THE HATRED OR FEAR OF WOMEN

I think its interesting that after, in my early teenage years,
I nervously approached a beautiful chick to ask her for a date
(in fear of intense embarrassment in the event of rejection),
when I actually DID get rejected (which was most of the time,
not being a good looking guy), I silently felt GOOD about my having manned up
and been brave enuf to control my emotions; no embarrassment.

The happiest day in my life came by my getting rejected by the girl of my dreams.

David

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So, fear of emasculation, although not necessarily literal.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

snood wrote:

Very good stuff there, engineer. I can't disagree with any of it.

You are of course one of the people who were sure that Angry White Men where out to assassinate Obama because of his skill color, so your low opinion of white men is known.

Apparently his skill color did not turn out to be what they thought it was...

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@Setanta,

Quote:

I think it is well enough established now why men might hate women, and i will reiterate that it is a prejudiced bigotry equivalent to racism. Engineer has given us some good reasons why men might fear women (as they would fear members of minorities, too, challengers for their former seemingly unassailably superior positions). Does anyone else have any other ideas on why men might fear women?

I think we have talked about only the tip of the iceberg regarding this subject.

It's important to distinguish individual men who might have deep-seated hatred, or fear of women, stemming from their actual personal negative experiences with women--i.e. a cold, rejecting, or overly controlling mother, or a marriage and/or divorce which involved a wife being extremely emotionally abusive--from other causes of hostility or fear of women..
In the case of the mother, the male might have life-long problems trusting women because the negative influence occurred at such an early stage of life and continued for an extended period when the individual was very vulnerable. So, feelings of fear or anger might be transfered onto all other females when that male is an adult.
In the case of a bad marriage/divorce, the anger and/or fear might be intense for a while, and transfer onto other females, but, like grief, it might abate with time so that, after a period of time, the man no longer hates or fears all other women just because of what he went through with one individual woman.

Engineer did give a good summary of social/economic factors that can lead to hostility or resentment regarding women in our current culture.

But, I think we also have to take into account the fact that hostility and/or fear of women has been true all over the globe, for thousands of years, as evidenced by instances of significant mistreatment of women as a group, or excessive control of women as a group, and this has often been irrespective of racial and religious factors--it's been cross-cultural. That suggests something more deep-seated in the male psyche that contributes to these feelings of hostility and fear toward women. Perhaps some of it is related to general male castration anxiety, and attempts to over-compensate for it, simply because male genitalia are more physically vulnerable than a females, or because the female is viewed as having been already castrated because she lacks a penis, or maybe it is unrelated to castration anxiety at all.

But it really cannot be denied that some of the hostility and fear of women goes beyond boundaries of time, and specific cultures, and has been prevalent in pretty much every part of the globe for thousands of years, and has resulted in discriminatory treatment of women, and abuse of women, and control of women. And this sexism, and bigotry toward women, has become acceptable because it has been woven into the cultural mores of societies globally.

I do think some of it stems from religious influences--certainly Judeo-Christian influences, given the depiction of Eve in the Bible. Women cannot be trusted because of Eve. The image of God is male, not female, making women inferior. And this sort of thinking has been around thousands of years.

But, other religions as well see women as worth less than males, or as needing to be controlled by males, or as having an identity only as it relates to males.

I'm curious about what others think on this issue. Why, seemingly, has there always been a certain amount of fear and hostility toward women? Is any of it rational?

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Well, even thousands of years don't hallow an idea, no matter how widely-spread and pervasive. Marija Gimbutas held that "pre-Kurgan" neolithic cultures were gynocentric, and honored homosexuals as well as heterosexuals.

Quote:

Marija Gimbutas (Lithuanian: Marija Gimbutienė) (Vilnius, January 23, 1921 – Los Angeles, United States February 2, 1994), was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological interpretation. Her conclusions that Neolithic sites in Lithuania and across Europe pointed to long-term stable egalitarian societies with women at the center materially and spiritually earned a mixed reception by other scholars, but became a keystone of the matriarchal studies movement and the Goddess movement.

