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Gerda Lerner (30 April 1920 – 2 January 2013) was an Austrian-born American feminist, historian, author, and advocate of Women's History.

We now know that man is not the measure of that which is human, but men and women are.

Quotes

The Creation of Patriarchy (1986)

• Women's History is indispensable and essential to the emancipation of women.

• The Creation of Patriarchy, Introduction, p. 3

• Women have been kept from contributing to History-making, that is, the ordering and interpretation of the past of humankind. Since this process of meaning-giving is essential to the creation and perpetuation of civilization, we can see at once that women's marginality in this endeavor places us in a unique and segregate posi­tion. Women are the majority, yet we are structured into social in­stitutions as though we were a minority.

• The Creation of Patriarchy, Introduction, p. 5

• What women must do, what feminists are now doing is to point to that stage, its sets, its props, its director, and its scriptwriter, as did the child in the fairy tale who discovered that the emperor was naked, and say, the basic inequality between us lies within this framework. And then they must tear it down.
• What will the writing of history be like, when that umbrella of dominance is removed and definition is shared equally by men and women? Will we devalue the past, overthrow the categories, sup­plant order with chaos? No—we will simply step out under the free sky.
• We will observe how it changes, how the stars rise and the moon circles, and we will describe the earth and its workings in male and female voices. We may, after all, see with greater enrichment. We now know that man is not the measure of that which is human, but men and women are. Men are not the center of the world, but men and women are. This insight will transform consciousness as decisively as did Co­pernicus's discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe. We may play our separate parts on the stage, sometimes exchanging them or deciding to keep them, as it works out. We may discover new talent among those who have always been living under the um­brella of another's making. We may find that those who had previ­ously taken upon themselves the burden of both action and defini­tion may now have more freedom for playing and experiencing the pure joy of existence. We are no more under an obligation to de­scribe what we will find than were the explorers sailing to the distant edge of the world, only to find that the world was round.
• We will never know unless we begin. The process itself is the way, is the goal.

• The Creation of Patriarchy, Introduction, pp. 13-14

• We have seen how in Mesopotamian societies the institutionaliza­tion of patriarchy created sharply defined boundaries between women of different classes, although the development of the new gender definitions and of the customs associated with them proceeded un­evenly. The state, during the process of the establishment of written law codes, increased the property rights of upper-class women, while it circumscribed their sexual rights and finally totally eroded them. The lifelong dependency of women on fathers and husbands became so firmly established in law and custom as to be considered “natu­ral" and god-given. In the case of lower-class women, their labor power served either their families or those who owned their families' services. Their sexual and reproductive capacities were commodified, traded, leased, or sold in the interest of male family members. Women of all classes had traditionally been excluded from military power and were, by the turn of the first millennium B.C., excluded from formal education, insofar as it had become institutionalized.

• Yet, even then, powerful women in powerful roles lived on in cultic service, in religious representation, and in symbols. There was a considerable time lag between the subordination of women in pa­triarchal society and the declassing of the goddesses. As we trace below changes in the position of male and female god figures in the pantheon of the gods in a period of over a thousand years, we should keep in mind that the power of the goddesses and their priestesses in daily life and in popular religion continued in force, even as the supreme goddesses were dethroned. It is remarkable that in societies which had subordinated women economically, educationally, and le­gally, the spiritual and metaphysical power of goddesses remained active and strong.

• We have some indication of what practical religion was like from archaeological artifacts and from temple hymns and prayers. In Me­sopotamian societies the feeding of and service to the gods was con­sidered essential to the survival of the community. This service was performed by male and female temple servants. For important deci­sions of state, in warfare, and for important personal decisions one would consult an oracle or a diviner, who might be either a man or a woman. In personal distress, sickness, or misfortune the afflicted person would seek the help of his or her household-god and, if this was of no avail, would appeal to anyone of a number of gods or goddesses who had particular qualities needed to cure the affliction. If the appeal were to a goddess, the sick person also required the intercession and good services of a priestess of the particular god­dess. There were, of course, also male gods who could benefit one in case of illness, and these would usually be served by a male priest.

