Hi, I am Hully's DS. Hully said I could ask you a question!

I don't know how old you are or whether this answer is suitable but I have always felt that as well as the childbirth aspect, the reason is that, as kickass said, humans are animals and as we grew more civilised, the physically stronger sex analysed and grew suspicious of the feelings that the 'weaker' sex aroused in them. Attraction and desire are powerful and overwhelming feelings for anyone, let alone a group that defines itself by its strength and brain and that is why so many men cannot get further than the 'witchcraft' explanation, why they put us on an unwanted pedestal or revere virginity, why there is this need to treat sex as a war game. For me, that's why subjugation of women is and has always been such a near-universal fact of life, perpetuated by ancient and modern civilisations.

Until we got the washing machine, pill and the Internet, that is...

maybe mentioned already but I would say because the fact that they are the ones who bear and birth children it makes them vunerable/the weaker sex in the eyes of many and has been so historically?

no i call bollocks on that one too. yay jesus talked to women - a MAN deigned to talk to women woo hoo! nope.

plus you are talking in utter androcentric terms sircliff - note you outlined femaleness as an example of difference thus relegating male as normal or fully human.

Not convinced by the empowering women argument at all.
I can't help but think of the way Shariah law treats women's testimony as half that of a male, or the way Judeao Christian tradition excludes women from postions of power, or the way women are considered unclean in Buddhist temples.....(I could go on). Religion might give women concessions, but it's always tied into her "role" of submissive helpmeet.

Nor am I convinced about the alpha male in animal packs. Wolf packs are usually dominated by a female, as mongooses and meerkats, macaques and grivet monkeys. Lemurs are almost exclusively female dominated across the whole family, with only a few exceptions.

Am I too late to add my point? I think the religion is a red herring. Most faiths actually empower women (it was a woman who whom Jesus first revealed himself, a woman who discovered the tomb empty and Jesus himself confided in many women friends who probably were also apostles) but it is the leaders of religion who choose to re-write the rule book and oppress women.

There is always a power struggle within humanity. Anything that is seen as different is also seen as a threat. Which includes women, blacks, homosexuals, children, etc. Ignorance breeds fear which in turn breeds hatred. Every animal pack has a dominant male (note, not a dominant female) and human beings sometimes display these very animal instincts. The urge to dominate is everywhere and sexism is just a small part of the bigger picture.

That's my theory as to why.

Good points slug. We identify with people genetically similar to us. Orwell uses this very well in his novel 1984 where all the representations of Big Brother are different to look like the people in that particular ghetto.

I was ruminating over the powerful women of the past discussion upthread over the weekend and it occured to me that, while some women in the past did weild huge power, it was often because they were not tied to a man. Abbesses spring to mind as an obvious example though, ultimately, they were required to submit to the power of a Bishop who, of course, can only be male (even to this day)

Look at Queen Elizabeth the first. She managed to stay in control of her country precisely because she managed to dodge the marriage issue her whole life. What would have happened if she married? Her lands (i.e. England) would have become a vassal state of her husband's. Clever woman that Bess.

Finally, have you notices Hullyson, that god is always referred to as "he". Once you give the ultimate power the characteristics of the ruling class, you underline the inherit superiority of men. For another example of this look at the most common pictures of Jesus. Why is he white, blue eyed and often bordering on blonde? The man, if he existed, was Jewish and Middle Eastern. Yet, as the Western word conquered, their missionaries took with them images of god made in their likeness to spread the word amongst the heathen.

it's also classic displacement isn't it? your boss treated you like an underling at work and humiliated you with your lack of power and you couldn't fight back but you could come home at the end of the day and roar at your wife and kids and feel like a king. so in their bully games with each other we essentially always bore the brunt and were their buffers against feeling totally degraded and for the rich men that meant we were their buffers against mass revolt.

and i do think that's part of why right wingers want women to go back to being owned by men - it creates more social harmony in the world of men and capitalism if the workers have a wife and kids under them. it appeasses the masses.

i think it is deeper than fear in the case of women - i do think it is what men give each other to make up for their varying status' in a way. so the male world is built on oppression and power and getting stuff and inequality but whatever your place in that hierarchy you were allowed 'your woman' to do with as you will and give you a bit of ownership and power of your own even if you had none in the public sphere of men.

men used women to forge links between their groups as well - trading their daughters as wives which forged alliances and trading relationships. gifts have always been formalisers of relations and ways of establishing bonds, daughters were the gifts supreme really and by exchanging them and having them living in with your group and reproducing your offspring (under the fathers rule in patriarchal groups and the maternal uncles rule in matriarchal ones) you intertwined your interests.

i think that gifting of women between men is a big part of it along with the obvious controlling the means of reproduction that became more important later when we got into agriculture and were able to produce surplus to pass on between generations and when considerable labour needed to be harnassed in order to farm.

