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This is pseudo-anthropology...the kind of "just so" story that sounds truthy until you actually dig into the topic.
In very short, the archaeological record actually there was less gender division of roles prior to the development of settled farming. In migratory or nomadic hunter-gatherer societies women generally don't have more than one small child at a time, allowing them to be more mobile. It was agriculture and the associated advent of women spending much of their lives pregnant and/or nursing, with larger families including more small children, that placed huge practical limitations on the time and movement of the average woman. Off the top of my head, agriculture was "invented" maybe 13,000 years ago, but we're looking at more like 10,000-8,000 years ago before it really caught on as something sizeable groups of people could do year-round in areas like the Fertile Crescent, along the Nile, and in the Yellow River Valley, and later than that before it "took root" (haha, pun) in other parts of the globe that weren't as easy to farm...much much later in certain regions. Not that thousands of years isn't a long time, but you're way off on scale.
Also, it's patently absurd to think that women (and those too old or young to roam) didn't also "band together" to take care of tasks nearer to home. Prior to the invention of the sort of equipment that makes farming and domestic tasks less labor intensive, collaboration was absolutely crucial for survival.
I would also caution that men and women having different roles did not indicate misogyny in all societies. You do, as a natural consequence of early rulers being mostly warlords of one sort or another, see mostly men as national figureheads, but that doesn't mean men in general were correspondingly so dominant in all societies, nor that the female contribution was was automatically considered lesser. There are plenty of cultures across history that venerate powerful female deities, celebrate the feminine, place women in areas of influence and/or authority, feature matrilineal succession, etc. There's a lot of variety in history beyond, say, the Abrahamic or Athenian legacies that currently dominate so much of the world's thinking.
Agree with the above but about the bolded: it is a mistake to think that a group that venerates female deities would also respect women and treat them as equals. Deities are feared for their power and because they are deities they venerated, placated with offerings and worship. Women on the other hand are considered endowed with power that is mystical and thus also feared. Because they women and not deities, they are controlled, their bodies and mind also controlled, and subjugated.
Inspite of all tha I agree women have held positions of authority and power and influence, but often it was due to wealth and marriage.
Isn't this a case of "old habits die hard"? It's not as if men and women were all suddenly put into the world we have now. We have to go back to the stone age. Men banded together to hunt while cavewomen took care of their stone age kids and we all lived in tribes; which is 100s of thousands of years of old habits. Another one is that even when you look at men and women today men band together, stick together, and actually help each other far more than women do for each other. Yes, there are exceptions, but exceptions don't make army's.
Kind of like in high school if you were a cool girl that actually liked to go out and do activities they most usually had more guy friends than girlfriends.
I'm sure I'm going to get yelled and screamed at for saying this LOL.
The stone age, which you obviously know little about, has nothing to do with modern forms of misogyny.
Your observation about the solidarity of bands of men, as opposed to groups of women is simply not true, fir instance.
Agree with the above but about the bolded: it is a mistake to think that a group that venerates female deities would also respect women and treat them as equals.
Oh, definitely agreed. Athena/Athens being a classic example of this. There are historical examples of positively regarded female deities that reflect a more generally positive regard for women in those societies, but yeah, worshipping female deities in and of itself isn't automatically an indicator of a lack of misogyny. But I would argue that the reverse - eliminating female elements from a religion - does almost always indicate some pretty deeply seated misogynistic tendencies in a culture.
There's so much diversity in the human experience. It's really fascinating.
So, I gather that instead of gathering data and looking at what it might reveal, it takes a viewpoint and tries to find evidence to support it.
In strongly patriarchal societies with bias against women, fully 1/2 of the human population are, to an extent, enslaved. Think of that. Half the population is subservient to the other half.
Not only that, but in the most extreme of cases, women are either deprived of their opportunity to work or are highly discouraged from pursuing any kind of academic career. I’ve not gone through this whole thread yet, so I’m interested in reading what others have written.
Kissing and groping a women without consent is sexual assault. Rape is penetrative sex without consent, as such "Rape Jokes" as defined are nothing to do with rape. Once again we have a very clearly well defined legal term that has almost universal understanding, that has simply been change to suit a political agenda, the use of the term simply adds to the problems, and creation of the perception of the existance of gender wars.
