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Woman.
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28-09-2010 7:08pm#1This is not the first time I've read such passages on the role of women in
the history of humanity, it is the second. Only in one other book, a book by
Friedrich Engels, have I come across such passages that describe history
the way the following does & I wonder how people react to it. I wrote
about 4 pages of a book out so it may seem a bit long but trust me I
wouldn't have spent the time unless it was worth it, make some tea and
give it a read
The passage comes from The Story of Civilization, part 1
- Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant:
"Since it was the mother who fulfilled most of the parental
functions, the family was at first (so far as we can pierce the
mists of history) organized on the assumption that the position of the
man in the family was superficial and incidental, while that of the
woman was fundamental and supreme. In some existing tribes, and
probably in the earliest human groups the physiological role of the
male in reproduction appears to have escaped notice quite as
completely as among animals, who rut and mate and breed with happy
unconsciousness of cause and effect. The Trobriand Islanders attribute
pregnancy not to any commerce of the sexes, but to the entrance of a
baloma, or ghost, into the woman. Usually the ghost enters while the
woman is bathing; "a fish has bitten me," the girl reports. "When,"
says Malinowski, "I asked who was the father of an illegitimate child,
there was only one answer- that there was no father, since the girl
was unmarried. If, then, I asked, in quite plain terms, who was the
physiological father, the question was not understood.... The answer
would be: 'It is a baloma who gave her this child.'" These islanders
had a strange belief that the baloma would more readily enter a girl
given to loose relations with men; nevertheless, in choosing
precautions against pregnancy, the girls preferred to avoid bathing at
high tide rather than to forego relations with men. It is a
delightful story, which must have proved a great convenience in the
embarrassing aftermath of generosity; it would be still more
delightful if it had been invented for anthropologists as well as
for husbands.
In Melanesia intercourse was recognized as the cause of pregnancy,
but unmarried girls insisted on blaming some article in their
diet. Even where the function of the male was understood,
sex relationships were so irregular that it was never a simple
matter to determine the father. Consequently the quite primitive
mother seldom bothered to inquire into the paternity of her child;
it belonged to her, and she belonged not to a husband but to her
father- or her brother- and the clan; it was with these that she
remained, and these were the only male relatives whom her child
would know. The bonds of affection between brother and
sister were usually stronger than between husband and wife. The
husband, in many cases, remained in the family and clan of his mother,
and saw his wife only as a clandestine visitor. Even in classical
civilization the brother was dearer than the husband: it was her
brother, not her husband, that the wife of Intaphernes saved from
the wrath of Darius; it was for her brother, not for her husband, that
Antigone sacrificed herself. "The notion that a man's wife
is the nearest person in the world to him is a relatively modern
notion, and one which is restricted to a comparatively small part of
the human race."
So slight is the relation between father and children in primitive
society that in a great number of tribes the sexes live apart. In
Australia and British New Guinea, in Africa and Micronesia, in Assam
and Burma, among the Aleuts, Eskimos and Samoyeds, and here and there
over the earth, tribes may still be found in which there is no visible
family life; the men live apart from the women, and visit them only
now and then; even the meals are taken separately. In northern Papua
it is not considered right for a man to be seen associating socially
with a woman, even if she is the mother of his children. In Tahiti
"family life is quite unknown." Out of this segregation of the sexes
come those secret fraternities- usually of males- which appear
everywhere among primitive races, and serve most often as a refuge
against women. They resemble our modern fraternities in
another point- their hierarchical organization.
The simplest form of the family, then, was the woman and her
children, living with her mother or her brother in the clan; such an
arrangement was a natural outgrowth of the animal family of the mother
and her litter, and of the biological ignorance of primitive man. An
alternative early form was "matrilocal marriage": the husband left his
clan and went to live with the clan and family of his wife, laboring
for her or with her in the service of her parents. Descent, in such
cases, was traced through the female line, and inheritance was through
the mother; sometimes even the kingship passed down through her rather
than through the male. This "mother-right" was not a
"matriarchate"- it did not imply the rule of women over men.
Even when property was transmitted through the woman she had little
power over it; she was used as a means of tracing relationships which,
through primitive laxity or freedom, were otherwise obscure.
It is true that in any system of society the woman exercises a certain
authority, rising naturally out of her importance in the home, out
of her function as the dispenser of food, and out of the need that the
male has of her, and her power to refuse him. It is also true that
there have been, occasionally, women rulers among some South African
tribes; that in the Pelew Islands the chief did nothing of consequence
without the advice of a council of elder women; that among the
Iroquois the squaws had an equal right, with the men, of speaking
and voting in the tribal council; and that among the Seneca
Indians women held great power, even to the selection of the chief.
But these are rare and exceptional cases. All in all the position of
woman in early societies was one of subjection verging upon slavery.
