As I am taking this history class, and then today’s Google graphic, I have been thinking about something. The patriarchy has become the boogeyman. It’s easy – and safe- to blame it for every little thing. Now, I’m not an anti-feminist as has been said. I am more of a rational feminist. I think. I don’t just accept what’s shoved at me and never think to question it. I am an inconvenient woman, one who is content in her motherhood and femininity. I’d like to see equality of opportunity, but I don’t demand equality of outcome.
In the class discussions, there was some talk of why women didn’t hunt with the men. In addition to the physical differences in body shape and strength, there are many other reasons. A pregnant woman needs to hoard her resources for her child’s development. A menstruating woman is weaker, has a strong odor, and if stone-age women were anything like modern women, a fair percentage of them simply didn’t feel up to an all-day run. Staying close to the fires and gathering sessile plants was about all she was up to. When the tribe’s survival is on the line, you aren’t worry about the patriarchy keeping you down, you’re worried about dying, your children dying, your family being ended. It’s only much later when civilization is at a peak that humanity would become wealthy enough to allow equality.
And later, sure, the Greeks and the Romans were odd about how they kept their women. I’m not sure what naming protocols by the Romans was so horrible, being named Julia because you were of the Julian Clan is like me being named Sanderson. I got it from my father, who got it from his. In fact, to my eye the women in Rome had more choice, or at least individuality, in their names through the nicknames they were dubbed with. I’d rather be Julia the Beautiful than Cicero the chickpea, anyway. The men were given names that identified them immediately to anyone they met, and they were judged by their clan names.
The Greeks immured their women in gynaeceums. Well, some Greeks did. Ok, maybe not that many, just the really rich and powerful. But they shut them up! And didn’t let them out! Because all Greek women ever wanted were sexytimes! Um… tell me again why women need safe spaces where men can’t microaggress against them? Oh, right, here we are back at the gnyaecum again. Only this time we’re (I have trouble with that corporate we sometimes) the ones locking the door behind us and shutting the men out. Of course, the low-class no-count Greek women went around shopping and talking and laughing and raising fat happy healthy babies. Just like now when most women just want to live life, and the whiny minority threatens that.
I’ve felt more threatened (and no, I’m not being entirely serious here. I’m capable of taking care of myself thankyouverymuch) by the idiocy of the New-wave Feminists than I have by men, and I have suffered actual harm at male hands. But I had recourse. I live in a nation that takes equality seriously, that is protective still of it’s women, although that era is fast coming to an end. By their radicalisms and false accusations, the neo-feminists are endangering all women. Because for some reason they want to convince all men that rape culture is a thing, and they idolize cultures where women are closed off from the world behind a veil of cloth (at least it’s not stone like the gynaeceum?) and subject to their male relatives slightest whims. By teaching our children that all men are rapists, you are telling them they can’t help themselves, when nothing could be further from the truth. Most men would no more rape a woman than they would raise a hand to her. Because you see, rape isn’t about sex. It’s about power. Just like the neo-feminism cries against the patriarchy are about power.
The power-seeking women (and men who see they are gaining power, and have attached themselves to the skirts of those women) seek to gain ascendancy over men. They have abandoned the aims of the women who risked imprisonment and shame to petition for the right to vote. They have kicked dirt on the hems of the women who were asking for eqaulity. Instead, they want to cut men out, shut their voices off, and close the door to the gynaeceum where they vainly think they will have all the power, and gloat over it lovingly. They are a shame to the women who struggled to win the victories that allow the neo-feminists to have the freedoms they hold and do not value at all. From seeking equality, they have moved on to seek supremacy.
