--- breaking the silence ---Toward a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence
© Roberta-Anne Kerlin, 1997
Just as archetypes equating manliness with conquest and domination are inappropriate for a healthy masculinity, these archetypes are inappropriate for a healthy femininity. But they are appropriate for a society of in-built power imbalances in the relations between women and men. Female archetypes splitting woman into an idealized mother-wife or a despised temptress-whore effectively teach both women and men that good (asexual) women like Mary passively accept the male's superior power, whereas bad (sexual) women like Delilah and Eve wield power over men with disastrous results. Not only that, most of our archetypes of femininity basically deny women any independent existence, defining them only in terms of how they further (or hinder) male-defined goals. Above all, they strip women of legitimate power, be it temporal or divine. DESIDERATUM
Riane Eisler, Sacred Pleasure, 1996, p. 266.
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