Illegitimate (adjective)
born of parents who are not married to each other; born out of wedlock: an illegitimate child.
not legitimate; not sanctioned by law or custom.
Who says what is legitimate or illegitimate? Up to now, it’s been men, mostly. The word is a weird one, isn’t it? It is a way to show what is valid, worthwhile, sanctioned, or allowed to fully be. When we think about how it is usually used, to relate to the parentage of children, we can ask ourselves: What is the point? And, why it is tied to the marriage of a man and woman?
Hmmm. Well, let’s think about it. At its base it certainly has to do with property ownership; ownership of the child…and wife. In days when men had total control over resources knowing the origin of a baby (who its father was) mattered to them in that they didn’t want to use resources for another man’s child, nor support the ‘bloodline’ of another man. I’m going to be charitable and say that “makes sense.”
You only want to pay your own tab, right?
Historically we saw children rejected due to illegitimacy. If the man didn’t claim it/own it, the child(red) was invalid. They couldn’t inherit. They were ostracized. These “bastards” weren’t valid humans and couldn’t participate fully—with rights and respect—in society. And it still holds, today, by and large. But since ownership of human beings is, in itself, an invalid concept nowadays, what difference does it make who you (man) own, since you ought not own anyone.
And it is a roundabout way to determine the “validity” of a human being because keeping track of “lineage” is much simpler if you do it through the woman. We can trace our origins back to the first woman in our DNA. How inefficient to run this through the father! Even today, thanks to DNA testing, we see children find out their “father” is not their biological father. I’m not saying that asking men to “pay tabs” that aren’t theirs is fair, but the setup is dumb. Establish validity and lineage through the mother. It’s more straightforward. Duh.
And fundamentally of course every human born is valid and valuable unto themselves—rights and respect thus are inherent.
All of these concepts—legitimacy, lineage, ownership—are questionable, but I don’t want to unravel the world at this point. I’ll say this, the male-centric way makes sense if you are trying to maintain a hegemonic position of males over everyone, which of course is the primary point of patriarchy.
Speaking of patriarchy and illegitimacy…that’s the bigger point, and my first idea when I was pondering the word itself. The power of the male over everyone and everything is the ultimate illegitimate concept, is it not? Who says men are better and more valuable and the norm? Who gets to lead? Who voted on this? Power achieved by force, violence, and restriction of access to resources has an anti-social nature that invalidates it for me.
How did we come to this consensus? WE didn't? Hmmm.
What were the steps and stages that led to this imbalanced view of life and right? A blog post I wrote a while back talked about men making things that are important to them, just important. But women have the ability to do so as well. It’s what I’m banking on! I’m curious to see what female hegemony looks and feels like. It probably smells good. LOL.
Everything I’m cooking up and working on as part of Centered Leadership programming is based on women seeing themselves, their needs, their ways, the ways we all live (can live) as central, normal, and correct. If you’re worried that women in charge will do what men in charge, have done, I say “worry not.” Women are not like men. That’s the point. I’m excited to train and coach cohorts of women to think and lead from the center…her center. Yay!
XO,
Alissa
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I just happened on this piece which offers some interesting parallel thoughts from a very different author. Worth a peek and links to many other things to get you into the rabbit hole comfortably. https://substack.com/home/post/p-143286008?r=28ohl4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web