Donald trump was voted in for many reasons, personally I believe a backlash against the rise of the far left is one of the main reasons, these days is seems virtually every public male figure in the US, has something dug up about them. People get sick of hearing it. I am certainly no fan of him from a political perspective
Proving guilt is very difficult under reasonable person test. Reasonable person tests are present in many areas of law. I am a tax accountant by profession, and when I was working in the profession a Reasonable Person test was one we needed to apply all the time in the interpretation of tax law.
Obviously these tests are in our laws for very good reasons.
The cultural and ideological stuff, can be addressed not doubt, however we need to look at it from everyone's perspective
Would you for instance treat women talking about grabbing a bloke or kicking a bloke in groin with the same disdain, as you would a man? Lets face it girls do this, I have been grouped by at least a dozen strange women in my life.
In the many TV shows and movies where a women and man meet, he doesn't like her and rejects her, but she doesn't give up...she "stalks" him, and "harasses" him until he gives in, would you say she has simply fallen in love?
Their are many other injustices in the world that are often not looked at, Take this BBC video for instance.
This is exactly what happens when, people are portrayed in popular culture in certain ways and with certain stereotypes, and as you seem to believe it a affects men greatly as well, however certainly from my perception if men open up about this, they are quickly swept under the carpet, in exactly the same way a women would also claim to be. Its almost seems like a war that nobody is ever going to win.
Quote:
Originally Posted by homina12
You referenced gender wars early in your comment. In a war we need to choose sides. Whether we call groping or kissing a woman without her consent sexual assault or rape, I'm against it. Words matter and trying to reach a common understanding about the meaning of words is important, but the precise meaning of words matters less than the effort to get men to leave women alone, whatever we call their behavior.
I agree at lest somewhat with most of your other points, but I still hold that we simultaneously expect too little and too much from men, and those twisted expectations give cover to men behaving badly, sometimes criminally, as well as it gives cover to those who ignore men's very legitimate needs.
The vast majority of regular men and women could find common ground on a lot of issues. Yet we often don't. It's almost like someone benefits from men and women being at odds and other groups distrusting each other. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by danielsa1775
Thank you for the input.
However if you do not mind me pointing out, the bolded is in my opinion is part of the problem , you used the word women, and made an example of men leaving women alone, if you used person/people for instance you have an entirely gender neutral term, which does not take sides.
What you have said, could easily be interpreted by the far right misogynist types, that women do not kiss or grope men without consent, and that men have absolutely no problem with been left alone by women, when both are untrue.
If we want to totally get rid of this behavior, using the gender neutral term would be might be best? I certainly think so.
Actually, I was responding to your quote in which you narrowed the discussion to women as victims of sexual assault or rape. At no point in this conversation or I'm pretty sure anywhere else in my comment history have I downplayed the possibility that men can be victims, in any number of ways including sexual impropriety, at the hands of women or other men.
However if you do not mind me pointing out, the bolded is in my opinion is part of the problem , you used the word women, and made an example of men leaving women alone, if you used person/people for instance you have an entirely gender neutral term, which does not take sides.
What you have said, could easily be interpreted by the far right misogynist types, that women do not kiss or grope men without consent, and that men have absolutely no problem with been left alone by women, when both are untrue.
If we want to totally get rid of this behavior, using the gender neutral term would be might be best? I certainly think so.
I agree with you about gender neutral terms in discussing things that shift mindsets. I frankly believe we've come a REALLY long way since I've been alive. I mean, when I was a teenager, I had never heard of date rape, I thought of "rape" as a thing that only happens when a stranger jumps out of a bush and violently grabs you or something, and I thought, too, that unless it's the classic "prison" example, only women are victims and only men perpetrators of it.
I've pointed out a number of examples where I believe that just as we talk about things like "toxic masculinity" and "rape culture" with this presumption behind it that it is only women who suffer at the hands of men...that is not true, and it's wrong to downplay the bad behavior of women.
Including what middle and high school kids do.
Including harmful tropes that have been pervasive in our entertainment and stories.
