The Womens Tent

By Trish Patrick in Articles

reflections on violence against women

THE WOMEN'S TENT
In front of you today is a representation of the " Women's Tent." In the ancient Israel (and other ethnic groupings ) it was customary for women to have a tent set aside for them to retreat to for child-birth, and other times when they were considered "un-clean." During this time of "un-cleanness," anything a woman touched was considered contaminated and a threat to the well-being of the community. It was designed to protect men from the dangers of unintentionally coming in contact with the taint of the Feminine. In ancient times, blood was considered a mystical / magical substance used in sacrificial offerings and rituals. It was both feared and revered because they realized it was intimately connected with life and death.
The fact that women were able to bleed regularly and not die, was considered by men, to be "super-natural," so women were perceived be a bit scary. Not only that, they could bear children, and blood was involved in the birth process, quite a lot of it sometimes!!
People fear what they don't understand.
It is a small step from "frightening" to "bad," so it does not require a huge leap of the imagination to realize this scariness needed to be constrained and contained. Our language reflects this still, for example, child-birth has been described as "confinement," and menstruation, the "curse."
There were wild superstitions surrounding women. It was believed that, if women were to milk cows or goats at a certain time of the month, even go near dairy products, they would curdle them. These beliefs still hold true in some ethnic groupings today.
Feminine intuition was regarded with deep suspicion and women specially gifted in this respect were often feared.
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This deeply held suspicion of women possibly plumbed its lowest depths during the hysteria of the witch-hunts resulting in executions of hundreds of innocent women. It is difficult for us today to grasp how restricted the lives of women have been over the centuries..
The tragedy is, it is still happening today. From a global perspective Women continue to be used as collateral damage in war, sold as sex slaves, abused ...the list goes on. We read about it, see it on TV and feel powerless in the face of it.
To be sure, men suffer the consequences of violence, hatred and war. We must not minimize this shameful fact, but the statistics of violent death, persecution, and domination of Women far, far, exceed those of men.
We, in New Zealand, are fortunate, because most women do not suffer the extremes of misogyny and superstition. We do however, have frighteningly high levels of violence against children, women and men. Our politicians of all persuasions make many utterances around the issue, yet women and children continue to die violent deaths at the hands of those who should be cherishing them.
Both as individuals and as a community of faith, expressions of our intolerance of violence in all its evil forms, need to be heard in places where policy is made and translated into social programmes. Let us not be silent.
Trish Patrick