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What actual injustice?
It frustrates me to no end that the Motte is more than happy to debate HBD and other taboo topics, and criticise mainstream liberal narrative generally, but still generally believes in the feminist myth that is the historical oppression of women.
And it is a myth. The idea of an oppressive 'patriarchy' in history is a produce of feminist historical revision, aided by our modern liberal democratic sensibilities making us believe anything not liberal or democratic as morally inferior.
This is something I've previously argued about both here and on the old subreddit and elsewhere on cyberspace many times in the past (please, read those previous comments if you haven't already). But the conclusion I'm very slowly and reluctantly reaching is that it doesn't matter how much I or anyone else try to argue against it and prove its falsehood.
It doesn't matter how many feminists myths, like the idea that husbands could beat their wives with impunity, are debunked. It doesn't matter how many prominent, power female historical figures are pointed out that shouldn't really exist in a supposed patriarchy. It doesn't matter how much subtlety you try and introduce into the debate around female suffrage including the fact that men were more in favour of women's suffrage than men were. It doesn't matter how historically rights and responsibilities have gone hand-in-hand which each sex preferred a different balance. It doesn't matter trying to explain how men and women having distinct sex roles does not necessarily mean one was inferior. It doesn't matter if you point out all the ways that women actually did have unique privileges that men did not have. It doesn't matter trying to explain that women can, do and did exhibit huge amounts of agency, influence and power in history and in our societies, if in ways often distinct from men. It doesn't matter pointing out that any onerous ritual that women experienced almost always had a male equivalent, such as FGM and MGM. It doesn't matter the ways in which men objectively and materially had it worse than women both historically and in the present, like life expectancy, participation in dangerous work and so on. It doesn't matter that the most important relationships between the sexes (family) is characterised by love, affection and cooperation, not oppression. It doesn't matter how blatantly obvious how absolute rubbish feminist theory to anyone with a brain who reads it. It doesn't matter how many holes you poke in the idea of the feminist idea of a 'patriarchy' (and you can poke so many holes), there is always the 'patriarchy of the gaps' and the historical oppression of women lurking somewhere, somehow as a historical 'fact'.
The conclusion I've come to as to why it doesn't matter is because I think deep down on some innate, primal level, we want to believe in the idea that women are oppressed, historically or otherwise, is true. Men want to believe it because we want to play white-knight-in-shining-armour, our instinctual desire to be a protector and provider for women. Men want injustice against women to be true so we can swoop in and save women from that injustice and be a hero and loved by those women for it. Women want to believe it because it justifies their own special status. It justifies the special treatment and privileges, which they deserve by virtue of their oppression. It's a convenient noble lie long ingrained deep in our cultural consciousness, rendered dysfunctional by modernity. We love to demonise our outgroup by how badly they treat women to demonstrate how virtuous we are. There's no better outgroup to beat on than the past, because they're really bad at fighting back.
To be completely clear, I'm not saying women have never experienced any injustice. But any injustice is specific and not part of a universal, continuous effort ('patriarchy') to injure women, and it has to be put in the context than both women and men have faced injustices historically.
I'm not completely defeatist on this issue, at least not yet. But part of me recognises the futility of fighting human nature, no matter how irrational, self-destructive and maladaptive it might be. But I don't know what the alternative is.
I like your take, we always have to dig deeply into accepted ideas to see how much myth-making. It's something I will 'lean-into' over the next while to see where I land.
However, I was already aware that females contribute a good portion of partner violence - although of course, tending to be less serious harm than male on female violence. I was also aware that key males had been written out of the suffragette story.
I also don't view it as man beating wife with stick through human history. The past is a different country as they say, so it's mistaken to project the modern idea of agency blindly onto previous eras Obviously women have always had agency and our history is shared, there must have always been accommodation of needs in the shared goal of child rearing and woman have been honoured and had certain priviliges over different cultures etc, depending on class. However, and bearing in mind I'm no historian and I shudder to think how little I know of it, but I'd say it's a given that among human hierarchies, women would tend to be lower than men in terms of power. The church asserts this explicitly, and clearly there wasn't even a thought to consider women as distinct entities legally until modern times. So I suspect that while revisionism against some of the myth-making of feminism may be due, it's not going to upend it to the point of there is 'no thing there'.
Feminism fits within a modern liberal view of freedom and opportunity. Here I think it's clear that there was a patriarchy, as evidenced by the efforts required for women to do things that men had always done-get a degree, occupy professional positions of power, own things, receive benefits as single parents etc. Now most women probably didn't object to this world, it was the water they swam in, but for some women it was a grave injustice under the modern liberal terms taking root. Now that doesn't subsume women to some powerless servitude but it is pretty inarguable as a real patriarchy.
I have also observed patriarchy first-hand, though as an outsider, when living in Japan. Again many women have power, many are happy with the status quo, but the hierarchy is plain to see. I'm given to understand that effectively the wife sits underneath her sons in the power structure side of things (though probably worth checking) and language itself reified this in the honorifics etc used when addressing then. Men have a mixed position there, often as salarymen that might only see there children on weekends, and of course are wedded to their own work heirarchies, but equally, are clearly top-dogs as far as society goes. Again this is under the lens of modern liberal values. Japan is a very civil society and there are many great things about it. And if course it's changing. But if you're a young woman wanting to progress professionally in male-dominated fields, you're going to put up with a lot of unjust shit, by virtue of being a woman.
Anyway I take your broader point and I have gone on too long. One of my first posts here was complaining about long posts and here I am....
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Welcome to arguing against Enlightenment Ideology. Its core claim is that it can guide us all to a brighter future, but actually doing that is quite hard, and "brighter" is always relative to the past. Consequently it's easier to lie about how bad the past was, then to actually improve on it.
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