On another board, someone posted a link to this article. A shocking number of people agreed with what the article said while I thought a lot of it was BS. What do you think, dear members?
Some points the rant makes:
Well, duh, any society in which women do not care properly for their children isn’t going to make it. However, we started out in most hunter-gather societies where women do plenty of work.
And this is the fault of the women? I see this as more of a fault of the men. As I understood it, most women in such situations do not chose not to have fathers, the fathers run off themselves.
Not all people want to have children. What about the couples that remained childless? From this article’s point of view, they were at guilt for taking away good jobs.
This part bothers me the most. Poor men, slaving away for their wives and families while the women just watched tv at home all day. Can we get a :rolleyes:
As I always understood, women in those days did plenty of tasks at home. In the pironeer days, they farmed, cooked, cleaned, did just as much, if not more, work as the men.
::Nearly dies:: Ah, I understand it now, being treated like children without minds of their own is a way that men showed respect for women. Right.
Well… you seem to be in denial of their bad treatment.
Again, going back to my anthropolgy class, women provided most of the food for the family with their gathering.
I can not think of a culture where women did have more power, but if one did/does exist, I think it would work rather nicely.
I know my arguments against this article are rather weak and I only took one course of anthro, so I could be totally wrong but…
Please look over this and tell me what you think, dopers.
I agree with part of the article. For most of history, women couldn’t really avoid having babies. For them, to be in a situation in which one has to take care of the home, children, plus have an outside job, is a huge extra burden.
I imagine that for many of these women, having the luxury of staying home with the kids was liberating.
But not all women.
The point he misses is that life and society today are different what what he describes.
Women can control their fertility. Have no children, or only a few if they want. This makes child rearing less (although still partially) an issue.
There have always been some women more interested in a career than in having a family. Now they have that choice.
And the economy has expanded so that if all women suddenly stayed home, we would have a huge worker shortage. Women who works aren’t taking away the only job available to support another family.
So… this guy has some good points, but he’s mostly full of shit.
He does very well apart from his titular assertion - that women were weak and pathetic. This is manifestly untrue as is made clear by looking at primitive tribes today.
His explanation of primogeniture is also lacking. Why not first-born child? There are a number of reasons, but the relevant one here is that childbirth was one of the most dangerous events for a woman. Just think of the problems that would arise if a reigning queen were to die in childbirth!
Does the “society benefits when women stay home” argument also apply to the way women were denied the right to vote or in general to have a say in public life? The way they were treated as property? That seems to have happened across the board in societies, and I’d say it’s a direct result of the “men are superior physically, and are thus just plain superior” line of thinking that always developed.
Likewise, from the quotes posted, the author appears to be arguing that society today is failing, or is failing its children and falling apart. I’d say that, given the record literacy, education, prosperity, and etc. enjoyed in so much of the West - I’m singling out the West here because that’s where feminism has made the greatest impact - this is not the case. He also seems to be implying that crime is going out of control, which as far as I know is also untrue. Further, in much of America at least, it is NECESSARY for both parents to work - it’s not just an exercise in feminist vanity or neglect of children. That’s the way things have developed, and going backwards won’t solve anything.
I think that the article is simplistic drivel.
For one thing it fails to address the fact that the average woman has always worked in some capacity or another-be it in an agrarian role on a family farm or as a house servant, dairy maid, seamstress etc.
What they haven’t had historically is an equal paycheck or even the right to retain their own wages.
That’s what I thought about it. From what I’ve studied, most women didn’t just remain in the house but were actively involved in the work. Even in cultures in which women were confined to the house mostly (middle-class ancient Japan I believe), they had the duty of running the household, taking care of the servants and had plenty of tasks.
I don’t think that women ever just had the job of raising children, but rather were constantly doing work that was considered less than that of the ones men were doing.
That was the major problem I had with the article. But again, I could have had the wrong impression of how things used to be.
Ava, while your OP subject is worth discussing, I wouldn’t use this “article” as the basis for a serious argument. It’s an anonymous opinion piece posted on an extremist agenda website. Did you read some of the other “articles” listed on the homepage:
“Is the Training of Women Doctors A Waste of Money?”
