Boreal

Anthony Bourdain Meets a Female Doctor

at a Libyan Barbecue

Ladies, Time to Create a Religion of Your Own!

In his foray into parts unknown, Anthony Bourdain visited Libya after the fall of Khadafy where he attended a barbecue on Libya’s Mediterranean coast with his newfound male friends.

It was very much an all-male bonding show until he runs into a female doctor. “Dr. Sheehan,” he explains in a voice-over “put her medical studies on hold to help tend to all manner of horrible war injuries.”

Bourdain ends his brief encounter with this female apparition with another voice-over:

Dr. Sheehan risked her life along with the men, but traditional and high bound rules of conduct do not allow her to sit with them during dinner. She's relegated to what might be called the kids' table. What can one say? We who like to think of ourselves as more enlightened in this area? I don't know. Rightly or wrongly I said nothing.

He said nothing!

Women, you can overachieve all you want, but where traditional Islam is concerned you will never be granted the respect you deserve. To do so would deny revealed truths (immutable facts revealed to a mortal by a god) which says you are dimwits with as much wherewithal as a domesticated ass.

The Epic of Gilgamesh sensibly gave a woman, the goddess Aruru, the preeminent role in Creation. Gilgamesh also credits a woman for making her lover Enkidu (a stand-in for men everywhere) a better man.

The Bible and the Koran usurped a woman’s role in Creation and gave it to a narrow-minded male god for whom women bring out the worst in men; the reason for all the rules governing their existence.

In the make-believe world of revealed truths, opposites do not cancel each other out as they do in the real world; they simply create conflicts with often horrific real-world consequences.

Conflicts can, however, be a means of arriving at reasonable accommodations. By reasonable, I do not mean one side caves in to the other’s demand as is too often the case when the real-world is asked to accommodate the make-believe world of revealed truths.

The life-giving goddess Aruru could be the perfect foil for a god like Allah Who would lay claim to a woman's role in Creation. It could create the necessary conflict to convince His favourite gender to compromise and arrive at a reasonable accommodation whereby both consider the other their equal.

Ladies, give it some thought. A man created the man’s religion; create its opposite by bringing Aruru back. You too need your religion and a powerful invisible friend in a high place if you are going to win this battle for equality.

Bernard Payeur, January 14, 2014, Revised November 19, 2022