I belong to that part of humanity that makes up a little more than half of it, but whose members are often considered unimportant and inferior.
I am a woman.
‘Mankind’ is the English term for humanity. That sounds as if men are actually the only proper kind of human being, which is not really ‘kind’ (nice).
Fortunately, we Dutch speakers use a friendlier word, ‘mensheid’ (humankind) which unfortunately does not mean that women have a better position here.
Traditionally, men have determined the course of humanity.
They battle, plunder, fight competitions and wars, they murder, they are heroes, they are victors, leaders, managers, CEO’s, major shareholders, presidents, pastors, mayors, and heads of families.
They care about being the best, the fastest, the strongest, the most powerful, the richest, and the most influential, and they want the most beautiful and willing women by their side, to serve them, to stroke their egos, and to produce their sons.
So, I am actually an inferior kind of man.
I quite like competitions, but I prefer them with a broad finish line, which we cross together, hand in hand.
I value intelligence, strength, health, talent and happiness, but I wish the same for my fellow human beings.
And what I also love is being calm and gentle, alone or with others.
I don’t need power and influence, except to do good. To stop the climate disaster and restore nature. To distribute prosperity and well-being fairly among all people. Power without aggression, for the benefit of all living beings.
I don’t really need to be rich either. As long as I have everything I need for a decent existence, and occasionally something extra, I am satisfied. For I understand that hoarding wealth, like hoarding power, comes at the expense of large numbers of other people, and I do not want that.
Therefore men don’t see me as equal. As far as they’re concerned, I’m failing on many fronts.
Not only am I an inferior kind of human being, I’m also a woman of a certain age. A woman who (fortunately) can no longer reproduce, who can no longer bring new people into the world.
A woman whose body is therefore no longer desirable.
A kind of invisible human being. An invisible inferior man.
But I’m also terrifying. Because while I already used to be an exception to the rule, not conforming to my role as a servant of men, I now speak out very clearly about what I see as injustice, and I bite back fiercely when I or others are wronged.
Men find this unacceptable in young women, but especially terrifying in militant old women like me. They prefer their wives submissively in the background. And they love to take credit for our ingenuity.
Men play a central role in our language and in the stories about our history. We humans value power, strength, virility, success, and wealth.
Our society revolves around ever more, ever faster, ever better, ever richer, ever more complex. We desire unbridled growth, because we are greedy and because we believe that growth is good and stagnation is decline.
We fail to see that unbridled growth leads to plunder and destruction, and that it ultimately leaves most people (including men) empty-handed and with a destroyed environment.
We still revere those people – almost without exception men – who absurdly enrich themselves at the expense of billions of others. And the companies that are the most ‘successful’ – at the expense of our planet, our climate and our human rights.
By the way, none of this would have been possible without humanity’s ‘soft’ qualities and ‘feminine’ activities.
The successful manager of a multinational corporation, the winning sports hero, or the ruling politician usually does not know how to connect with other people, cultivate friendships, de-escalate arguments, solve problems, go shopping, prepare meals, use a washing machine, raise children, or even sew on a button.
Now, I don’t mean to say that women are only gentle people. If you believe that, you don’t know me yet! You’ve never made me angry. My anger, however, is not directed at destruction and power, but at solving and repairing what is wrong, in private life and in society.
History is written by and about men, the victors.
Until a few hundred years ago, women weren’t even allowed to learn to read and write, or to delve into any intellectual subject. Women were not considered fit for that. They lived in service to man.
That’s why, for a long time, men didn’t notice – the average man in his comfortable position of power isn’t particularly bright – that women are often more intelligent. More intelligent than men, and also much better at solving problems, both large and small. So that’s what women have always done: solved problems, usually caused or ignored by men.
But real heroes are people who fight, hunt, conquer and kill!
Generalizing, you could say that men have always destroyed everything and women have always, where possible, repaired everything.
Yet heroes are almost without exception men.
That’s the result of the stories we tell each other.
As a woman, I don’t feel like the history I was taught back in school and that I can now read in books and online, and watch in documentaries and re-enacted films, is about me.
According to those stories, I am indeed an inferior man.
