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Every religion, and every society, in all times have demonstrated hatred of women in vile to subtle ways. Yet women are one half of the human race, and importantly the only means of propagating the species as possessors of a uterus.
Racism, and caste, as evil as it is, is ultimately, in truth, a convenient construct as a means of exploitation. Female sex is not a construct. Women have always worked as hard as men, even through pregnancy and the bearing of children, the future farm hands. What was the natural benefit in the hate and oppression? What was the payoff of hating the producer of future workers?
A few things I can think of that spurs this hatred:
Vagina/uterus envy.
They are property that can be stolen, can elope, and thus a liability.
They can seduce one to lose his senses.
[cut]
We hate that which we fear. What is the cause of fear?
What do you think?
Last edited by Rachel NewYork; 08-16-2021 at 08:19 AM..
Reason: Removed unsubstantiated and inflamatory comment.
Your entire post forces us to take your first statement as fact, and that it applies uniquely to women.
"Every religion, and every society, in all times have demonstrated hatred of women in vile to subtle ways"
The factual basis of this could be debated, but even if we grant that it is true... it is certainly not unique to women.
Does society "hate men" because our prisons are full of them? Does society hate men because they are the ones doing the lion's share of the world's most dangerous jobs?
Women provide plenty of value to mankind. As do men.
There seems to be a misconception that cavemen males oppressed women from day one. It's nonsense. Back in the day, you needed people to "work" (hunt, build stuff, fish, forage, chop trees, whatever) and you also needed people to raise and look after the next generation.
No matter how much feminists may hate it, it was very natural for women to handle childrearing and men to handle the "work". Why? Because in a world absent of what we think of as technology, men have more utility to do the type of work that requires strength, speed, etc. If a woman was a better hunter than the men in her tribe, one of two things happened: 1) She went out on hunts or 2) That particular tribe had a rougher time than it needed because it wasn't taking full advantage of what its population could contribute.
For thousands of years, this was the status quo and it made perfect sense. Over the last 5000 years, give or take, that has changed. As braun becomes secondary to brain as it pertains to "work" it made perfect sense for women (who choose to do so) to enter the workforce.
Or maybe you are right and men just have uterus envy. I know I wake up every morning and look at my penis and hate myself and I feel deep jealousy towards my sister. /s
It's all about control of a woman, and there are two ways to look at it: (strictly from the viewpoint of benefit to males) the individual view of "woman ownership", and the societal view of "woman ownership
Individual: If you can successfully own a woman, she has sex/babies with you and no other. This has obvious roots in evolutionary psychology, where a man (who is essentially a bundle of genetics) may have an advantage of having a surefire offspring of his own, and not wasting his energy on raising another man's offspring.
Society: Somewhere along the way, perhaps for good reason, society as a whole decided it was better for society to have only two-parent families for various reasons. This societal decision culturally enforces control of a woman by his husband (as recent history has been traditionally patriarchal, although this is not always the case).
All of this implies that the hatred/desire for control stems from the assumption (which I don't necessarily agree with, although it is a fairly reasonable assumption under the context of the absence of social pressure, even though it may not be in every case) that women are naturally polyandrous (in sexual terms, not necessarily marriage), and the assumption that this is more of a problem than sexual polygyny. Again, this mirrors the patriarchal bias of recent society being traditionally patriarchal.
Why does recent society have a patriarchal bias? That's a good question. It probably has to do with the physical (and more recently financial) dominance over things like food, property, and straight-up physical existence (a male can beat/likely kill a female in old times, although evolutionary he would not do well genetically to kill all of the females; FWIW many males chimps still kill females and their male competition's offspring). The kicker here is society, which in reality, a male would likely be killed by the tribe for doing so. Hint: this is one reason why we evolved to be more dominant over other animals. This is why many societies, including ours, are not strictly patriarchal. Males and females both collectively decide the rules of their society to the benefit of the whole of society itself. Of course, if males organize societally against females (which includes social and physical aspects), then they would in general be the ones to choose "the rules" by which society operates. THIS is what happened, and why recent history is traditionally patriarchal. This organization can occur in favor of females, too. But it didn't.