There has been a good deal of criticism of her conclusions, including from female anthropologists. One objection is that there were male, martial burials in the period before the Kurgan invasion, as well as hill forts and other evidence of warfare. However, i find such arguments less compelling than those who forward them, given that in the Ukraine, there have been found martial burials of women. Among the people that the Greeks called the Scythians, and who were probably the Sarmatians known to the Romans, the most elaborate and richest martial burials were of women. The Sarmatian female warriors were probably the origin of the Amazons of Greek legend. The Greeks traded with the Scythians (Sarmatians), not even Philip of Macedon nor his son Alexander attempted to conquer them. So, to my mind, the existence of hill forts and martial burials is not evidence that the pre-Kurgan neolithic European society was not gynocentric.

Women weilded a considerable power among the Natchez, too. In pre-Christian Keltic culture, women were the political equals of men, and any woman who could show that her personal property was greater than that of her husband would succeed to the control of their joint estate. That was precisely the basis of the quarrel between the legendary Queen Medb and her husband Ailill in the Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cooley's cattle raid, the stealing of Cooley's cattle). From the Wikipedia article:

Quote:

The second recension adds a prologue in which Ailill and Medb compare their respective wealths and find that the only thing that distinguishes them is Ailill's possession of the phenomenally fertile bull Finnbhennach, who had been born into Medb's herd but scorned being owned by a woman so decided to transfer himself to Ailill's. Medb determines to get the equally potent Donn Cuailnge from Cooley to equal her wealth with her husband. She successfully negotiates with the bull's owner, Dáire mac Fiachna, to rent the animal for a year until her messengers, drunk, reveal that they would have taken the bull by force even if they had not been allowed to borrow it. The deal breaks down, and Medb raises an army, including Ulster exiles led by Fergus mac Róich and other allies, and sets out to capture him.

When the Men of Connachta attempt to invade Ulster, they are opposed soley by Cú Chulainn, because the goddess Macha had cursed the Men of Ulster to suffer a wasting sickness in the hour of their greatest need. Cú Chulainn (which means "the Hound of Cullen," his given name was Setanta) was spared the curse because at the time the goddess cursed the Ulstermen, he was off in Scotland--learning warfare and weapons play from two women.

Both the Greeks and the Romans complained that when they engated Kelts in combat, the women would thow themselves on their soldiers as soon as they had been engaged in single combat. Legend has it that the mother of St. Columba saw two women going after one another with scythes during a tribal battle, and pressed her son to secure an agreement among the christian chieftans that women would not be allowed to fight.

I think it is a little too pat to suggest that women have been eternally and universally oppressed, as silly as it would be to allege that they have never been oppressed.

EDIT: I should add that i think the rise of large-scale, organized warfare accounts for the ascendancy of men in so many cultures. In particular, in the West, i also blame the Judeo-Christian tradition.

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@firefly,

firefly wrote:

I'm curious about what others think on this issue.

I think you've pushed the boat out too far.

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claims of fear/hate/oppression of women have been greatly exaggerated, what happened what that there was an agreed division of labor, which broke down when technology made women's work too easy. The women over time got bored and neurotic (idle hands are the devil's workshop). The deal needed to go, but coming off the deal saying that men are bastards as proven by the deal (the agreement part now being denied of course) is nothing but more of the long tradition of women not taking responsibility for their actions, of the knee jerk reaction to blame men for everything that they dont like. Women acting this way is not new, but the men putting up with it, refusing to stand up for ourselves, is not normal...and is a big problem going forwards.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

I think it is a little too pat to suggest that women have been eternally and universally oppressed, as silly as it would be to allege that they have never been oppressed.

I didn't say women have been eternally and universally oppressed, in fact, much of what I said relates mainly to the historical beginnings of Judeo-Christian influence, going back at least 3,000 years, and I feel it is still a predominant force, although not the only one.

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@hawkeye10,

You're so full of **** i can smell it from here . . . and you repeat the same idiocy over and over and over . . . you're like a broken record of a third-rate, out of tune band . . .

