The Sultan's Harem

Topkapi Palace in Istanbul is a stunning example of Ottoman power and opulence.  The sprawling campus overlooking the strategic Bosphorus is connected by colonnaded courtyard gardens, its hundreds of rooms intricately adorned with Anatolian mosaics, carved lattice, embossed inscriptions, marble baths and gold-leaf murals. But none of those treasures left as lasting an impression on me during my visit there as did the stories of the harem.

An estimated four hundred of the sultan's private apartments were reserved for his Imperial Harem, which was comprised of his wives, concubines, consorts, female family members and their attendant eunuchs.  The word harem can be translated as "sacred" or "private," so in fact, this secluded area of the palace was where the royal family and its trusted servants resided.

Contrary to predominant Western fantasies - ranging from reckless orgies with pliant damsels in infinite configurations of servility, to a kindly sisterhood of constant solace and compassion amid a helpless, hopeless plight - the harem was a strictly organized hierarchy based upon the order and status of each of its members.  As SUNY Binghamton researcher Phillip Emeritz put it in his paper Feminine Power in the Ottoman Harem, "The harem was not an orgiastic prison, but rather a private site of female political enterprise."

And apparently, the politics inside the cloister were no less treacherous than those on Capitol Hill, with the sultan's mother in the role of co-regent to the sovereign himself.  The queen mother, often the slave concubine of a previous sultan who bore her monarch his successor, wielded absolute power in the harem, determining the future of the dynasty and therefore the Ottoman Empire itself.  One famous young concubine, Turhan, served the court's queen mother, Kosem.  But when Kosem challenged Turhan's son's ascension to the throne, Turhan arranged for her competitor's murder in a violent coup that dramatically altered the trajectory of the entire realm.

Turhan's story backhanded me as my three-month pilgrimage around the Mediterranean's sacred sites in 2007 came to a close.  On an informal sabbatical from a rigorous course of study in feminine spirituality, the genderless reality of the human condition hit me like a cup of ice cold holy water.  Here I was, within blocks of the Hagia Sophia, the original Byzantine basilica dedicated to Holy Wisdom, said to be feminine.  Just weeks before, I had stood on the stone labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral outside Paris, tears flowing at the haunting resonance of a boys' choir practicing as I prayed facing a statue of the Virgin Mary, embodiment of the Divine Feminine.  And I felt duped.

Duped because I realized that much of my emotionalism had been merely an adolescent religious fervor, one that idealized reality rather than surrendered to it.  I wanted so badly to believe that there was a way of organizing society based on so-called feminine values of total equality, respect and integrity.  I needed to mythologize a human history that may have been, had men not raped and pillaged, conquered and enslaved.  I insisted on believing that our biological drives do not determine our behavior, that competition for resources and status was pure construct.  And I ate that DaVinci Code shit up like a starving child, desperately wishing for safety and order in a chaotic world.

While there may indeed be both feminine and masculine principles in the universe, this in no way automatically endows human beings in a female body some sort of higher spiritual awareness or power, any more than it does those with a penis.  The exclusively female capability for live birth makes us conduits, not creators, of life.  It is just too easy and too tempting to want to take our turn at the throne of sexism as a sort of historical payback.  To spiritualize this is no different than the various groups of men in history who justified their own dominance as a divine right legitimized by the sacred texts they themselves authored.  While spiritual superiority may seem like an obvious oxymoron, the concept is in fact not evident to some, including those feminists who believe that matriarchy is a blissful paradise of nurturing cooperation.  Because, you know, women never get pissed off or fiendishly controlling or want their kids to beat your kids' asses in soccer or SAT scores or anything.

Today, I am no more impressed by unintelligent feminism than I am by idiotic patriarchy. Women who believe the world would be utopia if we were solely in charge may prefer bedchamber back-stabbing and poisoned wine to outright combat, but I do not prefer either. Just because we have estrogen and mammary ducts does not render us exempt from unchecked egoism and the primal drive to rule over.  Mature, thoughtful equality is what interests me now.  Without that, the oppressed becomes the perpetrator for awhile, and then it just flips right back again, over and over.  It is only a matter of time before those who identify as victims become bullies when the power falls into their hands.

I bore witness to this during several instances of advocacy training during my early days in the social services field.  While I am forever grateful for the vital social importance and personal growth value of privilege and oppression work, I in no way want to live in that paradigm in the long term.  I have met advocates who insist that they cannot possibly be racist because they are part of an oppressed minority.  I have trained with professionals who vehemently believe that there is no way that people of relative privilege have legitimate suffering.  I have even been mentored by highly educated and accomplished leaders who suppress voices that challenge the victimhood identity.

A few years ago, I met a former idol of mine whose work has been a game-changer in empowering females around the world.  Like me, she had worked with women in domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers and prisons.  She saw first-hand the devastation of early trauma on these ladies' adult lives and the heartbreaking consequences of catch-22 choices.  Yet, when I asked her at a book signing whether she believed that women could be abusers without being coerced or forced to do so by men, her answer was flat-out denial.  It was as if she regarded the female gender incapable of generating unprovoked violence, as though two X chromosomes made perpetration or even the thought of it impossible.  Would she tell those abused by women that their experience of violation is biologically impossible?  Or is she reluctant to concede to the complexity of the issue for fear it will weaken the punch of her girl power message?

Dualistic thinking like that serves only to buttress the shame and isolation of those who have been harmed by females.  People victimized by women are already walking uphill both ways to even begin to conceptualize their plight.  They are already fighting against societal taboos and collective denial.  They don't need a bunch of self-proclaimed progressives telling them to turn a blind eye, lest they throw a wrench into an already-polarized political agenda.

It is crucial we women own the ways that we can be perpetrators, too. Any feminism which does not give serious consideration to how we as women also bully, dominate, abuse and oppress is to me only part of the story.  I have witnessed insecure women relentlessly erode the confidence of a strong woman and then gloat like a hyena over a fresh kill as she disintegrated into a pathetic puddle on the floor.  The only male who has ever been crueler and more oppressive toward me than several women I have known was a diagnosed sociopath.  And even he apologized.

So, please, ladies, let's cut the shit and do the rest of the work at hand.  Yes, we need to continue signing petitions and voting and demanding equal pay for equal work. Yes, we need to protect our bodies and reproductive rights, which are increasingly at stake every day.

And yes, we need to take ownership of that absolute tyrant that is inside every one of us, male and female alike, and befriend and integrate it as a very real part of us - and not the sole domain of The Man.