Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

definition remains that of Eliade, who wrote in Myths,

Dreams, and Mysteries:

*

It is estimated that the time space between 70 0 0 b . c . (when people

began to domesticate animals'and make pottery) and 1 9 7 4 a . d . is only 2 percent of the whole o f human history.

Androgyny: The Mythological Model

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What exactly is a myth? In the language current during the nineteenth century, a “myth” meant anything that was opposed to “reality”: the creation of Adam,

or the invisible man, no less than the history of the

world as described by the Zulus, or the Theogony of

Hesiod —these were all “myths. ” Like many another

cliche of the Enlightenment and of Positivism, this,

too, was of Christian origin and structure; for, according to primitive Christianity, everything which could not be justified by reference to one or the other

of the two Testaments was untrue; it was a “fable. ”

But the researches of the ethnologists have obliged us

to go behind this semantic inheritance from the Christian polemics against the pagan world. We are at last beginning to know and understand the value of the

myth, as it has been elaborated in “primitive” and

archaic societies — that is, among those groups of mankind where the myth happens to be the very foundation of social life and culture. Now one fact strikes us immediately: in such societies the myth is thought to

express the absolute truth, because it narrates a sacred

history; that is, a transhuman revelation which took

place at the dawn of the Great Time.. . . Being real

and sacred, the myth becomes exemplary, and consequently, repeatable, for it serves as a model, and by the same token, a justification, for all human actions. In

other words, a myth is a true history of what came to pass

at the beginning of Time, and one which provides the pattern for human behavior. 3 [Italics added]

I would extend Eliade’s definition in only one respect.

It is not only in primitive and archaic societies that

myths provide this model for behavior —it is in every

human society. T he distance between myth and social

organization is perhaps greater, or more tangled, in

advanced technological societies, but myth still operates

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Woman Hating

as the substructure of the collective. The story of Adam

and Eve will affect the shape of settlements on the moon

and Mars, and the Christian version of the primitive

myth of a divine fertility sacrifice saturates the most

technologically advanced communications media.

What are the myths of androgyny, and how do we

locate them behind the myths of polarity with which we

are familiar? Let us begin with the Chinese notions of yin

and yang.