# Why did men ever give up the power? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 29, 2005, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584 "2005-12-29T16:14:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/41 "2005-12-30T07:09:11Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > Okay. Would you rather have power or quality of life? I’d like to live in someplace like America or Europe or Australia or New Zealand, where I could be anything I wanted without too much difficulty. But historically, well it all sucked. Not sure where or when I’d like to live. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/42 "2005-12-30T12:03:00Z")
It is Man’s greatest achievement that he has ruled the world for thousands of years; it is Woman’s greatest achievement that Man thinks so. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/43 "2005-12-30T12:51:17Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > As all thinking persons know Excellent, a debate that **begins** with an appeal to popularity **and** authority. Bodes well… ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/44 "2005-12-30T13:10:13Z")
> [@SaintCad](#): > > Very true. The women’s movement started in the Victorian Age when women were seen as having the moral authority to take on issues such as temperance and preaching the Gospel. It started much earlier than that. Again, see Abagail Adams and Mary Wollstonecraft. Hell, I could make a good argument that Christianity spread in the Roman Empire because it offered a better deal for women than the previous Pagan mode. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw an explosive expansion of women’s rights in the western world, but then again, they also saw an expansion of human rights. Both the quality and relative social power of people in general and women in paticular have waxed and waned at various points in history. It’s not helpful to say that something as general as the struggle for women’s rights started at any one point. ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/45 "2005-12-30T13:17:55Z")
> [@Good Egg](#): > > What would happen if ALL the women there revolted? They couldn’t all be killed, the entire society would dissapear with no more children. Could it ever happen that they would succeed in getting rights? If the women all revolted, or even a significant minority, they’d make huge positive change. The thing is, I doubt the thought to do so would occur to them in such numbers. I’m sure Saudi women believe the arguments for keeping them oppressed almost as much as the men do. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/46 "2005-12-30T14:08:39Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > As all thinking persons know, the past was a dark time for women in our civilization. Do you mean, like dude, the USA? > [@gardener](#): > > They were routinely beaten, raped, sold into slavery, and always and everywhere kept in total bondage to men so that men could act out their cruel and sadistic fantasies on them. Women couldn’t own property, had no lives of their own, and were kept under lock and key by their father until it was determined for them whom they would marry, at which time they would become the property of their husbands, who would be almost guaranteed to beat them and rape them regularly, and their entire lives from that point forward would consist of nothing but the domestic slavery of cooking, cleaning, and bearing children, until they died. Perhaps you have heard of another continent called Europe? ‘Queen Boudicca raised the Iceni and the neighbouring Trinivantes tribe in revolt against Roman rule. … Boudicca’s treatment of her enemies was fierce and she must have given the Romans a terrific scare. One legion was so terrified that they refused to move against her.’ > **[Boudicca (Boadicea) and Roman Britain - Boadicea's Revolt](https://www.britainexpress.com/History/Boudiccas_Revolt.htm)** > > Boudicca (Boadicea) has been called the first British heroine. Relive her revolt against the Roman conquerors of Britain. ‘Elizabeth was a master of political science. She inherited her father’s supremacist view of the monarchy, but showed great wisdom by refusing to directly antagonize Parliament. She acquired undying devotion from her advisement council, who were constantly perplexed by her habit of waiting to the last minute to make decisions. She used the varying factions (instead of being used by them, as were her siblings), playing one off another until the exhausted combatants came to her for resolution of their grievances. Few English monarchs enjoyed such political power, while still maintaining the devotion of the whole of English society.’ [http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon45.html](http://www.britannia.com/history/monarchs/mon45.html) Queen Victoria is associated with Britain’s great age of industrial expansion, economic progress and, especially, empire. At her death, it was said, Britain had a worldwide empire on which the sun never set.’ [http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page118.asp](http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/Page118.asp) > [@gardener](#): > > …their entire lives from that point forward would consist of nothing but the domestic slavery of cooking, cleaning, and bearing children, until they died. I searched for Queen Victoria’s cookbook, but could only find this: 'In foreign policy, the Queen’s influence during the middle years of her reign was generally used to support peace and reconciliation. In 1864, Victoria pressed her ministers not to intervene in the Prussia-Austria-Denmark war, and her letter to the German Emperor (whose son had married her daughter) in 1875 helped to avert a second Franco-German war. On the Eastern Question in the 1870s - the issue of Britain’s policy towards the declining Turkish Empire in Europe - Victoria (unlike Gladstone) believed that Britain, while pressing for necessary reforms, ought to uphold Turkish hegemony as a bulwark of stability against Russia, and maintain bi-partisanship at a time when Britain could be involved in war.’ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/47 "2005-12-30T14:59:14Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > . The question for debate, then, is why did men ever allow change? If our civilization was a patriarchy, and men had absolute power, surely such things as the feminist revolution couldn’t have happened without their approval. So, does it follow that the cabal of men who controlled our society didn’t really like things the way they were after all? Or did men decide to be nice and stop enslaving women even though they did like things they old way? I think the answer can be found if we compare the western Christian civilization history to that of Islamic countries. After all, the improvement in the role of women in our western society has roots that go way back and have increased exponentially before levelling off to near full equality as the situation for them presents itself today. The primary reason as I see it is the rule of one woman per man. Even though the majority of men in Islam have only one wife, the upper echelon who have the power to institute change are free to accumulate up to four wives. As anyone knows today, if your wife isn’t happy you won’t be happy either. The Islamic polygamists could avoid the consequences by focusing on their more amenable wives and avoiding compromise. The Christian monagamist’s only recourse was divorce, which wasn’t so easy in the old days as his wife usually came from a powerful family as well. The atmosphere therefore in a powerful wealthy Christian home allowed for a greater role for women at home and socially. Children achieved a greater respect for their mothers and as a consequence for the mothers of their children. Women gradually were allowed to organize social groups and the next step, political action, the right to vote, began the process which accelerated womens rights in the 20th century. We see small changes in Islam today with respect to the role of women, but it appears precarious and the result of modern western influence. ---
**Author:** ![gardener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@gardener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gardener)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/48 "2005-12-30T15:11:26Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I don’t think patriarchy existed because of any quality-of-life benefit accruing to individual males. Power is not a zero-sum game, and oppressing women made it possible for powerful men to use access to women (which they could control as a consequence of women’s oppression) to oppress less-powerful men — most classically, the older men doing this to the younger men, i.e., “work your butt off for us and we’ll let you have a wife, otherwise you ain’t getting laid” > > Nearly every radical feminist who ever wrote a theory piece has said that males are less well off under patriarchy than they would be in its absence, especially in broad quality-of-life terms rather than narrowly defined who-has-power terms. Interesting. So it wouldn’t be true to say that “men” defined as the entire group had power over women, but rather, that some men had power over other men _and_ over women? ---
**Author:** ![gardener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@gardener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gardener)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/49 "2005-12-30T15:29:13Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > Oh yeah? So when the young woman I met on a bus in India who asked me if I had a live-in boyfriend, and then when I balked (cohabitation is completely unacceptable there) confided to me that she watched Sex and the City on TV, and that if she lived in the US she would live like that, and that she would be in the US if her parents hadn’t decided to turn down her chemistry grad school scholarship and marry her to a religious guy in a small town, and now while I was out travelling the world and having a good old time she was, at my age, raising three kids and cooking for her whole family (she shared her potatoes with me, and confessed she hates cooking and rarely bothers to put spices or anything in her family’s meals) she was really wielding more power then she’d have me believe? For reference, this was her first time leaving the house alone since her marriage. Her moment of freedom was on a two hour busride between her husband at the bus station and her mother-in-law at the other. Oh yeah? You won’t be lauding Sex And the City so much when conservative Muslims have taken over the entire world because they’re the only ones who still settle down and have kids. Enjoy your Sex And the City lifestyle while it lasts; your granddaughters won’t be able to (if there are any.) ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/50 "2005-12-30T15:34:46Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > Oh yeah? You won’t be lauding Sex And the City so much when conservative Muslims have taken over the entire world because they’re the only ones who still settle down and have kids. Enjoy your Sex And the City lifestyle while it lasts; your granddaughters won’t be able to (if there are any.) So are we now assuming conservative Muslims will conquer the world? I’ll bet not, and give you two to one odds if you like. That strikes me as being roughly as likely as the notion that there was once a time when virtually every woman in the world was regularly raped and beaten. I think the fantasy scenario of a world Muslim conquest is not really a basis for a serious discussion. ---
**Author:** ![kelvinator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9fc348/32.png) [@kelvinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelvinator)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/51 "2005-12-30T16:28:12Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > As all thinking persons know, the past was a dark time for women in our civilization. They were routinely beaten, raped, sold into slavery, and always and everywhere kept in total bondage to men so that men could act out their cruel and sadistic fantasies on them… \\*\* (All one has to do is read the many threads on this very board to learn that this was the case.) ← bolding mine.