I'm late to this but all oppression is about feeling better and more superior by making someone else feel worse - power. It is also about fear. Fear of being the oppressed and not having power.

That is why human beings look for differences. We divide to rule. It still happens and we've all been part of it in one way or another.

Think of the most obvious causes of "otherness" and you will find discrimination and fear (whether black, Jewish, French, female etc etc).

I also hope that he shares his sources with his mates.

Really, really laughed at 'Hi shirl, my mum has told me about you'

almost like controlling and capitalising on women's labour rather than sharing it with other women - which would possibly be a touch too ironic?

yes i do hope ds reveals his research method and shares this thread with those who want it. would be a tad selfish and entitled to take all our efforts and keep them to yourself.

Hully ds tell your Mum to inbox xenia .

So, Hullyboy, what have you learnt then? Apart from that if you ask your mum and dozens of women on mumsnet, they will do the hard bits of your homework for you

Make sure you tell the girls in your class where to come to find out more about how sexism works- especially as I bet you'll get a better mark than them

obv. your ht hasn't read simone de beauvoir's 'the second sex'.
there's ONE reason why - because women give birth.

even right back when men didn't realise they had any involvement in the matter, women's 'weakness' during pregnancy, birth & soon after, meant that they were susceptible to subjugation. although the idea of 'mother nature' was reverred, it was much in the same way that people still see 'the virgin mother' as being holy/wonderful, but still weaker & there for the role they perform, rather than for themselves. so procreation was seen as a great thing, but women were seen as the instruments of it for the benefit of humanity, ie they were serving the species, rather than respected as individuals

property ownership and inheritance rights also require that the woman is controlled reproductively, don't they? To ensure that the child inheriting is indeed the offspring of the male currently owning the property.

Possibly because in the old days, when we lived a subsistence lifestyle, it made sense for the labour to be designated along gender lines - which it still often is in very physical communities, like the Amish. Childbearing and infant feeding (before formula was introduced) plus the fact that women can't have millions of children like femal rabbits do, made women and children too valuable to be out hunting, for e.g, and if you can only gather a limited supply of calories, it makes sense to leave the hard physical tasks to the sex which is in general stronger, while the sex that does the v valuable work of childrearing and feeding to do the equally valuable tasks in the home / cave.

Post the Insustrial Revolution, actually much earlier, maybe connected with the introduction of money and trade, mens' role was the one most easily translated into cash, wealth and then power.

And they then saw that thier access to wealth and power was all the easier if they had a woman to support them, and not compete, hence the implementation and maintenance of a power imbalance.

Just conjecture - I was thinking about this watching the Amish programme on TV, and the people who llive in the far Arctic on frozen planet.

Property ownership! Inheritance rights. See the change in succession to the monarchy that happened JUST LAST MONTH!!!

Here in Ireland in the earlier part of the 20th century, many women who were property owners were committed to mental institutions for life because their (male) relatives wanted their property.

I put forward the evolutionary argument on the other thread.

If there is a gene that says "be jealous and possessive over women" then men who have that gene will only raise and invest in their own offspring, men who don't have that gene will invest in and raise other men's offspring. Therefore the gene that causes you to only feed/care for/train/protect your own offspring will spread, because people who have it will have more children and their children will be more successful.

In theory anyway.

oh, and once you have the why - to ensure that you are not raising other men's offspring - the how follow and multiply, as they have done

I read an interesting pov once. It was along the lines of - it all boils down to genes.

control women and ensure that the babies are yours. Because a woman carries the babies, she knows they're hers but a man doesn't and can only ensure the babies are his by controlling the woman.

It's interesting, anyway.