"Abortion" and Ritual in Classical Athens (original) (raw)
Female-only rituals may have served as a context for teaching and/or practicing contraception and fertility management in Athens during the Classical period, and perhaps also in Ancient Greece in general.
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The Problematic and Disposable Sex: Female Infanticide in Ancient Greece
Introduction: The assertion of women as undervalued beings is no new concept within the study of history; considering how long it took first world countries to name women as ‘persons’, it comes as no surprise that ancient cultures would have less-than-satisfactory customs in regards to womanhood. Although many ancient cultures had religious practices that involved powerful goddesses, the treatment of women as secondary beings was rather consistent. Nancy Demand writes in her book Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece that, “in Classical Greece the problems inherent in being female were believed to begin with conception.” Due to the ‘flaws’ of female development and the birthing difficulties believed to be associated with their sex, female newborns were not always considered to be worth the trouble; infanticide through exposure was a common response to the birth of a female child.
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Greece was placed first or second among European Union countries with high rates of abortion throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Rather than asking why there are so many abortions in Greece, I have taken abortion as a useful point of entry for studying Greek configurations of female personhood. Throughout this research, I engage with multiple discourses- erotas, suffering, abjection, self- control- and levels of analysis- from the site of the couple to the operation room- to reveal a class of subjectivity that is distinctly different from the western cultural ideal of the autonomous liberal subject. Research was conducted through interviews with six women and a gynecologist. In discussing abortion and contraception, women are craving a particular dream of the couple as eternal oneness, while simultaneously realize the aloneness that being part of a couple entails. In addition, women’s experiences with abortion reveal a self that is trapped between a mindful body and a fragmented body. Thus, the female subject that emerges from these narratives is diffuse, filled with contradictory discourses.
Modern and Ancient Greek religious festivals follow a ritual calendar where celebrations are performed in connection with important phases during the agricultural year. Fertility-cult is of focal importance in the festivals, and women are the most competent and central performers of the fertility-rituals. Their knowledge of fertility magic means that they have the power to both, promote and prevent fertility in society. Therefore, an investigation of the relationship between women and fertility, and the importance of the cult within the society in general, is required. The fertility-cult plays an important role within the official male value-system. This is the value-system, which the festivals and the society, which they reflect, traditionally have been considered from. The absence of the female value-system leaves previous analyses one-sided and incomplete. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis requires the female point of view to be included. Hence, the paper argues for the importance of changing our approach when working with ancient culture. Taking account of the female sphere in Greece provides us with a basis for considering the female part of society. But, by so doing, the official male perspective, which is similar to the Western male perspective generally applied within Greek studies, has to be deconstructed.
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Teaching ancient medicine: the issues of abortion
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