Wonder Woman is the fictional creation of an early 20th century psychologist, William Marston Moulton. The world in which Marston lived was dominated by men, not just in his own time, but since the dawn of civilization, dominated by men.
In his own DISC theory of human emotions, Moulton defined 4 behavioral types: Domination, Inducement, Submission, Compliance. Domination is a behavioral type growing from the negative aspects of human emotion because Domination seeks to establish Compliance through force of will, as opposed to Inducement which establishes Submission to another’s will out of love. In the late 1930s Moulton posited that the superior love of women, their emotional and mental strength, would bring about an age of humanity where women would hold the power in human societies …. But until then, beginning in 1941, Wonder Woman would lead the fight, for Moulton, anyhow, where women might realize their own voice and place in the Modern World.
Before the dawn of civilization, when most humans hunted and gathered to stay alive, not everything was ideal – there was no Garden of Eden …. But, human relationships seldom reflected the sort of inequality in resources and power that are evident in the “Civilized” world. Why? Why so equal? Because they had to. For a village or a group to survive, early humans had to use the full force of all adults in the quest for their daily resources. Specialization of task seldom existed, and the least special would be social or political dominance. Every voice was heard, just as every arm was needed. And this is a generalization, but one that can be demonstrated in ancient cave dwellings or rock glyphs from all over the planet, and even more recently with PAI Societies (Paleolithic Asian Immigrants, also referred to as Native Americans), like the Iroquois of what are now the northeastern states in the USA. Cooperation, or as Dr. Moulton might term it, Inducement, compelled men and women of hunter gatherer societies to fit their tasks to apparent physical features. Men, in most cases but not all, hunted and women, in most cases but not all, gathered, and in many cases built and maintained the village, or temporary dwelling site. Women gathered because they were also needed to birth the next generation of the society, and there was safety in staying close to the village. Being close, however, still meant that all adult muscle was needed to gain resources for the group. Even when nursing, women had to use their skill and effort in bringing in the sustenance of life for the betterment of the whole – and yes, they were rather communistical in their equal apportionment of everything gathered, hunted or gained. Why? Why so equal? Because they had to, or were induced to submit personal gain for the overall welfare of the group, otherwise the group dies, the individual dies. It’s easy to find submission when the stakes are so high.
Our earliest gods were goddesses celebrating the life giving power of women
But what if there were more resources, and the stakes, still high, but not as high? What then? Civilization.
Civilization killed equality. Civilization killed the old goddesses celebrating fertility and made the gods men, men of dominance, in heaven just as it is on earth.
Then came the male gods, like Chuku, from West Africa 
White god of the white Christians 
And the original Patriarch, Zeus
Civilization also killed hunting and gathering by making the primary resource production come through agriculture – sedentary, permanent dwelling, walls to protect us and our stuff, surplus establishing agriculture. Now, with agricultural surplus, there was a way to have some specialization, builders, artisans, soldiers and, most special of all, governors. It is not accidental that the first rulers in civilization, purportedly the Priests of Ancient Mesopotamia, administered the resources of the community, as well as create a spiritual justification for how the surplus of the community would be divided – with the greatest share going to the Priests. Ok, they said it was for the gods, but the gods were seldom around for dinner, so the Priests kept it for themselves.
And one of the great ironies of Wonder Woman is that Moulton set her origin within a context of one of the most patriarchal societies of all time – Ancient Greece. Moulton’s use of Greece, thank the gods, did not use that fairy tale that democracy came out of Greece and that why we looooove it. Sure there were Greek democracies, but hardly related to the Modern democracy of people have rights to define themselves and determine their own actions within the bounds of law as established through representative institutions. No that’s not Greece, not even Athens, who took disparity in proportional power and wealth to new heights. Because in Athens if you were an idiot, you were not entitled to wealth or power – or access to either. And idiots were idiots by birth – idiot referred to those who were not real members of society, women, slaves, foreigners. And all three of these have one thing in common. They were born idiots. Blood determined everything in the so called democracy of Athens. You only had a right to speak, to move, to think if you were born with that right. That would be men. Male dominance. Patriarchy, which conveniently enough is from the Greek patria – archy, father – rule. No wonder the Amazons wanted to get out of Greece. No voice, no love, no consent, only Domination. And that is probably why Greek sexuality made so many allowances for recreational sex or what the ancient world would have called same sex relationships. The famous Erastes-Eronomos relationship of (rich) pre-marital male with (rich) adolescent male was a model for other relationships that were based on, in Moulton’s words, Inducement and Submission – or in other words consensual love, because procreational sex in heterosexual relationships were based on Domination and Compliance. Why did Sappho lover her female partner? Because that’s where she could find love, and for much of the Civilized world that’s the only place anyone could find love because Patriarchy in government, Patriarchy in resources, Patriarchy in Religion meant Patriarchy in procreational male and female coupling. And of course that doesn’t mean there were no good heterosexual relationships and that love and happy recreational sex could only be found in same sex partnering, but it does explain a lot of headaches through the years, as in “Not tonight ….”
Olive Byrne (left) was one of the "sister" wives of Wonder Woman creator, Moulton (center).
Note the gold bracelets on her wrists. She was the inspiration and her Aunt happened to be
Margaret Sanger, the leading 20th century activist for Birth Control
I wish that I could say, “but then came the Modern World and people were allowed to define themselves and determine their own actions,” so that Domination/Compliance could be replaced by Inducement/Submission. But the Modern Revolutions in England, America and France may have attempted to guarantee universal rights on paper, but they did not do so in practice. England wimped out and instead of a governing system based on equal rights and equal representation, as hinted at during the height of the English Civil War, thanks to the Levellers, they opted to water down their democracy by having rights inheritable by your social status of King, Lord, Common. Not to mention that the Levellers forgot to mention women at all. America may have done away with the blood based hierarchy, but couldn’t get out from under the domination of Patriarchy, whether white over black, or male over female. And the French Revolution, which the Marxists like to claim was Marxist, did for a time grant citizenship rights to women before backsliding to protect only the rights of man, and then opt for dictatorship. There is definitely a relationship between a lack of rights for women and dictatorship, and, incidentally, many of the other ills of our world.
In the wake of the death of RBG, America is at a cross-roads in considering our support, not only for women’s rights, but for all rights. The significance of Roe v. Wade is so much more than abortion rights, in fact, abortion rights may be but a small piece of a larger understanding of rights that has been developing since this landmark decision. While reproductive rights are essential to any ideology that embraces self-definition and self-determination as the basis of freedom, Roe means so much more to all of us. The right to privacy established by Roe speaks to the essential nature of what it means to be an individual – I am what I am, and my choice to share anything about the real me is just that, my choice to unveil that very private essential being. And while privacy rights are absolutely necessary when it comes to our bodies, and especially women’s bodies that have been objectified, violated and used by patriarchal societies since the dawn of civilization, those rights extend beyond the physical to every aspect of our lives and must be protected. RBG was a wonder woman who fought for those rights, who helped establish those rights and who worked to maintain them. With her gone those rights, our lives are in peril and it will take all of us, wonderful women and all individuals to stop the idiocy of those who would deny us the most special part of our lives – our private, personal self.
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| This is my wonder woman, about to hit a game winning double in her last Little League at bat. |
