Men worked so its only fair that they had the property which was obtained by their labour.
In what way was it fair for them also to hold the property that was obtained by their wife's labor? What entitled him to collect his wife's paycheck? You seem to be talking about the situation today--after the feminists won their victories in the "first world"--not the situation before they began their work.
Before feminists came along, a married woman had no right to the property she obtained with her own labor.
The suffrage was actually opposed by many women around this turn of the century period, mostly because they feared the possibility of being conscripted by their country to fight in one of the many wars that were taking place in that era, men had the right to vote because they had more expectations and responsibilities handed to them, it took millions of men to die in fighting, to eventually win this right.
So what if "a lot" did; most did not buy into that silly line of reasoning. Today there are women insisting that they ought not to have equal rights to men because god commands it of them. So what? There's crazies among any large group of people. And frankly feminists have established those women the right to make that decision for themselves, rather than imposing it on them by the force of law as was done in the past. If a woman today wants to go live in a subservient relationship with her husband, that is still her choice today; that's what feminism was about, giving her the right to make her own choices.
You are saying that women ought not to have the right to make those choices for themselves; that instead those choices should be made for them by the decision makers in society, which will obviously only be men if we exclude women from participation in power.
As for courts, last i checked women receive lighter sentences from judges due to the chivalry factor, with men being socialised to put women before them, and the majority get the better deal when it comes to divorce settlements and childcare.
Today, in the first world, that is true. It is not true in, say, countries that adhere to strict Sharia law, or the United States in the 19th century. If a woman gets raped and has a child out of wedlock, that is her fault in most of those countries that adhere of Sharia law (which should not be the case according to the written laws, but usually is the case in fact). And moreover her testimony would only be considered half that of a man's.
And I would point out that the assumption that men can better pay child support costs is itself an idea in support of the patriarchy. Often times ideologies of power flagellate their members when they violate it strictures. In a patriarchy, a man who cannot keep his woman from divorcing him would deserve the punishment for being weak. Note; it wasn't until relatively recently that the wife even had the right to divorce her husband except in specific circumstances. I'm talking mid 20th century "recently".
A slave relationship ?
... how else would you describe a relationship where the husband gets to make all of his wife's decisions legally, and where he may collect all of the proceeds of her labor? She the wife has no right to complain about that or seek legal remedy for it. I'm not sure how you could possibly describe that as something other than a slave relationship. It may not have been precisely as harsh as being sent out to the fields and beaten until you pick cotton, but that doesn't make it not slavery.
Men were working all the time often in stressful occupations,
So, when a man has a supervisory role in the sweatshop where his wife works on the floor, and he gets to collect both of their paychecks as his own, that's a "stressful occupation" for him but not his wife? Because that's how it often worked in industrial states in the 19th century. How is it not stressful for his wife too?
hence why women outlived men and were generally a lot healthier than men,
Complete, absolute bullshit unsupported by the data. Your fantasy-past was true only for the relatively wealthy--for wives of men who worked in well paid professions, or who were the wives of successful businessmen or politicians. For the poor, both the husband and wife had to work, as did all of their children when they were old enough to do so. This notion that somehow most families were fine with only one income was pure nonsense only briefly true in the United States between 1946 and roughly the mid 1970s due to the postwar economic situation (the United States being the unquestionably dominant industrial power in the world). For most of human history, the families of everyone but elites have certainly required both parents to work, and usually all children above 8 or ten or so. In the distant past, that was relatively safer and less stressful agricultural work, but after the industrial revolution, that transitioned to dangerous and stressful factory or resource-collection work.
In reality, women in the 19th century had a
lower life expectancy than men.
Marriage was a contract in a sense, that there were agreements and obligations on both sides, both with consequences if they weren't followed through. Marriage was an economic contract, women had a surplus of reproductive abilities but a shortage of labour, mane had a surplus of labour but a shortage of reproductive abilities, the female sells her reproductive abilities for the male labour, hence agreeing to sell ownership to the buyer, property rights. The transfer takes place of the females reproductive abilities in exchange for the male's surplus of labour, which she now owns, so there is truth in what you are saying, the children became the property of the husband because he essentially paid for them, the wives sexuality was no longer hers to give away, hence why women committing adultery was more frowned upon than male adulteres.
First off, that description of how marriage works is only valid in the modern context, and isn't really true even when talking about the 1950s and early 1960s. Since both men and women worked, the notion that the wife had a deficit of labor is absurd.
