ties out into the world can lead to uninvited intrusions. Any woman
standing alone and waiting, or sitting alone at a restaurant or in a
lobby, can expect to be approached by men who assume that any
woman who is not clearly attached is fair game for comments or
attention. If she is receptive and approachable, then her friendliness
may invite assumptions that she is a readily available sex object.
Thus she may receive unwanted sexual overtures and may become
a victim of sexual harassment or of anger when she refuses. Two
factors predispose her to victimization: the man’s misreading of re-
ceptiveness or friendliness as sexual invitation, and the general as-
sumption that any solitary woman can be approached and is poten-
tially available. Another contributing factor is the underlying social
assumption that women are property. This assumption forbids men
to make comments, speak to, or even “look over” an escorted woman,
as men are free to do otherwise.
Women who are like Demeter and Persephone, who feel vulner-
able or unprotected, often have anxiety dreams. They may dream
that men are breaking into their bedrooms or houses, that lurking
or aggressive men are threatening or following them. Sometimes
the hostile men in their dreams are familiar: men whose criticism
they fear, men who intimidate them by abusive physical threats or
by outbursts of anger. If in childhood a woman felt unprotected or
was actually abused, the figures that attack her in dreams are often
from childhood, or they take place in familiar surroundings from
childhood.
Not all women who are relationship-oriented, vulnerable goddess-
type women have victim dreams. Like the phases of the goddesses
themselves, women who resemble these goddesses can go through
a period of life during which they feel safe and unthreatened. Their
dream life may be similarly pleasant. However, some women have
victim dreams in good times, as if to remind them of their vulnerab-
ility. In any case, the dreams of vulnerable women are filled with
people and often take place inside buildings; and they evoke
memories of past emotional ties as well as describe present relation-
ships in symbolic terms.
Goddesses in Everywoman