Anonymous OP 1d

misogyny/sexism however stems all the way back to the earliest societies, and even worse… it spans across most of the animal kingdom. its rooted in physical differences/ differences in the ability to subdue or dominate. its also half the world, and over half the US, and almost completely unaffected by social status

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Anonymous OP 1d

ie you could be married to the richest most powerful man, or come from a high class family, but you are still “just a woman”. they made up all these diseases to limit what would could “safely do”. like bicycle face (cant ride bikes), Greensickness (unmarried for too long), they taught whole generations that STUDYING was HARMFUL to a womans ovaries!

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Anonymous OP 1d

women werent viewed as second class citizens for any traceable historical tragedy. just innately and always. they said running was dangerous for the uterus up until halfway thru the 90s… they did everything in their power to make women easier for men to “own as their wife”. to make women think they were too frail to be on their own

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Anonymous OP 1d

also caveat— obviously both racism and sexism are bad and have their own seperate issues. im not comparing them to say ones worse than the other.

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Anonymous OP 1d

you're right that misogyny is older than US racism, but "innate and always" is the patriarchal story about itself. animals don't settle it: bonobos, elephants, orcas and hyenas are female-led. lots of foraging societies were pretty egalitarian. historians like Gerda Lerner trace patriarchy to agriculture, property and early states. bell hooks calls patriarchy a political system that teaches men they're born to dominate. systems have histories, not instincts.

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Anonymous OP 1d

also "unaffected by social status" is the exact thing hooks wrote against. in Ain't I a Woman she shows enslaved Black women were never granted "just a woman" status, and white women held power over them. a rich white wife and a Black domestic worker don't face the same sexism. race and class shape what sexism looks like. that's why you can't neatly separate the two, and why "half the world" isn't one shared experience.

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Anonymous OP 1d

and race isn't really tribalism either. the idea of a "Black" and "white" race was built in the 1600s-1700s to justify slavery and taking Native land. same with sexism: bicycle face and "studying hurts your ovaries" weren't nature, they were men inventing science to keep women in line. both are made, both are maintained, and both serve the same people at the top.

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Anonymous OP 1d

one more piece: childism. the "ability to subdue" logic you describe is learned first between adults and kids, the most obvious physical gap there is. hooks argued that adult domination of children, by mothers too, is where we first learn that power means control. and look at your own examples: calling women "too frail to be on their own" is infantilizing. it only works as an insult because kids are already treated as lesser. patriarchy owned wives and children together.

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Anonymous #1 1d

Yeah and ironically enough the “Ain’t I a Woman” speech was revised by a white woman. When sojourn initially introduced the speech, the Ain’t I a woman part was never in the original. When Marius Robinson transcribed it, she added that part further showing the power white women had over black women to be able to alter one of the most important pieces of black media.

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Anonymous #1 16h

most animals have some form of aggression in males. usually in how sex is forced, persuaded, or violent when occurring. and sexism (in a broad “ur less important” sense has spanned across time, its only theorized in times we dont hve written record from, but its proven (most of the time) in times we do. the only times in ancient history we dont see it is when its necessary for survival that everyone contribute in the same ways

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Anonymous #1 16h

yeah i never said they did. intersectionality is still a huge thing

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Anonymous #1 16h

the initial notions of “ur from another country/ you look unfamiliar to me and thats bad” is the same inner phenological process as tribalism

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Anonymous #1 16h

obviously its more complicated that that because the whole slave trade started from Portugal and europe (and eventually america) conquering africa and stealing people as part of that “conquest”, and then when majority of dark skinned people in those areas were part of this enslaved class, they started fusing the two qualities together and therefore saw dark skin as a symbol of enslavement or smth similar but theres still an argument to be made in that they never would have invaded and stole

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Anonymous #1 16h

people from a country closer to theirs, with people that looked more like their neighbors. i think its the distance and the physical appearance differences that contributed to the mental gymnastics they did to justify their extreme mistreatment

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Anonymous #2 16h

small correction: Robinson didn't add it. his 1851 transcript, published weeks after the speech, has no "ain't I a woman" at all. the refrain came from Frances Gage, a white woman, in 1863, 12 years later. she also wrote Truth in a fake Southern dialect (Truth was a New Yorker whose first language was Dutch) and invented 13 children sold away when she had 5. so your point stands, and it's worse: even hooks's book title comes from Gage's version.