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@firefly,

firefly wrote:

Quote:

I think it is a little too pat to suggest that women have been eternally and universally oppressed, as silly as it would be to allege that they have never been oppressed.

I didn't say women have been eternally and universally oppressed, in fact, much of what I said relates mainly to the historical beginnings of Judeo-Christian influence, going back at least 3,000 years, and I feel it is still a predominant force, although not the only one.

In other words you are claiming the oppression of women ONLY back to the beginning of history.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You're so full of **** i can smell it from here . . . and you repeat the same idiocy over and over and over . . . you're like a broken record of a third-rate, out of tune band . . .

Then prove me wrong.... you make it sound so easy and yet it never happens.

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@hawkeye10,

Silly Chicken Little . . . i don't have to disprove your propositions, you have to prove them--something you never do. When i made my last post on the place women have occupied in European history and pre-history, i provided sources without being asked. You just puke up your tired old sing-song, and never make a move to substantiate anything you say. If asked, you come up with bullshit like that hilarious "I am zen" line you used once, or you say that you're not anyone's research assistant.

Well, i'm not your research assistant, so if you want anyone to buy the line of crap you peddle, back it up. Men enjoy labor saving devices, too. It used to take a dozen men or more to sail a ship of 500 tons burthen across the Atlantic, and no guarantee they'd arrive at any given time, or at all. Now, a dozen men can steam across the Atlantic with a predictable arrival time within hours of docking, and that ship will have a burthen of thousands or even tens of thousands of tons. (Since i know you're not well informed, a ton of burthen is 100 cubic feet--it's a measure of volume, not weight. So we're talking huge orders of magnitude in the efficiency of the work accomplished.) Men don't have to drive nails on a construction site, they can use nail guns. They don't have to carve woodwork by hand, they can use power saws, power lathes, power jigsaws. So why don't we just assume that men have gotten bored and neurotic and have been taking it out on women to an increasing degree as tehcnology advances. Your whole silly argument is predicated on an assumption that women are only intended to work in the home, and historically that's never been true. We have thousands of years of western history to tell us that women have always been important providers for their families, and usually earning much less than men for the same work.

I'd say, Mr. Mom, that all we're getting out of you is sour grapes.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Silly Chicken Little . . . i don't have to disprove your propositions, you have to prove them--something you never do

You have three options

1) prove your explanation

2) disprove mine

3) admit that the answer is not yet determined

Quote:

We have thousands of years of western history to tell us that women have always been important providers for their families, and usually earning much less than men for the same work.

For most of these thousands of years families worked together to support the family, the man going outside of the home to earn money to support the family is a fairly recent change. However, when that happened paying men more because they have families to support and women were not responsible for the financial upkeep of the family was a reasonable approach, to which both sexes signed onto. We see the legacy of this approach even today, where in the military those with families are given extra pays that the single soldiers do not get, under the reasoning that they have extra costs. Calling this oppression of women is an example of you seeing what you want to see.

Quote:

Men don't have to drive nails on a construction site, they can use nail guns. They don't have to carve woodwork by hand, they can use power saws, power lathes, power jigsaws. So why don't we just assume that men have gotten bored and neurotic and have been taking it out on women to an increasing degree as tehcnology advances

Because how much physical labor was done on the job does not factor into the boredom factor, men got our work week down to 40 hours on the job and then more hours doing our house chores, but women got their hours of required work per week cut much more. The lack of challange in the work is also a factor, and it was a problem for men as well as factories increasingly made our jobs small and highly repetitive, but this was much more a problem for women when machines took over the cleaning work and most of the cooking work. I think that the men's experience with boredom at the factory was critical to why men were so willing to take seriously the complaint of female boredom though.

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@Setanta,

Fascinating, thanks for the info. I agree with your takes.

Huh, one of my grandmothers was a Cullen, which became a middle name of an uncle and cousin and I rather wish were mine, a little late now. This is history I haven't studied up on.

