When my son was a teen, he and his friends got together to play a game called Halo, which was my first introduction to the concept of “tea bagging,” when a male player stands over a corpse he’s just killed and squats over the victim’s face, as though inserting his testicles in the corpse’s mouth. According to my son and his friends, this gesture was the “ultimate” insult to the other gamer who had been shot.
When I asked how many times their characters had been “tea bagged,” they replied, “lots and lots of times.”
This concept of males disrespecting others through the use of their testicles was not new to me, since I have studied gender in all its permutations for decades, even by then.
But this image of “tea bagging” someone is the key to understand why some men still fear women, despite the fact that thousands of cases where women, either conscious or unconscious, have been forced to have male genitalia inserted in their mouths as a means of insulting them in some way are clearly documented.
Let’s go back a bit in history to fully appreciate this continued male fear.
First, all cultures began as female-centered, since women were viewed as more spiritually and physically powerful than males because of three things (and more, but you’ll need to read my book for those):
1. Women could seemingly give birth to new human beings solely out of the power of their own bodies—male contributions to pregnancy would not be discovered until the Egyptians domesticated swans, the only monogamous animals ever domesticated, circa 2400 BCE.
2. Women clearly had ties to the cosmos through their synchrony with the moon’s phases. The moon waxes and wanes for 27 days, then stays hidden for 3, just like women’s menstrual cycles. In fact, we get the prefix “men” from the word for the moon, and we still call women’s cycles “monthlies,” which also comes from the use of the moon to track time.
3. Menstruation means that women can bleed, but not die, for three to five days every month—amazing, when you think about it—and ancient men wanted that power so badly they imitated menstruation through circumcision (Eastern hemisphere) and penile piercing (Western hemisphere). Roman soldiers wore fascia for “protection” against dying because those penises were circumcised—thus drew on Feminine Powers of Protection.
We know that at least one culture, the early Sumerians, practiced a ritual wherein the elected “king” of the city of Uruk was sacrificed each year (aka at Easter, as it is still reckoned by moon phase) in order to propitiate the goddess Inanna, who was the ruler of Heaven and Earth, so that her appeasement would create a world of plenty.
Once males discovered they are necessary for women to get pregnant, however, they began to systematically change the narratives around birth, which is why both the Pentateuch (first five chapters of the bible, believed by all Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and The Iliad, both written circa 750 BCE, emphasize the fathers of the males named, in an attempt to wipe out women’s significance in their respective cultures.
I’ve also discussed elsewhere why the “Book of Ruth” in the Old Testament is not so much about embracing a new faith, which it is, but more about convincing the women of Judea to accept a NEW way of tracing lineage and inheritance—from the matrilineal method used before patriarchies began to rise (aka the Levite method) to a patriarchal one, wherein land can be inherited directly through the males of a family, and no longer through the females.
These changes had to be gradual to be accepted, however, but the primary tools males used to make women second class and third class citizens in their cultures was through LAWS.
Most of the Jewish laws were created post-exile in Babylon after those exiled there saw the financial and power benefits of having a male-led culture for themselves.
The Judean royals and priest classes were exiled in Babylon circa 597 BCE. The common people, however, either stayed in the besieged city of Jerusalem, or fled to Egypt, establishing a base in Elephantine where they built a second temple; the first having been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Because the people in Elephantine were not royals or high priests, that temple was never sanctified by the Hebrew powers that be.
We don’t know when the first Judean law was written that forbade women to learn how to read and to write, but the reference to such a law against women’s education is recorded in 1 Corinthian, which was written circa 54 BCE.
Why is being able to read and to write important?
Because women cannot advocate for themselves, if they are not allowed to communicate with others about the abuses they suffer.
Remember, human society’s default mode is democracy. We know that because many cultures prior to the rise of patriarchies were clearly democratic—voting in leaders, who became spokespeople for the communities, as well as voting in various city councils—one of the oldest forms of government ever recorded—often called “elders.”
Such a council ran the island of Crete before the people who would become the Greeks met them. You can learn a lot about the prior matriarchal culture there in the chapter on them in my book, Pitiless Bronze. They are one of many matriarchal cultures I explore.
So the real reason males are afraid of women, especially now in the United States wherein misogynists seem to be running rampant, is because these patriarchists realize that, if women are given COMPLETE self-agency, they will stop believing the myth that they NEED males to protect them.
That’s right.
If females are allowed and encouraged to be as physically active as males, they, too, grow up fast and strong.
If females are allowed and encouraged to seek educations, not just learning to read and to write, but also to propose their own ideas and form their own companies, they succeed at every turn.
If females are allowed and encouraged to run for political offices without being told they can’t simply because of their genitalia, societies IMPROVE by leaps and bounds, which means that the rich males who want to keep their wealth, even by depriving their employees and others of living wages, won’t want them fixing the problems those people are creating—and, let’s face it, these particular males do not act alone. There are far too many women who are too poorly educated or who believe they will become rich and powerful by supporting these men who fully support these males, even when they are clearly pedophiles and otherwise abusive.
My mother used to say to my brothers, who she had raised as self-centered hedonists, unlike her daughters, that she would “have their guts for garters” if they ever misbehaved again. Her threats never worked.
Perhaps it’s time now to have “testicles for tea” for all those males misbehaving now.
After all, they taught our young men that this kind of disrespect for a slain or unconscious enemy is acceptable.
Perhaps they need to realize that the abuses they CHOOSE to enact on others can and will come back around to haunt them.