The ancient world, that is, the area around the Mediterranean Basin, in particular Greece, is widely accepted as the cradle of western civilisation. This cultural milieu offers explanations, which described and defined man and woman in the ancient world. ‘Common sense’ notions of the day reveal that the discourse about the male ejaculate - semen, the one thing that all men had that women did not, led to the presumed superiority of the male and provided the rationale and legitimacy for patriarchy, which affected the development of cultural norms, values and religious doctrines. The discourse on woman and man underpinned social and religious organisation. Woman was socially and religiously constructed as man’s ‘inferior other’.
An examination of the writings of Aristotle, Plato, Galen the physician, Homer and the Iliad (the cultural and philosophical discourses of the Greek, and later Roman, world) provide us with a clear picture of 'woman' and 'man'. What we find is that the discourse on semen supports the practice of patriarchy, because beliefs about semen and male power are inextricably linked. But, the foundation of these fantasies surrounding semen has been forgotten. Ancient beliefs about semen provide the missing link in theories about male superiority and patriarchal organisation. Significant secular and religious discourses from the ancient world provide the cultural and philosophical context of European thought. Greek medical and philosophical discourses provided the ‘theory’ to support the 'fact' of male superiority. Christian thought is significant as it formed the basis of moral behaviour in Europe and eventually, many other parts of the world.
This is a seminal moment - no pun intended - as beliefs about semen are revealed as the foundation of beliefs about male superiority. The Greek discourse about semen is central to the ‘biological evidence’ for man’s superiority. The elevation of the phallus was not of itself enough. The mere ownership of a phallus was insufficient to make a man a man; a man must have a sufficient supply of semen.
According to Galen1 the Greek physician, the possession of semen made men ‘virile, hot, well built, deep voiced, strong in thought and deed’. It was through the possession of semen that men were able to think, reason, define and explain truth; it was semen that gave men the ability to act, to organise, to fight. Man, described later by Michel Foucault2 as the ‘spermatic animal par excellence’, was not merely superior to women, but was superior to all other forms of life. The possession of semen and resulting fantasies surrounding semen provided a ‘biological basis’ for all the positive characteristics assigned to men and led to the legitimisation of man’s domination of women, children and the natural world.
According to Galen, the lack of 'vital spirit' (semen) in women ‘made them (women) more soft, more liquid, more clammy-cold, altogether more formless than men'. Lacking semen, woman was physically and mentally weak. Unable to think clearly or logically woman had to depend on man to define and explain philosophical, social and religious ‘truths’. Woman, physically weak, needed man to protect her; unable to act alone she needed man as her guide. Aristotle3 [said] that the male was ‘naturally’ superior to the female. Aristotle has been praised as an early example of a ‘scientific observer’. Unfortunately, when it came to observing women Aristotle’s ‘scientific observation’ gave way to prejudice. In his History of Animals, Aristotle recorded that a menstruating woman could make a mirror turn 'bloody dark like a cloud', because the menstrual blood passed through her eyes to the surface of the mirror.
The possession of semen not only gave men positive physical, psychological and mental characteristics, but also gave men the primary role in procreation. It was assumed that the male ‘seed’ contained the entire foetus in embryo; a woman's function was simply to act as an incubator for the man’s child.
Another fantasy surrounding semen was, according to Areteus, 4 that nature intended all foetuses to be male. Males were those foetuses that had realised their full potential - to become male. He used the possession of semen as his evidence. For the foetus to be successful it had to amass a surplus of 'heat' and 'vital spirit' in the womb. Areteus gave the hot ejaculation of male seed as the proof for this. 'For it is the semen, when possessed of vitality, which makes us men, hot, well-braced in limbs, heavy, well-voiced, spirited, strong to think and act'. If enough 'vital spirit' did not come to the foetus in the womb a female child - a 'failed male' would result.
The physician Galen5 also considered 'vital heat' necessary in the development of the foetus. Those foetuses, which had not received enough 'vital heat' in the womb, resulted in female children. He concluded that women could not retain 'vital heat' due to the periodic loss of surplus heat through menstruation. Periodic menstruation demonstrated that women could not burn up surplus heat, which then coagulated within them. There was however a dilemma; this surplus heat was needed for the development of the foetus. Presumably, during pregnancy women retained enough 'vital heat' to nurture the foetus. Galen does not go on to consider the possibility that woman might have been purposely designed by Nature to play an equal part in procreation, even though he warned that if these surpluses were not for the nurture of the foetus, men might think that creator would purposely make half the whole race imperfect and as it were, mutilated, unless there was to be some great advantage in such a mutilation. This notion of woman as imperfect - a ‘failed male’ had a long shelf-life in European thought. Woman was considered not fully human. This idea persists in some parts of the world in the twenty-first century. 6
What is clear in the philosophical and medical discourses of the time is that evidence was not a requirement to define and explain ‘truth’. The ways that women were discussed were subjective and prejudicial, and suggest a hatred and fear of women, their sexuality and their bodies. Galen...taking the male as the 'norm' (naturally), decided that women were men turned inside out; the ovaries were 'smaller, less perfect testes.7 Plato’s comments on the male and female sexual organs reveals evidence of misogyny as a factor in biological explanations about man, woman and reproduction. 8 The penis is described in positive terms – masterful, whilst the uterus is described in negative terms as a 'revolting animal within an animal'. Plato also explained that the womb was like the penis, which 'becomes rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason and maddened with the sting of lust’.
Within these discourses the centrality of semen cannot be denied. It was these discourses that provided ‘evidence’ for biological differences between men and women. The fantasies surrounding semen were instrumental in the patriarchal construction of woman and of man and consequently, the construction of masculinity and femininity, the presumption of male superiority, the justification for patriarchy, the control of women and children, the use and abuse of women as servants and sexual objects.
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