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@hawkeye10,

You've presented a rather distorted rendition of Judeo-Christian culture, for what ever reason.

The division of labor exists in Christian culture, yes, but the rest of your rendition is quite bent.
Women filled a role within Christian society, if you really want to know what that role actually was, check the last chapter of Proverbs.
What you have completely ignored is the progression of male dominance, which was never the intent of Judeo-Christian culture.
The womens lib movement stood against male dominance, not the role women had filled.
Male dominance was/is an adulteration of Judeo-Christian culture.

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@wayne,

Quote:

Male dominance was/is an adulteration of Judeo-Christian culture.

you must be meaning to talk to someone else, because in my opinion there was no male dominance until technology came along and screwed up the power dynamic. Labor was divided according to the skills of the sexes, it was fair, and both sexes agreed that it was fair. Men controlled one section of life and women controlled another. It was only when technology decreased the work and the skills required of women much more than men that the deal was no longer fair...no longer worked. The claims that women have been oppressed for thousands of years is pure fantasy, driven by blind ideology.

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@hawkeye10,

There never was a "power dynamic", the Judeo-Christian model was never about control. This is an adulteration.
The system was intended to be complimentary.
The male was given the responsibility of leadership, not a position of dominance.
The male position was adulterated, as will happen, to become one of dominance. Technology has nothing to do with that.

In case you haven't noticed, mainstream Christianity has admitted and corrected this.
The modern, mainstream, Christian family operates on a basis of shared responsibility, under male leadership.
Note; Leadership is not dominance, or control.

No male dominance?
Look at the facts.
Men in fact, did dominate the workplace.
Women did receive less pay than thier male counterparts.
Men did refuse to accept the expansion of women's role.

Quote:

Men controlled one section of life

Men dominated the workplace.

You're very use of the words "control" and "power dynamic" demonstrate the view of male/female relations as some sort of struggle for dominance.
I don't see it that way, male/female relations are a cooperative venture.

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@wayne,

I remember all that, including your seeming modulated view, Wayne, from fifty years ago.

Buh! (said to me by an older italian woman to me as we were both walking in a strong wind one day in Parma)

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

Labor was divided according to the skills of the sexes, it was fair, and both sexes agreed that it was fair.

This is pure bullshit, and if you weren't so damned ignorant, you'd know it is bullshit. Among the laboring classes, women "kept house," and they labored in public. Manor court records show that women commonly provided labor service as a serf, which they needed permission to do. That allowed their husbands and sons to work additional land or to seek work in the towns. When a man died, if his son or sons wanted to take over the land, they had to pay the heriot, which meant cash money, which they didn't earn working for the manor farm. Women could, however, and frequently did inherit their husband's strip fields, which they could do without paying the heriot and "entering into the land." They would do this for a quittance from a son or sons, usually in the form of a guaranteed retirement--a seat by the fire, two meals a day, a bed of straw and a blanket. There are literally thousands of manor court records showing women doing their husband's labor service or working the strip fields when their husbands died. They ran the dairies, milking the sheep, goats and cows, and made the butter and cheese. They were most frequently the local brewers, which we know from manor court records. They took work as weavers and fullers, too, in addition to everything else they did. (Do you even know what a fuller is?) You really don't know what the hell you're talking about, which is no surprise. You make up this fantasy in your head, and then want others to disprove it. That's rich.

Try actually informing yourself sometime. Start with Life in a Medieval Village and Life in a Medieval Castle by Frances and Joseph Gies, highly respected academic experts on the subject. That will give you the barest outline of the kind of lives people lead, and the sources of the information the authors used. The Germans and the French in particular have done careful studies of the literally hundreds of thousands of pages of records from the middle ages and the Renaissance which tell us how people lived.

It's incredible that you have the gall to make up such simple-minded stories and expect them to be accepted.

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@Setanta,

None of your post contradicts my assertion "Labor was divided according to the skills of the sexes, it was fair, and both sexes agreed that it was fair."

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THE HATRED OR FEAR OF WOMEN

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