after birth and then are found alive, or who survived terrible physical assaults—have an inherent or archetypal will to live. They draw upon an indomitable spirit, a characteristic of Artemis that shows up early when it has to. One amazing true story of survival, found in The Girl with No Name (Chapman, et. al., 2013), tells of a five-year-old toddler who was probably kidnapped and then abandoned in the Colombian jungle. The child stayed on the periphery of a troop of Capuchin monkeys, eating what they ate. She was taken in by the monkeys and grew up feral and walking on all fours until she was found and maltreated by humans, which began another whole saga of survival. The child's birth name was never discovered; she now goes by the name Marina Chapman. Marina made me wonder if Atalanta could have been a real person about whom stories were told—a little girl who became a mythical figure, a girl thought to have been suckled by a bear and found by hunters.
Patriarchal Power
Greek mythology, like Greek society, was patriarchal. Male gods were powerful and territorial. Their use of power to dominate or rule over others was taken for granted, and men made in their image assumed the same rights. In classical Greek mythology, rape was a common theme. Zeus, the chief god of Olympus, tricked, seduced, raped, impregnated, and abandoned the mothers of his many progeny.
Patriarchal systems are always hierarchal, symbolized as a pyramid or mountain, with the most desirable position at the top. Humans, animals, plants, the ocean, and minerals are all exploited and used for the profit and power of those at the top of the mountain. Conflicts and wars are fought over who will occupy the top of the pyramid, with destruction of life, beauty, and hope found in every war zone. Rape is used as a metaphor when applied to cities and to the earth itself; but wherever there is war, women are raped. Today, in the Congo, rape is deliberately used as a means of conducting war. Eve Ensler, returning from the Congo, refers to patriarchy as a “Rape Culture” (In the Body of the World, 2013). This made me think about how Zeus on Mount Olympus, the symbolic progenitor of patriarchy, was a serial rapist.
From archeological evidence, most notably that described by UCLA archeologist Marija Gimbutas (The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 1982), we know that. Europe's first civilization, from 6,500 to 5,000 BCE, was matrifocal, sedentary, and peaceful. Its members created art and worshipped goddesses. Successive waves of invaders from the distant north and east, referred to as Indo-Europeans or Kurgans, conquered these earlier peoples. The invaders were nomadic, horse-riding, warlike tribes who worshipped sky gods. They regarded themselves as superior to the peaceful and more culturally developed people of Old Europe, whom they easily subjugated. Male gods and male superiority came to be assumed as the natural order. In the historical time when Athens became known as the “cradle of democracy,” the right of citizenship was given only to men. Fathers had the power of life or death over their newborn children, which meant that an unwanted daughter or a defective infant could be disposed of, and a daughter who lost her virginity could be sold into slavery.
Not much has changed in some parts of the world. There are still places where a young daughter can be sold into marriage to a much older man who may already have several wives. The prospective husband and her father merely agree upon a dowry or bride price. Or a daughter may be sold for an agreed price to a human trafficker who takes her to a brothel. Her virginity must be assured in both instances, as her value depends upon it. Under this code, since a virgin who is raped dishonors the men of her family, a brother, a father, an uncle, or a grandfather has the right to murder her. This awful practice is called “honor killing.” Mothers have no say in the fate of their daughters or, for that matter, in their own fate, since their primary function is to be brood mares. How very different if, instead, these women were mother bears!
In “Sarah Palin, Mama Grizzlies, Carl Jung, and the Power of Archetypes,” Arianna Huffington looked to “that under-appreciated political pundit, Carl Jung” to explain Sarah Palin's appeal (Huffington Post, August 1, 2010). She cites “Mama Grizzlies,” Palin's web video compiled from a series of Palin rallies, with sound-bite responses.
“It seems like it's kind of a mom awakening . . . women are rising up.”
“I always think of the mama grizzly bears that rise up on their hind legs when somebody is coming to attack their cubs.”
Huffington notes that it is not Palin's political positions that people respond to; it's her use of symbols.
Mama grizzles rearing up to protect their young? That's straight out of Jung's “collective unconscious”—the term Jung used to describe the part of the unconscious mind that, unlike the personal unconscious, is shared by all human beings, made up of archetypes, or, in Jung's words, “universal images that have existed since the remotest times.”
When women in India take to the streets to protest official disregard of rape, when women dance in the streets in an outpouring of support for Eve Ensler's One Billion Rising demonstrations to stop violence against women and girls, when the number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working toward empowerment and equality for women and girls grows exponentially, women across the world are rising up, led by feminists for whom Artemis and mother-bear activism are deep sources of meaning, even when these forces are not named. When they are, there is an immediate “aha!” of intuitive recognition, becausee cause these are archetypal energies that are found in many cultures.
Gendercide
When Atalanta is born, her father expresses his anger and his rejection in a horrible way. Today, the birth of a girl can still be a cause of disappointment, resentment, or anger. In China, for instance, under the “one child per family” policy, girl babies may literally be abandoned in railroad stations and other public places where they will be found and taken to a state-run orphanage. In rural areas, where infanticide is more common, newborn girls may be drowned, smothered, or starved, the family claiming that they died “in childbirth” or shortly after. The same is true in parts of India.
In a 2011 newspaper article, “Girls Choose Better Names” (San Francisco Chronicle, October 23), Chaya Babu reported from Mumbai that 285 girls shed names like Nakusa or Nakushi, which mean “unwanted” in Hindi, and chose new names for a fresh start in life. The plight of girls in India came into focus as this year's census showed the nation's ratio for children under the age of six had dropped to 914 girls for every 1,000 boys. Such ratios indicate a higher death rate among girls due to abortion of female fetuses, female infanticide, or neglect of female children.
Normally between 103 and 106 boys are born for every 100 girls. The ratio has been stable enough to indicate a natural order across races and cultures, one that resulted in approximately the same number of young men and young women, taking into account that, genetically, males are slightly more vulnerable and slightly more likely to die in infancy than girls. The change in this natural order was dramatically illustrated on the cover of The Economist (March 6–12, 2010), which carried the word “Gendercide” printed in bright pink on a black background. Under this startling headline was the question: “What Happened to 100 Million Baby Girls?” The serious article within concluded that these girls had either been killed, aborted, or neglected to the point that they died. When girl babies are not valued and prenatal sex-determination is linked with declining fertility as well as the selective abortion of female fetuses, a disproportionate number of male children survive, skewing the ratio of boys to girls. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, by 2020 there will be thirty to forty million more young men than young women in China because of the preference for boys. In India in 2001, there were forty-six districts with a sex ratio of over 125 boys to 100 girls.
It is not just a skewed birth rate that is reflected in there being fewer females in the world. There are also fewer girls and fewer women surviving than can be expected. Girls don't get the same healthcare and
