The Linnaean Taxomony of Femininity

ADDENDUM to the previous essay:

I had originally intended, but thought it unnecessary, to provide other examples of other types of femininity aside from anthropomorph schoolgirl-puppies and kawaii all-schoolgirl singing groups.

But more than one readers’ comment to that essay caution me that some readers will always interpret the statement “X is feminine” to mean “X equals feminine” not “X is a member of feminine, of which there are more members than X.”

The reason why I did not emphasize the obvious is that I thought it was too obvious to mention. The question being addressed was whether femininity existed at all; logically a single example suffices to disprove a universal negative. I only need to show you one Tasmanian tiger to prove Tasmanian tigers exist.

But, for the sake of those readers who are puzzled about the meaning of previous essay, please note it is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all feminine characteristics both physical and spiritual. I am confident that women other than anthropomorphic puppy-girls and saccharine-sweet cutie-pie schoolgirl singing groups exist. I believe Victoria, Queen of England, for example, was not a member of an all-schoolgirl singing group, or, at least, not during the later part of her reign. Perhaps she was a member of an all-girl Goth band or something.

It is unnecessary to remind me, or any thoughtful man, that the specific members participating in an archetype are distinct from that archetype and exhibit specifics not found in it. That is not only obvious, it is what the word “archetype” means. The Platonic ideal of a triangle is not the same as the triangular window made of glass in front left of the driver’s seat of the used Oldsmobuick I owned in 1988. We all understand the concept of Platonic ideals and specific examples, where the specific has characteristics other than those the pure ideal version implies.

However, this does not mean archetypes or stereotypes or ideals do not exist, nor does it imply that there is something untoward or illogical or insufficient in referring to them. If I say, “my car window is triangular” to a man who thinks triangles don’t exist, it is no argument to retort that other windows are rectangular, nor is the caution lest someone thing the word “triangular” means “car window” needed.

That said, allow me to propose to any readers unfamiliar with the existence of half the human race a simple Linnaean classification of some of the more prevalent or obvious or memorable archetypes into which women tend to fall.

I propose in brief that the pagan goddesses of old, if they did not reflect or represent a common idea or perception of certain stock feminine types, would not have been popular enough to be remembered from generation to generation.

The first is the Junoesque, who is both queen and mother of gods and men.

Juno

Now, I do not believe anyone regards Junoesque women to be unfeminine, but this is the Internet, so let us find a more pop culture version or something to make the point. There is nothing remotely schoolgirlish or puppyish about the celestial queen, but I defy anyone to make an argument that maternity or queenliness is a masculine role.

Hera

Are there any real women who come across as Junoesque?

Sophia Loren as Ximena in EL CID

While Homer portrays Juno or Hera as something of a shrew wounded by her husband’s adulteries, his is not the only interpretation of what a heavenly queen is like.

Madonna and Child

So we can adduce a second type of femininity, called the Marian, which encompasses everything from the Queen of Heaven to the humble handmaiden of the Lord, to a Mother to a Virgin. Obviously virgins who are also mothers are rare on Earth, so returning to our classical mythology, let us select another virgin for our next type.

 

Artemis

Again, this looks plenty feminine to me, even thought the chaste goddess of the chase engages in what of traditionally a masculine sport of hunting game.

What real women would I place in the Artesian category? While nearly any female athlete would do, I am a geek, so I will pick an actress from a fantasy movie.

Queen Susan the Gentle. Shoot them, Sue!

Is Artemis the only virgin from classical mythology? By no means.

Virginal Athena

Athena is a favorite goddess of mine. Fewer arbitrary acts of cruelty are told of old of her than others of the pantheon, and she is a patron of philosophers. It particular amuses me that the Christians are often chided by the Sexual Revolutionaries for praising and upholding virginity as a female ideal, when, of course, this is a human thing common to all races and nations of man, not something particular to Christians.

The Athenian archetype of womanhood includes two archetypes of its own: the wise woman and the warrior woman. Any bookish woman, bluestocking, scientist or scholar partakes of something of the first.

Chris Fisher as Girl Genius Agatha Heterodyne

For those of you who don’t recognize her, this is a Agatha Heterodyne from GIRL GENIUS, as portrayed by good friend Chris Fisher.  But any female scientist would fit the bill as well, such as Madame Curie:

Okay, that is not really Mme Curie. I hope.

