Subservience is forced, has been forced, due to biology, until the very recent past. Women could not even control having children until birth control. No one likes "corporate drone" jobs. No one likes being a servant or a slave either. Sometimes you take what you can get at the time just to survive.
There was quite a significant amount of social pressure and manipulation to achieve this "we gave it to them". Voluntary servitude has been going on for centuries.
Well, if one is forced into labor, that is slavery, and slavery is bad. Therefore, forced sex i.e, rape is also bad.
This is not to say that I am completely comfortable with this thing, though. For someone like myself, this Sugar-daddy-baby thing feels like a 180 degree departure from the values that I grew up with, which society itself promoted as the right thing. Now I just feel lost and alone. Everything is depressingly transactional. In all honesty, I'm quite comfortable with that when it comes to most of my daily interactions. But when it comes to relationships, I feel shocked. Maybe I'm a hypocrite.
Ironically, the widespread use of contraception and abortion means that women are much more likely to be used and abused, treated as objects, and discarded as disposable, rather than loved, respected, and cherished by men who are attracted to them.
They've claimed that this is their choice, that this is empowering, that the alternative was slavery and oppression, but I'm not sure how many sincerely believe those slogans.
This was all foreseen and predicted. The world was warned, but the world pressed on blindly.
Every society that denies women independence from men. I agree this is a sliding scale, but near the extreme end is this staple: Girls belong to the parents until such time as they are married off to a husband, who is then in effect their new owner. I take the liberty to call this slavery.
> "Domestic servitude" is a poor way to present homemaking
It is when you are absolutely economically dependent on the outside of the home work, from which you are functionally excluded, of a partner for survival, when even searching for an alternative in the same line is grounds for termination without support, and where the one on whom you are dependent has a legal right to use you sexually without consent (criminalization of marital rape in the US began in the mid-1970s after the mass entry of women into the workforce)? I think “domestic servitude” is an overly positive euphemistic description of the condition women were generally trapped in before their out-of-the-home work became normalized.
For almost all of history in almost every society both man and women have been ignored, oppressed, controlled. Things have drastically changed in Western world. Not sure we need to impose a Brave New World style "utopia".
Are you referring to the US, where women have no freedom to decide what happens inside their uterus and slavery is still allowed for their millions of prisoners?
Either women or men can choose to take submissive roles, and that is their free choice among practitioners. Likewise, either women or men can choose dominance (in fact it is popular for a dominatrix to be paid for her services.)
The BDSM community (not merely people who have a fetish) is very careful about safety and respect for others. There are safewords and failsafes and safety checks at every stage of the scene.
I think it is dismissive and close-minded to say that such a community "makes women slaves"; it shows that you are an outsider and that you know nothing of their customs, morals, or attitudes.
We could very well have accepted that some people are slaves. But we, as a society, decided that this is a bad idea. Why can't we do the same with gender roles?
Being coerced into fighting wars that have nothing to do with you is clearly oppressive. Maintaining a society which accepts this, is oppressive. Violence for entertainment is male-focused, and oppressive.
Men are very, very oppressed. A few who have escaped into financial independence does not make a trend.
There are also plenty of women that will tell you they are freely choosing to submit to male authority by wearing a head scarf, or binding their feet which requires breaking the arches so they can fold them in half (in centuries past), or working for significantly less money, or, or, or...
In general, I don't take people's words about the freedom of the choices they've made at face value unless they've first convinced me that they're actually free to make those choices, and that includes freedom from longstanding emotional baggage and unresolved internal conflicts.
Slave owner wasn't sent to do part time in a coal mine, BECAUSE he was slave owner. You can't equate some people having hard life with all people having because they had some role in society. And yes some people managed to eschew their role, but they are exceptions.
Don't get me wrong. There is a lot to hate in patriarchy, it's a very bad system, but it has some advantages for women. As well as disadvantages for men. However paltry they are.
Careful. There aren't a lot of longstanding systemic injustices you can't defend with the argument "at least everyone knew what was expected of them."
Women choosing to function in their "traditional" marital roles isn't inherently unjust, but women being in any way pressured to give up self-actualization (through career, personal freedom, &c) in the service of those "traditional" roles sure is.
It's like ... slavery-lite. Fundamentally what's the difference between Lola's role and a common role of a wife a hundred years ago?* And second – a dangerous question – is it necessarily wrong? I ask not to lead one to believe to think that it isn't, certainly there are aspects which are unquestionable immoral, but is there room for such a social construct? More importantly, answering why not in a robust way could make the societal goal of maximizing each individual's personal freedom a little closer.
* not that every wife was treated like a slave or that there aren't still women who are
You can regard both as detrimental to equal human dignity in different ways.
For most of human history you had exactly this. Women having little means to control their reproductive status (treated as property, no concept of marital rape), and men being forced to partake in the wars of their tribe/nation/state.
As society expands the rights of the individual over the utilitarian needs of the collective, both become less tolerated by society.
Subservience is forced, has been forced, due to biology, until the very recent past. Women could not even control having children until birth control. No one likes "corporate drone" jobs. No one likes being a servant or a slave either. Sometimes you take what you can get at the time just to survive.
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