Her periodic disability, her unfamiliarity with weapons, the
biological absorption of her strength in carrying, nursing and rearing
children, handicapped her in the war of the sexes, and doomed her to a
subordinate status in all but the very lowest and the very highest
societies. Nor was her position necessarily to rise with the
development of civilization; it was destined to be lower in
Periclean Greece than among the North American Indians; it was to rise
and fall with her strategic importance rather than with the culture
and morals of men.
In the hunting stage she did almost all the work except the actual
capture of the game. In return for exposing himself to the hardships and
risks of the chase, the male rested magnificently for the
greater part of the year. The woman bore her children abundantly,
reared them, kept the hut or home in repair, gathered food in woods
and fields, cooked, cleaned, and made the clothing and the
boots. Because the men, when the tribe moved, had to be
ready at any moment to fight off attack, they carried nothing but
their weapons; the women carried all the rest. Bushwomen were used
as servants and beasts of burden; if they proved too weak to keep up
with the march, they were abandoned. When the natives of the
Lower Murray saw pack oxen they thought that these were the wives of
the whites. The differences in strength which now divide the
sexes hardly existed in those days, and are now environmental rather
than innate: woman, apart from her biological disabilities, was almost
the equal of man in stature, endurance, resourcefulness and courage;
she was not yet an ornament, a thing of beauty, or a sexual toy; she
was a robust animal, able to perform arduous work for long hours, and,
if necessary, to fight to the death for her children or her clan.
"Women," said a chieftain of the Chippewas, "are created for work. One
of them can draw or carry as much as two men. They also pitch our
tents, make our clothes, mend them, and keep us warm at night.... We
absolutely cannot get along without them on a journey. They do
everything and cost only a little; for since they must be forever
cooking, they can be satisfied in lean times by licking their
fingers."
Most economic advances, in early society, were made by the woman
rather than the man. While for centuries he clung to his ancient
ways of hunting and herding, she developed agriculture near the
camp, and those busy arts of the home which were to become the most
important industries of later days. From the "wool-bearing tree," as
the Greeks called the cotton plant, the primitive woman rolled
thread and made cotton cloth. It was she, apparently, who
developed sewing, weaving, basketry, pottery, woodworking, and
building; and in many cases it was she who carried on primitive
trade. It was she who developed the home, slowly adding man
to the list of her domesticated animals, and training him in those
social dispositions and amenities which are the psychological basis
and cement of civilization.
But as agriculture became more complex and brought larger rewards,
the stronger sex took more and more of it into its own
hands. The growth of cattle-breeding gave the man a new
source of wealth, stability and power; even agriculture, which must
have seemed so prosaic to the mighty Nimrods of antiquity, was at last
accepted by the wandering male, and the economic leadership which
tillage had for a time given to women was wrested from them by the
men. The application to agriculture of those very animals that woman
had first domesticated led to her replacement by the male in the
control of the fields; the advance from the hoe to the plough put a
premium upon physical strength, and enabled the man to assert his
supremacy. The growth of transmissible property in cattle and in the
products of the soil led to the sexual subordination of woman, for the
male now demanded from her that fidelity which he thought would enable
him to pass on his accumulations to children presumably his own.
Gradually the man had his way: fatherhood became recognized, and
property began to descend through the male; mother-right yielded to
father-right; and the patriarchal family, with the oldest male at
its head, became the economic, legal, political and moral unit of
society. The gods, who had been mostly feminine, became great
bearded patriarchs, with such harems as ambitious men dreamed of in
their solitude.
This passage to the patriarchal- father-ruled- family was fatal to
the position of woman. In all essential aspects she and her children
became the property first of her father or oldest brother, then of her
husband. She was bought in marriage precisely as a slave was bought in
the market. She was bequeathed as property when her husband died;
and in some places (New Guinea, the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands,
Fiji, India, etc.) she was strangled and buried with her dead husband,
or was expected to commit suicide, in order to attend upon him in
the other world. `The father had now the right to treat,
give, sell or lend his wives and daughters very much as he pleased,
subject only to the social condemnation of other fathers exercising
the same rights. While the male reserved the privilege of extending
his sexual favors beyond his home, the woman- under patriarchal
institutions- was vowed to complete chastity before marriage, and
complete fidelity after it. The double standard was born.
The general subjection of woman which had existed in the hunting
stage, and had persisted, in diminished form, through the period of
mother-right, became now more pronounced and merciless than before. In
ancient Russia, on the marriage of a daughter, the father struck her
gently with a whip, and then presented the whip to the
bridegroom, as a sign that her beatings were now to come
from a rejuvenated hand. Even the American Indians, among whom
mother-right survived indefinitely, treated their women harshly,
consigned to them all drudgery, and often called them dogs.
