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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Feminism Parte Une
With all this feminism around at the moment due to this being the hundredth anniversary of Votes for Women, we might explore the AE attitude to the subject generally. Ishmael will put us straight on what is my attitude rather than AE’s attitude.
1. AE-ists presumably support The Advance of Women on the general grounds they have been chronic intellectual under-achievers for almost the entirety of human history.
2. The cause of the under-achievement must be either a) women or b) men.
3. Or (c) if anybody can think of one.
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Grant
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But women haven't been chronic under-achievers. Men have built the entire world in order to gain access to women. Women have always been in charge.
So why did feminism come to the fore?
Prior to two hundred years ago few men had jobs which women actually wanted. Most jobs were rather dangerous. But in the Victorian period loads of easy jobs started appearing - clerks, civil servants, journalists. Not surprisingly, women wanted to expand their horizons.
Notice that even now women don't want to do the really nasty stuff - sewage farms, deep sea fishermen, refuse collectors. But cushy jobs at the BBC - yes please!
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Historical feminism is an historical illusion. It was, in fact, just the latest stage in the expansion of the franchise. Men only received the vote about 50 years before women got it (if memory serves). The point is that power expanded outward from the monarch in stages. Those stages were determined by power. Women are among the weakest of communities and so received the vote later than other groups (children still do not have it).
The reason the vote expanded to the common man and then to the common woman, however, was firearms. The vote followed the availability of the gun.
Modern feminism too is a fiction. It is simply the Marxist Revolution's women's auxiliary.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Women are under-achievers because most people are under-achievers and women are more like most people than most people.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | Feminism Parte Une
With all this feminism around at the moment due to this being the hundredth anniversary of Votes for Women, we might explore the AE attitude to the subject generally. Ishmael will put us straight on what is my attitude rather than AE’s attitude.
1. AE-ists presumably support The Advance of Women on the general grounds they have been chronic intellectual under-achievers for almost the entirety of human history.
2. The cause of the under-achievement must be either a) women or b) men.
3. Or (c) if anybody can think of one. |
I think you are referring to the 1918 Representation of people Act .....by which all women over thirty who met a property qualification, and all men over the age of 21, got the vote.
One of the many problems for women (getting the vote) was up to that point was not all men had the vote.... which seemed a tad unfair (in the popular mind) against Men who had just been subjected to a massively disproportionate act of Direct sexual discrimination ie they were required to fight and die whereas the ladies were not. This seems a bit harsh on the blokes, particularly as the women had proved adept in the use of IED'S as part of their terrorist capmpaign to get the vote for posh women.
https://news.sky.com/story/women-would-have-got-the-vote-earlier-if-not-for-suffragette-terrorists-11227772
Not surprisingly the guys became demoralised and capitulated.....only to suffer a second disproportionate act of Direct sexual discrimnation during WW2, made worse by the fact that if the Camomile Lawn is to be believed (why not?), women took the opportunity to this time go for sexual liberation.....Wiley is starting to see a pattern here.....
| Owen wrote: | Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads. |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Sigh, I knew this would be a mistake
| But women haven't been chronic under-achievers. Men have built the entire world in order to gain access to women. Women have always been in charge. |
I did not say they were underachievers, I said they were intellectual underachievers
| I think you are referring to the 1918 Representation of people Act .....by which all women over thirty who met a property qualification, and all men over the age of 21, got the vote. |
I wasn’t dealing with suffrage. That was the pretext. When people want to avoid subject A they bang on about subject B. If I have the patience I will deal with (all) your misconceptions about suffrage issues.
| So why did feminism come to the fore? Prior to two hundred years ago few men had jobs which women actually wanted. |
Ludicrous. Men didn’t want to do them either.
| Most jobs were rather dangerous. |
No they weren’t.
| But in the Victorian period loads of easy jobs started appearing - clerks, civil servants, journalists. Not surprisingly, women wanted to expand their horizons. |
OK....
| Notice that even now women don't want to do the really nasty stuff - sewage farms, deep sea fishermen, refuse collectors. But cushy jobs at the BBC - yes please! |
Very wise of them.
| Modern feminism too is a fiction. It is simply the Marxist Revolution's women's auxiliary. |
I’ll let this pass. Marx by the way, like most leftist theoreticians, was a brute towards his own women. Just as Lenin took a servant with him into Siberian exile so he could think about freeing the servant class.
| Women are under-achievers because most people are under-achievers and women are more like most people than most people. |
Just a little bit of rigour would be acceptable from time to time. By definition ‘most people’ can’t be under-achievers. That would simply mean the achievement bar is being placed too high (or for some other purpose). You have not said where women are in relation to the bar and in relation to men.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Historical feminism is an historical illusion. It was, in fact, just the latest stage in the expansion of the franchise. Men only received the vote about 50 years before women got it (if memory serves). |
It doesn’t on this occasion. Women have always had the vote in the sense that if they qualified via various mainly property considerations they could vote (but not stand). ‘Men’ as you call them have always been in the same situation. The ‘fifty years’ you are referring to is presumably the 1867 Act that franchised 'most men'. It is not often mentioned but the 1918 Act actually franchised a lot of men as well as women over thirty.
