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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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

336 replies

Hullygully · 02/12/2011 18:20

For R.S i have been asked to think, and collect, 10 key points WHY women have suffered from sexism in the past. I can think of HOW, but I am interested in WHY. I would be really interseted and grateful in any thoughts you may have! Thanks!

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Sloobreeus · 02/12/2011 19:10

In the 50s, when I was a girl, most women stopped work when they married. Thus they earned no money. A mortgage was often in a husband's name so a woman had no power there either. She was effectively stuck...

ATruthUniversallyAcknowledged · 02/12/2011 19:11

I've just realised you don't need 10 reasons. Just print out this thread and tell your teacher that whoever invented sexism could see into the future, realised that one day women would spend all of their time gossiping on mumsnet & therefore decided it was best they didn't have any important jobs.

crazycrackernanna · 02/12/2011 19:13

14 and reading pregnancy threads already

Mmmnotsure · 02/12/2011 19:13

I'd suggest you define your terms to start with. That makes it easier to answer a question which may be ambiguous, or have more than one appropriate way to approach it. So, decide (and say) in what way or ways you will interpret 'why' and then collect the answers from above which fit that best. You've got loads of great answers. You could start with the absolutely fundamental reasons - being generally physically weaker, being the sex that gestate and give birth etc - and then move on to the social/religious mores that are overlaid onto these.

You sound great btw, and very enterprising. Good luck.

LEttletownofBOFlehem · 02/12/2011 19:28

Nobody knows for sure, but we have theories. My suggestion is that back when humans had to scrape a living from the earth, both sexes could help with gathering berries, roots and fruit, as small nursing babies were carried by their mothers, and this could all take place near the 'camp' or place of shelter. Hunting for protein in the form of meat meant going much further afield, sometimes for days, so that fell to the stronger men in the group who weren't looking after babies or the old. When they returned with meat, they naturally felt entitled to eat the best bits themselves first as their reward, and so we have the beginnings of power and privilege- a pecking order, which would eventually have to be maintained with violence, and "logic" in the form of social ideas about who should be in charge. This ended up being reflected in early religions and other institutionaliser forms of social control. And once one group has power, they are very VERY reluctant to give that up.

Also, once they have power and access to the best food etc etc, they become more and more strong and able to maintain the status quo. A bit like Manchester United etc. can buy much better players than Accrington Stanley, and are unlikely to ever be beaten by them, because they have drawn up the rules of the game- if you aren't offended by my using a footballing analogy just because you a a boy GrinWink.

That is what I believe.

LEttletownofBOFlehem · 02/12/2011 19:29

*institutionalised, sorry.

spiderslegs · 02/12/2011 19:34

Why?

Because men historically & religously are scared of women, historically because we do mysterious things with our bodies which they did not understand - we produced children but they did not know why, we made them weak & wanting & they did not like it.

And we talk, so we know things.

& this scared them more. So they used their superior strength to create societies which would sublimate us, make us chattels & and allow them to feel superior to us & their desire for us.

And in many countries still do.

spiderslegs · 02/12/2011 19:35

religiously

Hullygully · 02/12/2011 19:40

More replies, thanks!

Still no answers from dadsnet!

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LEttletownofBOFlehem · 02/12/2011 19:41

One more thing: do you notice the difference between my answer and spiderslegs?

One (mine) suggests that practical ways of organising society generates the ideology needed to support that way of doing things; while the other (spiderslegs') suggests that the beliefs and ideas come first and affect how we go on to organise our economies and ways of doing things.

Which way round do you think it works? Or do they both feed each other and become like a chicken-and-egg situation?

spiderslegs · 02/12/2011 19:41

Have just read the thread & see Cinque beat me with the 'fear of the mysteries of reproduction' theory.

Still, 'tis true.

PS Hully's DS - I would give you an A for resourcefulness alone

Hullygully · 02/12/2011 19:41

This is me, Hully, now btw. Ds has disappeared, hopefully to have a big ol talk with hisself about the patriarchy.