• The Creation of Patriarchy, ch. 7, pp. 141-142

• ...from the outset the Covenant of the pieces, community was defined as a male community. This would almost sequentially have led to very few opportunities for women in cultic function, since in the Mesopotamian tradition priestesses served fe­male deities and priests served male deities. Yet Yahweh's gender identity was unspecified, especially in the earlier texts. What is sig­nificant for gender definitions in Western civilization is which met­aphors, symbols, and explanation the writers of Genesis selected out of the many available sources. Similarly, what is significant for the present is not so much what the writers intended by each of their symbolic representations as what meaning future generations ex­tracted from them. If, for example, Yahweh was not conceived or thought of as a gendered God, but rather as a principle which embodied male and female aspects, as some theologians have argued, this is significant only in showing us that there were available alter­natives to the traditional patriarchal interpretation and that these alternatives were not chosen. The fact is that for over 2500 years the God of the Hebrews was addressed, represented, and interpreted as a male Father-God, no matter what other aspects He may have embodied. This was, historically, the meaning given to the symbol, and therefore this was the meaning which carried authority and force. This meaning became of the utmost significance in the way both men and women were able to conceptualize women and place them both in the divine order of things and in human society.

• There was therefore no inevitability in the emergence of an all­ male priesthood. The prolonged ideological struggle of the Hebrew tribes against the worship of Canaanite deities and especially the persistence of a cult of the fertility-goddess Asherah must have hardened the emphasis on male cultic leadership and the tendency toward mysogyny, which fully emerged only in the post-exilic pe­riod. Whatever the causes, the Old Testament male priesthood rep­resented a radical break with millennia of tradition and with the practices of neighboring peoples. This new order under the all-powerful God proclaimed to Hebrews and to all those, who took the Bible as their moral and religious guide that women cannot speak to God.

• The Creation of Patriarchy, ch. 8, pp. 178-179

• There are in the Biblical story of paradise two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.—"The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil"(Gen.2:9). The second reference is somewhat am­biguous and makes it appear that the two meanings have merged in one symbol— "Of every tree in the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die"(Gen.2:16-17). Since eating from the tree of life is not forbid­ den here, one might assume the two trees have become merged. But in Gen. 3:22 God specifically separates the two trees and expels Adam and Eve from the garden "lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever."

• In the Biblical story the knowledge which is forbidden to human­ kind is of a dual nature: it is moral knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil, and it is sexual knowledge. When human beings ac­quire the knowledge of good and evil, they take upon themselves the obligation for making moral decisions, having lost their innocence and with it their ability to carry out the will of God without moral considerations. Fallen humanity, in this act of acquiring a higher level of "knowing," assumes the burden of distinguishing between good and evil and of choosing the good in order to be saved. The other aspect of knowledge is sexual knowledge; that is made clear in the line describing one of the consequences of the Fall, "and they knew they were naked" (Gen. 3:7). In this, the consequences of Adam and Eve's transgression fall with uneven weight upon the woman. The consequence of sexual knowledge is to sever female sexuality from procreation. God puts enmity between the snake and the woman (Gen.3:15). In the historical context of the times of the writing of Genesis, the snake was clearly associated with the fertility goddess and symbolically represented her. Thus, by God's command, the free and open sexuality of the fertility-goddess was to be forbidden to fallen woman. The way her sexuality was to find expression was in motherhood. Her sexuality was so defined as to serve her motherly function, and it was limited by two conditions: she was to be sub­ordinate to her husband, and she would bring forth her children in pain.

• But there remained the tree of life, in the center of the Garden. Implicit in the human couple's tasting the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge was that they would aspire to acquiring the mystery of the tree of life, the knowledge of immortality, which is reserved to God. That implication is made clear both in the earlier-cited com­mand forbidding the fruit and in God's punishment "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return"(Gen. 3:19). To aspire to the knowledge of God is the supreme hubris; the punishment for it is mortality. But God is merciful and redemptive, and so in Eve's pun­ishment there is also a redemptive aspect. Once and forever, creativ­ity (and with it the secret of immortality) is severed from procrea­tivity. Creativity is reserved to God; procreativity of human beings is the lot of women. The curse on Eve makes of it a painful and subordinate lot.

