You could say that this is a difficult time for women, or you might say it has always been a difficult time. But let’s just say that women have had to be courageous forever.
Antigone, a 3000-year-old play by Sophocles, is perhaps our oldest example of a woman speaking truth to power. The protagonist defends the right to bury her deceased brother, a young man considered a traitor to Thebes by Creon, who is both her uncle and king.
Antigone believes it is her responsibility to her brother to perform the holy rites attached to his burial — an ancient religious act. Creon, however, decrees that this man should be prey for animals as he lies above ground where he was felled in battle.
When Antigone defies the king, she is put to death, as she knew she would by doing so.
There is more to a woman’s courage than this, however. Bearing children has always been associated with pain and the possibility of death. Raising those same little ones includes their defense, sometimes to the point of giving your own life to safeguard theirs.
Mating requires attachment to a man, historically stronger and capable of harming the female and her children. Rape remains a danger, a peril on every occasion women leave the home.
But there is more. Victims may endure verbal brutality in the questions they are asked when reporting the crime. Cross-examination in a court is not less harsh. Some defense attorneys claim the female provoked the attack.
Nor has the fair sex long been permitted the choice of a husband. Instead, the future wife had to accept the custom and control of parental matchmaking. The practice still exists.
A number of religions continue to characterize women as “less than” men — to the males they marry, in particular. They are told what to do, what is ladylike or brazen, and when to be silent.
Always by gents.
And yet, the partner must defend her husband without outshining him.
A tightrope walk.
Women are now firefighters and serve in wartime. They play hard in games that used to be the property of men. Rosey the Riveter might be a WWII fictional icon, but if brought to life, she would work in every available job today, even though wage discrimination exists.
The dangers of factories and slaughterhouses do not block the necessity of making a punishing living any more than the agricultural industry.
All the while, members of the fair sex are still called foul words related to their sexuality and their appearance. They are derided by the likes of Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently claimed the USA is short on “masculine energy.”
Ladies have taken on “men’s jobs” and taken on males. Think of Greta Thunberg, a 22-year-old climate activist who began her crusade to save the planet and the human race at age 15.
Data from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) indicate that in 2022, adult females were more likely than men to be diagnosed as mentally ill. In addition, women were more likely to be characterized as suffering from serious mental illness.
Many reasons have been offered for these gender disparities, including a greater willingness among women to open themselves to treatment via drugs or psychotherapy. Some would say more significant challenges exist for women than for men in the course of life. Nonetheless, it is well known that life expectancy is longer for the females of the species.
Argentine history offers a striking illustration of female bravery by the mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza del Mayo. Wikipedia tells us this:
Women had organized to gather, holding a vigil, while also trying to learn what had happened to their adult children during the 1970s and 1980s. They began to gather for this every Thursday, from 1977 at Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace, in public defiance of the government’s law against mass assemblies.[1]
Wearing white headscarves to symbolize the diapers (nappies) of their lost children, embroidered with the names and dates of birth of their offspring, now young adults, the mothers marched in twos in solidarity to protest the denials of their children’s existence or their mistreatment by the military regime.[1] Despite personal risks, they wanted to hold the government accountable for the human rights violations which were committed in the Dirty War.[2]
The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde is the latest model of uncommon dauntlessness. The cleric speaks with quiet strength in delivering her pleas for the unfortunate in her church and elsewhere in this country. Three thousand years after Sophocles, she inherits Antigone’s example of speaking truth to power.
Budde echoed the Hebrew Bible when she spoke to the new President at the National Cathedral in Washington:
“Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Exodus 22:21I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands, to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we all were once strangers in this land.
Mariann Budde’s sermon, which was part of the recent Inauguration ceremonies, has gone viral and is on YouTube. Rather than offer it here, you will find an older speech by the Bishop above, describing how she found courage in a difficult moment in 2020.
This woman says that she still experiences anxiety every time she preaches. She further states that “we are all called to be brave.” Indeed, she wrote a book about it in 2023: How We Learn to be Brave.
Very few of us are without fear. To be brave we overcome it. May you be brave. Perhaps you already are.
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The top photo is a Woman Operating a Turret Lathe by Howard R. Hollem in 1942, courtesy of the Library of Congress. It is followed by a picture of a Woman Firefighter taken by Spapa003. Norman Rockwell’s 1942 Saturday Evening Post cover of Rosie the Riveter comes next. The first and last of these are sourced from Wikipedia.org. The second comes from Wikimedia Commons.
