Why Not Let the Sky Fall on Our Heads?

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer
I love the old Chinese proverb that the Forum’s Jane Ahlin used in her column about gender equality: “Women hold up half the sky.” I keep a file on what’s happening to women around the world, and I pulled out at least 20 items or so because of that proverb.

First, an editorial in the New York Times about egg-laying factory farms aroused a few letters to the editor that I thought applied to both female humans and chickens. Regina Weiss of Brooklyn wrote: “Inhumane confinement, illegal anticompetitive practices and factory farming hurt animals, the environment, the consumer, the public health and the farmer.” This sentence is in reference to the practice of jamming hens into very confining spaces where egg-layers cannot turn around and are touching other hens constantly while providing omelets to humanity. Sounds almost human, doesn’t it?
Laws are beginning to be passed by legislatures, that factory farms—whether pig, cow, chicken, or human–-need to be much more humane. Veal calves should not be confined to tiny places where the animals cannot turn around. Chickens and turkeys have been abused for decades, never touching green grass or seeing the sun. I often pass huge buildings where turkeys are grown for our Thanksgiving day meal by good Christians who hold “dominion” over them. Modern egg-laying operations are now often required, because of “humane” legislation, to allow sufficient space so that hens can stand up, turn around, sit down, and walk to clean water and nutritious food troughs.
Scientists and the Individual Human Genome
The human body –- that’s both male and female –- is made up of about 10 trillion individual cells and over 100 trillion bacteria. Now scientists are working on the virome, which is defined as a large community of viruses that make up our microbiotic universe. Each human being –- both male and female –- has a distinct set of viruses that make up a highly stable viral DNA completely different from our sisters and brothers.

When Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in a pensive moment, describes male and female, he assembles all of those cells, bacteria, and viruses into one human species: “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!”

So how come women around the world are treated like the animals in a factory farm pen, stall, or wire cage if they are noble in reason, like an angel, and are the beauty of the world?
There are a few signs that women are being allowed to slowly enter the 21st century. When William Rehnquist was chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court some years ago, a female assistant solicitor general was arguing a case before the court. She was wearing a brown dress that Rehnquist did not like.

Halfway through the presentation of the case, Rehnquist sent a note to her boss indicating that he never wanted a female attorney to wear that color of brown in “his” court again! So here was the chief “determiner” who had to decide to treat men and women equally, castigating a woman for wearing a brown dress in court.

Would he have sent the same note if a male attorney had been wearing the hated brown?  A chief justice who pulled that today would be absolutely massacred by the press–I hope.
Times have changed. When a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg applied for a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in 1960, she was one of the top graduates at Columbia Law School. The fact that she knew the law didn’t enter into her rejection. She didn’t get the job because Frankfurter said: “I can’t stand girls in pants. Does she wear skirts?” The human brain, according to MRI studies, generates more electrical impulses in a single day than all the world’s telephones put together. But there is still the matter of a connection being made.
Rehnquist thought the chief justice should have a different robe than the other justices because of his “unique status,” so he added four stripes to each sleeve of his robe. Court followers snickered, with some stating the ultimate putdown: “I didn’t know the Supreme Court had a navy or an admiral for chief justice!” At least the robe was his favorite black, not brown.

One could ask the question: if women are holding up half the sky, why are there only three women justices out of 111 in our history?
From Indian Untouchable to International Business Consultant
I added another story to my collection this morning about women and half the sky. Guy Trebay in the New York Times tells the story of Kakuben Lalabhai Parmar of Mudhutra, Gujarat, India. Married at 14 and now the mother of seven children, she was born into the Indian caste known as the “Untouchables.” 

According to tradition -– and the Indian Constitution—she was absolutely bound to her home within Mudhutra. But 20 years ago she and other women in her village received very small loans to start businesses. Kakuben developed a distinctive embroidery system using bright threads and reflective shards from broken mirrors. The material is sold to manufacturers who make Simone Camille satchel bags that sell for as much as $2,000.
Kakuben is now the family’s chief breadwinner. She owns cattle, has an account with a credit union, and jokingly says she uses her husband as a secretary. And she is no longer considered untouchable. She was invited to New York by a group to discuss her success. 

