Queen of No Identity

In the winter of 2015, my family took a trip to a small island in Fiji where we stayed in a small hut by a beach. The area remained fairly empty throughout our stay yet every morning, we would see an elderly woman sitting on a blanket by the water, spending hours and hours weaving colorful bracelets. When inquired, she told us that she sold the bracelets she made in order to collect donations for the local orphanage in the nearby town. I remember acknowledging what a lovely sentiment that was but left feeling disheartened as she told us that the orphanage was mainly occupied by female children who were abandoned by the parents in their culture so they wouldn’t have to pay a dowry once they were of age to marry. I remember the somber feeling that came over me as I listened to this woman’s story and this same feeling came back to me recently when the topic of gender coding in Roman society arose in lecture.

The sex-based roles were defined in ancient roman culture; women were left with two jobs: to cement political alliances through marriage and to bare children. It was specifically mentioned that female babies were left to die, portraying the terrifying extent of a male dominated society. The presence of sex-based roles extends to many of our readings in class, specifically The Aeneid, in which women are characterized as temperamental, emotional, moody and incompetent. The ill depiction of women is primarily seen through the portrayal of the character Dido, who’s success in her city of Carthage is condemned to fail with the arrival of the Trojan war hero, Aeneas. Dido is strong, driven and rules her kingdom justly, yet cannot maintain the order established within her walls. Through Dido’s neglect of her city and subsequent failure as a ruler, Virgil depicts the decline a women will fall into if she acts outside of the norms of society. Her pursuit of love and human affection, factors considered to be particularly feminine, leads to her downfall; only by dictating herself as a firm and tough male ruler can she thrive and be the ruler needed to allow her city to flourish. Virgil’s implication then becomes that empire building should be left to the hands of men as even with all her efforts, she is doomed to fail in a male dominated society.

Gender roles, highly engrained in ancient Roman and Greek culture, does not fail to be deep seated in our modern society. From the early roots of sexism that can be seen in the cult of domesticity in the 1800’s, the belief that emphasized women’s role in the household, and the archetype of the suburban housewife in the 1950’s, sexism and misogyny have been a widespread and commonplace issue for as long as we can look back in history.

Although great strides have been made by women, such as receiving the right to vote with the nineteenth amendment, and although society is still currently evolving and changing, society still fails to shed the stigma that comes with being a woman. I must acknowledge the powerful voice of feminism here and the strides taken to break such gender inequality and stereotypes. However, there are countless those who believe that as a female, you are inherently deemed to be inferior to men. While not in the same degree, women are still expected to work in the home and often have to choose between a successful job or a successful family. Women get paid less of doing the same job as a man. Women are highly sexualized, called offensive terms, and oftentimes have their identity based on the amount of the sexual partner they have. On social media, I find too often that I come across a large variety of sexist jokes and threats of rape as if it's a casual pastime. From plainly the pure stigma that the word feminism holds even to this day, it's hard to turn a blind on to the inherently misogynistic tendency of our society.

From ancient Roman culture to the nineteenth century to modern age, sexism has been commonplace and ingrained into our society. Only with hopes of forward thinking and continued efforts to end gender discrimination in the workplace, government, and society, can we hope to end the misogyny that stains our humanity.