Dear Pandora

Why erasure of history poisoned the gender well

Pandora, John William Waterhouse, 1896

There is something incredibly interesting that has come to my attention when regarding the discussion of gender relations and how tumultuous they have been, at least online. A pattern that only exacerbates and stokes the flames of a pre-existing resentment. But before we get to that pattern, let’s talk about trauma.

Trauma is a tricky thing: it is a burden often carried not just by individuals but entire communities and cultures. The trauma of one member of a family is compounded through generations even after the traumatic event has stopped. The only end in sight is for both the trauma to no longer be inflicted and a cognizant desire to cease existing within said moment in time. No one can heal from trauma that continues to occur.

It is a well studied sociological concept that poverty tends to beget poverty. It is not only a harrowing economic position to be in, but also a constant traumatic event. Not having enough money for food is traumatic, not having enough money for sustained, reliable housing is traumatic, and this trauma is constant. This trauma affects generations upon generations, with children born into it doomed to repeat the same pattern. But even outside of socio-economic class, sustained trauma can occur to any group. It can occur within families plagued by addictions, or sexual abuse, or interpersonal violence. It is a compounding of psychologically damaging situations which then house themselves within the memories of the members that lived (or continue to live) through it.

We are not free from historic trauma carried by our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. My grandmother lived through one of the most brutal dictatorships in Argentina’s history where the fear of being kidnapped by the regime’s secret police was a very real threat. My mother remembers being a little girl and watching her mother burn political books in their fire place, fearing government retaliation. As a result of this nation-wide trauma, my mother’s generation is known by their ability to keep their heads down and stay quiet. Her generation was essentially muted, their tongues severed at the source, and the country suffered for it.

Argentina has never truly bounced back from this and it’s people continue to confuse progress for regression because what every human being craves is safety and consistency. And Argentina is not the only country that finds itself in the same situation. Historic trauma has an aggregate effect.

Now, let’s talk about women’s history. Women’s history is littered with trauma: women from every corner of the world through any historical point have been subjugated, abused, and oppressed in some way, shape, or form. This oppression occurred over thousands of years. Of the women who were able to rise from their predetermined stature, many of them were only recently uncovered.

For decades, centuries, and millennia, women’s contributions to the project of civilization have been obscured, often to the fault of no one, or, more succinctly too categorically unimportant to document. And so, for countless upon countless of years, the version of the woman who’s only purpose in life was to make babies persisted. We were taught that women didn’t hunt because they are weaker, they didn’t paint because they are uncreative, they didn’t invent because they are unintelligent. Their subjugation was framed as safety, because they are emotional creatures incapable of running their own lives. And so when new history is uncovered that provides factual evidence of the opposite, it is like pouring rubbing alcohol on an open wound. Of course women are plenty capable, of course they hunted and painted and invented. To believe otherwise is utterly foolish. No other female mammal sits around and waits, especially not one gifted with higher consciousness and logical reasoning.

It’s difficult as a woman to not feel perpetually gaslit, because women have been and continue to be gaslit. The trauma of our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers doesn’t just disappear, especially when the traumatizing event continues to happen. Marital rape was only criminalized less than 50 years ago. Roe v Wade was overturned less than 10. These aren’t things of the past, these are still part of the present—3-4 generations were alive during both (and so much more counting the entire world).

There is a sense of betrayal when you find your own place in the world to be intentionally shrunk. No one enjoys to be made to feel small because there is no power in smallness. Every creature yearns for freedom, and women are no different.

---

One thing that is sure to cause absolute fracture is the inability or unwillingness to point out obvious problems. Racism in the United States will persist so long as no one talks about how the aftershocks of slavery and everything that followed continues to plague the Black community. Argentina will never solve its corruption problem so long as people continue to believe in the first world narrative of exceptionalism. Tension between the genders will persist so long as the elephant in the room continues to be ignored.

I run into a certain type of comment on here that goes along the lines of:

Well, men in the present are not responsible for what happened in the past and we should not be held accountable or blamed for that. I’m not a bad guy, not all men are bad guys.

I want you all to understand that what I am writing about here is not blanket accountability for sins of the father. That’s too easy. What I’m looking for is too look into the ugly mirror of the past and realize that somethings were given by taking from others. And in looking in that mirror, I want you all to start talking.

We do not live on a set timeline that only moves forward, that’s not how our brains work. We are often living in pockets of time, sometimes the present, sometimes the past, sometimes a future. The stories and cautionary tales of the wayward man are not spooky tales from history, they are oral warnings given to us by our mothers and their grandmothers and so on and so forth. There is no ancient history for bad or evil actions to be buried and forgotten about, they are ever present. Whenever a woman is beaten by her spouse or a child is raped by a family member or a young woman returns as a ghost one college summer, the reality of the past, the present, and the future all collide at once.

And so, when men so often refuse to look at the ugly, the real ugly, the type of ugly found within military records of their families or ancestry tests that show a sudden mixture in genetic history that coincides with an atrocity or found within browsing histories of friends, coworkers, and mentors, that open wound stings again.

History shapes us, it shapes all of us. As a result, there is a very clear fracture, because how could anyone expect a different outcome? Our pattern recognition is informed by the past, our perceptions by the present, and our future by both. When Pandora’s Box was opened, the only thing that did not pour out was hope, and that lack of hope is self-evident. Thankfully, though, humans are pesky, tenacious little things born with our own reserves hope, and it’s up to us to decide to use it.

This is the part where the dude with a tomato cart comes rolling through in my comments offering one free throw to a mean and misandrist online feminist who thinks all men are evil. Have at it. But if you’re not one of these dogpiling idiots I urge you to look at the world and be honest, not just with yourself but with your understanding of men and women. Injustices happen to millions of people, often they happen to entire demographics (of which many include men), and these things are given a green light to continue so long as they are not discussed, or worse, swept under the rug.

The only way to be free of trauma is to talk about it because talking about it sets it free, and when it comes to generational trauma, the door for release is of unfathomable size. Yet, if we want mutual cooperation, it is everyone’s responsibility to start working the locks.

-Pythia