Including all forms of consent violation, not just rape as strictly defined, but ALL sexual consent violation (a term I generally prefer, as it covers more things.)
This is why I want to see a more broad, gender neutral, and inclusive kind of education that focuses on a human being's right to consent and bodily autonomy, and the necessity for all other human beings to respect it.
And this, in my mind, does not harm or diminish the cause of women. It does not sweep aside our specific concerns in a cloud of whataboutism. If anything, it lowers the defensive shields of men and gets them engaged in the conversation. I want us all to realize that an overwhelming number of people, regular people, are in most ways on the same team here.
I guess one question in my idyllic imaginary concept where we can all act like rational people respecting each other's needs and rights.... How DO we discuss a case where a form of misogyny, or something very like, was the motivator for a crime? We had a guy here in the States who was filled with self loathing because he was not very good with the ladies and was resorting to visiting sex workers in massage parlors. He saw these women, I guess, as an example of women ruining men or being temptresses or something, I don't even know. He was very religious and very disturbed and conflicted, but some of the ideas he was way spun out about, I've heard in lesser intensity and with less threat attached (usually but not always) here on City Data from men. It seems to me like the realities of our sexuality give rise to some few-ish individuals experiencing a lot of disturbance and difficulty, which then leads some even smaller number to actually want to KILL other people over it. That usually seems to be men doing that. I'm not sure how we discuss an extreme such as that, in a gender neutral way, as the outcomes don't seem to exist independent of gender divided concerns.
I stated, earlier in the thread, that I think modern misogyny is rooted in the entitlement and unwillingness to share power. I think this is something that most people would agree with and that getting into debates about the gender or demographic composition of paleolithic hunting parties, while interesting to study, won't really solve the problem of sexism TODAY.
Honest question, what then is the solution? If patriarchal sexism and oppression is rooted in the unwillingness to share power, entitlement, and males in society being raised to "be tough" "stop crying" or "man up", what do you do about it??....What would inherently make to power holders give up their advantages to those who have less? What would be the inherent incentive for them to do so, outside of the argument that they should because it's morally right? We ALREADY agree that gender, racial, and social equality is right but the powerholders and many of their wives and children don't care because they love having those advantages.
I want to mention some mindsets that I have witnessed.
A man who has an overwhelmingly negative view of women... It typically seems rooted in the idea that he has a NEED for something and is frustrated when women don't want to give it to him. Society requires him to get consent/cooperation for the satisfaction of the need he feels, and he believes that he cannot be happy without it. That like any of the trappings of a successful existence, it is an entitlement. The injury he perceives women having done to him, is in the denial of something good.
Most of those cases are not men who have been beat up, assaulted, or who have experienced violence at the hands of women. But I've known men who equate the emotional pain of rejection, with ABUSE. They hurt, therefore someone has injured them.
The women I know who have an overwhelmingly negative view of men, have usually been harmed beyond rejection. They have been assaulted, abused or violently victimized.
I think we'd have to set aside infidelity as a reason why people become cynical toward the opposite sex, because studies show that both men and women (in het relationships) are about equally guilty of it. And I think that it's problematic to try and figure out the effect of emotional and financial abuse, too, because both do it, both suffer it, and those situations get really complex with a lot of "well what about when" scenarios.
But a difference I see is that men, even those who swear that they've "gone their own way" sometimes remain very angry about their thwarted sense of entitlement to what a woman has and won't give to them. Women who turn against men are usually less risk of rage and acts of violence and more along the lines of, "I'll get a cat and live alone for the rest of my life, it's all good." They might talk crap to their girlfriends about men, but that's about as far as it's likely to go.
I guess a lot of our evo-psych types will just say, "duh, testosterone"...but it always struck me as wild that a certain someone in my past managed to think that his acts of violence were less of a wrong done, than my lack of sexual desire towards him. Withholding of something positive somehow made me more of a villain than a guy who patrolled the house with a loaded rifle and told the kids he'd burn the house down with them in it.
And having raised boys... Well mine don't, I think, throw violent tantrums at others if they don't get what they want, but they do seem to turn a lot of that anger in on themselves sometimes. One at least can be very self destructive.