• But there is another side to the story of the Fall. God's curse on Adam ends with assigning him to mortality. Yet in the very next line Adam re-names his wife Eve "because she was the mother of all living." This is the profound recognition that in her now lies the only immortality to which human beings can aspire—the immortal­ity of generation. Here is the redemptive aspect of the Biblical doc­trine of the division of labor between the sexes: not only shall man work in the sweat of his brow and woman give birth in pain, but mortal men and women depend on the redemptive, life-giving func­tion of the mother for the only immortality they shall ever experience.

• It is the first act of fallen Adam thus to re-name Eve or, rather, thus to reinterpret the meaning of her name. Fallen Eve may take hope and courage from her new redemptive role as mother, but there are two conditions defining and delimiting her choices, both of them imposed upon her by God: she is to be severed from the snake, and she is to be ruled by her husband. If we understand the snake to be the symbol of the old fertility-goddess, this condition is essential to the establishment of monotheism. It will be echoed and reaffirmed in the covenant: there shall be only One God, and the fertility-goddess shall be cast out as evil and become the very symbol of sin. We need not strain our interpretation to read this as the condem­nation by Yahweh of female sexuality exercised freely and autono­mously, even sacredly.

• The second condition is that Eve, to be honored as life-giver, shall be ruled by her husband. It is the law of patriarchy, here clearly defined and given divine sanction. We have seen an earlier develop­ment leading toward such a definition in the Code of Hammurabi and in Middle Assyrian law §40. Here we see it in the form of divine decree fully integrated into a powerful religious world-view.

• We have seen how the two basic questions, "Who creates Life?" and "Who speaks to God?" were answered in different cultures, and we have shown how the answer to both questions in the Old Testa­ ment affirmed male power over women.

• To the question "Who brought sin and death into the world?" Genesis answers, "Woman, in her alliance with the snake, which stands for free female sexuality." It is quite in line with such think­ ing that women should be excluded from active participation in the covenant community and that the very symbol of that community and that compact with God should be a male symbol.

• The development of monotheism in the Book of Genesis was an enormous advance of human beings in the direction of abstract thought and the definition of universally valid symbols. It is a tragic accident of history that this advance occurred in a social setting and under circumstances which strengthened and affirmed patriarchy. Thus, the very process of symbol-making occurred in a form which marginal­ized women. For females, the Book of Genesis represented their def­inition as creatures essentially different from males; a redefinition of their sexuality as beneficial and redemptive only within the boundaries of patriarchal dominance; and finally the recognition that they were excluded from directly being able to represent the divine principle. The weight of the Biblical narrative seemed to decree that by the will of God women were included in His covenant only through the mediation of men. Here is the historic moment of the death of the Mother-Goddess and her replacement by God-the-Father and the metaphorical Mother under patriarchy.

• The Creation of Patriarchy, ch. 9, pp. 196-198

• It should be noted that when we speak of relative improvements in the status of women in a given society, this frequently means only that we are seeing improvements in the degree in which their situation affords them opportunities to exert some leverage within the system of patriarchy. Where women have relatively more eco­nomic power, they are able to have somewhat more control over their lives than in societies where they have no economic power. Similarly, the existence of women's groups, associations, or eco­nomic networks serves to increase the ability of women to counter­ act the dictates of their particular patriarchal system. Some anthro­pologists and historians have called this relative improvement women's "freedom." Such a designation is illusory and unwarranted. Re­forms and legal changes, while ameliorating the condition of women and an essential part of the process of emancipating them, will not basically change patriarchy. Such reforms need to be integrated within a vast cultural revolution in order to transform patriarchy and thus abolish it.
• The system of patriarchy can function only with the cooperation of women. This cooperation is secured by a variety of means: gender indoctrination; educational deprivation; the denial to women of knowledge of their history; the dividing of women, one from the other, by defining "respectability" and "deviance" according to women's sexual activities; by restraints and outright coercion; by discrimination in access to economic resources and political power; and by awarding class privileges to conforming women. For nearly four thousand years women have shaped their lives and acted under the umbrella of patriarchy, specifically a form of patriarchy best described as paternalistic dominance.

