h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

kea:
>>But come to think of it I can't think of any country where men haven't made the abortion laws.

True. But let's hypothesise a world in which female suffrage was earlier than it was. (and props to your nation for being the first. )

Are you saying that women would have legalised abortion from the outset? Possibly. On the other hand...there are at least *some* women who are Anti-Choice. Aren't there? And at least a few men who are Pro.

(In the UK, abortion was legalised following a private member's bill from David Steel)

>>Are you saying that women would have legalised abortion from the outset? <<

I'm saying that in cultures where women have more autonomy than in the West, abortion simply wasn't illegal. I believe that would include pre-Christian Brits btw.

>> On the other hand...there are at least *some* women who are Anti-Choice. Aren't there? And at least a few men who are Pro.<<

Oh sure. We're talking about Western countries there perhaps, and obviously there are plenty of each gender on both sides (although some anti abortion women are known to actually get abortions themselves on the sly, so who knows where to categorise them).

I'm not really talking about individuals though as much as who as a class has power within a patriarchal system. If women don't have the vote AND the balance of power in a government then it doesn't really matter what what their views are. Women in NZ only got the vote because the male politicians at the time agreed.


>>In the UK, abortion was legalised following a private member's bill from David Steel<<

In NZ abortion is still illegal. You can get around this law if you can get two certifying consultants (Drs) to say that your mental health and/or life would be at risk if you continue with the pregnancy (and there are still places in NZ where you can't do that). The last time anything substantial was done to the Act (early 70s), consultants were usually men, and the people making the laws were too. I'd be interested to know how similar or different the situation was/is in the UK.

>>
First of all, I didn't think I said anything about white people, men or otherwise, imposing modesty or control on native peoples in my previous post.
<<

Anhaga, I think you've misunderstood me there. I wasn't saying that you said that. My (poorly phrased) comment was about your last line in that post, not about the story you told earlier in the post. *I'm* the one that extrapolated that out to include another example.

I can see now that you were referring specifically to the book, but your sentence is actually a pretty good description of a wider issue.



>>
While I would certainly agree that Europeans have tried to impose their social standards on those they've encountered and tried to dominate, I will not acknowledge that it has always, if ever, been successful.

And such an imposition on the First Nations is precisely opposite to what I was trying to explain about what takes place in 'The History of Emily Montague'. To put it plainly, white women saw the example of First Nations women and chose to impose it on the existing white social structure. And, in the novel, you can clearly see (particularly the older) white males squirm under the new order, when their power is broken and happiness is allowed.
<<

Yes, that is what I heard from you, and I agree. What I was referring to was European missionaries trying to get native women to wear clothes as a way of conforming to the European standards of the time. But it's also an attempt at moral control.


Thanks for talking about the book, I'll see if I can find a copy.

>>I'm saying that in cultures where women have more autonomy than in the West, abortion simply wasn't illegal. I believe that would include pre-Christian Brits btw.

I'd be interested to see the evidence for pre-Christian British female autononomy.

In the pre-Christian Roman empire...women had little autonomy. I'm not sure about abortion, but infanticide was legal.



I agree completely (of course!) that women's control over their fertility is a vitally important right. All I'm doing here is questioning whether (and having a gentle pop at ) the issue is quite as clear-cut as 'Women want it vs Men try and stop it'. The picture and the evidence are a lot more messy than that.

But then...this leaves us with the problem that - agreed - patriarchy is real, and that women fare least well in patriarchal societies. *However*, patriarchal societies aren't *just* patriarchal. They tend also to be restrictive and hierarchical in various other ways. (Don't they?). So what are the underlying causes of patriarchy? Is it simply that men are bad buggers? Or are there factors which tend to shape societies in various ways including but not only patriarchy?

If we were to take a Marxist perspective, say, (and why not? ) we might see restrictive familial relationships as highly conducive to the maintenance of economic power structures. To put it crudely, the woman's role is to support the primary labour unit and to produce future labour units. Societal arrangements which were not based around this necessity would be as beneficial to men as they are to women.

See...while modern Feminism has been an undoubted good - I see a danger in Identity Politics in that it misses the bigger picture. Things like abortion shouldn't be treated simply as Women's Issues.

( Typical men! Always wanting to muscle in.)

kea.

and good luck finding a copy of 'the History of Emily Montague'.

>> ~jwf~ if you think this has nothing to do with gender...<<

Oh it has everything to do with gender.
But most people don`t or won`t understand that.

In this thread for example, even as we vaguely speculate along the timelines of the ancient cultures as to when,
where and why we hairless apes recognised our nakedness, no one has yet mentioned (and it would be pointless of me to introduce) a truth that is still being contested and denied and suppressed by vested male interests.

That truth is that women were the dominant gender of our species when we made the progression from grazing to growing. We `worshipped` the goddess. She provided. She nurtured. And as women developed agriculture and shelter and clothing men formed sulky little groups, tried to stay naked and wild and went off to kill things.

After a few thousand years of `civilisation` Mother Nature threw us a curve-ball, the Flood, volcanic activity and ongoing decades of dark skies and crop failures.

In the aftermath of this collapse of civilisation men took over. Because they could. They blamed the Goddess and Women for the collapse and created their own gods of war and vengeance. And we`ve been totally fugged up ever since.

Just to add another dimension to this persepctive, it is possible that Nature (not likely either a Mother or a Father) was simply resetting our gender settings to reprogram our evolution, just as today we see a global decline in masculinity occurring in all species.


jwf

"What I was referring to was European missionaries trying to get native women to wear clothes as a way of conforming to the European standards of the time."