If you read this and think I'm a horrible person, I'm not. My analysis of what happened historically is certainly not in-line with my ethics.
Traditionally men wanted to control women to guarantee paternity. You always know who the mother is, but you don't always know who the father is. Male physical strength is what enabled this control.
Men are very competitive among each other, and raising another man's child is a deeply ingrained aversion.
Neither sex is particularly faithful to their partners absent monogamous social mores. If we did pair up for life naturally, society and history would have been very different.
Misogyny is rooted in the fact that this is a Patriarchal society. Why patriarchal societies are more prevalent than matriarchal ones is something I wonder about. Maybe it came about because in early hunter-gatherer tribes, men put their lives on the line to hunt large animals to feed the tribe and they became more aggressive as a result. Maybe it came about so that men could control who were and weren't able to have children, and to prevent every male in an a tribe from killing each other so that there was only a couple left to father children.
As far as why Misogyny still exists today, when none of the ^ above are conditions anybody is living under, I think it comes down to entitlement and a lack of willingness to share power. The same goes for the root causes of racism.
Women lost autonomy early in human civilization. Females were married off to cement alliances. As civilizations developed, the female deities tended to lose power and influence over time in their respective cultures. Warfare became necessary and status was granted to those men who were dominant and could defend their political units.
Rich men could afford multiple wives, thereby assuring many offspring. Polygamy probably benefitted women, who would not be the sole child bearer in the family unit, and who had help running the family unit. But among several wives, status would be unevenly divided or diluted.
In a civilization that valued physical domination highly, the contributions of women can be devalued, and probably were at many times throughout history.
I think the root of misogyny is simple reluctance of dominant males to relinquish power, or even to share it. This power over women’s bodies came very early in human development, and was part of many developing civilizations. And when men cannot control women’s bodies they have sought to devalue her scientific, commercial and political accomplishments. Even in modern times women’s accomplishments have often been overlooked in favor of high status men.
Misogyny is rooted in the fact that this is a Patriarchal society. Why patriarchal societies are more prevalent than matriarchal ones is something I wonder about. Maybe it came about because in early hunter-gatherer tribes, men put their lives on the line to hunt large animals to feed the tribe and they became more aggressive as a result. Maybe it came about so that men could control who were and weren't able to have children, and to prevent every male in an a tribe from killing each other so that there was only a couple left to father children.
As far as why Misogyny still exists today, when none of the ^ above are conditions anybody is living under, I think it comes down to entitlement and a lack of willingness to share power. The same goes for the root causes of racism.
Ding ding ding! Agree it is the root cause of both racism and sexism but with an important difference in that men of all races are sexists, but not intra racists. Other kinds of discrimination yes.
Women lost autonomy early in human civilization. Females were married off to cement alliances. As civilizations developed, the female deities tended to lose power and influence over time in their respective cultures. Warfare became necessary and status was granted to those men who were dominant and could defend their political units.
Rich men could afford multiple wives, thereby assuring many offspring. Polygamy probably benefitted women, who would not be the sole child bearer in the family unit, and who had help running the family unit. But among several wives, status would be unevenly divided or diluted.
In a civilization that valued physical domination highly, the contributions of women can be devalued, and probably were at many times throughout history.
I think the root of misogyny is simple reluctance of dominant males to relinquish power, or even to share it. This power over women’s bodies came very early in human development, and was part of many developing civilizations. And when men cannot control women’s bodies they have sought to devalue her scientific, commercial and political accomplishments. Even in modern times women’s accomplishments have often been overlooked in favor of high status men.
Reluctance to cede power exists within the male world as well. Misogyny is not just about ceding control, it involves hate. Rape is not about sex, it is violence, even mutilation and death. It is hate of the female body and disgust for it. Female infanticide is a symptom of this sickness in the society, when being born female itself is punishment. Raping women is meted out as a revenge. No amount of “advancement” has been able to mitigate it, only fear of criminal charge and even that barely.
