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.
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'm saying "men oppressing women" is the same BS as "the bourgoise oppress the proletariat"
> Not every claim about one group having done something to another group rests on some kind of Marxist ideology
Of course it doesn't.
What I am saying is that I find parallels in many, many, ideologies. If the only difference between the ideologies is the names of the "bad" and "good" people, then I call the ideologies the same.
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.
I would say that's about right as someone who basically espouses this way of looking at class dynamics (though I'm not sure it's really a solely Marxist view, as I am still a fan of capitalism, etc.).
One nuance that might be missing from your comment is that folks who believe this still agree that individual men can be oppressed. And some groups of men can be oppressed too -- black males come to mind. But generally, when talking about oppression, they/we are talking about systemic oppression, and would generally agree that men as a whole are not systemically oppressed, although they theoretically could be if women ever became the dominant gender.
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.
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.
>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).
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.
I think we've all that misandrist teacher who tried to destroy us.
I get people are emotional animals, and women were oppressed. Some women see it as their divine right to hurt boys for the sins of their ancestors.
But it's not.
Leave the kids alone.
> The culture was oppressive towards damned near everyone who wasn't of the highest class.
Yes, yes, "all lives matter". It doesn't change the fact that given a man and woman of the same class, it was generally more oppressive to the woman, Biblical queen exemptions notwithstanding.
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.
Ah, this old argument. Yes, and modern feminism would not disagree with you. What this argument does is try to shift the responsibility away from the oppressor (in this case, patriarchy), akin to the slave owner saying to the slave that he's also had a hard life.
Humans also owned slaves and treated women as domestic property for the majority of human history.
I was an elementary science teacher for 3 years, I found superior logic and intellect and explanation was better than any punishment I could dole out. Nevermind that causing physical suffering by violence is wrong.
>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.
>Men have been getting the good end of sexual discrimination for centuries. Owning property. Voting. Higher education. Being allowed to practice a profession. Being favored by marriage laws. Being favored by social biases.
Yes, so let's reverse it, and get a female-biased revenge ...on people that weren't even alive back at those times.
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