What you do have a point about is that she wasn't paid enough for her work (in a factory, say); by law and by social custom her wages were probably far below her husband's wages. Which is part of the patriarchy that feminists reject--the fact that even men working in the same positions would earn more money. Because it was assumed that he would be supporting his wife, and it was assumed that the wife's wages would simply go to the husband. Which really is how property relationships in a marriage worked in the 19th century. The wife would work, and the husband would own her paycheck.
I'm not even talking about reproductive freedom here; I'm talking about her actual wages from going to the factory and putting in twelve hours a day. Her husband was entitled to those wages, not her. She had no right at all to them. An unmarried woman would have a right to her wages, but a married woman would not.
The transfer takes place of the females reproductive abilities in exchange for the male's surplus of labour, which she now owns, so there is truth in what you are saying, the children became the property of the husband because he essentially paid for them, the wives sexuality was no longer hers to give away, hence why women committing adultery was more frowned upon than male adulteres.
In what was is it an even remotely equal trade for the wife to have to work twelve hours a day in the factory for substandard wages that she wasn't even allowed to keep for herself
and being forced to give up her reproductive freedom? How is this an equivalent trade? She works just as long as her husband, makes less money for doing it, has no right to her children... for what? For whatever share of the family's collective wages he decides to share with her?
This is another example of family organization so natural it can only be established by law. You might have a point if the husband worked and the wife did not, but that's not the case in the 19th century, where both had to work, usually between 80 and 90 hours a week. Their children also had to work when they were old enough to do something of value to a business owner.
It is only a half truth though, as men were also owned by the women as workers like wise.
Not even remotely true. He could divorce her whenever he wanted, for example. Not true in reverse.
The one thing just as bad as a slutty wife would be a dead beat lay about husband who failed to provide for his family and was short of labour, money is essentially labour, both sides agreed to sell theirs. Men who had property rights over their wife and children were more likely to work full capacity and to accumulate wealth, trends have always shown that soon after childbirth the father scales up his work to provide, if the children are not his, then you can see why this would be a problem.
Women have standards of success even the so called feminists, they wouldn't settle for a man who had little income and career potential, more so than if he does the dishes or not.
It constantly amazes me how little people know about labor history in the 19th century--to be able to post a perspective like this utterly ignores the facts of labor relations in the 19th century. It's a valuable sort of lesson, and something we ought to keep in mind when we are so quick to outsource to the third world. Because it pushes them through precisely the same sort of situation. But again, what is the wife getting out of this? She's still having to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. What's her advantage here? Why should she enter into this "contract"? Her only motivation lies in the social pressures and inadequate wages that leave her no option but to sell herself to a husband.
Women didn't enter professional careers, because child bearing was a full time career then, due to high numbers of infants dying,
Not it wasn't. The full time career of an urban factory worker was her twelve-hour-a-day job on the floor of a factory in one of the industries that would hire women. Her part-time job was child bearing and child rearing. What, you think poor urban factory families let the wife off when she was pregnant? How could they, when that would mean starvation when they lost a third of their income?
to ensure survival of at least a few of the children, women would have more than several children.
Sure, and she would keep working too, because those children had to be fed, and if she didn't work they would all starve. She would keep working and she would have children.
Besides you don't seem to understand that in the 19th century most men struggled to find themselves in professional careers, the majority of the population was working class, only the small middle and upper classes could have that choice, it wasn't the case of the "state" not allowing them to.
I understand very well how labor worked in the 19th century. Most families had no choice but to have all members of the family working when it was at all possible. Including the pregnant wife for as long as she was able (which was much longer than women tend to accept today). Capitalists liked it that way.
Women needed support to raise their kids, as this was a time when there wasn't day care or nannies, and men as expected wanted to have follow the cycle of previous generations and have children.
How this actually worked; younger children would be cared for by older children (perhaps eight or ten) or elderly parents unable to work (if they happened to be available) while the husband and wife and every child over ten were out working. The notion that working class women in the 19th century could stop working to go take care of their children is a ludicrous fantasy. Note; the fact that most of her children would be working in the factories themselves meant the need for daycare and nannies was dramatically reduced.
You seem to be forgetting the role of child labor in all of this. The children weren't at home either--the workplace where they worked was their "daycare". This is one of the major reasons why child labor laws were so contentious. It was really only possible in the context of a minimum living wage.
As long as there was marriage, women were tending to the children and the house, there wasn't luxuries around at that time, to mean that the mother could go out working, it was a full on job.
