Will women always be more 'vulnerable'?

[rosabud]

The news yesterday that the woman who escaped Boko Haram reported that these groups are raping women as a matter of course is horrible and frightening but not unexpected. Also in the news yesterday the focus was on Saudi Arabia and its appalling human rights abuses but, most especially, how women are simply not allowed to do ordinary things like participate in sport or drive cars.

It seems that although governments like ours agree that this all "terrible" there is not much we seem to be able to do about it. There is an implication, therefore, that the rights women enjoy here are a "privilege" and a "lucky" result of living in a rich, Western country. A bit like having good drains. Or not dying from hunger.

This makes me wonder:

1. How much do the men around me believe that I should only be treated well in certain contexts? In other words, if Armageddon occurs tomorrow, will all the men in my lovely Western society start raping me etc?
2. Are women only ever going to achieve equal rights in certain contexts - so is the progress women's rights have made over the last century or so a very flimsy, easily withdrawn concept?

I am thinking aloud here. Does anyone else know what I mean??

If you look at any war situation, the rights of women have been pretty negligible. 'Comfort women' in Japan during WW2, rape used as a weapon of war, including so called 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia not so long ago, 'sex slaves' in Iraq and Syria now. Mass rapes in Kenya a few years ago. Rapes of German women by the invading Soviet forces at the end of WW2. Rape has always been used as a weapon of war and I think women will always be vulnerable to that sadly. Rape is an act of power and control and women are often seen as the 'spoils of war' ( horrific term).

I read that homeless women try to conceal that they are women because the risk of sexual assault is so high. I guess they are living in a kind of lawless parallel world today on the West.

There is an excellent ( but sad and shocking ) book called 'The Good Women of China which documents some of the appalling ( and largely unknown) sexual abuse of Chinese women in that country, much of which happened during their revolution. It completely altered my perception of that country after reading it and demonstrated to me how so often women are just seen as not human. It can happen in any country, including 'civilised' ones

We do live in a time of abundance, there is food, shelter and plenty of distractions to keep us occupied. Because of that people are free to be 'nice' and generous and to have things such as rights. Take away these things and people will probably revert to the basic rules of nature. Nature is both cruel and beautiful but has very little time for the weak.
I do not consider women to be weak by the way humans are tribal most of our aggression would be towards other groups that we compete with for resources .

As for a post apocalyptic world the ones with the weapons will dominate regardless of physical attributes might would be right.

I am immensely grateful to have the luck of being born a citizen in a western European, secular , liberal democracy.As is my husband. On the whole societies influenced by and embracing those principles and the principles of the Enlightenment seem a better option.

I disagree that these rights and freedoms that we all enjoy in such societies are merely at the whim of men.

In an apocalyptic situation I fear the most ruthless, whether men or women, will be at the top of the heap.

Oh and I agree with Greysanderson re weapons and tribes.

It's telling you think women will be at a competitive disadvantage to men. Depends on the environment, no?

Its an environment where society crumbles away. If you think I am wrong rather than saying 'its telling' just say what’s wrong. If you can conceive of a future where women would prosper post collapse I want to hear it. I cant look back at human history and say its teaming with matriarchies and women living quite pleasant lives, so this is my view rather than reverse.

You seem to mistake my view as me wanting to hold the view. Actually I would prefer, in all seriousness, that you change my mind.

Isn't that sort of the point of natural selection?

Society would have to fall a very long way for natural selection to kick back in for the human race.

But I do think you're rather proving Rosa's original point rather well.

Possibly because I agree with it?

I enjoy your posts immensely Buffy

do the usual stereotypical male physical attributes necessarily mean they are better able to survive in an apocalypse / disaster / wilderness type situation? Everything I have been taught tells me that is the case, but how much of that is about learned skills or general physical fitness and how much is natural?

Wow. Great post buffy.

Ah buffy just basically answered my question with that excellent post!

X-post

When I say "taught" I mean what my socialisation, generally accepted "truths" etc - not so much what I have learned through my own experience iyswim

I don't actually think that that is the case

I have had a number of posts misinterpreted over the last couple of days so I'm clearly going to have to stop typing on the hoof and concentrate on what I'm trying to say!

The scenario in which 'we' have to walk for days to find food sounds like that of the antipodes hunter-gatherer tribes who, settled in that pattern for centuries, know what they are looking for and also think in terms of longer-term social structures.

In a post-apolocalyptic society that will not apply. No on-knows where food will be found. No-one is thinking about long-term social structures (think of the dash for resources in the Hunger Games).

Are women weaker? Well, until we can walk as far when heavily pregnant, during a long labour and immediately post-parturatively, yes very probably so. Those aren't stereotypes, they are basic biology, and so societies need protective structures for the weak. And in the immediate post-apocalypse, these may not be forthcoming.

I agree with the anthropologically worded post earlier. Societies change depending on their resources, and the most secure and affluent are the ones who can look at society as a whole, and be most generous to their weakest. So to take one example, suttee (as a way of dealing with the inconveniently longer-lived) was banned by the imperialists, but was reducing anyway as affection for granny outweighed the cost of caring for her.

Childbirth being harder on the human frame than any other creature I can think of, plus infants having a such long time of total dependency, have led to structures different from any other animals. An apocalypse would lead us closer to the biology, and until 'peaceful agrarian' state is reached after it, then anyone old, infirm, pregnant/newly delivered or still a baby/infant is going to be dependent on the most effective resource acquirers. Which means not just the finders, but also those who secure the use of them in the face of competition.

It's interesting thinking about these scenarios honestly in an apocalyptic situation various different ones could occur at once depending on location.

I imagine in a situation where males would have to be waited hand and foot and helped along to the point of just surviving I doubt women would be doing much better and there certainly won't be children around.

I can see Buffy's secenrio occurring if maybe some sort of disease were to affect males a lot more than females who knows females do have slightly better cellular repair after all.

I am uncomfortable about calling heavily pregnant women as 'weak'. They are far from it. Vulnerable, maybe. But do we think that men are free from vulnerability at all times? Wouldn't these all heroic protectors of ours be more susceptible to injury, for example. There is some evidence that men are more prone to illness than women, for example.

Surely a post-apocalyptic world would be similar, in terms of survival to say the Stone Age except we'd have more skills in terms of understanding the way the world works and how we can use it. Do people really think that women only survived because of the benevolance of men in those times? Do you really think women brought nothing to the party in terms of skills and surviving?

I am not saying that there wouldn't be brutality targeted at women (and other marginalised groups) because we are women. But that is more a product of attitudes today rather than whether women could survive better/worse than men.

So I think I am agreeing wholeheartedly with Buffy in her excellent post at 9:44.

No not you it's me, I am struggling to put together coherent posts

What I'm trying to say here is that my socialisation, summed up by your phrase "within our current frame of reference, where we are socialised to accept male strength and male domination as normal" means it can be easy (for me) to assume certain truths that would not necessarily be the case in a post-disaster situation, and I'm trying to avoid doing so. So I am asking myself, why would male physical attributes necessarily mean they are more successful in any given survival situation?

Which you are helping to answer with your posts

I'm with you Petula, and I'm with Buffy too .

We tend to look at what will happen in post-apocalyptic times through the structures within society at the moment (and how tenuous they may be). Current societal attitudes will have a bearing I think, especially initially. But that does not detract from who would actually be physically/mentally more capable of surviving and our preconceptions of that. If, in fact, there would be any discernible [sp] difference.