Why is the opression of women a common theme in world history?

I was born and raised to be Catholic. About the time I was 16 i started realizing how silly the whole thing was (I haven't been to church in almost ten years besides for Christmas to make my parents happy), but for my entire life up to that point I was really into Catholicism. From my experience the Church isn't nearly as crazy as its been in the past. You hear about a lot of Christian religions these days trying to dig their grubby fingers into politics, pushing political agendas through their sermons and whatnot. I did not really see any of this when I was in church. It was almost a kind of tradition more than anything - you go to church every weekend, listen to a priest talk about the biblical stories he's supposed to mention that day, eat some crackers and drink some wine that they try to pass off as the body and blood of Jesus, and you get to go to heaven. That's pretty much all it was.

I'm not particularly offended by any of the things i saw going on in the church when i was still within it, at least on a local level. I'm just amused by how silly and irrational the whole religion is in general. I mean all of Christianity, not just Catholicism in general.

Sure, a lot of the people I went to church with when i was a kid are probably conservatives of the nutjob variety who want to make gay marriage illegal and support wars and so on and so forth - but this is not because this is what the church told them to believe, at least not our church. It is because that is what the political party which they see as also being the Christian party told them to believe.

There IS one exception - abortion was occasionally mentioned as a negative thing in my church. Even this was rare, however. For the most part the church that I experienced was a very apolitical thing. And when abortion was mentioned, it was not treated as an issue that the congregation should actively fight and protest and vote against. It was just presented as a sad truth in the world, the victims of which should be prayed for. Thats pretty much all it was.

I even had an instructor for one of my Catholic education classes that told us that evolution was real. I believe evolution has even been officially recognized as fact by the Catholic church in general. I guess what I'm getting at is that a lot of catholics today don't take their religion so literally and totally serious as a lot of other Christian religions do. They are actually willing to accept some bits of reality into their otherwise silly religious fantasy world.

I'm curious, when you say it's Catholocism you are most affected by, do you mean because of its history or do you that the church itself, in the modern day, has affected you? And how so?

 

I'm a transsexual who's working on becoming a woman, I say fuck them to people who hate women. Egypt along with Sparta is a lone example. Take Athens, the original democracy, women had no rights what so ever, and in the Roman empire it wasn't really any better.

 

Listen, i'm not about to argue with you. But i'm offended.
I am catholic myself, and I am not bashing Catholicism - at all. I was just giving a simple reason to why women were oppressed in history. I didn't really want nor mean to get started on Spartans and that Empire - I only tried to justify myself because YOU mentioned it. I admit I'm not completely aware of what happened in that part of the world at that certain time - sorry for trying to sound like I DO know it.

Better grasp on history was what got me though. I study Europeans and celtic studies.

I'm a history major 3rd year in university.

Just watch what you say. Please don't write back. I'm starting to get really pissed off. I've been here for awhile, and I have YET to make the judgment of anyone being an asshole. Thanks.

 

I'm really not trying to argue with you, or offend you. You seem like a nice person, but I had to take issue with you saying Athens/Sparta were following the teachings of the Catholic Church... I mean, come on. What you're saying about Catholicism seems pretty strange if you're a Catholic yourself. I'm not sure why you'd want to blame the oppression of women throughout history on your own religion. Sure, it's played a part, but not necessarily a definitive one (I don't think).

And on the reacting thing, all I was saying was that taking what Madcap said as an insult against women was jumping the gun a bit, when if you'd read it more carefully you would have understood what he meant. If I'd read it the way you did, I would have assumed he was an asshole. If that's not the word you would have used, fine. I think the judgment is the same.

Anyway, we clearly got off on the wrong foot. I'm not trying to be a dick here.

 

i mean on a few levels... the bloody history ofcourse, and my mother was a catholic... the effect that had on my life was devastating and i don't really want to go into details here, but if her mind-set had not been catholic, i don't think she would have been the same puppet at all...

also, my observations are that many many children have been abused by members of the catholic church... the fruit? i acknowledge that these vile things are prevalent in other religions/groups etc, but my experience and observation just happens to be the catholic church... hope that answers your question for you... peace

 

I hesitate to agree with the idea that today's women are more "free" or less "free" than previous generations - I think women and men are simply chained in different ways today. I don't think that, suddenly, in the 1930s and 1960s, women suddenly "got strong" and asserted their rights.

Women have always been strong individuals and groups, with influence and power, but not in the same way as men. Sometimes, they have been the direct targets of oppression; so have men at some times. I certainly think women have been very strongly oppressed institutionally, but as a historian the idea of some "break from the past" in this century is absurd.

I believe that the source of that institutional oppression is tradition, etiquette, and perceived gender roles. People are trained based on what their sex is, to live a certain kind of life and to shun another.

But, trying to assign some monolithic reason for women to be oppressed is folly - it's like saying money evolved because people were greedy. That's just too simple.

Humankind seems to have had a sense of different sex roles, at least on some small level, for as far as history can reliably take us. Are sex roles oppression? Some would say not, but it's certainly the source of sexist sentiments.

 

Glad to see another history major. Don't worry if you got some of your information wrong, it happens, just study, learn about it, and all will be well.

If you want to do history be ready for arguments! hehe

 

This made me think of Aristophanes's Lysistrata, where the Athenian women withhold sex from the men in order to end the Peloponnesian war. It worked in the end.

 

well, it's worth a try girls

 

Agree.

 

My professor said that some women in a community in I believe Iran used this same tactic in order to have the men build a new well and it worked for them.

 

Hmmm that's a really interesting thought.:cheers2:

 

This is a good point too. However, I think in general, women have been in an opressed position way more frequently and often than men.

 

We must recall that while males have not been universally oppressed as much as women have (i.e. every man in a given society), everyone has had their share of hardship. While the rulers may have been male, there were always a hundred times as many men working as serfs or wage labourers, and just being generally abused by the upper classes. These people were seen as less than human as well, but due to their social status rather than their gender.

 

i'm sold on the idea... where do i sign

 

the suppresion of women started pretty much when the hebrews decided that their priests should only be decendants of Adam (specifically Abraham as the first) .... the old testament puts the Fathers as teh teachers, and women as the nuturers... through all walks of life, if your society followed an Abranic tradition

oh, and if you have a bodypart missing you can't be a priest either... gawd bless those who hop around... but they can't teach us anything

all very droll and very controlling... lets hope the next ten thousand yrs take us away from such fuckwittery

 

The Old Testament is just a compilation of other stories told before. These themes didn't originate with it, it just carried them on.

 

I agree. Male chauvinism is a fact. It is also learned behaviour. It will continue as long as young boys imitate fathers who are chauvinists or oppressors.

The best we can do as men is set good examples and be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

 

Oppression is a common theme in ALL history. This is a general trend (and we dont learn from history). Think about Britain with India, North America and First Nations people, African Americans, Hitler and the Jewish people...even religious veins, the Christians vs. the Pagans.

Man vs. Woman is huge in history...It's hard to understand, but people have had this fear of what they don't understand, and of those who dont adopt similar beliefs or lifestyles. Thus leading to this need for dominance over them/it...this even includes nature and the desire to "domesticate" it.