Which she did in her part time, in addition to her twelve-hour-a-day factory job. Remember, due to child labor, there would only be a short window where someone would need to care for the younger children during the day. Well, that could be done just as easily by one of their middle-aged children as it could by her, and she would earn more than the child.
Note also; birth control became really, really popular during the 19th century. So popular that the patriarchy had to put a stop to that and make it illegal to transport or distribute contraceptives of various sorts. Birth rates fell by ~50% over the course of the 19th century. That too is something that most of the anti-feminist historical revisionists like to ignore.
Women weren't good at lumping bricks and building roads, but were good at providing the workforce to do that, hence why society placed emphasis on child raising than anything else.
An absolute misunderstanding of their intention. People in the 19th century loved children because they were powerless and exploitable and capable of doing work. Families liked to have lots of children for the additional income they provided (through working), businesses liked child laborers because they didn't have to pay them as much as an adult and could push them around much more easily (and had less worry about them doing any of that nasty union business). But in no sense his the wife's role as child bearer keep her out of the factories. Working-class women in the 19th century worked while pregnant. So have most women throughout history, for that matter. It wasn't until relatively recently that the idea that she ought to stop work in favor of child care even became semi-reality. For most of human history, there is no chance at all that 50% of the workforce could bow out and focus on homemaking. Even at the heyday of that sort of thinking--the 1950s, not the 1850s--it wasn't really true for anyone but the middle and upper classes... like it has always been.
Oh, to be sure,
elites could work like you're describing, and some professional classes, but that wasn't even close to reality for most people.
As for the outcry of child labour and women working, it was just that, there wasn't an outcry for men breaking their backs in coal mines or what ever hellish industries there were out there. Men are socialised still to this day to not complain as its seen as a sign of weakness, and put women first, this probably stems from biological instincts, in which protecting women was essential for the survival of the human race, as they held the reproductive capabilities.
Again, this is to be expected in a patriarchy. It's not really any sort of biological instinct, it's just sociological custom. Questioning why a patriarchy might, in some senses, make things harder for men is a bit like asking why a southern plantation owner int he antebellum period would be expected to spend lavishly on his guests. To do otherwise goes against the foundational ideology of that power structure. In a patriarchy, a man who can't keep his wife under control
deserves to be unjustly punished through alimony payments. A man must work more difficult jobs, in order to justify his higher social status. Etc, etc. Ideologies of power have requirements.
The reason these ideologies are unjust is because they force those relationships onto people who might not otherwise want them or believe in them. It strips away choice; while it may feature some concessions by the ruling elites, they are still the ruling elites under the system. It is still less harsh for them than it is for those under them, and by god they will make sure that ideology will be enforced... because it is the basis of their power. It's why elites are typically reactionary traditionalists--they don't want people to question the foundations of their power.
And yes, feminism does play into this much broader mileau. It is an important and unavoidable question when talking about labor and power relationships. "Why shouldn't women get to choose for themselves whether they want to be meek docile homemakers or not?" In what way should anyone but that individual woman get to make that determination?
As for the choice of industries, again most men didn't have much of a choice of what industry they were to go into, it was usually a trade or industry which their fathers did before them, or which ever one their community was based around.
You're referring again to skilled labor. If we're talking about the 19th century, what most characterized the industrial revolution was the movement to unskilled labor, meaning that a person would not be bound to his father's trade. There are really only two broad categories of workers who participated int he rural-to-urban migrations during the industrial revolution; the first group are those who were forced off their rural property either by social custom (southern racism moving African Americans north, for example) or by direct legal assault by capitalists (intentionally driving up the price on land through large block purchases, lax law, and control of tenant rents), the second group are those who wanted a different life from their parents and were attracted by the wages offered by factory labor.
But even in the days before that, there were often other options for people who genuinely did not want to pursue their father's trade, like apprenticeships, movement to the frontier (or colonies), etc. Or participation in revolutionary movements.
Feminism was a movement which spurred from bored middle class women in the 19th century who wanted to do the same jobs as their fathers, it was only a recent concept, which puts into question, how oppressed women have been, when taking in mind that for thousands of years people together have been crushed by countless dictators and tyrants, i personally like to subscribe to the belief that human beings have been oppressed since the beginning of time, and not some fantasy gender war, that people with penises have always had it easy in life at the expense of the so oppressed women.