\*\* Attention people! Many of you have taken this OP as being **gardeners** true belief and knowledge but you can see that his “over the top” statements were really sarcasm pointed at the overwhelmingly liberal, feminist postings on these boards. :smack: His posting used the same kind of messages that the extremist groups have made for years. He was trying to refute their statement by saying that if men were truly as bad historically as the extremists have always claimed, then there should have been no way that women could have achieved the equality they have now. It looks to me like you have all taken him at his word and have been majorly whooshed. :rolleyes: Jonathan Swift once wrote that the Irish could solve some of their problems by eating their children. This was a social commentary against English oppression in Ireland. Or do you think he was looking for a few good recipes? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/52 "2005-12-30T16:33:42Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > Originally Posted by **AHunter3** > > > [@](#): > > > > I don’t think patriarchy existed because of any quality-of-life benefit accruing to individual males. Power is not a zero-sum game, and oppressing women made it possible for powerful men to use access to women (which they could control as a consequence of women’s oppression) to oppress less-powerful men — most classically, the older men doing this to the younger men, i.e., “work your butt off for us and we’ll let you have a wife, otherwise you ain’t getting laid” > > > > Nearly every radical feminist who ever wrote a theory piece has said that males are less well off under patriarchy than they would be in its absence, especially in broad quality-of-life terms rather than narrowly defined who-has-power terms. > > Interesting. So it wouldn’t be true to say that “men” defined as the entire group had power over women, but rather, that some men had power over other men and over women? Do you play cards? It’s like bridge or whist —your 7 may be at risk of being taken by my 10 even if they are both of the trump suit, but if your card is not a trump and mine is, your card is flat-out getting taken. It would _not_ be a very good description to say “some trump cards beat other trump cards and also cards of other suits”, even though it’s not precisely _incorrect_. It makes a better description to say “trump cards beat non-trump cards, and among trumps higher trumps beat lower trumps”. Under patriarchy, male is trump. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/53 "2005-12-30T17:20:00Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > Oh yeah? You won’t be lauding Sex And the City so much when conservative Muslims have taken over the entire world because they’re the only ones who still settle down and have kids. Enjoy your Sex And the City lifestyle while it lasts; your granddaughters won’t be able to (if there are any.) Whoah! Now your starting to sound like my mom! ---
**Author:** ![gardener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f19dbf/32.png) [@gardener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gardener)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/54 "2005-12-30T18:12:57Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Do you play cards? It’s like bridge or whist —your 7 may be at risk of being taken by my 10 even if they are both of the trump suit, but if your card is not a trump and mine is, your card is flat-out getting taken. It would _not_ be a very good description to say “some trump cards beat other trump cards and also cards of other suits”, even though it’s not precisely _incorrect_. It makes a better description to say “trump cards beat non-trump cards, and among trumps higher trumps beat lower trumps”. > > Under patriarchy, male is trump. Hmm. So under patriarchy, is being a male serf preferable to being a princess? > [@RickJay](#): > > So are we now assuming conservative Muslims will conquer the world? I’ll bet not, and give you two to one odds if you like. That strikes me as being roughly as likely as the notion that there was once a time when virtually every woman in the world was regularly raped and beaten. > > I think the fantasy scenario of a world Muslim conquest is not really a basis for a serious discussion. Not so much “conquer” as passively wind up dominating due to the fact that they are the only ones having kids. > [@even sven](#): > > Whoah! Now your starting to sound like my mom! Ah, your mom must be a wise woman. I do wonder, though, where she got her wisdom, growing up as she must have in a world in which she was repeatedly enslaved, tortured, and murdered every day of her life in order to fulfil sadistic male fantasies. ---
**Author:** ![Birdmonster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/71e660/32.png) [@Birdmonster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Birdmonster)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/55 "2005-12-30T18:18:05Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > Ah, your mom must be a wise woman. I do wonder, though, where she got her wisdom, growing up as she must have in a world in which she was repeatedly enslaved, tortured, and murdered every day of her life in order to fulfil sadistic male fantasies. I will now cease paying attention to your posts. Adios. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/56 "2005-12-30T19:36:34Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > Hmm. So under patriarchy, is being a male serf preferable to being a princess? Yes. I think you are reading too many John Carter of Mars books, or visualizing some kind of Disney princess — perhaps subservient to the King and Queen and to her male siblings, and perhaps at high risk of being made subservient to her husband once married, but nevertheless in a position of authority over the lesser nobility, the small shopkeepers, the serfs, and the chattel slaves of the society? Something like that? I don’t think it was like that. Had you been a princess through most of recorded patriarchal history, I think you would not have issued any instructions to any of the above, even the slaves, not even those who were most directly assigned to attend to your personal comfort and needs. Yeah, they might bring a bunch of grapes or rub your feet at your bidding, but for quite a wide range of possible behaviors they would not only not do your bidding but would actively prevent you from doing things you were not to do. While most of the parameters that circumscribed your Royal Behavior were not originating with your attending slaves (although in the specific details, some of them might have), the slaves would be telling _you_ what to do, and making sure you did it. I will nevertheless grant that in the complexities of society exceptions have existed. Elizabeth I of England would have made a far better example for the point you were making than a hypothetical / typical princess, and I’ll readily grant that she didn’t have to take shit from serf, slave, or noble, and Og help the person who got crossways with her. But exceptions aside, yeah, patriarchy tended to cage its upper-class females more tightly than its kitchen wenches, and they had less freedom than almost anyone else. Even less than they themselves had enjoyed as young children in some cases. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/57 "2005-12-30T20:50:14Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Had you been a princess through most of recorded patriarchal history, I think you would not have issued any instructions to any of the above, even the slaves, not even those who were most directly assigned to attend to your personal comfort and needs. WRT Europe, I disagree: the wife was in **command** when the husband was away. She ran the household even when the man was there. In Celtic Gaul and Germanic barbarian society, women had full rights, especially as they typically outlived (20s vs 40s) the men (source: a Katherine Kerr article about women in antiquity in Dragon magazine). Queen Hapsetshut ruled Egypt, as did Cleopatra. Mathilda of Bordeaux was Queen of England and another Queen Mathilda was mother of King Stephen and very much the power behid the throne. And then we could look at the Roman empresses: Livia, anyone? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2005, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/58 "2005-12-30T22:06:15Z")
> [@gardener](#): > > Not so much “conquer” as passively wind up dominating due to the fact that they are the only ones having kids. I guess I would see your point if Muslims were in fact the only ones having kids. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2005, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/59 "2005-12-31T03:27:36Z")
> [@kelvinator](#): > > Attention people! Many of you have taken this OP as being **gardeners** true belief and knowledge but you can see that his “over the top” statements were really sarcasm pointed at the overwhelmingly liberal, feminist postings on these boards. :smack: His posting used the same kind of messages that the extremist groups have made for years. He was trying to refute their statement by saying that if men were truly as bad historically as the extremists have always claimed, then there should have been no way that women could have achieved the equality they have now. It looks to me like you have all taken him at his word and have been majorly whooshed. :rolleyes: > Jonathan Swift once wrote that the Irish could solve some of their problems by eating their children. This was a social commentary against English oppression in Ireland. Or do you think he was looking for a few good recipes? First, I did not thing it was permitted to post opinions one did not truly hold on this board. Under THOSE circumstances, it’s reasonable to take people at their word when they post, barring any indications within the posts themselves that irony or exagerration is being used for effect. There was certainly nothing like that in **gardener’s** post. Second, there is considerable evidence that women have historically been treated as slaves, property, etc., in many cultures. Frex, many cultures practiced slavery for both men and women. In ohter cultures, women were traded like livestock, even though they weren’t officially slaves. And in a surprisingly number of cultures, there are strong indications that brides were once obtained via capture – the current custom of carrying the bride over the threshold is said to be a throwback to those days. So there’s an interesting historical argument in there somewhere, with plenty of opportunity to bring out new information, but it’s not likely to thrive here. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2005, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584/60 "2005-12-31T03:29:39Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > WRT Europe, I disagree: the wife was in **command** when the husband was away. She ran the household even when the man was there. In Celtic Gaul and Germanic barbarian society, women had full rights, especially as they typically outlived (20s vs 40s) the men (source: a Katherine Kerr article about women in antiquity in Dragon magazine). Queen Hapsetshut ruled Egypt, as did Cleopatra. Mathilda of Bordeaux was Queen of England and another Queen Mathilda was mother of King Stephen and very much the power behid the throne. And then we could look at the Roman empresses: Livia, anyone? I don’t know that you can reasonably extrapolate the lives of ordinary women from the fact that in some cultures, noble women ruled. Rome and Egypt practiced slavery, and I be the lives of female slaves was NOTHING like the lives of Cleopatra and Livia. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-men-ever-give-up-the-power/337584.md?page=4)