And, of the second aspect of Athenian femininity, the Martial Maiden is perhaps the most common archetype most favored by our modern pop culture, almost to the exclusion of all other female types:

Nicole Leigh Verdin in SHROUD

Leelee Sobieski as Joan of Arc

 

Wonder Woman in Wonder Bra Armor

Note that only the cartoon image above is wearing a metal battle-bikini. The other two images show something more like what Joan of Arc or Elizabeth I might have worn to visit a battlefield, rare as it was for women to be found on battlefields before the invention of the firearm or “equalizer.”

Nicole Leigh Verdin with Equlizer

While the Athenian image of the Martial Maiden is a popular one these days, one reason for its popularity is that modern women serve in the military more frequently than previous generations.

Spc. Jennie Baez of the the 47th Forward Support Battalion in Iraq with heavy caliber Equalizer

There is many a maiden who has need of an Equalizer. Despite what you’ve been told, the depiction of women in old pop culture did not ignore this archetype.

A Dame and Her Equalizers

In the old days, the armed female was actually relatively common. I am puzzled, but not surprised, at the tenacity with which the story is spread that women were always portrayed as damsels in distress in the previous generation. I have not formed anything like a rigorous survey, but I have seen old magazine covers:

Indeed, Biblical and Classical sources show the archetype existed since the dawn of history, the only difference being that its rarity was recognized as normal rather than as evidence of some extraordinary repression of a natural desire in women to commit acts of war and murder.

Judith Decapitating Holofernes

Note Judith in the picture above wincing at the butchery.

Yet another virginal goddess, ironic considering her role, is the eldest and first of all the children of Saturn is Vesta, the goddess of hearth and home, the earth mother herself. Vesta is sadly disregarded in pop culture cartoon versions of the pantheon of old:  I cannot recall seeing her in those well researched and scholarly portrayals of Greco-Roman mythology known as Hercules the Legendary Journeys or Woman Woman comics.

While the vestals were virgins and keepers of the sacred flame, Vesta herself was the goddess of motherhood.

Vesta, Goddess of the Hearth

Vesta the earth-mother is an archetype most disliked in pop culture these days, even as the archetype of the Martial Maiden is the most venerated. Gaea, Rhea, Demeter, and in some ways Proserpine all partake to a degree of this same basic feminine archetype.

Demeter the Grain Goddess

I am sure there is some version of the maternal type in pop culture. Let me see.

June Cleaver

And, as an opposite number to the matrimonial Juno and the virginal goddesses, we have the Venereal archetype, the love goddess. I will use a Victorian artist portraying a classical mythic scene to demonstrate that Not-For-Work-Safe pictures have been with us always, except that the classic nudes were more tastefully done, even beautiful:

The Birth of Venus by William Bouguereau

I am sure I can find a more family-friendly version:

Toon Aphrodite

A digression: I recall reading a complaint by an author whose name I will not repeat, that our modern society was not sufficiently sexual liberated and sexually active. As proof of our ongoing Puritanical repression, he offered the linguistic tidbit that while we have a word for ‘virgin’ we do not have a word for a woman who is not a virgin. I thought this a preposterous argument to make, because it betrayed the blind spot of the author making it. The word, of course, is wife.

Only the son of a deeply corrupt and unchaste society would overlook how the common wisdom of common culture celebrated the transition of the maiden into matron: with the symbolic tearing of the bridal veil, the change of a last name, and, in order and wiser days, with a change of hairstyle and dress and jewelry, particularly the wedding ring, to show that the woman was no longer a virgin.

Of course the sexual revolutionary had simply ‘blanked-out’ the existence of wives and mothers in his mind. His complaint was that there was no word for an unchaste unmarried women. To the contrary, there are many such words. Demimonde or paramour is the politest of the words we can use for such women in polite company. End of digression.

Are there other female archetypes we can draw upon from classical sources? Certainly.While not a member of the pantheon herself, Hecate the Queen of Darkness is a favorite among feminists and neopagans alike, provided they don’t read Hesiod and discover what she was really like.

I am not sure this is actually an image of Hecate. It’s close.

There is many, far too many women these days who follow the example and archetype of Hecate. I think they think it is empowering.

There is a particular feminine bitterness, a fear of loneliness and a hatred of betrayal, which is as strong as a man’s fear of failure and humiliation, which drives a woman to brew poison rather than, as man might, sharpen a long dagger to hide beneath his cloak and lie in wait for his foe. The witch, being less powerful in combat than the brute or bully, must carry out her malice in a venomous way which has naturally become an archetype for that aspect of feminine nature.