Having it easier does not mean having it easy. No one but elites have been the genuine beneficiaries of social policy; but some have suffered less than others. White men in the first world have suffered far less than most others, even though the non-elites suffered while the elites benefited.
I don't believe that society viewed women as being lesser people, as much as feminists like to paint a picture of women being feeble human beings that are always the victims. Most sexism stems from men playing the role of the biological protecter, which i would say is "benevolent" sexism in the truest sense, although the results were bad.
Your assertion is laughable in the face of 19th century literature on the subject. Seriously, go read some of that crap. It really is atrociously sexist; both benevolently and malevolently. Feminists don't need to manufacture evidence, they just need to reprint what people in the 19th century actually were writing on the subject. It's not like humans int he 19th century were magically less perceptive or able to engage in self-analysis. They talked about their own social questions, and after women started agitating for rights, they talked a lot about the role of women in society. And their analysis had almost nothing to do with "contracts", and almost everything to do with what they perceived as innate infirmities in women.
Yes it was common for women to die in childbirth, until the evil oppressors developed medical technology with the aim of making childbirth more safer, but all in all men died more frequently than women, because their occupations were more dangerous, stressful and in general were never going to lead to a long healthy life. Women lead and still to lead longer lives than men.
Portraying all men as evil oppressors is as stupid as portraying every North Korean as an evil oppressor. People buy into systems of exploitation and unfair power relations all the time. That doesn't make them evil. Certainly those who craft and self-consciously maintain those systems of power are evil, but that doesn't include most of the participants. While some philosophers like to say that the cogs in an evil machine are themselves evil, I would say otherwise. Self-consciousness is required for evil, and most participants in relationships of power are not self-conscious of the relationship or of the problems in the ideological underpinnings of that relationship. They see it as the natural order, even though it is obviously artificial and exploitative to an outside observer or a sufficiently self-critical interior observer. I disagree with Arendt about this, for example.
Yes but it was men in government that made changes which ensured more women's rights, and technology to develop contraceptive abilities, if the oppressors wish to keep control then why did they produce and publicly sell the pill ?
Sure, yeah, lots of men are feminists. There are also women who are not feminists. So what? That's got nothing to do with the feminist argument, and in no way suggests that the feminist perspective is wrong. In what way is a man arguing that women ought to be entitled to equal rights a suggestion that women ought not to be entitled to equal rights? You're holding out examples of men who have helped women as some sort of example that women are wrong to suggest they ought to be treated equally. It's not a valid argument--your counter-point literally has nothing to do with the original criticism. Feminism isn't about women vs. men, it's about women being entitled to equality. The fact that lots of men agree with that does not in any way diminish the argument--quite the opposite, actually.
Everyone ought to be entitled to equal access to power; any socialist can see that, including anarchists. Including socialists who are also men.
No i am not glamourising the past at all,
Sure you are; among other things you seem to think the working poor in the 19th century had the luxury of letting the wife off work to take care of the children. They usually couldn't afford that.
the image of fathers being abusive drunken louts has came about from decades of propaganda around that period, not entirely by feminists but by christian pressure groups at that time, who were against the pubs in working class britain, because they believed it corrupted society. These christian pressure groups used to produce a lot of propaganda and literature to pressurise the government in making laws and penalties, which did take place. Popular culture especially since the 60's has always created an inaccurate image of fatherhood and men probably in the pursuit of appeasing feminists. I would recommend watching this documentary if you wish to talk anymore about fathers and husbands which provides a refreshing different opinion on the matter, and how fatherhood was tarnish over the years because of the interests of different groups.
There are good and bad people in any group; my point was that women lacked recourse in the 19th century. When their husband was a drunken abusive lout (like there are husbands who are drunken abusive louts today), she had no recourse for it other than to hope society would ostracize him sufficiently for it to convince him to stop (which is a hope about as valid then as it is today). I mean, holding up some heroic paternal image is itself white-washing the past. I don't even need to try to claim that spousal abuse was more common in the 19th century than it is today. Let's say it's exactly the same as it is today--how does that make it okay to deprive a woman of legal recourse for it? Let's say it's only half a percent of families with abuse--an admirable goal to be sure--how would that make it okay to deprive the wife of legal remedy for the abuse?
Let's generalize this; no matter how good the wife's condition might be,
what gives anyone else the right to take away her freedom to choose her own path in life? Because that's pretty much what you're having to defend when you excuse the abuses against women's rights that surely did exist in the 19th century, and continue to exist today in large parts of the world. In what way does good treatment justify a curtailment of freedom? For that matter, let's take this a bit further. Let's accept your premise that women were treated far better than men, held to up on a lofty and comfortable pedestal.
