THE ADVENTURER
Society's traditional double standard towards female adventurers
A bearded man of rugged good looks sat beside the interviewer in a short red dress and high heels. She fawned over him as she questioned him about his latest perilous journey. At the bottom of the TV screen, his name scrolled across, underneath his title and profession: 'Adventurer.'
Anger seized me! I remembered a friend of mine referring to my travels as global gallivanting. Would he have used the same terminology if one of his strapping Aussie mates had told him that he had been diving with sharks in South Africa or hiked the Villa Rica volcano in Chile? How could being male make the term adventurer look like a legitimate occupation when, in a traditional dictionary, the definition for a female adventuress was:
'A woman who seeks social or financial advancement by dishonest or unscrupulous methods, a sexual adventuress is scheming to make a profitable marriage.'
It seemed that for a man, it was a badge of honor tracking through inhospitable places, facing deadly animals, and studying previously unrecorded tribes. On the other hand, an adventuress, even if her behavior did not exhibit sexual promiscuity or gold-digging, always ran the risk of being shamed for acting selfishly, not fulfilling her God-given task of maintaining society's fabric by performing a plethora of unpaid, reproductive work, ranging from raising children to running the bake sale at the local charity.
Maybe in the olden days, like chickens, society kept women safe by clipping their wings. Girls were educated in the belief that it was disproportionately dangerous for a woman to venture into unknown territory. The threat of rape has always been there. But statistically, most women are raped by their nearest and dearest, not by strangers lurking in remote places.
It can be safer for a woman to travel. I remember hearing about male missionaries traveling up the tributaries of the Amazon to join the Auca cannibals. Predictably, they got killed. When two female missionaries arrived in their canoe, the men ignored them. They were free to befriend the women and children. Another woman, even a foreigner, is easily assimilated into a household in many places. Conversely, a man is perceived as a threat—an intruder who might challenge the local males and compete for females.
On my travels, I have experienced this firsthand. I once stayed with a family in the ultra-Muslim Osh Valley in Kyrgyzstan. On my recent trips to Colombia, I cannot thank the women enough who welcomed me into their homes and allowed me to experience Colombia's generous hospitality firsthand when I was nothing but a stranger to them.
Working at the American Museum of Natural History, AMNH in New York, I learned about the lives of adventurers, branded as explorers whose far and wide wanderings formed the base of the museum's priceless collections.
Almost daily, I would pass by Ahnighito, a meteorite weighing 31 tons. Getting it to the museum from the Arctic is associated with Robert Peary. Only after I looked up his biography did I learn that his wife Josephine Diebitsch, a researcher at the Smithsonian before marrying him, accompanied him on his early Arctic travels. After their marriage, she stayed home and raised their children. Unfortunately! Had she accompanied him on all his trips, she might have kept him from fathering children with a 14-year-old and several other Inuit women. In the prevailing morality then, it mattered little if a man planted a few seeds along the way. But a white adventuress giving birth to a half-native child would have been a scandal in an age where indigenous people were exhibited along with zoo animals.
At the AMNH, I also marveled at the impressive Akeley Hall for African Mammals. However, it was not until years later that I discovered that it was not this virile male trophy hunter Carl but his wife, Mary Jobe Akeley, who had contributed most of the specimens after his death. But her name was not on the museum's plaque.
Looking back, a big regret id that I never dared to follow my dream of becoming an underwater archeologist. As a Park Avenue housewife, I played tennis with the 'ladies who lunch' at the Westchester Country Club, but I always felt out of place.
Early on, my father had shamed me for my adventurous streak. When I won a travel scholarship at age 16, he forced me to give it to my brother, who never completed the trip. I learned to view my passion for exploration as though it was a character flaw.
Although there were role models of women explorers while I was growing up, I never knew about them. My life was already half-lived when I finally came across such amazing women like Alexandra David Neale by listening to a lecture at the New York Explorer's Club. Only after my divorce, no longer under male scrutiny, did I trek down the Himalayan foothills, explored South America's backroads, traveled along the Silk Road, and took up scuba diving.
Now I have turned old and grey. Physically more challenging destinations like climbing volcanos are out of my reach. But there are still other fun things to do! When I travel today, I am delighted to share my quarters with young women who are far more courageous than I ever was. They no longer apologize for going wherever their dreams take them, and as one of them pointed out:
"Today, we use gender-neutral terms.” Anyone can be an adventurer. 'Adventurer of the Year' awards regularly include women whose achievements of climbing higher and diving deeper often surpass men's. That would have been impossible only a generation ago.