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RantMen are disappointingly predictable. A lesbian is tragically murdered by her wife. Men: “women are more violent and emotional you know”
Meanwhile, femicide by male partners is so very common, it barely makes the news
I just can’t with these losers
I won’t link to him, but a conservative youtuber Anthony Brian Logan is saying that lesbian relationships are more violent than gay male or straight relationships because there’s ‘no man to calm the over emotionality”
Meanwhile, man kills pregnant girlfriend…
Parker was shot and killed at her Memphis home in June 2020, after Dotson reportedly became irate about a Facebook post and her pregnancy, the local DA's office said.
Hate to say it, but for the Celts that we actually have primary sources for, it's a myth. The only ones we know in any detail how they were treated are the early medieval Irish, as we have a whole surviving body of law and a lot of annals to go on. So I'm not talking about Iron Age Gauls, or Hallstatt era Austrians, or even whatever was going on in Iron Age/Antique Scotland, because those people didn't leave us any texts of their own, we only have accounts by outsiders that you have to take with a pinch of salt.
In early medieval Ireland, women had some rights, it's true. But they had more rights if they had more wealth. Generally, women were without independent legal capacity, so could not be witnesses, could not make a valid contract without permission of her husband or father. But she can inherit when her father has no male heirs, in which case she holds her inheritance during her life, and after her death it reverts to her kin, rather than her husband or her sons. If she doesn't inherit wealth, she can still attain legal capacity through other avenues: if she is "the woman who turns back the streams of war" or "the hostage ruler", or if she is a female wright, a woman physician of her túath, a woman revered by her túath or a woman abundant in miracles (not sure what that's all about).
Medieval Irish law recognised many ranks of marriage, including marriage that starts with rape, and was mainly concerned with who had responsibility for any offspring. They did recognise divorce, for example if a couple couldn't conceive together but through a trial separation managed to conceive with other people, that was grounds for a permanent separation. Also worth noting that the early medieval Irish practised polygamy; and the surviving laws state that a first wife is free to shed the blood of (but probably not kill) her husband's second wife. (One text mentions that this is only to inflict non-fatal injury and only within the first 3 days of her husband's second marriage, so a sort of crime of passion, if you like.)
Women's status was largely tied to their economic circumstances; there's some evidence women could be educated and act as poets (filidh), but honestly more often you get references to "female satirists" who were the lowest rank of wandering poet and came in for a lot of abuse, reading between the lines (very few rights, very few protections). The annals don't list a single female political or military leader.
There are some interesting laws around assault that I think are worth mentioning. Irish law differentiates between forcible rape (forcor), and all other circumstances of rape (sleth) (eg of a drunken woman). They are generally regarded as equally serious offences, but there are distinct terms for them. There are situations where a woman has no redress as a victim of sleth, eg if a married woman goes to an ale-house alone, because she should have taken her husband with her. The penalty for rape is that the rapist must pay the honour-price of his victim's legal male guardian. In addition, he pays a fine if he rapes a girl of marriageable age, a chief wife or a nun. For the rape of a concubine (any secondary wife), only half the honour-price is due. If the victim becomes pregnant, the rapist is responsible for rearing the child. There are 8 categories of women who get no redress if victims of rape, of either kind: mostly promiscuous women such as an unreformed prostitute, a woman who makes an assignation to bush or bed, or a married woman who agrees to meet another man. Also a woman who conceals her rape, for any reason. If she is assaulted in a town or settlement, a victim has a legal obligation to call for help. If she's in the wilderness when she's assaulted, she's shit out of luck because there are 3 darknesses into which (respectable) women should not go: the darkness of mist, the darkness of a wood, and the darkness of night. And that's from a wisdom text closely associated with the law.
I think it's no surprise that when Christianity came to Ireland sometime in the 5th/6th century, the first converts were women and slaves. Christianity offered women something that their society hadn't up until that point, and that was the chance to live independently of men, as nuns, probably a better shot at education that way too, and status as abbesses.
