Feminism in prehistoric times / primitive culture

[Joneser]

Hi. Is it possible in theory that any kind of feminist movement could conceivably have existed in prehistoric times or in any primitive culture? I don't mean matriarchal societies, I mean a feminist movement.

I don't really see this guy effectively running my tribe. Most of the MRAs don't seem built for manual labour ime.

On that poster abstinence is the make last choice but the first female option which rather sums up the whole attitude doesn't it?
Men should be able to have lots of sex without responsibility but you women should keep your legs shut.
I always wonder who exactly they think they'd have sex with if that scenario played out for real.

I will never understand misogyny. What on earth is it that women do to make that happen?

It has to be an internal feeling of resenting what you can't have.

I will never understand misogyny. What on earth is it that women do to make that happen?

Literally nothing. Men want to protect their privileged positions without having to do anything at all. Like people complaining about immigration bringing skills to the country.

I always wonder who exactly they think they'd have sex with if that scenario played out for real.

I suppose they haven't given much thought to it.

They sure aren't happy if they're rejected by even just one woman.

In theory, homosexuality would solve all their problems with us evil women, but for some reason, they don't seem very keen on trying that.

"I always wonder who exactly they think they'd have sex with if that scenario played out for real."

I suspect that for many of them, in an ideal world there would be two types of women.

The future wives, who stay virginal and pure until their wedding day, who later morph into perfect cookie-baking-never-complaining mother Earth types. These would be always happy, there to uphold the reputation of their husband and bear children - because they're not people, just walking wombs/status symbols.

And the "dirty" women, there to satisfy the men's sexual need in the meantime, who must be completely egalitarian in which men they fuck so as not to deprive any poor men of their right to sex. These women would be despised, but fucked anyway, and fair game to any mistreatment - because they're not people, just holes.

must be completely egalitarian in which men they fuck so as not to deprive any poor men of their right to sex

Oh yes the anger when can't get sex, how unfair it is when women will have sex with certain men but not others.
As if women's first duty is to take care of mens feelings and should share themselves equally, as women are a resource which should be available to all, like free health care.

Do you think the media adds to their sense of entitlement? TV and films have a lot of frankly unattractive men having sex with gorgeous women. Off the top of my head:

• The Big Bang Theory : creepy Howard, mute Raj and frankly stalkerish Leonard.
• Beauty and the Geek
• Knocked Up ( Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl)

I'm sure there are more. And then they find out that in real life, beautiful women - any women, really - shows no interest in them. Wouldn't take long for their resentment to seep through, repelling anyone who might have given them a second look .

TV and films have a lot of frankly unattractive men having sex with gorgeous women

Absolutely!
I see this all the time, presume the aim is to sell the program, film, product etc by flattering the male audience
Men just lap it up and don't seem to understand how unrealistic it is

Exactly where: I'm so tired of the "beautiful woman learns to be less shallow* and chooses man who is nice/intelligent over man who is rich and good looking" trope.
Even though the "nice" intelligent man is himself being just as shallow by lusting over the beautiful, popular girl in the first place.

*I have never though that being sexually attracted to people you find attractive is shallow.

'Shallow' in this instance being doublespeak for understanding your value as a person

whereyouleftit the nerdy social misfit/unattractive (and completely shallow) guy who gets the uber hot 'it girl' often by making her rethink her (shallow) preference for attractive men to see him only for who he is on the inside' is a highly recurrent theme. Think the Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast, Cerano de Bergerac... my feeling us that it these stories have historically been made up to make girls and women feel better about being 'given away' as child brides or other arranged marriages to men they feel repulsed at the thought of having to touch.

It is also a theme in many teen movies and a main stay of porn. Ron Jeremy, although being attractive to some women, is an unlikely porn star to appeal to women's preferences, and he got the (male-fantasy ideal) choice of all the 'hottest' women.

Female sexual preferences have been pretty much edited out of male-dominated culture in favour of male fantasy in a patriarchal world. These young misogynists are seething because they didn't get allocated the 'hot', highly-sexed, willing to be used and abused women that patriarchal culture led them to expect and feel entitled to.

I'm glad MN have left this thread up Bullshit evo-psych is an important thing to counter. I think it's basically a lack of the sense of the sweep of history that causes these people to think everything before, I dunno, the Romans was some kind of static idealised picture that happens to suit their own political preferences (you see this tendency in some of the primal dieting stuff as well), and this is why I think prehistory should be taught in schools. It's not necessarily people's fault that they don't get the complexity of deep history.