How she got to New York is a fascinating trip through time, space, and culture—and is a direct parallel to the story of her rise in the “business” world. In that Mudhutra is in an isolated rural area of western India, she first climbed onto a cart pulled by a bullock, followed by a ride in a trishaw (three-wheeled bike), then a ride in a flat-bottomed jeep, then the open top of a shuttle bus to the airport, and finally climbed the stairs to a jet passenger plane. After her New York exposure, she now travels the world as a business consultant.  I would think that in her part of the world she is holding up way more than half the sky.
If I Were Catholic and Muslim Women, I’d Let the Sky Crash Down on the Vatican and Mecca
Evidently the priests, bishops, cardinals, popes, mullahs,and imams of the world actually think they are holding up the entire sky, protecting women from any thoughts of being equal or of being noble in reason—or moving in squadrons of angels. It’s too bad there is not a huge uninhabited island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific where we could send all Catholic and Muslim men to live, who could then live out their arrogant, sadistic lives in 14th-century splendor until they perished.
The Vatican just told the women of the church what Mel Gibson would have told them if he had been boozing again. In a dreary tome of avoidance the Vatican came up with a few toothless and sky-falling directions for bishops to use in handling sexual abuse cases involving priests and higher-ups around the world.

But in their inhumane attempt to keep the Roman church free of the advice, counsel, and leadership of women, they put in a clause about the excommunication of any priest or bishop that ordained women as priests. Can any bishop explain to me why the sexual attacks on defenseless children by horny, uncelibate men equals the ordination of women to the pulpit?

I did get a kick out of the exposure of the relics of Mother Teresa in churches -– while the Vatican is conducting two investigations into how nuns are handling the intricacies of the modern world.
The Vatican bosses say that as long as Jesus did not pick any women as his “apostles,” they can’t allow women to become priests because of a 2000-year tradition. What codswallop! Jesus treated women as equals, evidently knowing they kept up half the sky. He taught women, thus recognizing they had brains. He accepted women as close advisers and followers. At least half of his closest followers were women. Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene first after the Resurrection. Most of the attendees at the crucifixion were courageous women, even if they were busy enough keeping up their half of the sky. Where were the male apostles?
Why did the Gospels often refer to Mary Magdalene as the “apostle to the apostles?” When Jesus cured the woman of twelve years of erratic menstrual flow and then called her “daughter,” what did that mean, Pope Benedict? Is it possible He was blessing her as being equal to any “son?” If equal to any son, couldn’t the daughter also be a priest of the church? There are 66 million Catholics in this country of 305 million. Assuming half are female, we certainly need 33 million more females to help hold up an often very cloudy sky.
The Tale of the Niqab, Hijab, and Burqa
Water pipes are very popular devices in the Muslim world, bringing solace and peace to many in cafes –-as long as you’re a male. The Hamas rulers in Gaza have just announced that females will no longer be allowed to smoke water pipes in public places. Police spokesmen said they are simply enforcing the traditions in Muslim Gaza. They also claimed that many divorces occur because women are seen smoking in public. Hamas took over control of Gaza in 2007 and immediately began a program to impose strict Muslim interpretations of Islam on all residents. School girls must wear modest clothing at all times and women must have female hair stylists work on their hair.

The Koran, the “bible” of all Muslims, specifically states the following about the place of women in that religion: “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women because Allah has made the one superior to the other…Therefore, righteous women are devoutly obedient. Those who defame virtuous women and cannot produce four witnesses to support their allegations shall be scourged with eighty lashes.” 

It’s too bad men cannot experience childbirth to bring them to some sense of reality. Carol Burnett described it this way: “Take your bottom lip, pull it as far from your face as you can, and now pull it over your head.”
Perhaps our new Central Command commander, Marine Corps General James Mattis, has the right attitude about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a reputation for being very candid about military actions in those two Muslim countries: “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap around women for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway, so it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”  Finally, a general who thinks it’s necessary to kill people to win a war.
Speaking of veils, many European countries, including France, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands at the moment, are considering banning Muslim veils on the grounds that forcing women to wear them is demeaning and degrading to women. Syria has already banned the wearing of the niqab, the full black Islamic veil that covers women completely except for the eyes.

Turkey has banned the hijab, the simple head scarf that covers only the head. Turkey is almost half Muslim so the authorities are trying to avoid scenes in public places.

The burqa, which covers the woman from head to foot including the eyes, is controversial in many countries. The Taliban often demands that all women must wear the burqa, often throwing acid on the faces of uncovered women to make the point.
The Status of Women in the United States
Women are making slow progress toward equality in power, money, and leadership positions in the U.S. I think a cartoon in a recent New Yorker has a rather sardonic but truthful message about the differences between men and women. A female detective is looking at the victim of a knifing on the floor of an apartment and ventures this statement to her male assistant:

“The killer had to be a man. Not only is the knife still bloody–it wasn’t even put in the sink.” Here’s a woman who is doing her share in holding up the sky.
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