So sorry to burst that bubble, but it wasn't all rosy for Celtic women.
(And if anyone would like to know more, all of the above examples came out of Fergus Kelly's excellent book, A Guide to Early Irish Law.)
Sounds very much like biblical laws.She better scream or else she gets stoned too etc.
Yes, Kelly makes the point that the laws are very similar to the Indian Laws of Manu, so another point in favour of a common Indo-European way of looking at the world.
That was absolutely fascinating. Thanks for all that great info!
Look, when you've got the books on the shelf looking at you and you have a spare half hour...
first converts were women and slaves
It was pretty much the same in the Roman Empire.
All cultures have oppressed women. Even the ones that “treated them well” still oppressed them. Celtic women, Ancient Egyptian women, Spartan women were still not free, even if they were treated “relatively” well.
Every time I read about the status of women in some ancient culture, I always see some disclaimer saying that for this or that reason, the women of this culture were treated less badly than their counterparts in other contemporary cultures. Every time. It’s almost like every culture, and every historian writing about them, has sought to downplay their brutal misogyny in any way they could.
I don’t believe it anymore. Unless someone can show me a culture in which women’s political and financial dominance is well-documented, where women did not depend on men either for protection or resources, where women were truly free, I have no use for the “which culture is worse” game. They are all awful. Men everywhere are all awful.
If a culture didn't oppress women, the culture wouldn't "treat its women" any particular way. Because the women would be fully part of the culture as much as men are. We don't talk about how cultures treat their men because the cultures are the men.
This is a very good point.
Edited to add:
cultures are the men
People are so resistant to this idea, but it is so true.
Women perceived as being treated well were in the ruling classes or had political power through family connections.
Honestly, if you were going back through time I don't think there was a time when women were genuinely treated as equal to men in status. Historians like to highlight specific examples, but those examples didn't apply to the general population of women in those cultures.
Modern cultures are the closest we have ever come to equality, and even that is under constant siege.
Sparta especially had more than 90% slaves. So women were treated well really only if you only count the ruling class women. (I don't think there's written records on how slave women were treated, but considering Spartan boys had to kill a (presumably male) slave to become full members of the ruling class, it is hardly imagineable that they didn't rape and murder the slave women at even worse levels.)
If you look at medieval Christian Europe from that angle, I guess you could say women were treated pretty well there, too, if you go by quality of life and not by "tomboyish behaviour allowed" - I think I could have been quite content as noble-born nun. (More content, actually, than as Spartan woman who has to do all kinds of exercise to birth strong Spartan boys - as far as I know, marriage was not negotiable, Spartan women had to.)
Getting up in the middle of the night to pray, and working hard most of the day isn't exactly fun - I would have hated the strict rules in a convent - but that stuff still doesn't violate any human rights, while being forced to marry absolutely does.
I do not know to what extent the Church protected women who wanted to become nuns against their male family members' will, but it did protect women from forced marriage to the wrong man to some extent (as in, you managed to run away and marry your sweetheart, with a Christian priest conveniently not asking whether your father consented, the Church would grant you asylum so you couldn't be forced into what the Church considered adultery), so if you could make a plausible case of feeling called to be a nun, I suppose you could get some protection, too. Especially if you had money that would become Church property after you became a nun ...
I don’t know how common it was for women who didn’t want to marry to be allowed to become nuns though, even among the upper classes. From what I’ve read, it was more common for upper classes parents to commit their daughters to convents, not because the daughters themselves didn’t want to marry, but because the parents had several children and simply didn’t want (or weren’t able) to pay for the upkeep (and eventual dowries) of their younger daughters.
I think forced marriage was still pretty common in medieval Europe and women didn’t really have the ability to refuse to marry at all (unless they were rich).
Though, I agree I might have been quite content as a noble born nun. Aside from their obsessive religion, it seems potentially quite peaceful.
Oh any articles about that?
About what?