Women lost autonomy early in human civilization. Females were married off to cement alliances. As civilizations developed, the female deities tended to lose power and influence over time in their respective cultures. Warfare became necessary and status was granted to those men who were dominant and could defend their political units.
There are exceptions, though: the women warriors among the Scythians (the so-called Amazons), a tradition that never entirely died out, as Viking burials of warrior women attest. Women were also religious authorities/priestesses among the Scythians and Vikings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by silibran;
Rich men could affordmultiple wives, thereby assuring many offspring.Polygamy probably benefitted women, who would not be the sole child bearer in the family unit, and who had help running the family unit. But among several wives, status would be unevenly divided or diluted.
In a civilization that valued physical domination highly, the contributions of women can be devalued, and probably were at many times throughout history.
I think the root of misogyny is simple reluctance of dominant males to relinquish power, or even to share it. This power over women’s bodies came very early in human development, and was part of many developing civilizations. And when men cannot control women’s bodies they have sought to devalue her scientific, commercial and political accomplishments. Even in modern times women’s accomplishments have often been overlooked in favor of high status men.
How would clustering women among a few (presumably prestigious) men, leaving other men without a partner, produce more offspring than if each man had one partner?
How would polygyny benefit women? How would not being the sole child bearer in a family unit bring about a benefit? The women in a family unit (such a discrete term!) would still probably bear children as often as they would if each had their own exclusive partner.
I've read explanations like this before. There seems to be some truth to the point about when warfare became common, men rose in prestige and women sank. But the picture isn't so cut-and-dried.
We need to keep in mind, that for generations, most historians and most anthropologists were men. They approached their research through their own male-oriented lens. So, for example, they convinced Western society at least, that it was "natural" for men to "spread their seed" among many women, because supposedly that's what other primates did. Such a convenient justification for their own proclivities! But later, women anthropologists and primatologists discovered, that female chimps or gorillas were sneaking off in the middle of the night, to mate with the strongest male. This ensures the female will have at least a couple of offspring who have a better chance of survival.
Women anthropologists found "primitive" tribes in various parts of the world, where it was normal for women to collect DNA from as many men as they wished. In some of these, women exercised a measure of political authority as well, and still do, since they live the longest. In some Siberian Native tribes, it was common and accepted for women to seek out men to mate with as they saw fit, while one male remained committed to them, and helped raise the children. This practice continued well into the middle of the 20th Century, until the Soviet regime put a stop to it. (One wonders how they enforced that.) The men in these tribes accepted, that women needed to choose whomever they deemed to be among the fittest males, to ensure the survival of the tribe in harsh conditions (typically, though not exclusively, in arctic regions).
So, these conclusions that are tossed around and repeated as authoritative were constructed mainly by men viewing the world through their own perspective, and the rest of us bought what they were selling, until later research by women revealed, that the picture of human (and primate) behavior was not so simple, and had been constructed on incomplete information. More research needs to be done, and is ongoing. One cannot assert across the board that "power over women's bodies came very early in human development". Perhaps in some parts of the world it did, in others, it didn't. In a few parts of the world, women have retained autonomy over their bodies to the present day.
This is why archaeology and anthropology are fascinating; if you're patient, someone will eventually come along and overturn the previously-held beliefs about what's "normal" and "natural" about human behavior. Stay tuned for further developments.
There are exception to everything. My previous post consisted of generalized statements which obviously are not universal. The saying, “the exceptions prove the rule” applies. I wish I could remember the book that lays this stuff out. Reading it made a huge impression on me, but the title escapes me.
Recently, I have read online about the fearlessness of female Vikings. They sailed with their men in various hazardous explorations. So, sure these women were as fearless as men, but ask yourself why their names are not remembered? Why aren’t their exploits celebrated?
To the widely held belief about rape. I am no expert on this. But I do believe that rape is about lust as well as about power, and possibly rage. I do not think this despicable act can be reduced to one word. Some rapists in some situations take advantage of impaired women in an opportunistic way. In those cases, motivation might be different, or possibly mixed with other emotions. I confess to not knowing. But coerced sex is rape, and for some men it is no doubt an expression of their misogynistic inner beings.
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