Radfem 2013 and the MRAs

[MooncupGoddess]

As many of you will remember, the Radfem 2012 conference in London was explicitly open only to born women and consequently attracted lots of condemnation and anger from people who saw this as transphobic. It was kicked out of its original venue at Conway Hall and went underground (very successfully in the end).

This year Radfem 2013 has not explicitly banned transwomen... but instead it's come under attack from Men's Rights Activists, who have staged a demo at the planned venue, the London Irish Centre, while making lots of unpleasant and ridiculous claims about how radical feminists want to murder small boys and the like. As a result the venue is threatening to cancel the booking.

www.mralondon.org/

bugbrennan.com/2013/04/20/statement-from-rad-fem-2013/

I have mixed feelings about the whole trans issue but have no hesitation in declaring the MRAs utter misogynist knobbers and am disappointed the London Irish Centre has seemingly caved into them.

Women of the ruling elite in Tudor England worked as managers, effectively - they did jobs running houses (ie big ones with hundreds of staff), estates and businesses that would now be relatively high status and well paid, but because it was women doing it, many people don't even realise it was work at all. Go figure....

(btw I don't mean you when I say 'many people', Mini - I was thinking more of the people who buy into the 'men worked, women stayed at home' simplification.)

alex, from reading it seems that with agricultural surplus came rising population because a larger population could be supported. With increasing population comes the need for more surplus which meant a need to "modernise" and find new technologies. These technologies lead to increased specialisation, plough technology led to larger areas of land being covered, the practice spreads and as it does so means women are increasingly taken out of the equation to specialise not in work out of the home but work within the home. Later of course "women's" work within the home such as wool spinning, basket making etc, became socialised again and we see a move from cottage industry which entailed making for use with only smaller quantities for exchange to making for exchange only rather than for use. The industrial revolution is when production moves from use and exchange to production just for exchange.

ooh, I agree about estate management......Bess of Hardwick, what a woman

Ah, I see what you are referring to. I think the problem is that activities such as spinning, carding, weaving, etc, were not seen as "work" as such, just things that women had to do. This changed later, as you say, when whole industries were set up.

Mini It seems that missing from your historical analysis of class oppression is violent seizure/war & rape as genocide - the historical of slaughtering rival men, taking 'their' women as sex-slaves and baby factories and how this played a part in economics.

The violent capture and keeping of slaves/concubines is interwoven with the othering and low social status of women.

Absolutely Mini - and Bess is often presented as if her achievement was merely marrying her way up from one richer husband to another, rather than the reality which was that her management of their assets made each one richer.

"If you were on the losing side, it didn't turn out very well."

Absolutely... Just saying that it is important to remember that violence has a huge part to play in the roots causes of social inequality.. it is not just a natural flow occurring within a free market between equals where one person had a surplus of wheat after a good summer- violent seizure of other's goods or exploitation of labour is how you end up with a surplus in most cases...

Ok, let's assume you're right Lazarus and a good deal of the oppression women have suffered has been biological, unintentional or due to societal circumstances that are somehow spontaneous - as we are able to do so can you give a good reason why we shouldn't try to remove that oppression as much as possible from as many women as possible? Or is this oppression something you think women should just suck up?

"the process of subjugation is historical and is not based on biological determinism but from the division of labour that sprang from practical necessity."

Sorry, what practical necessity?

There was no practical necessity for dividing labour, on the contrary, there was simply not enough population to have the luxury of being able to divide labour in that inefficient way.

The division of labour by sex, came much later, with the growth of patriarchy. It did not stem from practical necessity, but from ideology disguised as practical necessity.

Sorry, read to a post and stopped (because I am dipping in and out of the thread now).

'LRD it wasn't engrained in the culture prior to the industrial revolution.

If you go far enough back sexes at one time were seen as equal.'

When? Please tell me exactly when and provide me with the historical evidence.

I would especially like to know in which pre-industrial-revolution era misogyny was not ingrained in the culture.

Bubbles, the violent caputure and slavery isn't a women only thing. It has happened to men over the years too. Men were sex slaves too, and some even had the balls cut off.

Chubb, I fully agree that any inequality based on outdated practices should be removed. Certainly more should not be brought in.

Basil, women started staying at home in order to carry out the various support functions required. They looked after the kids, cooked, looked after the family livestock etc.

I beleive that if a modern housewife was to be paid for her work it was worked out it would come in at about £30k or more. It is by no means a small input to the family.

Why did this start? Certainly during the Industrial Revolution we started to see more complex skills coming in to the work area. As machines took over work, allowing fewer to do more, redundancies followed. Again, women having to take time off (no matter how small) in order to have kids meant it was natural for them to drop out of the work place and in to the home.

The practice of the woman being younger than the man also played a part, the man often earnt more.

Again, it wasn't a nefarious plot to keep women in the home. Men are not in league against women.

Hang on - what about all the women working in the mills? They weren't staying at home

I don't think any feminists think that men are in league to oppress women. But the point is that society is man shaped, specifically in the west it is white able bodied man shaped. When this is pointed out to men some are very defensive of the status quo and frankly why wouldn't they be? It serves them very well. It's not working for me though.

"Men were sex slaves too, and some even had the balls cut off."

I would say boys rather than men. Some men have kept/keep women, girls and boys as sex slaves. Far fewer grown men- not saying it doesn't happen though.