Even if we assume this, what would give society the right to tell her that she has no choice but to sit on that pedestal? People have a right to choose different priorities; to value an exchange differently. You are essentially excusing abuses by saying that you think the exchange is worthwhile, but that really isn't your choice to make for anyone but yourself. And
that is what feminism is about--giving women the right to make those choices for themselves.
That is a very, very anarchist idea. Incidentally, anarchists are also opposed to matriarchies.
This isn't a social construct, men have displayed and acted on power differently to how women do, if men come across as weak or passive it is seen as a weakness, even feminists don't respect men who are passive and fail to display masculine traits.
There's plenty of examples of inversions of that in matrilineal societies. There's no natural biological basis for claims that women and men utilize power differently; that is a product of culture. In patriarchies, men are expected to be the strong and aggressive deal-makers. In matriarchies, it's the women who are supposed to have that role. You are confusing European norms of social organization for a universal human condition.
And yes, patriarchies are more common than matriarchies--which really shouldn't be a surprise in a society built on force and coercion. Men are built better to coerce.
The alpha males who were able to lead other men and who were the strongest in will, were and still are sought after, again this goes back to basic evolutionary biology. Women on the other hand always held power over men in a different fashion, you can see this when countries go to war, propaganda recruitment posters always have displayed this, i.e.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picture ... ml?image=3
Again, confusion of western cultural norms for biology. Culture is very, very powerful.
Essentially, to be a man and have women accept you and look at you in a good light, you need to go to war !
Sure, in cultures derived from the Indo-European culture.
Again feminists tend to avoid responsibility and play the plausible deniability card, men and women both have their expectations in society and this has always been the case, no one is dictating to anyone,
Okay, first off, let's put this in context. You're talking strictly about western culture, because women certainly are dictated to in other parts of the world--as they were
here until feminists won their victories over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. 21st century feminism will be about the rest of the world. How is it not "being dictated to" for the law to explicitly grant rights to men that it does not grant to women? How is it not dictation when the law explicitly lays out how a woman may inherit property, engage in work, what rights she has to pursue legal remedies, etc.That sounds like dictation to me, and it was certainly the case in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Women have this less so now, as womanhood is something which is celebrated and prioritised in education, were as masculinity and manhood is looked down upon and now restricted, seen as something bad and regressive, which is ironic, as masculine traits are what lead to pretty much most developments in this world period, planes, skyscrapers, space travel, medical advances, political and economic theories, and unfortunately a lot of wars and destruction also.
Women face fewer of these barriers today, in the west,
because feminists fought for those rights for two hundred years and won them. You're saying that feminists were fighting a futile battle because society doesn't mistreat women nearly as much as it did before feminists fought for rights for women. You're saying that the success of feminism has diminished its importance, which is crazy. Because women in the west have nominally equal treatment we ought to stop concerning ourselves with equal treatment for women in the west? What kind of sense does that make?
Established by law ?
Yes. The relationships of power within a family in the industrial states of the 19th century were established by law.
what mothers having children, and the fathers providing for them ?
Mothers working, fathers collecting the benefits. By law, in most industrial states in the 19th century, a husband was entitled to all of the wages and property of his wife as his own personal property. That's straight out of historical English Common Law. They didn't own this property jointly; it was the husbands and his alone. She was entitled to none of it. You know how people in the west snicker about regressive Sharia-practicing countries where women have to ask their husbands (or fathers, or eldest brother, if they're unmarried and their father is dead) for the right to go to work? Well, that was how it worked in the west in the 19th century. That's a family relationship established only by the force of law.
idealistic dreams of a post modern utopia weren't at the forefront of most people's thinking back then, life was a drag and unfair all the way round,
Idealistic dreams were pretty common back then; why do you think there were so many socialists, communists, anarchists, and other revolutionaries? Revolutionary fervor does not spontaneously present itself. It builds over years, and often out of abysmal conditions. People don't dream about post-modern utopias when life is good, they dream about it when life is horrible. The drive for revolution is low when people are treated well, because there is less need for immediate change--and less incentive for violent retribution against the old elites.
if anything marriage was the fairest institution back then compared to most other institutions.
So, it was "fair" to give a husband all of the power and the wife none of it? You're right, that may have been the fairest of the institutions, but that's setting yourself a pretty low bar there.
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