February 27, 2023

The female lawgiver.

IMG_0273D

I took that photograph on February 19th. The sculpture, on top of a Manhattan courthouse, is something I blogged about, here, on January 27, with a closeup picture.
It's not a permanent installation, so the question whether it belongs with the other historical law-givers isn't all that important. And yet, it does highlight the absence of female law-givers in history. One has been imagined, and it suggests that female law-giving would be something quasi-religious — rising out of a lotus, hair spiraling demonically. And yet the male law-givers on the building are religious — Moses, Confucius, Zoroaster, and the no-longer-there Muhammad.

Please talk about anything you want in the comments.

42 comments:

todd galle said...

Is it, perhaps, a precursor to Gozer appearing? The Arts community has become a sad farce.

rhhardin said...

The point of God as a father is that he's stern but just. A mother, on the other hand, believes in your innocence.

So the law givers are male.

BIII Zhang said...

There has never been, in the history of mankind, a single law promulgated by women designed to protect men.

From anything.

Bow your head and think on that, ladies. All of mankind's laws, passed by men, have been promulgated to protect YOU.

Thanks for nothing.

I want my rib back.

Mr. Forward said...

"UNEXPECTEDLY: Chicago’s pursuit of ‘criminal justice reform’ an utter failure: Windy City homicides top nation for 11th year in a row with crime still rising. “There were no police available in 2021 for more than 400,000 high-priority 911 dispatches. That included 15,000 assaults in progress, 1,300 instances of people shot, 14,000 instances of domestic battery, and many more serious crimes.”
Instapundit

"Chicago is home to the highest combined state and local sales tax rates in the nation, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Chicagoans pay a combined state and local sales tax rate of 10.25%. The city has held this dishonor since the Cook County Board passed a sales tax hike in 2016."
https://www.illinoispolicy….

M said...

Who the he!! put Muhammad there?! His “laws” were just repacked barbarians with bits stolen from Judaism and Christianity to make them look nice to the ignorant.

That statue is an embarrassment to rational women. It looks like something a lonely, disaffected middle school girl would draw in her notebook while daydreaming about some female centric god killing all the mean kids. “Especially that Ryan who laughed at her in front of everyone when she tried to ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance! Not that she really likes him! It was just a joke! Ewe. All boys are gross monsters. She’s probably really gay! That’s the ticket!”

Dave Begley said...

Love is the law!

Leora said...

Deboarah was a perfectly good Bibical judge.

tim maguire said...

There are plenty of prominent female leaders (Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I, Golda Mier, etc.), but I’m not aware of any transformational female leaders, which, I suppose, is why we don’t have any female lawgivers.

But that’s the way of it—if history hasn’t provided one, we’ll make one up. Because women will feel left out if they aren’t properly patronized. Apparently.

tim in vermont said...

“Too many laws make people unhappy.” - Bloody Mary, South Pacific

If memory serves.

pious agnostic said...

This is a depiction of Asherah, the consort of Ba'al.

Baceseras said...

Federal Courthouse in Cleveland sports a hu-u-uge "Venus de Milo" above the portal. Painted a dark bronze so it looks like a giant ... um, Baby Ruth.

Venus has never been associated with lawmaking, unless you count libertine variations as laws. Pallas Athena, or Juno, would have been appropriate though unfamiliar to the man in the street (a teachable moment!). It was an Art Committee that foisted the big Venus onus on us.

Quaestor said...

The only female law-giver of importance was Pearl Forrester.

Carol said...

So, I've stumbled into the He-Man Woman Haters Club again?

Big Mike said...

Sandra Day O'Connor gave us affirmative action for ever and ever.

FullMoon said...

Looks suicidal.

Narr said...

Female lawgiver? Ha!

She bears no resemblance to my wife.

Big Mike said...

I do not completely accept that COVID-19 was created in the Wuhan Laboratories using money provided by US NIH and authorized by Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci to get around legal restrictions on US labs designed to prevent the development of bio weapons, and subsequently accidentally released into the human population.

I’m wondering whether the release wasn’t deliberate.

tcrosse said...

