Cornithaca County

Family Fables – The Man and the Mural

A woman and a man were discussing the relative positions of women and men in society. The woman contended that she and her sisters were more deserving than men by reason of their greater worth. "Come now with me," she cried, "and I will soon prove that I am right." So she took him into the public meeting hall and showed him a new mural depicting women’s greatness in all things. • "That is all very well," said the man, "but proves nothing, for it was a woman who painted that mural." • We can easily represent things as we wish them to be. •• This fable is changed very little from “The Lion and the Statue.” I have reversed some fables, twisted them, and made some ambivalent, and mixed things up, to remove the reader’s comfort zone and provoke thought. For the same reasons, thoughts of the most respected “icons” in the history of social development will be printed at the bottom of some pages in this book, as a benchmark against which current social theories can be measured.