Born a Female

           In the text Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography, we learned that it was typical for ancient Mediterranean families to abandon new born infants if it was a girl. In the current text we are reading, Muhammad, A Prophet for Our Time, it is stated that Arabs killed new born infants if they were a girl, (29). At first, I saw this as a trend and a similarity between both cultures. After our discussion in class, I realized that this was the way many people from many cultures handled having unwanted female children. There was no birth control or contraception available during this time, so they took the only option they had. Although, it is rare that we leave infant children in trash cans today, and we do have contraception, there is still abortion and unwanted infants go to an orphanage. In some sense and depending on the position you take we haven’t grown much from our old ways. The only major difference is that we now think males are a burden as well as females and we are more polite when we throw away unwanted infants.

        In addition, as pointed out in class, new born females were thrown away but, men and women praised female Gods in multiple cultures. This is because the parents never saw their female new born to be a goddess. Women were never able to live up to that standard because men would always knock them down if they tried. People still have this tendency today. They think one way and act in another way.