From Eve to Dawn Quotes

“High fashion turns women into works of art, and women have always been willing to sacrifice freedom for the appearance of transcendence. What power is to a man, illusion is to a women. You can count on this: in any society, in any period, whatever style emerges to distinguish the elite from ordinary women will physically constrict.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“In no society have women constricted men within the domestic compound or regularly battered or raped men. In no known culture, no matter how high a woman's status, have women as a caste locked up husbands, limited their bodily freedom, or denied them a voice in group decision. Men in matrilinies do not suffer as women do in patrilinies. Matrilineality is rooted in the bond between mother and child; patrilineality is rooted in dubious assertions of ownership of women and children.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Clans became patrilineal, which inevitably entails male-domination. Naming children for fathers is intrinsically an act of force: it reverses natural mother right. And because it is impossible until recent years to assure paternity, patrilineality requires abuse of women.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Everywhere, men base their claim to superiority on a connection with the deity that women lack. During the period of state formation, women lost the right to perform rites of worship. This denial led to the devaluation of female children and the exclusion of women from property rights.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“In 381 Theodosius I organised the Council of Constantine, which proclaimed the doctrine of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of the same substance, consubstantial, one person comprising god. The doctrine went even further than Greek myth in eliminating the female from the godhead. The Christian father-god utters the Word, his son, and procreates through language, entirely without a woman. The holy spirit is born from the mutual love of son and father. This creation is not incest because bodies are not involved. The Trinity, understandably called a mystery, lies at the heart of Christianity. It achieves two major goals: it posits a realm that transcends the physical world, in which reality is made by the word. History is filled with rules who claim divinity to justify their superiority, but not until Christianity and the sacralising of the notion that language creates reality does the debate between appearance and reality begin to pervade Western literature and thought. [...] the Trinity procreates without the female - without body, blood, ooze, without nature, and superior to it. Generations of clerical writers, wishing that women did not exist, lament that this sort of procreation was possible only to god. The church defined the divine realm in opposition to the earthly one, celebrating birth through utterance, death as life, the overcoming of sex and body, a realm where nothing changes and power and justice are one.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Oppressors fear those they oppress: Greek myths and literature depict women as uncontrollable and violent. Male killers where heroes of victims of fate beyond their control; female killers were monsters.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Unlike men, women have not, until the feminist movement had sex based solidarity the isolation is not incidental; solidarity is what men have feared most in women. To prevent its formation, every state we know about separated women from each other, imprisoning them in the home, where they were under the direct surveillance of husbands or kin. When women began to ally with each other and to politic during the French revolution, men barred female assembly. In India today, men suspiciously eye women who gather at wells or pumps. Women are afraid to speak to each other, although no law forbids it. Simply making men central, by making them necessary to survival, is enough to set women against each other.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Both men and women collude in their oppression when they accept their societies myths, but many believe the myths and propaganda teaching male superiority. Laws forcing women into marriage by denying them any other avenue of support, or allowing them access to power only through sons, co-opt their loyalty. Women may even accept constrictions if it puts them in the superior group, makes them "ladies" in worlds that despise women.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Historians often debate whether women have more rights and capabilities in religious or secular, Catholic or Protestant, capitalist or communist, or militaristic or humanitarian states. Such debates assume that the oppression of women is incidental to another aspect of culture. All early states deprived women of their status as human beings and of the rights men possessed. Religious states like India used religion to justify this constriction; China's guiding secular philosophy, Confucianism, constricted women as much as India's religious laws.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Given the degree of male will and power exercised against women throughout history, it is amazing that women remain a force to contend with.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“The first laws we know about that make females inferior Uruk (Sumer). These laws list a new crime - adultery - that only women could commit. And in Sumer, a knew occupation - prostitution - is devised by the temple priests. The coincidence (in the same culture if not at the same moment) of an assertion of female inferiority, the criminalisation of free sexuality in women, and the use of female sexuality in commercial transactions benefiting men demonstrates the new male vision of women: as sexual objects to be possessed and used by men.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Patriarchy makes men unhappy, but degrades women. Every early state passed laws regulating women alone; the laws of these states resemble each other despite their separation in time and space, and such laws grow harsher as time moves on.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“The assertion of female inferiority prepares the ground for men's subjection, because the principle of superiority ramifies endlessly. If one man can be superior to another, the second man may also be superior to a third, and so on. If men can be superior to women, some men can be superior to other men. Male solidarity attempts to blur that fact, to assert that "down deep" all men are brothers. But this ideal is far from realisation in this world - men are united only when they are opposed to women. Male superiority is a psychological core of patriarchy, but its political and economic purpose is the subjection of other men. Men have regularly rebelled against one ruler or another but have never rebelled against the principle of superiority - the only rebellion that can end the injustice and misery that arises from invidious distinctions - or generic discrimination.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Patriarchy was conceived as a revolution against female domination; men pulled together against a sex described as inferior in order to usurp women's powers. But they did not really want women's powers: they did not want the responsibility for producing and raising children and the daily work of sustaining men. They wanted symbolic powers - ownership of children and women.