This blog has some interesting tidbits about Sparta, it is where I get the bit about over 90 percent of the population having been slaves: https://acoup.blog/2021/02/19/collections-the-universal-warrior-part-iii-the-cult-of-the-badass/
I haven't caught the blogger himself at any genderist nonsense (if I had, I would have lost all respect for him, a historian who believes gendernonsense would be an even worse idiot than those who just studied English language or something ..) but he is rather popular in TRA/genderist circles, saw him linked on at least one misogynist woke site, so proceed with caution.
Unless someone can show me a culture in which women’s political and financial dominance is well-documented
Heavy on that. Evidence to support their claims about well treatment because it all sounds like interpretation to me.
Worth reading Debt: the first 5000 years (I always recommend this book, for every question :)) - here's an excerpt:
'In the very earliest Sumerian texts, particularly those from roughly 3000 to 2500 BC, women are everywhere. Early histories not only record the names of numerous female rulers, but make clear that women were well represented among the ranks of doctors, merchants, scribes, and public officials, and generally free to take part in all aspects of public life. One cannot speak of full gender equality: men still outnumbered women in all these areas. Still, one gets the sense of a society not so different than that which prevails in much of the developed world today. Over the course of the next thousand years or so, all this changes. The place of women in civic life erodes; gradually, the more familiar patriarchal pattern takes shape, with its emphasis on chastity and premarital virginity, a weakening and eventually wholesale disappearance of women's role in government and the liberal professions, and the loss of women's independent legal status, which renders them wards of their husbands. By the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC, we begin to see large numbers of women sequestered away in harems and (in some places, at least), subjected to obligatory veiling.'
Just put this on hold at my library, it sounds like a fascinating read, thank you!
It's a fantastic book, and Graeber's work is worth reading. Here's something else of his to consider:
https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5409/are-we-city-dwellers-or-hunter-gatherers
Relatively kind… probably the West 10 or 15 years ago is as good as it’s been for women for a long time
Worst would probably have to be particular Muslim countries… I think such extreme misogyny is that is hard to find, even in ancient cultures
I keep saying this on here but a number of countries worldwide are pushing themselves to collapse just out of hatred of women. I noticed Dr Emma Hilton saying something like ‘What’s the endgame’ for the Taliban in Afghanistan … there isn’t an ‘endgame’ as far as the Taliban are concerned… they will annihilate their country if it means having women to oppress
Men write history, and I wonder now how many cultures have been brought down not by economic crises, war or natural disasters but by oppressing the female population… that they are simply outcompeted by civilisations that treated women better
There still are muslim cultures where they cut off parts of the external female genitalia so that she couldn't enjoy sex
they are simply outcompeted by civilisations that treated women better
That's a really interesting point. It seems obvious that countries where 100% of the population is thriving (or at least doing reasonably well) will be more successful than countries where only 50% of the population is thriving and the other 50% is suffering terribly.
The problem is that patriarchies produce more offspring, so can wage more war, which keeps them alive much longer than they'd usually survive (seeing as they aren't self-sufficient, but steal all their stuff), which is why we have so many patriarchies in the modern world.
Nowadays, which country can economically outcompete which other country is more important (with modern weapons technology, buying power matters more than before) so one would hope that less misogynist countries win over more misogynist countries. (Only once we don't need Saudi Arabia's oil anymore, tho)
People are happy to accept this point when it comes to denying homosexual people rights - that excluding homosexual people from the workforce and society at large results in a comparative drop in GDP - but they then rarely if ever apply this logic to women
Obviously there are other factors that go into making a country poor but I think that this is a huge one that we simply don't acknowledge
We’re looking at European and middle eastern cultures, of which even the “progressive” ones are terrible. Some Native American cultures may have offered better quality of life for women.
For example, the Iroquois were a matrilineal society. I’d imagine that other hunter gatherer societies could be a bit more egalitarian (though you also see some crazy shit too).