“Women Responsible for Rape”
“Domestic Violence - It’s Always The Same Women”
“Men Are More Violent Than Women? … So What?”
Or this manifesto:
It gets worse from there (be sure to read THE THIRD MILLENNIUM piece that follows). It would be hilarious if it wasn’t serious. Unfortunately, there are people looking for scapegoats who will buy into this stuff without question.
Sorry if this is hijack-ish, but I thought the source was worth noting. Also, Ava, could you post the link to the thread where this was first cited? (who on the SDMB seriously agreed with this and why???)
According to this article in today’s New York Times, the fact that the Japanese are resistant to allowing women to hold management and other high-power positions in the workplace is a large factor in their current economic slump. So Japan is suffering economically because women are either staying at home or doing nothing more than secretarial work.
I went to the site and read an article or two.
God give me strength- what a load of whiny crap.
Women encourage sexual harrassement by dressing seductively.
Women should bear total responsibilty if they become pregnant.
Women are responsible for the failures of the NHS in England.
It goes on and on.
Is there a place where we can find reasonable arguments for his case?
**
It was on another message board (one for people with a certain hobby) and I believe it is against the rules to post links to discussions in other message boards on the SDMB. But most people on the other message board were very tolerate of it and said that the author “made a lot of good points” and things of that sort.
Thank God you’re not the type saying you won’t be saved unless you believe this or that. Is your soul like tupperware and it has to be saved or it goes bad?! “Only the good die young and the wicked remain behind to repent their sins” I think is the quote. So here is hell if there’s such a thing… all of us are “saved”. We all go to heaven. It’s not the exclusive domain of Christians or followers of Jesus.
I believe women did a great deal of work historically. Homemaking was a big job before the invention of appliances, prepared food, etc. In fact, my impression is that women worked harder than men in some Native American tribes.
However, during the period when I grew up, 1945- 60, women had been substantially pushed out of the workplace, but there was less work at home, due to advances in technology. Wives whose children were grown could play cards, gossip, hang out, go to the beauty parlor, do daytime radio and TV, etc.
Since I’ve retired, my life is pretty much like that. I like it. So, I’d say that married women during that particular, brief period did have it better.
Kept by my father ‘til I was a wife
A slave to my husband the rest of my life.
The good old days are gone and changed because they were not that good. It was a pretty restrictive view that relegated women to the role of wife and mother, nun or whore. Those were the good old days. Anybody really want them back?
Did anybody consider what happens to the economy of the western world if women all go home to become brood mares?
The social history of women and family has been one of continuing and progressive liberation from “Kuchen, Kinderen und Kirk.” While it may offend the more paternal among us, it has been a steady and beneficial progress and it is not about to stop.
I’ve been unemployed for the past two years. I do the house-husband bit while Marcie goes to work every day. I cannot keep up with the housework. As my mother used to say, “A man may work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done.” That’s true for a househusband, too.
I’d suggest that people these days simply don’t realise how hard life was even 100 years ago for both men and women. As december says, simply keeping house and home was a big job - and a lot of men and women were employed as maids or valets.
spavined gelding I think you are being a bit biased. I’d suggest that the general improvement in the wealth of society has made it better for both sexes. Men hardly had it better. It’s easy to look at the upper echelons of society, but they were the minority - and within that minority, talented women could still shine like Sophie Germain, the Bronte sisters… Looking at the majority, you had both men and women working in the mines and fields and mills and factories. Again, compared with 100 years ago, the amount of leisure time we have is astounding. Further, until recently there was no concept of a state pension: your children supported you in your dotage in the rare event that you survived that long. Surviving to 60 was quite an achievement. This, of course, meant that the woman had to be pregnant and childrearing (and don’t forget that infant mortality was much higher) for a significant part of her life; it also meant that men had to provide for their wife and children.
If you understood how much taxes have increased since the 1950’s, you would understand why women work today. Taxes now take up more than food, clothing, and shelter combined for the average family.
In the 1950’s, there was no state income tax, property taxes were not much more than social security which was less than $200 max!
Few families paid much if any federal income tax.
The plain fact is, that most women today are working just to pay taxes. This is what everybody wants(an expensive government that provides a lot of welfare and services) , so there isnt much point in trying to rationalize other reasons for why women work today.
