Eve vs Lilith

...I let him take my hand
And everything I knew for one embrace
Then I was erased
Quickly was replaced
With a girl called Mediocrity
And is it only me
Or does it seem to be
That a man wants an Eve not a Lilith...?
©Dinah Judith

One of my main areas of interest lately when considering gender relations and female identity/my identity as a female, concerns the myth of Woman in the Torah ('Old Testament' to some...), particularly the fascinating story of Lilith.

In Genesis there are two separate accounts of G-d creating humans, both featuring the creation of a woman. In those two stories, the woman is created in two different ways.

In the first account, woman is created in the same fashion as man i.e. from the dust. In the second account, the one better known in popular culture, woman is created from man's rib.

The Midrash (being a rabbinic commentary on the Torah that essentially tries to fill in the gaps) reasons that the two contradictory stories must mean that there were two women:

Lilith (1st)

Eve (2nd)

Now, according to the Midrash, Lilith considered herself as Adam's equal and they fell out when she refused to 'lie beneath him'... She wanted to be on top, basically... So Adam complains to G-d, and G-d says to Lilith (not an actual quote, here...), "Do what Adam says or I'll throw you across the Red Sea". Lilith says, "Well, fuck that - throw me across the Red Sea" (again, not a direct quote...)

This little story explains why, in Genesis, G-d then creates Woman (again) from Man's rib and then we get Eve: created from Man and therefore ultimately willing to do what she's told (except when it comes to the forbidden fruit, but that's probably another post...)

In the meantime, Lilith is quite literally demonized in the Midrash and the Zohar, with all sorts of stories arising of her eating babies and flying through the night like a screech owl. Descriptions of her being a harlot who stands in dark ally ways wearing red lipstick, and giving birth to the children created by men's masturbatory and 'nocturnal emissions' (wet dreams to the rest of us) mean that Lilith is the ultimate representation of patriarchy's fear and hostility towards female sexuality.

Perhaps that's why I like her so much...

I also read a very interesting article about how Genesis was used as propaganda by a monotheistic cult who were quite deliberately trying to get rid of a female Mother Goddess group.

So it seems that the patriarchal fear of female sexuality has led to quite a large conspiracy within Western culture...

This a new area of research for me and my musings on it are in their early stages, but I find it fascinating and plan to write a serious academic work on the subject.

But... what's the point, I hear some cry...?

Well, for me, some of the point is that both of my major relationships have partly ended because I'm a Lilith and not an Eve.

Despite her transgression with the fruit, Eve represents a sort of earth mother quality: relatively wholesome, willing to submit to Adam and have 2.4 children, a mortgage and a Volvo... Bâiller is an Eve...

Whereas Lilith...

Lilith knows the full-force of her sexuality and is willing to use it to her advantage; Lilith will give you the best head you've had in your life and then walk away, knowing you'll follow her; Lilith doesn't need to have a child strapped to her hip to know that she's a woman; Lilith sings 'fuck you, I won't do what you tell me...'

But are all Liliths destined to spend eternity alone on the other side of the Red Sea, living as a spinster in a house full of cats?

Or are there men in world who can step up to the challenge of loving a Lilith?

I certainly fucking hope so...

Glory Box

I was listening to a radio show about Mary Wollstencraft the other day; a sort of biography punctuated with analysis of her writing in regards to the rights of women.

One of the guests described the contradictions within Wollstencraft's work, in that Mary believed strongly in the rights of women to be educated (beyond the superficial realms of sewing, etiquette and so on) and therefore seemed to be what we would think of as a feminist, and yet she made huge sacrifices for the man she loved and went so far as to travel to Scandinavia in an attempt to rescue his financial affairs. The guest described Mary as believing that, gender-wise, a woman is a true equal within society and should benefit from the same privileges as man without question. BUT that She instinctively becomes a Woman when she is in love.

And this is what I wonder right now: perhaps we as human beings are truly equal regardless of gender, but when we are in love (or just plain lust if you believe that love is an emotional side-effect of a biological urge) we are distilled to the base instincts of our sex.

If one takes that proposition as a starting point, one can then see the structure of society as relating to those terms. Man penetrates, Woman receives. The creation of new life is due to the ejaculation of Man rather than Woman (how different would gender relations be if fertilisation was dependent on the orgasm of the female, or even both male AND female...?!)

So here I am, a love-sick feminist: a human being who genuinely believes in the equality of all creatures, who is so desperately in love that she cannot help but offer herself freely and unconditionally to the object of her affection.

Maybe this is a contradiction in the world of the critical feminist.

Or maybe it is a symptom of the human condition - that all logic, reason, analysis and theoretical musings fly out of the window...

...when we are in love...