In history classes, we were taught that the first human-made tools were spears and axes. I dare to doubt that.
The earliest humans mainly ate plant-based food. Food they picked or dug up.
Only for the necessary protein did they occasionally catch small animals, like fish.
Now, if they had found edible fruits or seeds, and satisfied their hunger, I imagine they tried to take the leftover food back to their camp or cave, for their family and for when they got hungry again.
For that, they needed baskets, or bins, or Tupperware or something.
So, long before they invented the spear and the axe, or even fire, they used things like large hollow shells, pieces of curved tree bark, hollowed-out pieces of wood, or nets woven from things like plant fibers. And more durable pots, for example made of clay, to preserve surplus food longer.
Things they probably also made early on were forms of shelter from rain or sun, from wind and cold. They made these from branches, reeds, large leaves, clay, from whatever was available.
And they made fishing rods too, of course; or at the very least fishing nets or hooks.
Something the most powerful man couldn’t accomplish in millions of years is what the inferior man – the woman – has done since time immemorial: carrying and giving birth to new people. Without a doctor, birthing chair, or epidural.
Of course, the man played a role in this too, right at the beginning, but his contribution can hardly be called significant.
If men had had to ensure the survival of the species, we’d probably be extinct long ago. Our heroes tolerate little pain.
Oh, another reason to invent baskets and bags: with a baby on your arm, it’s hard to forage!
Another important role of inferior men (women, or rare men who collaborated with women, or men who had grown too old for fighting) was storytelling.
Stories connected people and were passed down to subsequent generations, preventing them from having to reinvent the wheel (though we hadn’t gotten to that point yet).
And besides storytelling, singing, acting and dancing also played a major role, just like today, in uniting a group of people and in preserving their stories and their history.
In short: the ‘unimportant’ part of humanity provided shelter, kept it tidy and made the necessary repairs, ensured the creation and survival of offspring, cared for the sick and wounded, gathered most of the food and prepared it for consumption, settled disputes and mediated to prevent or end wars, made primitive tools, baskets, sacks, nets, fishing rods, clothing and fire, and told stories.
And yet they placed themselves at the service of the clumsy and less intelligent, but ‘important’ half of humanity.
Most of the ‘important’ people weren’t that smart and lacked the talent for caring for children, the sick and the wounded, for gathering and preparing food, for housekeeping, for repairs, for inventing new tools, for storytelling and for singing and dancing. So they started to get bored and cause nuisance.
But no worries!
The ‘unimportant’ people had invented stone tools to hollow out their wooden bowls, to scrape hides and to cut plants, and then they made the first axes and spears.
Now the ‘important’ people no longer had to be bored and they could occupy themselves with something that wasn’t strictly necessary, something that was even unnecessarily dangerous, but which of course gave them a great deal of prestige and respect: hunting big game!
In northern regions they mainly hunted mammoths, if we want to believe history (we don’t; after all, there were much safer prey animals available to run after).
Those people who now hunted big game could easily be missed for a few days or weeks. After all, they did not contribute anything substantial to the group and were mainly in the way and bothering the women, who often had better things to do.
So it was quite a relief when they were out hunting.
And they came back with new stories. Great stories, exciting stories, IMPORTANT stories! For example, about how two of them had been impaled on the tusks of a mammoth and crushed to death, but how the others had finally managed to kill the beast!
And look how much meat they brought home! And those hides! And those tusks and bones! Imagine all the things they could do with those!
Well…, what the ‘unimportant’ people had been doing all along, but now to an exaggerated extent. Sigh…
Did people really need that much meat? Perhaps, but not all at once. Now they had to find ways to keep it from spoiling.
And such warm hides? Yes, they certainly came in handy.
And those tusks and all those bones? Yes, even though there were far too many. They could make tools from them. Spearheads and arrowheads, for example.
And from what was left over, the ‘important’ people when they weren’t hunting, and bored, could perhaps carve pieces of art and luxury items.
At least then they had something to do again.
Today we live in a world where the unbridled desire for aggression, power and possession by mankind – by the MOST IMPORTANT people – has left deep scars.
Scars that even so-called inferior people can’t heal.
How long will we let the macho man continue to have his way?