Everywhere the life of a woman was considered cheaper than that of a
man; and when girls were born there was none of the rejoicing that
marked the coming of a male. Mothers sometimes destroyed their female
children to keep them from misery. In Fiji wives might be sold at
pleasure, and the usual price was a musket. `010347 Among some
tribes man and wife did not sleep together, lest the breath of the
woman should enfeeble the man; in Fiji it was not thought proper for a
man to sleep regularly at home; in New Caledonia the wife slept in a
shed, while the man slept in the house. In Fiji dogs were allowed in
some of the temples, but women were excluded from all; such
exclusion of women from religious services survives in Islam to this
day. Doubtless woman enjoyed at all times the mastery that comes of
long-continued speech; the men might be rebuffed, harangued, even- now
and then- beaten. But all in all the man was lord, the woman
was servant. The Kaffir bought women like slaves, as a form of
life-income insurance; when he had a sufficient number of wives he
could rest for the remainder of his days; they would do all the work
for him. Some tribes of ancient India reckoned the women of a family
as part of the property inheritance, along with the domestic
animals; nor did the last commandment of Moses distinguish
very clearly in this matter. Throughout negro Africa women hardly
differed from slaves, except that they were expected to provide sexual
as well as economic satisfaction. Marriage began as a form of the
law of property, as a part of the institution of slavery. "
From the Engels book Origin of the Family, Private Property & the State:
"Thus when monogamous marriage first makes its appearance in history,
it is not as the reconciliation of man and woman, still less as the highest
form of such a reconciliation. Quite the contrary. Monogamous marriage
comes on the scene as the subjugation of the one sex by the other; it
announces a struggle between the sexes unknown throughout the whole
previous prehistoric period."
There is a lot more from this book that is of interest but I've quoted
enough, my question is do people know about all of this? Have these idea's
been discredited? They certainly don't appear to be well known from what
I've seen but I'll readily admit that is probably due to my own ignorance.0
Comments
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JuliusCaesar wrote: »Well known to feminists.
Apropos of nothing, went to see Made In Dagenham today; the attitude of men to women was shown well. These cro-magnons exist still. (And that really insults the cro-magnons) Anyway, in it, the Union Rep quotes Marx to say that a society is judged by the way the women are treated.
Judging by what I've read it seems women likely ruled during cro-magnon
times
That film looks brilliant! I hadn't heard about it so thanks for giving me
a new movie to look forward to! :cool:
The thing about what I've quoted is that it sounds very appealing and
obviously very intruiging. I mean this should be known in society by
everyone and honestly I'd only read about it the first time a year ago
reading Engels! From then to when I picked up Durant's book I haven't
come across such descriptions apart from the very rare time I checked on
the internet to see if Engel's had been debunked.
What evidence is there that this was the case in anient times apart from
evidence in the 1800's and 1900's of some matriarchal tribes? The
descriptions of the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy must be
purely imaginary, they have linked the defeat of women to the rise in
property & while I can see that following from a marxian interpretation of
society & history it's just not testable or inferrable (as far as I can see).
Reading Engel's he based his work off Lewis Morgan's anthropological work
in the mid-1800's in North America and some other sources but I'd
just like to know how iron-clad the evidence is for the claims in these
books. If you have more modern and scientific sources or book
recommendations I'd really appreciate it, I'm happy knowing it's just a
marxist interpretation of history but I'd prefer to see the unbiased
material for this information, it is pretty shocking.0 -
It's been said that feminism is not just about better treatment for women but also men. Something that I can fully agree with. Whatever about the younger posters on the forum, I can tell you my father and grandfathers generation had a very stern life. Giving a young lad a thrashing for accidentally breaking a widow playing football or something was the norm back in the late 60's and early 70's. That generation of men didn't know any better, they learned it from the previous generation. They thought it was the father's right and role and if he didn't do so he was too soft and not a proper father. Then sure was the attitude, " it would toughen him up and make a man out of him " :rolleyes: Cannot say it about them all of course, but unfortunately it could be said of too many of them. And from growing up in that era I can say that feminism took the "wait until your father comes home" ignorance attitude and indeed violence out of the home....... And then on top of it their was the hammerings from the Chrisitan brothers at school. The good old days indeedJuliusCaesar wrote: »Well known to feminists.
Apropos of nothing, went to see Made In Dagenham today; the attitude of men to women was shown well. These cro-magnons exist still. (And that really insults the cro-magnons) Anyway, in it, the Union Rep quotes Marx to say that a society is judged by the way the women are treated.
Feminism has probably been one of the very few ism's that can truly be said to have improved society for greater good without question. Capitalism, Communism, imperialism etc have all to one degree or other brought incredible injustice and bloodshed in the name of 'liberation'.
I would request that the mod keep a good eye on this worthwhile thread. Without doubt we will have the usual clowns coming on from the AH forum with their 'smart' comments. Good thread OP.0 -
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