Well, weren´t they in most cases making the men wear clothes too? Then why assume it has something to do with those damned "white male power strucures" that I knew would be mentioned eventually?

Same with that canooing story. The english women wanted more freedom, after seeing the native women had it. That has what to do with modesty?

What it (that 'canooing' story) has to do with modesty is that for much of modern European history, 'modesty' was not just about covering up the private bits, it was about women keeping quiet in mixed company, about not going out without a chaperone. Modesty was more about behavior than it was about clothing.

Which would be great, if we weren´t discussing modesty as regards covering up with clothes, and not as regards not recieving compliments well.

The distinction escapes me.
But then I`ve never been a snappy dresser.


jwf

that was a dangerous typo in your , ~jwf~.

>>We `worshipped` the goddess.



Enough with this worshipping the goddess bullshit, already. *We simply do not know* who our pre-literate ancestors worshipped, if anyone. Gods, godesses, trees, the sun...whatever. On contemporary anthropological evidence of technologically undeveloped cultures, our best guess is that some (but not all) of them probably worshipped - or, at least, gave attention to - their ancestors. But this notion that ancient societies were matriarchal, nature-worshipping hippies is modern wishful thinking.

We know the kind of view there was of women in Victorian times, and their position in society. Yet if we look at bathing suits from the time, it seems to me both men and women were covered up equally. I don´t see why we should assume modesty all began with getting women to cover up, as a way for all the menfolk to control them.

Isn't the requirement to uncover equally coercive? In our own society, men aren't expected to display as much flash as women.

flesh, even.

I refer you to post 19 (and 8, but it got hidden because I suggested that someone had read to much Heinlein. Or maybe it was because I'd suggested someone had sexual fantasies about their little sister):


'In Renaissance Europe (and a number of current hunter-gatherer societies), covering up the private bits meant (means) augmenting the private bits. The emphasis is not about covering up one's natural endowments, it's about projecting an unnatural abundance (sort of like padded, cleavage enhancing bras carrying implanted breasts).'



whatever we might want to say about 'modesty', that's not usually what clothing is about.

Myself, I find hijab particularly alluring. It sets off a pretty face wonderfully.

Although it's difficult to argue that a burqa is enhancing anything.

>>
I'd be interested to see the evidence for pre-Christian British female autononomy.

In the pre-Christian Roman empire...women had little autonomy. I'm not sure about abortion, but infanticide was legal.
<< Ed

I did say more autonomy than currently not total autonomy And I did state it as a belief.

We know that there have been many cultures, even in recent times, where women have a degree of automony that is almost unrecognisable to Westerners. eg native women in many places had access to abortion and other forms of birth control when Western women didn't. I can't see any reason why the UK native women would have been any different. (And I'm not talking about the Romans).



>>Things like abortion shouldn't be treated simply as Women's Issues<<

I'd have to disagree of course Where the wider society is involved eg late term abortions that require another highly skilled person to kill a baby, it seems more reasonable that the wider society should have a say. But for early pregnancies where women could probably terminate pregnancies in a straightforward way I can't see any reason why men should have a say in that.


>>
But then...this leaves us with the problem that - agreed - patriarchy is real, and that women fare least well in patriarchal societies. *However*, patriarchal societies aren't *just* patriarchal. They tend also to be restrictive and hierarchical in various other ways. (Don't they?). So what are the underlying causes of patriarchy? Is it simply that men are bad buggers? Or are there factors which tend to shape societies in various ways including but not only patriarchy?
<<

I'm glad you brought this up. I don't see patriarchy as result of men being bad. I don't know why patriarchy started but it's now a self-sustaining system. Men simply have the most privilege in that system and possibly the most power to change it *if they wanted to*. So any critique of men by me is to do with what they are doing with their power.

For the people that find the concept of the patriarchy triggering, try thinking it in terms of being a domination system. The whole thing is based on domination and who has the power to do that. We've lived in such a system for so long we've forgotten it's not the only way for humans to form society.

Myself, I see the patriarchy as being a domination system that is centred on gender but not exclusively, so yes I think there are factors beyond gender (race, class, and how we relate with the natural world being the most obvious). That doesn't mean I blame men for all that. It means that I look at men having a specific responsibility that is different than other classes. Part of the role of contemporary feminism is to get this recognised, which is probably why it comes across as blaming men i.e. men have to be the focus until enough of them are able to acknowledge the degree of privilege. Until that happens it's hard to see that much will change.


>>
If we were to take a Marxist perspective, say, (and why not? ) we might see restrictive familial relationships as highly conducive to the maintenance of economic power structures. To put it crudely, the woman's role is to support the primary labour unit and to produce future labour units. Societal arrangements which were not based around this necessity would be as beneficial to men as they are to women.
<<

Precisely. Undermining the patriarchy is as beneficial to men as anyone else I just wish more men would realise that

>>That truth is that women were the dominant gender of our species when we made the progression from grazing to growing<<

~jwf~, I agree that women had a completely different place in society at other times. But I don't agree that it was a role of domination. The speculations about pre-agrarian societies talk about egalitarian relationships where women are central to the family systems and the female principle is highly valued.

It's hard maybe for some men to understand that an egalitarian system where women are central is beneficial for men too. That's because we're so used to thinking in domination. We find it hard to conceive of another way so we just reverse the genders.

But I've not seen any evidence for this reversal. In other words, there's never been a matriarchy (AFAIK).

kea:
>>And I did state it as a belief.

Ah. That's OK then. Belief's are exempt from the critical scrutiny that's applied to mere thoughts.