> historical warped perception of women that created unjust conditions and treatment
then I'd like to see you argue against that premise. Let's take a very specific instance: voting. Historically there have been many countries where men were allowed to vote before women were allowed to vote. Do you think men being allowed to vote, while women are not, is:
a) A clever lie in our history books, where men were allowed to vote, women were also allowed to vote
I didn't say anything about classes, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. There is, obviously, a long history of men oppressing women. Men used to own their wives and have the legal right to beat and rape them. Not every claim about one group having done something to another group rests on some kind of Marxist ideology. There are any number of uncontroversial historical statements along the lines "group X did Y to group Z" which would be assented to by people of all ideological stripes.
I think your point is interesting, but what do you propose to do regarding the injustices of the past in women and minority groups? You can't just unilaterally declare that the field is level, and ignore history.
As far as I can tell, you're saying that it's not true that men have historically oppressed women because it's not true that the bourgeoisie (note spelling) oppress the proletariat. That's clearly a non sequitur.
I don't think this negates the fact that most recorded events are about men which I think if you're leaving something out of history when you could have included it that's pretty much ignoring
Honestly this comment was a very long winded way of saying "women aren't as oppressed as some men"
Yeah, I suppose I lacked some precision in my language there.. I agree with you that women as a group were certainly oppressed in the past, and any woman who didn't want to live within the cultural norm would have felt oppressed, whether she went along with it or not. Feeling you're being treated unfairly and attributing it to oppression and actually being oppressed are two different things, though.
For the majority of women in most of history, oppressed means that your life is just as difficult as a random man of the same class, plus he might rape you.
You're looking at history through rose colored glasses. Societal justice in the past meant basically "protect those in power, burn everyone else on sight." If you weren't part of the ruling group (be it by race, gender, ideology, etc.) then you had very few protections.
Throughout most of human history, the powerful people have behaved in a way that, by our standards, would be considered repugnant toward those who are less powerful. Most of the powerful people, following the author's thesis, would be men. So the vast majority of women (along with a majority of men) are going to be beaten down by them. Women were denied the vote throughout much of Anerican history, but so were blacks and non-property-owning men.
I think his point is that women haven't been relegated to second-class status in many cultures because of a deliberate conspiracy to oppress women per se, but because the powerful people usually oppress the less powerful, and men tend to reach the highest levels of power for individualized, non-conspirational reasons. No conspiracy or intentional patriarchy is needed.
Patriarchy hurts men too is a weak and out rightly laughable argument. Because that's not how oppression works, at all.
Let me give you some examples. White masters thought they were stronger than black slaves yet slaves had to do all the dull & dangerous work. Same with the colonial masters they thought their underlings were weak and pathetic so they doubled down on oppression and plundered even more wealth through additional taxation and other means.
All the laws were out rightly favoring the oppressors in every case except magically when it comes to patriarchy. Imagine if Nazi Germany worked like patriarchy. Aryans were the all supreme, the strongest and the most independent race so they would've had almost all laws in favor of Jews right? Nope instead they gassed millions of Jews.
>And who gave women the right to vote? The evil, patriarchal, oppressive, misogynistic... men.
Yes. Women were not able to get the vote until men assented to it. That is a textbook example of men oppressing women. You might as well argue that slaves weren't oppressed because they were eventually "given" their freedom by white men.
You really think the "oppression" of women in western industrialized nations today is comparable to the oppression of a conquered people in medieval times?
I'm very aware that the poor have been historically oppressed especially in recent capitalist societies like the US, I absolutely agree that it's a problem that capital owners continuously try to deflect through propaganda.
However the oppression of the poor has historically run in parallel with the oppression of women. In ancient societies, women were often excluded from political and public life, and their main role was to bear children and maintain the household. This was true in many early civilizations, such as ancient Greece, Rome, and China.
Religion also played a significant role in the oppression of women. Many religious traditions, such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, have traditionally placed women in subordinate roles, with men as the primary religious leaders and decision-makers.
Women were also subjected to practices such as foot-binding, female genital mutilation, and forced marriages. These practices aimed to control and limit women's movements and independence, and were often seen as necessary for maintaining social order.
>For most of history, women were basically the property of their fathers, then traded for dowry to become the property of their husbands. They couldn't own property, they couldn't vote, they could be stoned to death for disobeying their husbands.
For most of history, both men and women in any society couldn't do any of the things you just described. The majority of people in any society, of both genders, have belonged to the lower classes. This is still true today, but you have far more rights as a lower class person today than you would have 200 years ago. You're viewing history solely from the perspective of the upper classes (which includes the middle class).
And even worse than that, what's happening in women's prisons. It couldn't be more obvious that this is rooted in male entitlement and dominance, yet somehow the oppressor gets painted as the oppressed and vice versa.
Sorry to hear that. The point I was trying to make is that inequalities != oppression. I think it is important to distinguish between unfairness arising from random natural events (e.g. being weaker, shorter, uglier or below average in some other way) vs unfairness that arises from one group having authority over another group and placing undue constraints on them. I think it is hard to disagree that historically, women who wished to live a life outside of the cultural norm at the time were oppressed. I just disagree that beauty standards had anything to do with it.
In reality, the injustice is that a small group of very powerful men oppress all women and nearly all men.
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