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Anonymous #1 16h

ur comparing the two (in regards to which is worse) which i explicitly said i wouldnt do. by “unaffected by social status” i mean that women of high class families were typically still forced into female roles, and honestly even more so (socially). they’d have it worse w things like forced marriages, dress codes, “female etiquette” and other unwritten social rules. their lives were damn near scripted by the men around them im not sure how anything you brought up negates what i said. it sounds

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Anonymous #1 16h

like u just wanted to info dump abt some stuff ur knowledgable on, which is totally fine if true

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Anonymous OP 16h

unfamiliarity doesn't explain it. Europe already traded with and knew Africa for centuries. what changed was ontology: Europeans built a theory of what a human is, with the white Christian man as the measure. Africans got classed as property, Native people as "savages" who didn't own land since they didn't "improve" it (Locke). that wasn't mental gymnastics after the fact, it was the blueprint. Sylvia Wynter and Fanon both write about this: racism decides who counts as human at all.

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Anonymous OP 16h

calling it "ur less important" across all time skips the same question: who decided what a woman is? Aristotle literally called women deformed men. that's not instinct, it's a philosophy of being, and it put the same kind of man at the top as the race hierarchy did. animal aggression isn't sexism either. sexism needs categories, rules and institutions. hooks names the whole package white supremacist capitalist patriarchy because it's one ontology, not separate instincts.

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Anonymous OP 16h

not ranking them at all. my point is that sexism doesn't look the same across classes. rich women were scripted, yes, but the script was different: chaperones and arranged marriages for some, forced labor and sexual violence with no legal protection for enslaved women. and the rich white wife often ran that household. that's what hooks means: gender is never lived apart from race and class, so it can't be the "natural" baseline everything else sits on.

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Anonymous #1 16h

can you elaborate on what you mean by the natural baseline everything sits on? what (of what i said) are you referencing w that?

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Anonymous OP 16h

you said misogyny spans the animal kingdom, comes from physical differences, and was "innately and always," while racism came later from slavery. that makes sexism the natural foundation and racism the historical add-on. my point is both are built. patriarchy has a history too, with laws, religion and science doing the work. if sexism were natural, nobody would've needed to invent bicycle face. treating it as nature is how patriarchy protects itself from being questioned.

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Anonymous OP 16h

and it wasn't just ideas, it was religion being rewritten. in ancient Israel, Asherah was worshiped alongside Yahweh; there are inscriptions literally saying "Yahweh and his Asherah." later reformers tore her poles down. in Europe the witch hunts killed tens of thousands, mostly poor and older women, right as capitalism was taking off (Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch). the feminine sacred didn't fade naturally. it was removed on purpose.

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Anonymous OP 16h

and the science itself has a history. scholastic universities built on Aristotle, and Aquinas repeated that woman is a "misbegotten male." women were barred from them. then alchemy, which saw nature as alive and joined masculine and feminine principles, got replaced by a mechanical view of nature as dead matter to master (Carolyn Merchant's The Death of Nature). that science later "proved" bicycle face and race hierarchy. domination got rebranded as objectivity.