Anyway the issue when looking for the roots of patriarchal oppression is not to be found by examining the victims, but the perpetrators of violent masculinity.

LRD,

Ancient Egypt is beleived to have been a equal society as far as sexes were concerned, likewise other ancient societies.

Roman and Greek not so much. Sparta was quite progressive, but still not completely equal.

The concept of property (as minx as mentioned) was the main cause of the slip.

A family head was responsiblve for the rise (or fall) of a families fortunes. Such a person's death was a time of uncertainity for what was essentially a dictatorship.

To prevent teh fragmentation of the family (and fall from grace and fortune) a strong and recognised leader was a must.

Bubbles, I am not saying there wre no women working. Just how the 'stay at home mum' concept started to take form.

lazarus - no, Ancient Egypt is not believed to have been an equal society. Look at the numbers of male versus female pharaohs, for a start.

Sparta was not especially progressive either.

Try again.

The fact that these places were very much more equal than certain other societies (compare the legal rights of women in Egypt compared with Greece, or Sparta to Athens) doesn't mean they were equal as we would understand it.

Given that it's far easier to be sure who is a baby's mother than who its father might be, that would seem to be an argument for inheritance passing down the female line rather than the male.

Another quickie post, btw:

The major flaw in this 'women worked at home, men worked in the fields, cos of nature' issue isn't that women could and did work outside the home. It's that for much of history (and still in some cultures today), everyone works in the home (including the land around the home). Men and women.

This idea that we can generalize what happened during the industrial revolution backwards and assume that all work within the home was originally 'women's work', is just not true. It's a way of constructing a narrative that appears to explain our current model of women's oppression, where women struggle to get into paid employment and where work within the home is not well valued. However, it's false.

The ways in which oppression of women shapes the workplace differ across time. The industrial revolution replaced one society in which women were economically oppressed with another society in which women were economically oppressed. The constant in this is women's oppression.

Stories about some imagined period of history, either one where women were equal to men and everything was lovely or where women were sweet stay-at-home mums who didn't lift a finger, are equally bullshit and equally well designed to stop us trying to tackle the real issue. That women are and have been oppressed.

LRD, Re Egypt

www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/womneg.htm

Joyce Tyldesly of Cornell University (Ivy League, USA) says...

"An exception to most other ancient societies, Egyptian women achieved parity with Egyptian men. They enjoyed the same legal and economic rights, at least in theory, and this concept can be found in Egyptian art and contemporary manuscripts. The disparities between people's legal rights were based on differences in social class and not on gender. Legal and economic rights were afforded to both men and women.

It is interesting that when the Greeks conquered Egypt in 332 B.C.E., Egyptian women were allowed more rights and privileges than Greek women, who were forced to live under the less equal Greek system."

finishing with

"Many people say the Egyptian time was a good time to live. It seems that it was, at least, a nice place for women to live. It was filled with equality for them, and gave them some basic rights that today's society is lacking."

It's as equal as a time as we can probably find.

Sparta wasn't too good at recording their history, in comparison to other societies of the time, but

Aristotle wrote "during the period of their empire, many things were administered by the women. Yet what is the difference between having rulers who are ruled by women and an actual government of women?" They certainly seemed to have enjoyed more economic and political freedom than the other Grecian women.

And they had their own games to keep fit, and were educated to a higher level. The Spartans seemed more than aware that healthy educated parents produced better children.

DoctrineofSnatch. You are quite correct that a female leader having a child would remove any doubt that the child was that of the leader, and thus improve the inheritance line.

But pregnancy and childbirth was far from safe, the chances of death of the mother was high, and thus the leader. Also should she be infertile it would be another time of uncertainly in the line of succession, where another branch of the family or famly enemies could pounce.

LRD, nobody actually appears to have said women haven't been 'oppressed'. As I have stated when I entered the thread, I have more of a problem with the way the issue is being addressed by certain elements of feminism.

You yourself claimed we are pre-programmed to listen to men more than women. I don't believe that. I will listen to anybody. But I will turn off and stop listening when they start saying silly things like I am in some way of responsible, or that men deliberately hold women down or that men subjugate women by subtle town planning.

lazarus, men and women were not equal in Ancient Egypt. Simple facts, such as that most pharaohs were men, will tell you this. The academic you quote is making the point (which has already been explained upthread), that greater legal parity does not mean equality across the board.

There is no society that we know of, in which men and women have been equals.

I would say, I think a society where, if you were a royal woman, you were likely to end up as one of your brother's concubines and quite likely to bear children with congenital deformities that might kill them, you, or both, probably wasn't a 'nice place for women to live'. Respectfully, I disagree with that academic. I am also pretty sure she's not thinking in absolute terms, so I doubt she would mind!

The point about listening is not because we're 'pre-programmed'. It's because we're conditioned. And what you 'believe' is totally irrelevant to the facts of the matter.

You started into this with a lot of historical errors, which you are trying to use to pretend that men have sometimes been oppressed because of their sex. We have demonstrated that you are in error - yet you still think you are 'listening'? Really?

The patriarchy is not about pointing the finger at individual men. It is about describing a structure that exists in our society, and which oppresses women. We do not necessarily consciously participate in reinforcing that structure. No-one is saying town planners sit down to discuss 'how can we mess things up for the women today'. You have misunderstood the terms of the debate.

However, we can look to issues such as the treatment of women in history, or to the fact that men are not treated like chattels as a result of their sex and women are, or even to town planning, to see that that structure exists.