At a high level, it’s really the agrarian societies that start to say “okay, we need people. Lots of people to make lots of food and hoarde it. Girls, you need to have lots of babies and also this guy owns you and it’s going to be really hard to leave and do anything except have tons of babies.” Hunter gatherer societies limit population growth and when there is a need to do that, things start getting better for women.
That said, indigenous cultures owned slaves and some of the FGM shit you read in African cultures will break your heart, but there may be more influence from agrarian cultures there.
Edit: typo
I can't tell you what it was like historically (and I doubt anyone can), but currently Papua New Guinea is a horrible place for women. High rates of rape, gang rape, domestic violence, and femicide. Also lots of intertribal warfare. Have they always been this way? My (uneducated) guess is yes.
Everybody loves to claim that their own people historically treated women pretty well. I am never inclined to believe it.
Mediaeval Europe probably wasn't a particularly bad place to be a woman. They had some genuine rights, protection against forced marriage (in theory at least) and an alternative to marriage in the church, where they could also get an education. .
Honestly all cultures treat women like shit. In Africa and the middle east genital mutilation is still practiced in many areas, along with child marriage.
If you're talking about older cultures Norse women during the viking age had it... Better than a lot of other women. Specifically non-slave women native to the area. They could divorce in some cases, there were laws against hitting your wife, they could sometimes inherit properly, and rape was considered a shameful act that could end with the perpetrator getting outlawed and stripped of legal rights (which went hand in hand with the victim's family members killing them).
It was still not a great place to be a woman, but they were afforded more rights and protections than many other cultures of the time. Ironic considering what the men did while viking.
I have always tried to find a culture in history and pre-history where I as a lesbian woman would have been able to live a free life. So far without success. I have read most books by Heide Goettner-Abendroth who has done extensive research on matriarchal societies past and present. If you don't want children or are lesbian a matriarchal society is not for you. (In some matriarchal societies it is a rule that only men travel while women stay on the land they own. I love to travel so that's yet another reason why I am not so excited about matriarchal societies. If I own the land but can't leave it what kind of freedom is this?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heide_Göttner-Abendroth
I don't know much about history, but thanks to a game mod I heard about the Golden Orchid Society that existed in China during the Qing Dynasty.
the women of Guangdong thanks to the silk industry could live as free and independent women, they formed a sisterhood where they completely forbade marriage with men and swore to support each other, with many even marrying each other.
Thanks! This is so very interesting. I will try to get more information on this society.
If you are going to assess - you need to look at the whole of society
Access to education
Access to their own bank accounts & financial independence
Property rights
Freedom of movement
Freedom to leave a marriage and live independently
Freedom to control fertility
Laws that protect women that are actively upheld
Here is a start https://ourworldindata.org/women-rights
I would also say you need to look at whether all women have the standard of life you declare as being the norm.
(By that standard, quite a lot of countries are catastrophic for women, even ones that are considered quite enlightened in popular culture - Germany for example, an okay-ish place to live before the misogynist gender law, if you were a German citizen, but a living hell for the Eastern European women trafficked here to be prostitutes.)
Sex trafficking, slavery and forced marriages should definitely be included.
Despite some countries having laws that are supposed to stop it, not enough resources are being put enforcing it.
If Germany wanted to stop trafficking, it'd introduce the Nordic Model, so yeah. Making laws against trafficking while legalizing prostitution is about as good as just saying they strongly disapprove of trafficking. Gotta remove the incentive!
The situation of immigrant women is also less than rosy, with judges getting away with deciding that "it's her culture!" when an immigrant man beats his wife and she seeks justice.
Germany would have to crack down on crime massively so that things like "Women can walk home alone at night without fear" are true for ALL women, not just native Germans living in posh areas. (If an immigrant girls walks home alone at night and is beaten up by her father or brother for having been out at night, that also means she cannot really do that without fear.)
For women to be safe, you need a strong state, something that is against the interests of many so-called progressives.