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Anonymous #1 16h

well i dont think its natural, i think its a byproduct of male hormones and sexuality centered (in animals mainly) around “spreading seed” (related to conquering) but still i see what ur saying now. for an enslaved woman her enslavement (tho succeeding her femininity) still held more weight in society and was treated as her defining characteristic. that’s why even tho her femininity came first, and misogyny came first, she is treated first and foremost by her race not her sex

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Anonymous #1 16h

if patriarchy/ sexism was built and came of man made circumstances we wouldnt see its same traits so prevalent in animals. the SYSTEM of patriarchy is not the true root of sexism. its what continues it across time. the real root is very complicated but i think it comes down to male ego/hormones/desire etc (found in males across species, and not necessarily found in every human, but more so like a string attached to every man, some loose and unrestricting.. some taught and hard to ignore, but

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Anonymous #1 16h

that can pull them towards certain tendencies ro satisy certain urges (whether that be sexual or ego based etc)

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Anonymous #1 15h

ohhhh if we bring up religion we will be here for hoursssss. but to keep it surface level, the desire to subdue women came before it was put into scripture. ie the men that put it in the scripture alrdy felt that way, and the society that accepted that writing as gods word already felt that was an accurate read of the world

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Anonymous OP 15h

saying it's hormones IS saying it's natural, just with extra steps. and it's the oldest excuse there is: "boys will be boys," "he couldn't help it." if men are just pulled by urges, nobody's responsible for anything. but men make choices every day. hooks says boys aren't born wanting to dominate, they're taught it, often by being shamed for having feelings. even testosterone research shows it boosts what a culture already rewards. it doesn't write the script.

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Anonymous OP 15h

not religion. HISTORY.

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Anonymous #1 15h

its not natural because humans are rational beings with the ability to control their desires! its natural for me to want ice cream. its not natural for me to go stab someone to take theirs. the want is natural, the way in which you forcefully obtain it (in a civilized animal) is not. ie ofc men WANT sex… ofc men want status or land etc. but u dont go kill a thousand people to satisfy that natural want

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Anonymous OP 15h

that's a really oversimplified version of what happened. regular people in Israel kept goddess figurines in their homes for centuries. it took kings smashing shrines to stop it, and the prophets complain for generations that people kept at it. same with witch hunts: it took new laws, courts and torture. if everyone already agreed, you wouldn't need that much force. power came first, then it wrote itself into scripture.

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Anonymous OP 15h

then we agree on the big part: domination is a choice, not instinct. that's what i mean by built. but "men naturally want status and land" is still doing patriarchy's work. owning land isn't a hormone. plenty of cultures had no private land at all, and many Native nations saw it as something you belong to, not something you own. wanting to own things and people is taught. so is the idea that men want it more.

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Anonymous #1 15h

everyone naturally wants those things. id argue tho thay male hormones make that want stronger since those things are tied to having access to more sex. women have always had much easier access to consensual sex so its hard to determine if the desire for it is truly stronger in one or the other, or if men are jusy more likely to do things in pursuit of it because its a little harder to access otherwise

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Anonymous #1 15h

simply having female goddesses doesnt mean women were viewed as an equal component of humanity. they almost always were goddesses of things like fertility and agriculture. this very clearly stemmed from women giving birth, and nature (crops/ agriculture) being seen as a form of fertility as well. them making those roles feminine does not mean they jumped at the idea of worshiping a woman, they just couldnt pretend fertility was at all a male trait

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Anonymous OP 15h

NO, everyone doesn't. i don't. lots of cultures were built around sharing, not accumulating, and colonizers had to force private property on them. "everyone naturally wants land and status" is the colonial idea of a human, presented as human nature. "men pursue it because sex is harder to get frames women's bodies as the prize men compete for, and that's literally the social system we're talking about: patriarchy.

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Anonymous OP 15h

"simply" is doing a lot of work. plenty of goddesses weren't about fertility: Ma'at was cosmic order and justice, Athena wisdom and war, Inanna war and kingship, Saraswati knowledge. in Proverbs 8, Wisdom is a woman who was there at creation, helping build the world. and treating fertility as lesser is the patriarchal move itself. creating life got demoted to a body function so men could claim mind and meaning for themselves.