But what of even more powerless women, or damsels in distress? Here we must look for mortals, and not goddesses, because no one has ever heard of a powerless goddess.

Briseis, the slavegirl possessed by Achilles and taken by Agamemnon, the source of his famed wrath in Homer’s famous poem, springs to mind. Fortunately, this image is forgotten in the far past, no longer popular, and there is no fangirls who dress as her and fanboys who dream daydreams about her. Such a relief!

I am not sure this is actually an image of Briseis

The classical example of a woman who outsmarts all her suitors, and perhaps even her husband, is Penelope, the most faithful and loyal wife of longsuffering Odysseus. Every widow uncertain if her husband is dead, or every woman wilier than her man falls into this archetype.

Penelope and Suitors by Waterhouse

In fact, an interest contrast is made with her cousin and fellow Queen, Clytemnestra. Here is an image of her emerging from murdering her husband in the bath with a two-headed axe. The motive for the murder was complex, as all motives in myths are, but the political ambition of Aegisthus, who was both Clytemnestra’s lover and the King’s cousin with a clearer legal claim to the throne than he, formed part of it. Another part was her husband’s murder of Iphigenia, and also his infidelity with Cassandra, whom he owned as his concubine.

Clytemnestra by Collier

Helen of Troy, another cousin of Penelope, was even more famous, and even more disloyal, for thousand ships she launched with her face ended up slaughtering more men than one, and more years than ten.

Helen of Troy

The degree to which the Helen archetype overlaps with the Venus archetype I leave for others to debate, but I will point out that unlike Venus dallying with Mars behind the back of her husband Vulcan, Helen’s role in her own abduction is more ambiguous, and Homer, at least, portrays her affection for Paris is minimal.

What is the point of posting all this pictures of all these women? Is it merely a gratuitous excuse to show images of cute dames on the Internet? Of course not! If that had been my purpose, I would have posted a completely gratuitous shot of  catwoman.

No, my point is that femininity is a real thing, not an arbitrary social convenience or convention, and not limited to Japanese all-girl j-pop bands. In the examples above, some archetypes represent things men cannot do at all, roles they cannot fill, such as Vestal virgins and seductresses and mothers and witches, and some archetypes represent roles men fill much better than women and with much more zest, such as hunter or ax-murderer or soldier boy.

My argument, or, rather, my statement, since I don’t think the point needs to be argued, is that even when women fill traditionally masculine roles, they tend to do it in an identifiably feminine way: a woman in command acts like a Queen, not like a King. Women murder for the sake of jealousy, as in the case of Clytemnestra, far more often than for the sake of money, and far more often her husband or child than a stranger.

As for the Martial Maidens so beloved of the moderns, and women in combat, it is significant to recall that women still act like women and men still act like men.

Since this is a point on a topic where most people get their opinions not through experience but through the propaganda organs of the mass media, allow me to quote Robert Bork:

The Israelis, Soviets, and Germans, when in desperate need of front-line troops, placed women in combat, but later barred them. Male troops forgot their tactical objectives in order to protect the women from harm of capture, knowing what the enemy would do to the female prisoners of war. This made combat units less effective and exposed the men to even greater risks.Our military seems quite aware of such dangers, but, because of the feminists, it would be politically dangerous to respond as the Israelis did by taking women out of harm’s way. Instead, the American solution is to try to stifle the natural reactions of men. The Air Force, for example, established a mock prisoner of war camp to desensitize male recruits so they won’t react like men when women prisoners scream under torture. There is a considerable anomaly here. The military is training men to be more sensitive to women in order to prevent sexual harassment and also training men to be insensitive to women being raped and sodomized or screaming under torture. It is impossible to believe the both efforts can succeed simultaneously.

I listed Military Maidens as a female archetype common to the classical and Biblical cultural memory because it is: Camilla and Deborah, Semiramis and Boadicea people history and literature. How commonly real women fill this role is a separate discussion. The witch is also an archetype, and witches are make-believe.

However, there is one type or image of womanhood which is not an archetype: and that is Snow White wielding a sword.

Snow White, Warrior Princess

This is not an image calculated to strike terror into the heart of a foe. Something of the basic falsehood, the play-pretense of it, necessarily shows through.

Everyone knows that the preferred weapon of women in combat, especially if she is in a skintight catsuit or a brass brassiere, is the whip.

The Preferred Weapon of Womankind

A Completely Gratuitous Shot of the Catwoman