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.

chickelit said...

Females don’t give laws; they give lives.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I usually don't finish YouTubes I start. But when I do, it's a sign the video is good.

Why you should NEVER make conversation with "the woman"

Hint: What does a handshake have to do with #MeeToo?

chickelit said...

Females accept laws—that’s why they’re as picky with laws
as they are with men.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

the male law-givers on the building are religious — Moses, Confucius, Zoroaster, and the no-longer-there Muhammad.

For 200 Alex... What does Muhammad have in common with Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben's and Land O Lakes Native American?

The more things change...

Daniel12 said...

So we already knew that "It's ok to be white" is a meme. And that the ADL had labeled it hate speech. But now we know that Rasmussen explicitly polled the question because of the ADL designation. Let's let Rasmussen say it in their own words:

Update: Astroturf has finally discovered our 'Ok to be White?' poll, inspired by the @ADL literally defining the wording of the question as "hate speech."

For those so disposed, here is the link to their site where you can report us for asking it - šŸ¤”https://adl.org/report-incident

They did a trolling poll, designed as a trap for so many -- the right included, whether intentional or not. And in the process added fuel to the race fire in this country.

It's disgusting and irresponsible. I hope everyone here disavows this stupid poll and it's intentional obfuscation. Please don't allow the results to become a permanent "fact" -- we don't need more unearned racial grievance in this country.

Big Mike said...

I subscribe to Jim Treacher’s Substack. This is part of what he wrote about the “National Day of Hate”:

Sometimes the lack of evidence for a thing is simply further evidence to prove the thing’s existence. All you have to do is abandon reason and logic. Just go with what feels true.

So it is with the National Day of Hate last Saturday.

What’s that you say? You’ve never heard of the National Day of Hate? A likely story! Of course you’ve heard of the National Day of Hate. Everybody has. And even if you haven’t — er, I should say, especially if you haven’t — you’re still a bigot.

Just listen to the people you can trust: politicians, journos, and other Democrats.


For those of you born without a funny bone, he’s deep into sarcasm,

Or, as Glenn Reynolds likes to put it, the Left’s demand for hatred in America vastly exceeds the supply.

gadfly said...

If Muhammad was a qualified lawgiver atop the roof, then the rightful new occupant could have been Joseph Smith, author of the Book of Mormon, founder and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He made all the church laws and changed them when he wanted to accommodate his personal behavior outside of Illinois laws.

In 1844, he and his brother Hyrum were arrested and jailed in Carthage, only to be greeted there by a mob of anti-Mormons from Illinois and Missouri. Joseph and Hyrum died execution style.

Joe Smith died bravely. He stood by the jamb of the door and fired four shots, bringing his man down every time. He shot an Irishman named Wills, who was in the affair from his congenital love of a brawl, in the arm; Gallagher, a Southerner from the Mississippi Bottom, in the face; Voorhees, a half-grown hobbledehoy from Bear Creek, in the shoulder; and another gentleman, whose name I will not mention, as he is prepared to prove an alibi, and besides stands six feet two in his moccasins.

Smith had two loaded six-barrelled revolvers in his room. How a man on trial for capital offences came to be supplied with such luxuries is a mystery that perhaps only one man could fully have solved; and as General Deming, the Jack-Mormon sheriff died soon after, and left no explanation of the matter . . .


But Smith's shots likely only wounded the men he targeted.

Enigma said...

For the LARGE majority of human history the notion of 'law giver' would have been abstract and irrelevant to daily life. Humans roamed about in small tribal groups with the seasons, and set up villages in the most fertile regions. Bodies dictated jobs and the division of labor. Females gave birth, hand created the 'law' for their young offspring. Females gave life and shaped life until the children became independent.

For most of human history, maturity and independence happened at puberty. Girls were traded with neighboring tribes to...reduce...incest while boys went out as 'gangs' to build hunting skills and toughness. The boys who survived could then take a mate. This model largely persisted in the UK until the Victorian industrial era, where child labor was still the norm. Children worked on farms, in mines, and in factories. As today, boys then had heavy labor and girls had detail tasks (e.g., weaving, lace, jewelry, watches).