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Anonymous OP 15h

every one of us was grown inside someone's body. that's creation, the same thing the gods get credit for, and patriarchy taught us to see it as a lesser, "natural" job instead of sacred work. there have always been other readings of divine gender: Wisdom at creation, the Shekhinah, gods beyond male and female. flattening all of them into "just fertility" is patriarchy telling its own story again. so genuine question: why defend that story this hard?

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Anonymous #1 15h

athenian women couldnt vote. they typically were forced to live under a “male guardian”. they had arraigned marriages and basically all the typical restrictions or burdens women have faced in history lets not forget what we’re actually arguing here: when did sexism start. if youre listing all these female gods in a way relevant to that main argument as a way to say those ancient societies respected women as equals, they absolutely did not

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Anonymous OP 15h

Athens proves my point: guardianship laws, arranged marriages, no vote. You don't legislate what's natural. And remember who wrote the record: the most documented religion comes from the institutions that crowned themselves. "When did sexism start" can't be proven either way, so "it's always been here" isn't a neutral default, it's a choice. Same as free will: if we can't know, why pick the belief that justifies the hierarchy?

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Anonymous #1 14h

bruh. am i talking to a man?

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Anonymous OP 14h

no, and even if i were a man, that wouldn't rebut anything i've said. but notice what you’ve been doing. when the argument gets hard, gender becomes the argument. that's the whole thread in one line. i'm not saying ancient Athens was equal. i'm asking why you keep treating patriarchy as the default when you've already agreed domination is a choice. why hold on to that so hard?

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Anonymous #1 14h

ur so hung up on the word natural when i already specified thats “natural/innate” is the want. not the path or way in which things are enforced. but if ur no longer willing to have a constructive conversation abt this im done. it seems like u just want to talk abt history and dont care how ur claims actually relate to the argument

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Anonymous OP 14h

i'm not hung up on a word, it's the crux. we agree enforcement is a choice. where we disagree is the want. you think men naturally want status and control more. i think that want is taught, and history is my evidence, because it shows the want changing across cultures. if it were hardwired, it wouldn't vary that much. we can leave it there. thanks for actually engaging, most people don't.

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Anonymous #1 13h

actually its the crux of what you got hung up on half an hour ago from your misinterpretation of what i said

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Anonymous OP 13h

no, you’re literally still just pushing patriarchal mythology.

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Anonymous #1 13h

the history you’ve described is the evidence that the want already existed at those times. i dont believe you have said anything to prove the want has changed over time. you just said they had female goddesses at one point

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Anonymous #1 13h

i am saying that all humans have the same desires and those desires are natural in the animal kingdom (however the use of the term natural does not mean the behavior that results of it is excused in a civilized world) and im saying those desires are more prevalent in men, in history and now, for several reasons. 1. men have less access to sex and therefore act irrationally more to obtain it. 2. there is somthing to be said about male hormones making things like aggression more common in certain

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Anonymous OP 13h

men. 3. this is where the social aspect comes in. those preexisting tendencies are then reinforced and turned almost into a game/competition by the patriarchy (now not only does status open up opportunity for sex, sex opens up opportunity for status among peers)

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Anonymous OP 13h

i know what you're saying. i'm saying it's a story, not a finding. the evidence can't settle where the want comes from, so the explanation you pick is a choice. you picked the one where men want more because of hormones and sex, which is the same story patriarchy tells to excuse itself. even "women have easier access to sex" is a product of the system that polices women's sex lives. so this comes down to philosophy: what we choose to believe, and what that choice builds.

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Anonymous OP 13h

the goddesses weren't my proof of equality. my point is "the want already existed" only describes who held power and wrote things down. the people in Jeremiah 44 refused to give up the Queen of Heaven. and variation is everywhere: Haudenosaunee clan mothers chose and removed chiefs, the Mosuo run matrilineal households today, and at Çatalhöyük men and women had similar diets and were buried alike. if the want were universal, none of that would exist.

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Anonymous #1 13h

and im saying that being willing/ happy to follow a female goddess does not mean you respect the human women around you!