You don't need a lot of police, but every single man needs to know that if he wrongs a woman, there will be consequences. Relatively few police officers can work as long as all men know that the government will increase police if they start to act up in large numbers. (I mean, on the surface it looks like e.g. native Swedish men are less misogynist than the Muslim immigrants, but I suspect the reality of it is that after a few generations, "If you rape, you go to prison" turns into "We don't rape because you just don't do that". Either that, or rapists just can't procreate because they're in prison, and thus are removed from the gene pool. Probably both. I am sure punishing rape effectively would create an utopia within like 500 years. Why? Because we managed to breed wolves that usually do not attack humans within a similar timespan, just by killing each and every wolf that looked wrong at a human. Whether by learning or genetics, wolves now instinctively know that attacking humans is a massively bad idea.)
Oh? Where did you learn that about wolves?
I am afraid I cannot give you a scientific study, but wolves can kill humans, so them not attacking humans because humans are so very special seems rather unlikely.
So this is my own theory. Medieval humans hunted wolves almost to extinction. There's also a LOT of old fairytales and sayings referring to how dangerous wolves are.
In modern times, we are told wolves are actually very shy animals and never attack humans and just have a bad rep.
How does that make sense?
Well, it does make sense if we assume that we killed all the wolves who didn't promptly run the other way when they saw a human.
I shared this in response to Femina’s question, but I wanted to make sure you saw it too, about Dmitry Belyaev’s experiments with foxes in the Soviet Union.
https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-018-0090-x
Not about wolves, but Dmitry Belyaev experimented with breeding foxes in the USSR in the 1950s (I believe the experiments are ongoing, or at least they lasted a long time), and discovered quite a bit about the domestication process. Presumably, at least some of what he found can be extrapolated to the domestication of the dog, which is still technically a wolf.
https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-018-0090-x
The Nordic countries have a long history with being better than average for women. I phrase it this way, because there are no cultures I can think of at all where women have it as easy as men. Zero. But the Nordic culture has always been fairly good both in culture and law, including having female rulers (both ruling Queens, and prime ministers in more modern times).
I have misplaced my copy of Riane Eisler’s book The Chalice and the Blade, so I can’t go look up the references, but she claims that early European societies, particularly early Minoan civilization, were very female-centered, and Marija Gambutas proposed the Kurgan hypothesis, which, if I understand it correctly (I am neither an archaeologist nor an anthropologist, much to my chagrin), postulated that early European civilization was very female-centered until horse-riding male-dominated nomads from the Ukrainian steppes swept through and conquered all of Western Europe (presumably killing the men and subjugating the women).
I am sure these hypotheses have been harshly criticized, but I found them hopeful, and according to Wikipedia, the Kurgan hypothesis is widely accepted today.
Riane Eisler: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chalice_and_the_Blade
Marija Gambutas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marija_Gimbutas
Two resources for you:
https://www.amazon.com/Female-Power-Male-Dominance-Inequality/dp/0521280753/ref=sr_1_1?crid=LIIHTAM75HT8&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Nap4hR9hamQM-PwBtJiXlbj4E0avYWtOeyFMfNTuZrJY1RMmmx7y3_ucQhhtfFxsDKPu5_u_FZg7Cgjcow__K77c7WY4P_J1dbBw35gJSi-GkdP8OxydU-CwRBvP28dGTZWwjLXp4-E6YPszB915rarZ_oNZfG6SWOrSVvPTz0lcRViCucB30m1JIV6WkTBeemLZBwkXhx-YqI-9KDmq_veK-QBsTKEJ4f6todWKBlk.I4m05dcaRgpTktenxQTSLaH-PgJN8s-_UvhJQiv7QFo&dib_tag=se&keywords=peggy+reeves+sanday&qid=1733408450&sprefix=peggy+ree%2Caps%2C234&sr=8-1 (This book reviews historical tribes according to how well or how poorly they treat women, and is also a great read overall.)
Muslim/Arab countries. Pure evil vicious misogyny.
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