to both admire and envy female creation powers

(and therefore sexual powers), and both defer to and attempt to commandeer for
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themselves those powers. Ultimately, however, these myths illustrate that

corruption of the natural creation process isn’t good for anyone and partnerships

prevail instead, implying the necessity of duality and an eventual comprehension

that men and women are equivalent though different.

Immediately readers are exposed to negative images of women. “The

deadly race and population of women” (Theogony, 595) are described as the curse

upon mankind. They bear “brutal brood[s]” (Theogony, 309), throw tantrums

when they don’t get their way (Ishtar’s mad rampage with the Bull of Heaven

(Gilgamesh, 3, p 24-6) or the goddess tiff resulting in the Trojan War), and sexually

manipulate men until they are weak (after Enkidu lay with the harlot “his swiftness

was gone. . . Enkidu was grown weak” (Gilgamesh, 1, p 14-5, 5)). Independent

female sexuality appears feared and treated as sin. Potiphar’s wife’s forward

sexual aggressions and rage at being spurned send Joseph to prison (Genesis, 39, p

68). Part of Pandora’s evil is her irresistibility to men (Theogony, 593). But these

negative traits can be transformed to examples of female power in context.

Consider Ouranos’s castration from which an extremely sexually powerful

goddess is born (Theogony, p 66-67). But while using one of a man’s greatest fears

as a vehicle for feminine sexuality may make a man equate female sexuality with

fear, weakness and emasculation, the same story empowers female sexuality as an
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“epiphany” (Theogony, 200). Pandora is “sired in power” (Theogony, 591) and can

control men. Ishtar, the Goddess of love, may bring trouble, but is worshipped

and unequaled by any man (Gilgamesh, 1, p 13, 3). While the Harlot in Gilgamesh

is in one form a tool for men to use for their own purposes, on a deeper level the

men are acknowledging only her “women’s power [can] overpower this man.”

(Gilgamesh, 1, p 14, 2-3) Her “women’s art” (Gilgamesh, 1, p 14, 5) or sexual

prowess is what gives him wisdom and “the thoughts of man” (Gilgamesh, 1, p 15,

1). She makes him like a god through the same sexual power that deems her a

“wanton from the temple of love” (Gilgamesh, 1, p 14, 2). In fact, multiple women

are harbingers of knowledge. The Woman of the Vine in Gilgamesh imparts the

wisdom of spending the life you have to the fullest rather than fighting a futile

battle against mortality (Gilgamesh, 4, p 32)—once again women are keepers of

the proper motion of the life cycle. Eve gives Adam the fruit from the Tree of

Knowledge of Good and Evil and almost makes Adam a god as God reveals when

he says “[b]ehold, the man is become as one of us” (Genesis, 3, p 59). This seems

quite contrary to their image as foolish simpletons when Job reprimands her for

speaking “as one of the foolish women speaketh” (Job, 1, p 78), and Eve is easily

beguiled by the serpent into leading herself and Adam to their downfall.
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Comparatively, when women are the ones who give birth and the fertile

earth sustains humanity, it seems natural that creation forces should be female,

but more often than not a superior divine male force is given this credit. In the

Hopi Spider Woman, Kókyangwúti may create the earth and all humanity, but

Sótuknang creates her, seemingly following the plan of Taiowa, the implied

masculine sun god. “You are meeting your Father the Creator for the first time,”

are Spider Woman’s words to the first humans (Spider Woman, 11) placing the

power of the overall plan in his hands. And she too, creates men in Sótuknang’s

image first, before she creates the wúti in her own. In the Hebrew Genesis it is a

male, paternal God who “created the heaven and earth” (Genesis, 1:1, 56) and he

creates Adam before he pulls Eve out of Adam’s rib. Popul Vuh literally states “[n]o

woman gave birth to them . . . by genius alone they were made [by the Maker] . . .

with looks of the male kind” (Popul Vuh, 4, p 3090, 1-5). And then the women are

created, named first and foremost as “their wives” (Popul Vuh, 4, p 3091, 4). While

in Theogony Gaia (the epitome of female earth deities) is created first (only an

ambiguous un-gendered ‘Chaos’ is found before) (Theogony, 116-8) Zeus is

considered “our father,” (Theogony, 473) the more popularly known deity. Each

story takes the power of birth and removes it from the woman and places it with a

greater (frequently male) force that then creates men first, with women following
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to serve as “an help meet for him” (Genesis, 3:2, 58). Potentially in a time when

the male’s role in reproduction was less visible and more difficult to understand, it

would follow that they would feel jealousy for women’s ability to create and wish

to place themselves in the cycle; whatever the reason, on this level the men are

trying to take ownership of creation away from women.

