Where did women come from?
An origin story about Lilith and Eve to illustrate the audacity of men everywhere
*** Please scroll down to just below the paywall if you’re looking for the audio version of this!
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Hello dear readers, and welcome to everyone who has signed up in the past week! I assume/hope it’s because you’re eager to read these weekly instalments of “Where Did Men Get The Audacity?”, which is another way of saying why do so many men feel so confident to spew utter bullshit when they have nothing but their own conviction to rely on as evidence?
With each edition of Well, Actually, I’ll be equipping you with the facts you need to counter the fiction such men (and their patriarchal cheerleaders) use to reassure themselves of Man’s Natural Dominance. Amongst an abundance of topics of fictional factfuckery that will surely keep me going for at least the next, oh, millennium, we’ll be looking at such things as the myth of world-building (“we built all the roads!”), the myth of women’s universal biological function (“if you don’t have babies, you’ll be sucked into a vortex of unhappiness everyone knows that!”) and the myth of masculine/feminine “polarity” (which is a thing spiritual wellness “warriors” like to waffle on about without actually having a clue what they’re talking about or where such gobbledegook comes from).
But because it’s school holidays and I have a sick child pulling me from work, I thought we’d kick the series off with something funny! This is something that didn’t make the final cut of my most recent book, I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage (you can purchase that here.) It’s MY fictional reimagining of the story of Lilith, who mythology has it was the precursor to Eve in the Garden of Eden, and what really happened with that whole Eve, the rib and the apple palavar. I had a lot of fun writing this, and it pained me to leave it out of the book. But it didn’t really fit, much like the cargo pants I insisted I wanted for my first day at university, when I was looking to make a good impression.
I’m making it the inaugural Well, Actually post not just because I think everyone could use a chuckle right now, but because it’s a good example of how people can just make things up and call it truth simply because it conveniently bolsters whatever version of reality they’ve decided suits them best.
Enjoy!
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If we’re to believe the stories, Adam’s first marriage didn’t turn out too well.
I don’t mean his marriage to Eve although, to be fair, that one was kind of a bust too. Messy business, that. Can’t trust a woman! Dirty creatures, with all that dangerous curiosity and unrestrained sexuality. Best to keep them under lock and key.
No, I mean Adam’s marriage to Lilith. You won’t find much mention of her in the Christian world (the Bible mentions her by name exactly once) but there are references to her in art, engravings and folktales over the last four thousand years at least. Mostly, she’s been depicted as a demon - specifically, the twisted feminine monster responsible for stealing women’s babies, either in the womb, at the moment of their first breath or unexpectedly while they sleep.
But every good villain needs an origin story, and three thousand years after her first recorded appearance, the medieval publication of The Alphabet of Ben Siri (one of the midrashic texts offering Rabbinic interpretations of the Hebrew Bible) recast Lilith as a member of the First Wives Club.
Here’s the basic summary: God made Adam and Lilith from the same material and gave them both the Garden of Eden to live, laugh and love in. Being made of the same material, Lilith sees herself as equal to Adam. But when Adam tries to force Lilith to lie beneath him, she refuses, inciting God’s wrath. He banishes her to a cave in the desert, where the Angel Samuel impregnates her repeatedly. Using His angels as emissaries, God commands Lilith to return to the Garden of Eden, warning that one hundred of her babies will be murdered each day until she complies. Again, she refuses. Her babies are slaughtered as promised, and God creates Eve to be a “helper” to Adam in her place. Forgotten in the barren desert, Lilith grows wings and becomes the demon thief of babies’ souls. Pregnant women are taught to fear her, this hate-filled creature who feeds on their capacity to create life. Mothers in grief are taught to blame her, their babies stolen in the night by the monstrous aberration of femininity she has become. She is a femme fatale, trapping men with her beauty and then consuming them. She is a devil, a monster. According to at least one biblical reference, she is a screech-owl.
Lilith is one of our oldest cautionary tales. Look at what happens when you girlies reject the role God has created you to fulfil! You’ll become a dried up old husk languishing in the barren cave of your womb; an angry, bitter, twisted witch jealous of the pretty girls and all their fertile soil. People will warn their children to avoid you, the winged demon who threw it all away for her “freedom”. And look at her now! Lonely and sad, with no one to visit her in the Old Demons Home.
I don’t like this version of the story, much as I don’t like how we’re supposed to blame Eve for snacking between meals and causing humanity’s original sin. But when men are the only ones allowed to write our collective stories - literally HIStory - then it’s little wonder we have to deal with so many shitty endings for women who step out of line.
Lilith refuses subservience to male authority and becomes a demon?
Cool.
Eve tries to acquire knowledge and “curses” women to experience menstruation and painful childbirth for all time?
Seems fair.
These kinds of stories are told and re-told to women over and over as a way of keeping us in line. Don’t stray too far from the path girls, or you’ll get lost in the woods. Don’t forget your purpose girls, or you’ll lose your one chance at happiness. Don’t hunger for knowledge, experience or adventure, because you’ll destroy the world as we know it.
She was asking for it.
She’s set feminism back one hundred years.
She’s going to end up old and alone with only herself to blame.
I’m sick of the stupid fucking bollocks that all of the dumb men throughout history have insisted is women’s origin story.
So I wrote a better, more believable one.
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