Suska wrote:Wow. Ok. In a hostile frontier environment men don't need to "own" a woman, they just need to be capable of protecting them. The big bullies, always protectin and shit.
Right; but being as brief as possible about centuries of history, it is believed to be the pattern of violence and territorial fighting that lowered the status of women and elevated men. For example, in several places in the Old Testament (the blueprint for patriarchy) patriarchs of note are "blessed with many sons," not daughters! Sons are important to the patriarch's little private army as he defends his possessions (which include the wives he has bought or stolen from others).
I'm not saying that agriculture and living in fixed locations made patriarchy and female oppression inevitable; but it did make it possible, while the role of women in prior hunter/gatherer societies was too crucial to make it possible for women to be reduced to the social status of chattel. And example of how it all might have turned out differently for the course of history is if we compare the Indus Valley cities of the Harappans with Sumer and the Nile River settlements. Where Sumeria set the stage for patriarchy and "Judeo-Christian" values, as they are called today, the largest Indus River city of Mohenjo-Daro was a model of equality, where no temples or palaces were built, the only large structures appear to be for grain storage or public use such as public baths, and every house appears to have been built according to the same floor plan and exactly the same size.
No doubt that sounds boring and conformist today, but the best speculation (since the few hieroglyphics found have nothing equivalent to the Rosetta Stone to enable translation) is that the Harappan culture was still following the communitarian values of their migratory past, and the as yet unknown religious core value system rigidly enforced these equal standards. Actually not a great deal is known about the status of women in the ancient city, except that statues and artwork of women indicate that they had a much greater public role than the women of Sumer were able to enjoy during the same time period.
And scanning over the origins of where our modern values came from should show why it is like pulling at a thread in a ball of yarn! It's hard to address the issue of where these "traditional values" that woman cited as the reference point in her video actually came from without trying to take a quick glossing look at thousands of years of history.
FWIW, I noticed a recent article from a Huffpost blogger that covers some of factoids in the middle between the origins of patriarchy until the modern era where we are still arguing about what marriage is and what it should be:
Changing Notions of Traditional Marriage In actuality, traditional marriage -- as it existed centuries ago -- is not worth defending.
Let's start with concubines, also known as mistresses, who were owned by husbands in ancient cultures and are mentioned without disapproval throughout the Hebrew Bible. Then there's the practice of polygamy, which was the norm in biblical times. Back then, tradition forced rape victims to marry their rapist. Tradition also called for victorious soldiers to make female war prisoners their wives and concubines.
In the Middle Ages, marriages were arranged for political and financial reasons, and girls could be forced to marry when they were as young as 12 years old. British Common Law held a man to be "lord and master" of his wife who was subject to "domestic chastisement." Wife beating was legal and common in England until the late 1800s.
In colonial America, wife beating was illegal, but marriage equaled patriarchy. A wife had no legal rights or existence apart from her husband. Any money or property she inherited belonged to him. Their children were his as well. Wife abuse was not uncommon.
In 1864 a North Carolina court heard the case of a woman abused by her husband because she had called him names. The court ruled that:
A husband is responsible for the acts of his wife, and he is required to govern his household, and for that purpose the law permits him to use towards his wife such a degree of force as is necessary to control an unruly temper and make her behave herself; and unless some permanent injury be inflicted, or there be an excess of violence, or such a degree of cruelty as shows that it is inflicted to gratify his own bad passions, the law will not invade the domestic forum, or go behind the curtain.
It wasn't until the 20th century, when women fought for and won the right to vote, to sign contracts on their own, to obtain financial credit, to have access to contraception and more, that these earlier notions of traditional marriage began to crumble, and something resembling the institution we recognize today began to emerge.
But each of the advances for women's equality was fought by forces that considered them an invasion of the sacred private realm of the home and an assault on the family. Even so, these advances became part of law and culture and are now the norm. In fact, they are embedded in the institution that conservatives are now so fiercely defending.
Marriage has always been dynamic. For the most part, its evolution has been positive. Marriage today is far more mutually supportive, egalitarian and secure for children than it was centuries ago. Take heart, conservatives. The institution of marriage does change and adapt over the years, and that is what makes it endure.
If I haven't presented the reason yet why I view the attempts to unwind the reforms made by feminism as dangerous and something for men as well as women to fight against, it's because I feel that the traditions of patriarchy - nationalisms, social hierarchies, making war and concentrating resources on war, are all social virtues that are clear vices today and need to treated as vices if the human race has any future on this planet. It's not that all women are liberals who want to focus on family and social programs and against war funding, but more women taking more of a role in how our societies are governed is going to be essential to making the future less focused on guns and bombs, and more focused on improving the environment and living standards.
And, I don't buy an earlier point that implied that gender equality was a natural result of modern liberal capitalism. Sure, the marketing industry loved the idea of having women in the workplace so they could become more prolific consumers and business in general liked having more women in the workforce also. But, as many feminists have noted for years - that the right to work has often meant the right to work for less money than men and total indifference to concerns regarding safety and affordable child care. Workplace or not, the conservatives, the capitalists, the war mongers, all see rolling back the achievements of women over the last century as an essential part of furthering their goals. That's the real fempocalypse!
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