• The Creation of Patriarchy, ch. 10, p. 217

• ...thinking woman stays far longer than is useful within the boundaries or the question-setting defined by the "great men." And just as long as she does, the source of new insight is closed to her.
• Revolutionary thought has always been based on upgrading the experience of the oppressed. The peasant had to learn to trust in the significance of his life experience before he could dare to challenge the feudal lords. The industrial worker had to become "class­ conscious," the Black "race-conscious" before liberating thought could develop into revolutionary theory. The oppressed have acted and learned simultaneously—the process of becoming the newly con­scious person or group is in itself liberating. So with women.
• The shift in consciousness we must make occurs in two steps: we must, at least for a time, be woman-centered. We must, as far as possible, leave patriarchal thought behind.

• To be woman-centered means: asking if women were central to this argument, how would it be defined? It means ignoring all evi­dence of women's marginality, because, even where women appear to be marginal, this is the result of patriarchal intervention; fre­quently also it is merely an appearance. The basic assumption should be that it is inconceivable for anything ever to have taken place in the world in which women were not involved, except if they were prevented from participation through coercion and repression.
• When using methods and concepts from traditional systems of thought, it means using them from the vantage point of the central­ity of women. Women cannot be put into the empty spaces of pa­triarchal thought and systems—in moving to the center, they trans­form the system.

• To step outside of patriarchal thought means: Being skeptical toward every known system of thought; being critical of all assump­tions, ordering values and definitions.
• Testing one's statement by trusting our own, the female experi­ence. Since such experience has usually been trivialized or ignored, it means overcoming the deep-seated resistance within ourselves toward accepting ourselves and our knowledge as valid. It means getting rid of the great men in our heads and substituting for them ourselves, our sisters, our anonymous foremothers.
• Being critical toward our own thought, which is, after all, thought trained in the patriarchal tradition. Finally, it means developing in­tellectual courage, the courage to stand alone, the courage to reach farther than our grasp, the courage to risk failure. Perhaps the great­est challenge to thinking women is the challenge to move from the desire for safety and approval to the most "unfeminine" quality of all—that of intellectual arrogance, the supreme hubris which asserts to itself the right to reorder the world. The hubris of the god-makers, the hubris of the male system-builders.
• The system of patriarchy is a historic construct; it has a begin­ning; it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its course—it no longer serves the needs of men or women and in its inextricable linkage to militarism, hierarchy, and racism it threatens the very existence of life on earth.
• What will come after, what kind of structure will be the foun­dation for alternate forms of social organization we cannot yet know. We are living in an age of unprecedented transformation. We are in the process of becoming. But we already know that woman's mind, at last unfettered after so many millennia, will have its share in pro­viding vision, ordering, solutions. Women at long last are demand­ing, as men did in the Renaissance, the right to explain, the right to define. Women, in thinking themselves out of patriarchy add trans­forming insights to the process of redefinition.
• As long as both men and women regard the subordination of half the human race to the other as "natural," it is impossible to envision a society in which differences do not connote either dominance or subordination. The feminist critique of the patriarchal edifice of knowledge is laying the groundwork for a correct analysis of reality, one which at the very least can distinguish the whole from a part. Women's History, the essential tool in creating feminist conscious­ness in women, is providing the body of experience against which new theory can be tested and the ground on which women of vision can stand. A feminist world-view will enable women and men to free their minds from patriarchal thought and practice and at last to build a world free of dominance and hierarchy, a world that is truly human.

• The Creation of Patriarchy, ch. 10, pp. 227-229

External links

• Biography | Gerda Lerner
• Gerda Lerner | Austrian-born American writer and educator
• Gerda Lerner | Jewish Women's Archive