| The point is that power expanded outward from the monarch in stages. Those stages were determined by power. Women are among the weakest of communities and so received the vote later than other groups (children still do not have it). |
Well, yes, this is sort of true though strictly speaking widening of the franchise was almost always because the people in power thought the newly franchised would vote for them rather than because of any intrinsic power shifts. It is notable that 1918, like 1832, did follow from effective protests from the disenfanchised but it also has to be said that women’s war work and the fact they were getting the vote elsewhere (without necessarily a struggle) were factors as well.
| The reason the vote expanded to the common man and then to the common woman, however, was firearms. The vote followed the availability of the gun. |
This is interesting because new but would need a bit of fleshing out on the grounds of apparent ludicrousness.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Feminism Parte Deuxe
I think it is reasonable to assume it was (2) men that were holding women back. Not just intellectually but in general. But intellectually is what interests AE-ists, if for no other reason than it is sufficiently targeted to aid both precision and objectivity (most of us being men).
If we take the whole of history i.e. 3000 BC to 2000 AD it is reasonably apparent that all intellectual output (that we know about) was from men. I think the first recorded women intellectuals were as late as 1200 AD-ish when various women mystics and Christine Pisani (and Heloise?) started putting stuff out. (From our own point of view this coincides with ‘the Normans’.) One doesn’t get the impression that these women intellectuals were met with either opposition (qua women) or even surprise. But still and all, until the Enlightenment, there were remarkably few of them. Certainly there was no breaking wave of the future.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: |
If we take the whole of history i.e. 3000 BC to 2000 AD it is reasonably apparent that all intellectual output (that we know about) was from men. |
Is it ?
It is certainly recorded as being from men, but many of those men have improbable biographies. Either way if these scholars reflect schools, we don't know if a lot of the thinking was done by women or men.
Within Christian tradition knowledge always comes via men.....
| John wrote: | | In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. |
God's word was communicated, made flesh, by Jesus and after his death communicated by the apostles who, as we all know (as opponents of equal opportunity in the church remind us on every occasion they can) were all men.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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No-one can say who was important intellectually without written accounts though archaeological digs find occasional female skeletons buried with pomp and treasure. They are assumed to have been a member of an elite family, a queen or princess perhaps.
Records from the 12th century onwards are generally monastic or royal; monks of course were (supposed to be) celibate so presumably women would only be mentioned en passant, if at all. Christianity seems on the whole rather anti-intellectual, total faith being the top virtue, but may be influenced by Judaism in that Jewish scholars were always men and 'kept' by women since the study of the law/teachings is uppermost in the social hierarchy.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| It is certainly recorded as being from men, but many of those men have improbable biographies. Either way if these scholars reflect schools, we don't know if a lot of the thinking was done by women or men. |
Since we have zillions of years and zillons of cultures and zillions of sources and it’s the same men-only story throughout, this would amount to a conspiracy theory the like of which the world has never seen.
| Within Christian tradition knowledge always comes via men..... God's word was communicated, made flesh, by Jesus and after his death communicated by the apostles who, as we all know (as opponents of equal opportunity in the church remind us on every occasion they can) were all men. |
You’re being a bit selective here. Specifically selectively Pauline. The Gnostics and, by tradition, the early Church were quite welcoming of women in the hierarchy and even intellectually -- in so far as Christianity ever encourages intellectuality..
No-one can say who was important intellectually without written accounts though archaeological digs find occasional female skeletons buried with pomp and treasure. They are assumed to have been a member of an elite family, a queen or princess perhaps.
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Nobody is doubting that powerful women are around from time to time. This is not the same as intellectual women being around from time to time. In fact it is striking that we can have the former without the latter.
| Records from the 12th century onwards are generally monastic or royal; monks of course were (supposed to be) celibate so presumably women would only be mentioned en passant, if at all. |
You can mention someone without having sex with them. Besides there was no shortage of women monks and isn't being banged up for life without having children (and men) to bring up a surefire recipe for scribbling?
| Christianity seems on the whole rather anti-intellectual, total faith being the top virtue, but may be influenced by Judaism in that Jewish scholars were always men and 'kept' by women since the study of the law/teachings is uppermost in the social hierarchy. |
Christianity is certainly anti-intellectual (Judaism isn’t) but that is not the same as being anti-women intellectuals. Judaism though surely points the way: 'they' encourage intellectuality but forbid women to take part. 'They' presumably being men rather than Jews. That would appear to be the case since the women are Jews too.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Still there are allegories of intelligence that are female.
Caissa
Sophia
Nous
Episteme
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Because females embody what men admire and aspire to.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | I think it is reasonable to assume it was (2) men that were holding women back. Not just intellectually but in general. |
I guess we must also be keeping them out of the prisons.
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