Women and Language

The main difference between women and men, in my view, is simply that men are willing to put up with more abstraction than women. Men can work themselves into boundless philosophic, technological and scientific ecstasy, leaving their bodies behind. They compete and measure themselves and each other by abstract measurements women don’t use. They also accomplish and create things women didn’t know they wanted, such as Skype chats across continents!

Women hear the call of their bodies, not only on a monthly basis, but several times a day for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. Women are profoundly changed by the children they bear and their immediate and intimate needs. Their attention stretches across generations. The home they make for their family is real, friends are real and the ceremonies they create to celebrate life are real, each demanding time and thought.

Language is, of course, an abstraction, which may be one of the reasons we have heard less from women down through the ages. Claudine Herrmann writes in The Tongue Snatchers, originally published in French in 1976, that a “virile” culture pervades the public intellectual and artistic sphere, that women must use a language they have not developed and learn to restrict themselves in using. But all of us have experiences which are difficult to put into words.

Herrmann makes the point that “women’s vision could serve to shed light on the most varied of questions.” As a lover of language, I agree. Without the harmonic that women’s voices provide, abstraction becomes a thin veneer on the rich, inchoate life of culture. In addition, speaking or writing is one of the ways we seize our humanity, a way we “actualize the sheer passive givenness of our being,” as Hannah Arendt says.

I know of no better example of women shedding light on varied questions than the books the scholars Elaine Pagels, Karen Armstrong and Lesley Hazleton have recently produced. Having absorbed the manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi and other early texts, Elaine Pagels describes in Beyond Belief how the early church codified beliefs for the sake of unity. She insists however that suppressed gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas, actually enrich and extend our understanding of Christ’s teachings and the early church, helping us get past rigid belief structures.

In The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, Karen Armstrong studies the ways four cultures contributed to the Axial Age, the name Karl Jaspers gave to the period between 900 B.C. and 200 B.C. Armstrong uses current archaeological, historical and textual scholarship to show the shift in the ways people thought of themselves, how the needs for liberation and redemption were awakened. Lesley Hazleton’s book entitled The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad tells the dramatic story of how Muhammad, a young camel driver at the edges of society, received divine inspiration, came to power as a political leader and worked toward social justice. Helped greatly by his first wife, Khadija, I might add.

All three of these women write to help heal the fragmentation and divisiveness our closely-held religious beliefs have led to, the sticking points of abstract language. Karen Armstrong believes that at the heart of all religions, spiritual traditions and ethics lies compassion: Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Having recently read the three astonishing books noted, I am thrilled to find mainstream, accessible work being done in this area. By women!

Since we live in an information age, I am free to write in this casual way, pointing to what has moved me. And you are free to copy any of these cues into your favorite search engine and learn more about them.

The Afternoon Knows

In finding my path, I’ve promiscuously sought wisdom among both men’s and women’s writing. While the brain of humans is wired as dominantly male or female, part of it is clearly beyond sexual distinction. Wisdom literature, seeking to tame our unruly selfish instincts into patience, forbearance and generosity, addresses us at our most common humanity, equally shared by men and women.

I grew up in a homogenous community, of northern European origins, the Christian religion and a fairly cohesive post-war sense of country, the United States. Like others of my generation I set off early to see the world. Determined not to be held back from anything human, I allowed myself to be quite open, going into free fall more than once. Luckily, my family was there to pick me up. But crashing and burning didn’t stop me. Once healthy again, I proceeded outward, my internal steering mechanisms strengthened.

The fact that I was a young woman had a great deal of bearing on my adventures. No mountains were involved, except as a metaphor for aspiration. "Everyone has something to do from his or her essential nature," says Rumi (in Coleman Barks' translation). Seeking my place in an expanding and pluralistic world, my love of literature was my guide.

Though I read all over the map, an internal reality detector served me. Everyone has this. Even if we have been dominated and influenced by a decadent culture, each of us must accept responsibility for our thoughts and actions. Sometimes, for safety’s sake we go along with a prevailing situation. But we hold in our hearts the inner knowledge of what is good, true and beautiful, and the desire for it. The ground of reality shines through art, aligning with inner certainty. Literature thus serves, holding up stories which satisfy and feed the yearning heart. I was moved by many women characters.

This blog records the characters I have learned from. It’s a mixed group from all over the world, their stories told by both women and men. I’ve used translations freely as my interests range far afield. I want to give younger women the gift of these stories. Some women fear passion and certainly see around them cautionary tales. But there are also tales of luminous, intense love which lift the characters into the mythic realms which illuminate everyday life. Each of us should have such a tale of our own. They point us to our essential nature.

The blog allows me to speak from a feminine point of view. Claudine Herrmann in The Tongue Snatchers says: “I’ve thought it useful to show not only how the vision of a woman was different, but also that this vision could serve to shed light on the most varied of questions.” By most accounts I am in the afternoon of my life, which gives me the chance to look back, but also the freedom to speak to many questions. For the afternoons knows what the morning never suspected, as the Swedish proverb has it.

Since blog entries slide off the page, the intent of each here is to be synecdoche, the part representing the whole. A brief telling of the story, pointers for those who are interested in more, and the reason I loved it. They will be in no particular order.