But on the other hand, the most physical overtaking of the power of

creation—either forcing the mother to take “back into a hollow of Earth as soon as

they were born” (Theogony, 157) as in Ouranos’s case or by swallowing them

down himself as Kronos did (Theogony, p 74)—doesn’t result well for the

offenders of the natural order. They both end up usurped by their own offspring

with Ouranos even being castrated in the process (a just punishment for the

incorrect use of male creative power). This suggests even the authors of such

masculine myths knew that to contort the nature of birth was wrong; motherhood

is sacred.

For evidence, just look to Ninsun “who is well beloved and wise”

(Gilgamesh, 1, p 15, 4) and Gilgamesh’s venerated mother. She is the first one

Gilgamesh turns to for dream interpretation and understanding. Even he “to

whom all things were known” (Gilgamesh, 1, p 12, 1) needed the wisdom she

provides. Similarly, as soon as Achilles runs into trouble with Agamemnon he goes
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weeping and praying to his mother for help (Iliad, I, 415-23). Wise men defer to

the wisdom of mothers’. Furthermore, in the Iliad, motherhood and the helpless

children are the noblest causes the war is fought for as Hector acknowledges when

speaking to his admired wife Andromache (Iliad, VI, p 145). Hecuba, Hector’s

mother, is sent on the spiritual mission to pray for the souls of Troy (Iliad, VI, p

140) indicating the holy nature and responsibility of mothers. Without

motherhood and partnership, a man’s estate will fall to chaos (Theogony, 606-

614). The Spider Woman is given the “knowledge, wisdom and love to bless all the

beings you create,” (Spider Woman, 10) in a sense, the traits of motherhood.

All these conflicting images of women as cruel, heartless harpies preying on

innocent male weakness, or deified mothers, or simple, faulty creatures, or

benevolent earthy wombs of life appear to stem from a counterpart’s desire (like

the potentially male spiritual scholars and authors considering the time) to create

a simple hierarchy of men and women’s differing abilities. To linearly categorize

as better or worse, first or second, wiser or simpler. But the most successful

moments of any creation appear to come from a partnership between the

opposing forces. The men of Popul Vuh become truly happy once their wives

come into existence (Popul Vuh, 4, p 3091, 3), in a sense, completed because of a

union of opposites (a major component of Campbell’s archetypal Hero’s Journey).

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Their Plumed Serpent God is neither clearly male nor female, but a combination

from midwife and matchmaker to begetter (Popul Vuh, 1, p 3080, 1). Even in

Genesis the patriarchal god speaks to a mysterious and nebulous “us” when

contemplating humanity’s punishment and references the earth as a female

power—“which hath opened her mouth . . . not henceforth yield unto thee her

strength” (Genesis, 4, p 60)—when chastising Cain. In the Lord labeling the earth

as she, and using her dust and dirt to form Adam, in a sense, it is their union that

created humanity. Native American myth emphasizes cosmic parents—a Sun-

father and Foam-cap (feminine). In Spider Woman the male gods don’t just create

human themselves, they require a female deity to do it, otherwise her presence

would not be included in the myth, and she requires them for her own purpose.

Whether the imagery brought to mind is the yin-yang or the double helix

(formed of the union of two opposite strands of equal importance), the ultimate

take-away message from the complex struggle these myths express is to perhaps

neither place woman as superior forces or subservient forces to male. Instead,

acknowledge that both are required in the process of creation and it is from the

mutually beneficial partnership of the masculine and the feminine that the most

can be achieved and the most wisdom discovered.