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Anonymous #1 13h

i never said the “want” (in how ur using it u actually are referring to the actions taken or not taken to obtain that want) was universal. the actual desire for the satisfaction of desires as they pop up (cause some people have low libido, or dont care to hold power or conquer land) IS universal across time AND gender we are getting confused cause of the language. it goes like this a natural want to satisfy desires -> certain common desires pop up across the animal kingdom -> a desire for

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Anonymous #1 13h

sex or power is common -> that drive is seen more commonly in males (this can be due to many causes, and I’ll expand on that if ud like) -> that desire is less immediately met in men in society (women withold sex cause they risk the most w it, women may get that power satisfaction in the household or [more likely] had no chance of ever holding office/being a king/queen, leading an army, physically overtaking someone etc… due to societal limitations to summarize, cause rhat was a big block of

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Anonymous OP 13h

Never said it does. simply that it disproves your eternal inequality fantasy. The only one confused here is you.

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Anonymous #1 13h

text, the issues we see today and in history stem from circumstance that we cannot attribute to one or several “bad men” who set the world up to be sexist. they come from naturally (not implying theyre right or they should stay that way, just that there isnt an evil mastermind behind them) occurring things

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Anonymous #1 13h

first of all. cut rhat shit out if u want to continue this conversation with me. i have been trying hard to not make this combative, and to simply try to find the truth here. you have been downvoting my comments and bejng nasty increasingly more and more

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Anonymous OP 13h

you can stop explaining your framework. i understand it VERY well, and that's how i can see where it breaks. nobody here said there was an evil mastermind. built doesn't mean planned. systems get built by millions of ordinary choices, laws and habits, women included. that's literally hooks's point. and you keep sliding "natural" back in through hormones and sex access, then saying you don't mean natural. we disagree on that. i'm done going in circles.

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Anonymous #1 10h

and that series of ordinary choices, laws and habits is EXACTLY WHAT I MEANT BY NATURAL nature is a series of choices. evolution is a series of choices. those choices are rooted in the circumstances that brought about them what circumstances you may ask? biological, and social circumstances brought on from prior choices that established hierarchies and situations

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Anonymous #1 10h

if u agree that misogyny wasnt randomy brought into the world by a couple bad apples.. then you agree with me in my use of the word natural natural = not artificially implemented for reasons outside of what can be attributed to biological or social influence ie for it to be unnatural (in my use of the word) it would have to be one or s couple people’s will, forcefully imposed on everyone else.

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Anonymous OP 9h

"EXACTLY WHAT I MEANT BY NATURAL"? then you meant CONDITIONING and used the wrong word. choices, laws and habits are the textbook opposite of nature. and NO, evolution is NOT a series of choices. natural selection has no chooser. you just admitted the hierarchy came from "prior choices that established hierarchies." that's the whole argument. you conceded it and called it nature.

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Anonymous OP 9h

"not artificially implemented... biological or SOCIAL influence"? SOCIAL INFLUENCE IS THE ARTIFICIAL PART. by your definition slavery, colonialism and every law ever passed are "natural." a word that covers everything means NOTHING. and nobody said "a couple bad apples." that's a strawman. it doesn't take one villain to impose something. millions of people enforcing it for centuries IS imposition.

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Anonymous OP 9h

and patriarchy WAS forcefully imposed. coverture erased wives' legal existence. witch trials killed tens of thousands, mostly women. laws barred women from schools, property and the vote for centuries. you described CONDITIONING and tried to call it nature. redefining a word to rescue your argument isn't philosophy. STOP trying to educate me. you don’t know what you’re talking about.

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Anonymous #1 2h

i do not mean conditioning because i am talking about what STARTED it. conditioning doesnt just spawn out of no where, and we already agreed there wasnt some group of people who invented misogyny to enforce upon the world for fun

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Anonymous #1 2h

social influence is what continues it. what do YOU think caused the social influence.

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Anonymous #1 2h

what would make millions of people enforce something??? how do millions of people suddenly have and enact the exact same will???????????

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