Law giver: That required written language and followed the establishment and failures of many non literate and semi literate Bronze Age cultures. So, we are only talking about the last 5,000 to 7,000 years of human history or so. As with all other human male-female divisions of labor, males choose or are forced to attempt high-risk, high-reward tasks while females choose or are forced toward safer child rearing, social networking, and creating the next generation.

The influential Maslow Self-Actualization and Hierarchy of Needs model tends to place males in the top tier (i.e., intellectuals and thereby law creators) while females tended to remain in the middle layer...with belonging, friends, and intimate relationships. This model later ran into issues among some feminists, but abstract 'law giver' beyond closely directing children has never been a core female trait.

https://positivepsychology.com/self-actualization/

Temujin said...

That thing is an hilarious sky high monument to the small thinking of today's most moved people.

Andrew said...

How about a statue of Margaret Thatcher?

Narayanan said...

if all previous lawgivers are male the mother female is giver of lawgivers

Tacitus said...

Regards suitable female figures of Justice I propose Nemesis.

"The word nemesis originally meant the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad, simply in due proportion to each according to what was deserved". She later, and quite understandably, got fed up with human nature and specialized in handing out Just Comeuppance....

T

Tacitus said...

Wikipedia, so far not entirely scrubbed with PC soap, even has a tale that involves the strife between the feminine ideal and a slim hipped mean girl....

(note, not a nice story. What were the Ancient Greeks thinking?!)

Aura
In Nonnus' epic Dionysiaca, Aura, one of Artemis' virgin attendants, questioned her mistress' virginity due to the feminine and curvaceous shape of her body; Aura claimed that no goddess or woman with that sort of figure would be a virgin, and asserted her own superiority over the goddess thanks to her own lean and boyish silhouette. Artemis, enraged, went to Nemesis and asked for revenge. Nemesis promised to the goddess that Aura would have her punishment, and that the punishment would be to lose the virginity she took such pride in. Nemesis then contacted Eros, the god of love, and he struck Dionysus with one of his arrows. Dionysus fell madly in love with Aura, and when she rebuffed his advances, he got her drunk, tied her up and raped her as she lay unconscious, bringing Nemesis' plan to a success.[15]

T

gilbar said...

MOST of these myths were said by, and believed by, women
https://nypost.com/2023/02/27/10-myths-told-by-covid-experts-now-debunked/

narciso said...

This is when the demon dogs come

Tina848 said...

Aren't the "Scales of Justice" held by a blindfolded woman? The image is famous and on the Supreme Court Building.

LuAnn Zieman said...

Deborah was the one and only female judge in the Bible--the fourth judge in Israel pre-monarchic. (The book of Judges.) She was also a prophetess, which would make her a superior judge! She would look good up there with Moses and the others.

planetgeo said...

With the way our law-givers are functioning now shouldn't there be some law-taker statues up there soon?

Lurker21 said...

I was going to mention the Scales of Justice and the different law-giver goddesses around the world, but my computer died, so I'll ask about the appropriateness from an Islamic point of view. They took down the statue of Mohammed and put up a statue of what looks like a pagan goddess apparently made by a Muslim sculptress. For a devout Muslim, is that really much of an improvement?

n.n said...

Venutian. Off with his head.

Smilin' Jack said...

“And yet, it does highlight the absence of female law-givers in history.”

No surprise there. Who’s going to obey someone who can’t even pee standing up?

Static Ping said...

So not only is it bizarrely demonic, it also clashes badly with the other installations.

There are not any female law givers of prominence that come to mind, but you could always go with the personifications of Liberty and/or Justice. Or Athena, goddess of wisdom.

Known Unknown said...

"The only female law-giver of importance was Pearl Forrester."

I would indeed welcome a statue of Mary Jo Pehl up there.

Tacitus said...

Known Unknown

Although the saying is attributed to her son I think the Pearl Forrester statue should have on its base the immortal phrase:

"Deal with it Joyless Prole"

T