The question was posed: where are the women philosophers?
We’re in the same place as those missing women bloggers.
You know that question, the one that’s asked every three months or so – where are the women bloggers?
They’re right next to the female philosophers.
We’re here. You have to look for us. It shouldn’t be difficult.
From time immemorial you’ve call us Mom.
You know us as su madre y su vita, votre soeur et votre petite amie, ihre Mutter, l'amore della vostra vita, su abuela y su tía, la cousine, your spouse.
Beloved.
But from time immemorial you’ve also call us bitch, old bat, crone and nag, ball-and-chain, broad, biddy.
Witch.
When we speak, you don’t look at us as philosophers. Nor do you see us as such when we write.
You don’t even see us as bloggers – and yet here I am, blogging while female.
What am I to my children, I wonder now that the question is asked?
When I ask them what they believe and then challenge it, while tying their shoes and wiping their noses, do they see me as their Aristotle or merely the old hag?
What am I to my spouse when I question his convictions and his management style when they differ from mine – am I merely a nudge, or am I his Machiavelli?
When I stand up and question the direction of my political party, do they see me as Thomas Paine or Patrick Henry, or as just another pain-in-the-ass, loud-mouthed uppity woman?
When I write this inquiry, will you see me as a blogger, philosopher, or just another middle-class suburban statistic, a woman waiting for the laundry in the dryer?
Will my heartfelt tête à tête, late into the night with my dearest female friends be new Socratic dialogues, or a simple kaffee klatsch with a gaggle of dames?
And when I write of the hopes, dreams, aspirations I have for myself and for the flesh I’ve borne, will I be nothing more than another desperate housewife in your eyes?
I suppose it could be worse.
I could smell my own hair burning as the flames of the pyre begin to lick at the stake to which I am bound.
Or rent, limb from limb by a mob, physically or mentally shredded to pulp for what I am.
Or smothered, wimpled, cloistered away from the rest of humanity, hoping only that my writings will survive to give evidence that I thought about much.
Or I could be forgotten altogether, like Jeanne d’Arc, Hypatia, Hildegard and Teresa.
But as luck would have it, I am a wife, a sister and a mother.
I can whisper as I straighten his tie, tuck children in bed tonight: N'oubliez pas.
Forget me not.
--- Rayne
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