By
Tip Toe Rosie
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ The First Woman ~
I am not a writer. I like to tell stories or to force my truth down your throat. Writing is a means for me to do this, but by no means do I consider myself to be a writer. When the DRS editors informed me I had to write a Dead Rebel of the Week article, I thought and thought. Then it came to me: Lilith! Gotta love Lilith. Ok, I will do her. It can be short and sweet. How hard could it be? She has feminist magazines named after her, not to mention the entire Lilith Fair, which to me somehow bypassed feminism and surged right into lesbian territory. Not that I have anything against lesbians, but somewhere along the line we started to associate feminist with lesbian. And this offends me. (And I have no clue why since I am neither.)
Anyway on to Lilith… The first female rebel. We all know the story, yes?
Here is a brief version for those of you living in the dark:
Lilith was made by God to keep ol’ Adam happy. Adam got horny and decided that Lilith should lay down and spread her legs. She said, “Oh hell no! I’m getting on top! There is no way you are bossing me around anyway!” He probably called her a cunt, which pisses us all off, and she booked.
God, who by now I am sure is shaking his head calling himself a dumbass, sends an angel or two after Lilith to bring her back. They tell her, “Lilith, babe, he is your husband you have to submit to him.” Well, Lilith is not going for that, so she continues on her own, probably pissed and heartbroken all at the same time. The angels go back to God and tell him, “You go deal with her.” God is many things, but nuts isn’t one of them. He would rather just start from scratch and let Lilith go on her merry way. Heck, she will probably come back when she realizes that she will not have Adam’s glorious company any longer. That is not going to happen, and so the term Bitch was born. God now has to do something, so he stomps out that free thinking gene he created and gives life to Eve. Then yada, yada, yada the story goes. (Ancient writings about Eve list her as everything from Adam’s first wife to a demon who had sex with Zeus.)
Now we have stories about Lilith. Like… God was so pissed at her he cursed her children to die. So in revenge Lilith visits babies and children at night and scares the crap out of them. This made parents start telling and singing stories and songs to their kids at night, to chase Lilith away. Hence the term Lullaby. It stands for “Lilith get the hell outta here.”
We also know that Lilith predates the Bible. There are drawings, jewelry and statues on Lilith, going back to thousands of years before the Bible was written.
I could show you writings and interpretations of Lilith. I could teach you why she became thought of as a succubus but I am thinking if you want to get that deep into Lilith you would read it for yourself. This is just my thinking.
So who is Lilith then? Lilith is the representation of women's strength. Lilith is the part of ourselves that kicks ass; the part that makes it possible for us to overcome impossible situations. Lilith is the one part of us that scares men. It’s the part that gives them a niggling thought in the back of their brain that we are indeed stronger than they are. Lilith represents your sexuality, your independence and your backbone. She is half of you - the half that demands attention and respect. Lilith is the part of you that won’t let you get away with just being second best.
So whether she was a woman who lived in the Garden of Eden, a woman who lived long before that, or even an amalgamation of women from a long dead matriarchal society, it does not matter. Lilith is part of you and she is what got women to the point where we are now. And that my friends deserves a lot of fucking respect.
Can you guess who the other half of you is? That’s right! Eve. Eve is the more maternal side of you, and she is the other half of MY Dead Rebel of the Week.
She bit the fucking apple after all.
TTR
