This is really just one of my random thoughts… something I have been ruminating on as I listen to the audio book of The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. This book is a reexamination of the current narrative of how our civilization, culture, social institutions, etc evolved in the light of new evidence and new interpretations. In it I came across the following passage:
“Rejecting a Garden of Eden-type narrative for the origins of farming also means rejecting, or at least questioning, the gendered assumptions lurking behind that narrative. Apart from being a story about the loss of primordial innocence, the Book of Genesis is also one of history’s most enduring charters for the hatred of women, rivaled only (in the Western tradition) by the prejudices of Greek authors like Hesiod, or for that matter Plato. It is Eve, after all, who proves too weak to resist the exhortations of the crafty serpent and is first to bite the forbidden fruit, because she is the one who desires knowledge and wisdom. Her punishment (and that of all women following her) is to bear children in severe pain and live under the rule of her husband, whose own destiny is to subsist by the sweat of his brow.”
I have no excuse why Continue reading “The Book of Genesis: A Promulgator of Misogyny?”