I wonder if there is any way to mitigate male violence in the species without also unmanning men? Or is it just part of the male creature that we've got to live with?
I wonder if there is any way to mitigate male violence in the species without also unmanning men? Or is it just part of the male creature that we've got to live with?
I really wish I had the answer to this, as do we all, but I just don't know if there is one. Raising boys to be better is the greatest solution I can think of, I certainly will with my own. But unfortunately, no person can control what the others do whom they did not raise. Heck, you can even teach them to be better and they'll still do their own thing.
Sonic, it genuinely makes me disheartened to say this, but I think it's both the creature we live with AND that we keep fighting to change. I'm man of color, and I have definitely felt the unfairness of being one in this society. I have definitely felt the fear of being trailed and tailgated by a police officer, even though I didn't do anything and have a clean record.
I can do better, raise my son to do better, and still ....an idiot who I don't know, and have no relation to, does things which threatened and endanger women. I really hate that. Just keep fighting for better!
I really wish I had the answer to this, as do we all, but I just don't know if there is one. Raising boys to be better is the greatest solution I can think of, I certainly will with my own. But unfortunately, no person can control what the others do whom they did not raise. Heck, you can even teach them to be better and they'll still do their own thing.
Sonic, it genuinely makes me disheartened to say this, but I think it's both the creature we live with AND that we keep fighting to change. I'm man of color, and I have definitely felt the unfairness of being one in this society. I have definitely felt the fear of being trailed and tailgated by a police officer, even though I didn't do anything and have a clean record.
I can do better, raise my son to do better, and still ....an idiot who I don't know, and have no relation to, does things which threatened and endanger women. I really hate that. Just keep fighting for better!
*nods*
What I know I can do is to work on the change in my own head, and to share ideas and speak to others whenever I can. Walking AND talking the talk to try and be the change I want to see in the world.
I feel some pretty deep stuff about the plight of men of color in America. I've seen (and been disgusted by) automatic suspicions and mistrust of black males, by white people I've known. When Trayvon Martin was killed, all I could think of is how I am a mother and my own sons were on the threshold of their teen years and it was so...automatic...for me to react to that from just a place of shared humanity. He was a kid, and his mother was grieving him. That one hit me really hard.
And what has felt like a punch in the gut ever since, is how much contortion I've heard white people do to try and justify and excuse these cases. I don't understand the lack of compassion. I just don't.
I wish I could project my remembered experiences on a wall like a movie to show other people sometimes, maybe that sounds crazy, but... I wish I could show people about my time as a poor person in Cincinnati. Because I first lived in a poor white area. I was pregnant, like "pregnant out to there" pregnant, and I was walking to a clinic in the neighborhood for a regular checkup. A group of white boys (who were not in school why? I don't know) came out of nowhere and chased me, throwing bricks and chunks of concrete at me and laughing. I didn't know them. They didn't know me. I was just a target for them, for no other reason than unrestrained juvenile savagery.
Then I moved to a different area, on the edge of a neighborhood called "Over The Rhine." It has since been gentrified, but at the time, in the late 90s and right before the "race riots" it was considered to be one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the entire country. It was almost completely a black neighborhood. I walked through it many times, with my baby in the stroller. Went to the mission to get free food, tied the plastic bags to the stroller and walked back up Vine St. to get home. I never had anyone threaten me, attack me, or treat me badly. I showed courtesy to others and they showed courtesy to me. Sure, people asked me for change, if I had it, I shared it. Offered to sell me drugs, which I just politely smiled and said, "no thanks, man! Hope you have a good day, though!" Never had an issue.
How can a race with so much blood on its hands, my own, have people who think that other ones are somehow degenerate or criminal, it's pretty damn well beyond me. Only they have bought what they were sold, I guess.
But I think that it does illustrate how systemic power generates these feelings of entitlement that breed hostility in certain situations. I personally believe that what POC in America deal with is a lot more serious than what most white women are dealing with. I think in my day to day, I'm most likely to run into misogyny as just words on the internet. The odds of someone feeling like they might have to shoot me, even with a psycho ex lurking in the wings of my life, are not very high.
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