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Patriarchy insists that some people are better than others because its primary reason for existing is to assert that men are superior to women. But because this claim is a falsehood, it is regularly challenged. States built on lies are insecure and are easily threatened; leaders must endlessly propagandise, insisting their lies are truths.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Democracies claim that they do not subscribe to the lie of patriarchy but hold everyone equal. A society of equals votes for one man to be held a limited superior for a limited time, in order to govern not as a divine appointee, but as the people's choice. But patriarchal thinking, with its idolisation of power a belief in transcendence, permeates all societies and cannot simply be ignored. Power cliques develop in patriarchies, and soon enough become supreme, even over the elected governor. In our time, these cliques are multinational corporations. Politics cannot change unless patriarchy ceases to be the primary structure of our thought.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Today, no law or custom forces women to constrict themselves this way. They do it to gain status, to set themselves off from the common herd of a despised species. Elite women always adopt fashions that impede freedom of movement and action, and those who want to appear to be elite always imitate them. Men mock women as slaves to fashion but women's concern with fashion has a sub text. All women know that females are barely known as animals.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“People in simple societies may have killed infants they could not feed in times of scarcity. Female infanticide is an entirely different matter. It occurs in societies with private property in which only males can own property, and it is justified by the need for male heirs. In such societies, men alone can perform religious rituals. Female infanticide is obviously a manifestation of low self esteem for females. Since women's status was traditionally associated with their reproductive capabilities, female infanticide also implies a low value for reproduction. It occurred in most ancient states.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Men who rise in status win greater autonomy or power, but women who rise in status must cede control of their reproductive and person life or their work.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Status is treacherous for women: in patriarchies, it is always a trade-off for freedom.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“States are corporations masquerading as peoples. They encompass diverse peoples with varied customs, bloodlines, and languages, and they are ruled by an elite that imposes unity by force and asserts a bond of nationality that supersedes traditional blood or family ties.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Matriarchy, if it existed, would be identical to patriarchy, with females dominant. Women have wielded great power in the world and have had personal authority over men in their families or communities. But no society has institutionalised female-dominance, a sociopolitical structure giving women authority over men and the right to use force against them. So entrenched is patriarchal thinking, however, that people commonly use the term "Matriarchy" to describe women living free of male authority.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Patriarchies are societies within institutions - hierarchical bodies of government, religion, law, education, commerce, and culture - designed to transcend individual lives, to endure over ages, and to maintain and transmit power from man to man, a practice called "Passing the mantle". All institutions have customs or laws that give men prerogatives or advantages and that exclude or limit the participation of women and certain men. Patriarchies in different states disempower different groups of men, but they all disempower women.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“The term " Patriarchy" denotes institutionalised male dominance, guaranteed by a set of interlocking structures that perpetuate the power and authority of an elite class of men over all other humans and grant all men power and authority over women of their class. Power is might - physical, psychological, or economic. Animals may dominate other animals by virtue of birth or charisma. But authority - a moral or spiritual right (tactically backed by force) to judge others and coerce behaviour - does not exist among animals. Authority is insidious because we tend to internalise it: we feel guilt at performing acts called wrong by authorities, even if we ourselves do not believe them wrong.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Once the mechanisms of patrilineality, patrilocality, and exogamy were in place, it was difficult for women to escape. In time, men in some groups raised vying for status to an organising principle, competing to show their importance within the group and generating "Big man" societies. These societies fostered the rise of the state and its sociopolitical form - patriarchy.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Myths rarely offer facts, only metaphors for political or social forces, but myths about former female powers would not exist if men had always controlled women. If men always controlled women, their domination would need to explanation or justification, but would seem natural. Myths of once powerful females are amazingly universal.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Patrilinies are founded on domination. To own children, men must guarantee their paternity, which requires them to guard women's bodies, claiming to own them. This claim turns women into men's possessions. Controlling another requires force, so patrilineality permits or encourages brutality towards women. Such behaviour makes for bad relations between the sexes. Brutality is rare in matrilinies, where women are surrounded by kin; men invented patrilocality to control women.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Rituals were designed to protect men from Earth's retribution, and it has been suggested that after the invention of horticulture, humans began to attribute creation to a deity above nature, rather than within it, to a male God rather than a female Goddess.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Isolated, confined, allowed only small amounts of certain foods and drink, taught that her body is powerful but contaminated, a girl learns that she has power - to pollute: in such cultures, menstrual blood is a source of horror and fear. Menstruation symbolises female power, considered destructive to men. If female power can destroy men, women are men's enemies, and the condition of the sexes is a state of war.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1

“Puberty rites are specifically designed to coerce boys to reject their primary and deepest bond, to their mothers. Male initiations emphasise that men must be born twice, once through the mother and a second time through men.”
― Marilyn French, From Eve to Dawn: A History of Women in the World, Vol. 1