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EleanorRathbone · 02/12/2011 19:42

I don't think there are 10 key points.

There's only one AFAICS - because throughout recorded history, men have wanted to maintain control and power over women so that they could have better lives than them and feel themselves superior to at least one other person in the world.

They have been able to do so, purely and simply because women are on average smaller and less physically strong than men, so they can exert violence against us if we don't toe the line (and frequently do). Also part of the same species, kinship groups and communities, oppressed women have interests that are genuinely bound together with those of their oppressors, uniquely for any oppressed group.

Oppressors have always used fellow-feeling "we're all in this together" rhetoric to convince the people they oppress, that they're not really oppressing them, they're all on the same side (so if you can get the worker in the field or factory, to identify with the squire or the industrialist because they're English, French or whatever, more than with the worker who speaks a different language in a different country, who is being oppressed by a squire or an industrialist just like the one who is oppressing you except that he speaks French, then you can persuade them to kill each other in industrial quantities instead of killing you. Patriotism was invented for just this purpose.)

Women otoh, have genuine crossover interests with men - we have children, families, communities and values in common. So it is much harder for women to identify their oppression and much harder for men to recognise when they are being oppressive - particularly when that oppression is hard-wired into people's culture, psyche and lifestyle. And it is also much harder and more complex, to overthrow - in a sense, it would have been easy for the working classes to simply execute all the capitalist industrialists had there been a revolution (as Stalin attempted and as the French revolutionaries attempted). Women could just steal down to the kitchen in the night on an appointed date and murder all the men we live with, but we don't, because we don't want to because we love them. Uniquely, the group that is oppressed, loves the group that oppresses it, invests in it and shares DNA with it. And of course, the oppressers love the oppressed back. That makes the overthrow of that oppression, much more complex than with any other oppressed group IMO because sorting out what is systemic oppression and what is just two people organising their private lives, is so much harder to spot.

Everything else is HOW, IMO.

bemybebe · 02/12/2011 19:43

isn't the reason that as men started accumulated personal wealth (coming from communes to more fragmented units), men didn't want to spend their wealth raising other men's children (obviously not knowing it)

hence all the violence and desire to control

LEttletownofBOFlehem · 02/12/2011 19:43

Aw, really, Hully? I was just getting into that Grin

I like the points you've just made, Eleanor.

ISawPINOTSnoggingSantaClaus · 02/12/2011 19:44

I'm still waiting for HullyJr to dish the dirt on his Mum... in a kind and loving way obvs

EleanorRathbone · 02/12/2011 19:44

Oh damn.
Missed it.

Grin
Hullygully · 02/12/2011 19:44

I like your question Boffy, I'll spring it on him tomorrow. He's doing art now! I have to stagger the questions, it's difficult not to stuff 48 years of knowledge down their little throats in one go...

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Hullygully · 02/12/2011 19:46

Keep it coming, it's great. He'll read the rest tomorrow. As I said before, it's easier coming from you than me, when I say stuff I have to preface it with "Forgetting you're male and I'm female and the whole antagonistic yet unnecessary power dynamic for a moment..."

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bemybebe · 02/12/2011 19:47

btw, Stalin was not acting on ideological grounds, he was totally power hungry and was executing anyone who posed thread to him regardless of ideology.

if you want to given an example of ruthless ideological revolutionaries from Russia Lenin and Trotsky are your guys

Hullygully · 02/12/2011 19:48

bemy - did you mean that to be here? History is next week's...

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bemybebe · 02/12/2011 19:50

sorry, did I say something wrong? it was a comment to Eleanor's comment Confused

Hullygully · 02/12/2011 19:51

Sorry bemy - addled of pate here.

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bemybebe · 02/12/2011 19:53

ah! no probs Grin

spiderslegs · 02/12/2011 19:55

Good points BOF & Eleanor.

Also, until recently paternity could not be proven so it made complete sense in a patricrchy to limit women's movements, lives & sexuality to ensure a line of descent.

I always said a matrirchy would be easier to maintain.