My thoughts on this particular topic aren't very formed but it's fascinating. If anyone's interested I can recommend this book on one small aspect of this topic - it focusses on the early textile trade in the Mediterranean, roughly late Neolithic into Bronze Age. It is of course focussed on settled, sedentary societies, so not hunter-gatherers (which is usually what people like the OP mean when they fling round the word "primitive"). It's basically an example of a gendered division of a particular industry where, a lot of the time, we actually have not much idea what the dominating power structures were, because a lot of this is pre-writing. It could have been these women operated within a patriarchal power structure, or could have been otherwise.

Basically, a division of labour (along ANY lines, not just gender-constructed) has been a feature of many societies, sedentary, mobile and somewhere between the two, but it's the automatic equation of gendered divisions of labour with today's particular political arrangements that marks someone out as a bit hard of thinking. But you all know all this.

Think the Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast, Cerano de Bergerac... my feeling us that it these stories have historically been made up to make girls and women feel better about being 'given away' as child brides or other arranged marriages to men they feel repulsed at the thought of having to touch.

Yeah.

Ironically, in the Disney version, the Beast doesn't really have any more inner values than Gaston.
Here's an interesting article on that:
www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2017/03/how-feminist-was-disneys-original-beauty-and-beast

The beast does the exact same nasty things to Belle as Gaston (and then some) but is portrayed as somehow better.

I enjoyed reading your post LilaoftheGreenwood! I agree that people are able to form rather odd beliefs about ancient/pre-history because we're not taught it as a rule and when we are it's through modern eyes. It seems bizarre to me that people think living in a primal way is best, be that diet or the way society functions, because we have evolved to live in a society with cooking methods and stuff and in developed countries we have the longest life expectancy and lowest infant mortality since the dawn of time.

Some ancient societies left their newborn baby outside for a night to see if they survived... maybe that would be a good way of weeding out weaklings such as the OP?

Great article Vestal

the nerdy social misfit/unattractive (and completely shallow) guy who gets the uber hot 'it girl' often by making her rethink her (shallow) preference for attractive men to see him only for who he is on the inside' is a highly recurrent theme

That is why Paper Towns was so disappointing. It was supposed to be a feminist dismantling of the "manic pixie dream girl" trope but instead it was all about him and not about her. Plus the supposedly deep subplot of the beautiful shallow woman falling for the nerd was well just another "ugly man hot girl" pairing.

Also add Chandler and Monica to that list.

Where are the stories about the ugly / average women and their journeys? Their absence from our media just adds to the resentment of so many anti feminist men, those of the "women have so much sexual power over men" category because they're only talking about beautiful women (and what kind of power is that anyway?). Normal women don't even show up on their radar.

Well op you have opened my eyes and my mind, with your irrefutable logic.

All hail the men! You carry on 'working tirelessly behind the scenes to keep the show going' and I'll pop the kettle on and a bit of gossiping, bitching and moaning. Sounds fab.

Aw thanks Suzie I was thinking argh Ive gone full ranting nerd

The whole ugly guy stunning hot young woman in most films has been driving me batshit for years.
I think we should ban supermodels from dating fugly men!
There are never women who look like me represented in main roles, I would be the fat funny friend.

It gives men unrealistic expectations and causes far too much arrogance and conceit. On the other hand most women are very aware of where there place is socially and who they can partner with if they don't want to be mocked.

As it is when my beautiful 23 year old dd goes out she gets the fugliest old loser guys latching on to her thinking they are entitled to her attention. I have taught her to be polite and lie that she has a man already (is owned by another male) because when she was just telling them to fuck off a couple got very nasty and threatening to her. I was worried about her safety.

When Madonna dates hot young men so many in the media mock her and people assume the men are just in it for the money and game, despite her being beautiful and having a great body. But you just have to watch any of the real housewives programs to see beautiful young women with unattractive and non masculine men who are loaded. The women get called gold diggers but the men are never mocked and shamed.

Fame not game

I always thought chandler was a bit of alright... no?

Ross on the other hand would never have stood a chance with Jennifer

Rachel!

Yeah Chandler was alright.