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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26048 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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Horses are better than humans at running but the number of people throughout history who would disagree with the statement "horses are inferior to human beings" is very small.

Inferior in what sense or to what end? Would be a more sensible response than agreement.

Inferior typically applies between variations of a type or catagory, and then often for a specific use. Horses would make inferior men, and men inferior horses. Your usage makes little sense.

Inferior in the great chain of being, in absolute worth, closer, in the mind of a pre-modern, to the Imago Dei

I'm not sure I see evidence for this. Men and women are both created in the image of God.

Women historically had been protected or privileged over men in things likely to result in death like drowning on a sinking ship, or serving in combat.

This is the point that @omw_68 made to me in a private message that was perhaps meant to be a reply here.

... if a society has a choice between sacrificing a random woman and sacrificing a random man, most choose a man. And that's been the case for thousands of years based on looking at who is expected to do dangerous jobs such as military service or mining coal.

In other words, it's pretty clear to me that to the extent one had to choose who is seen as superior, at least in terms of value and at least in the West, women have always been seen as superior to men.

Men and women are both created in the image of God.

Maybe, but to what extent? Augustine believed the woman was not as much the Image of God as the man. Aristotle said without much qualification that woman was inferior to man.

Women historically had been protected or privileged over men in things likely to result in death like drowning on a sinking ship

This actually isn't really true. Someone linked the wikipedia page for "women and children first" which makes clear this is not some ancient code of conduct but a rather recent 19th century phenomenon, observed only sporadically. Men tended to fare better in shipwrecks, the Titanic being the glaring exception, because they were better swimmers.

or serving in combat.

The idea that being exempted from combat is a privilege is itself a pretty modern one. For a very long time bearing arms was one of, if not the highest honor. Free men could bear arms, not slaves or women. Probably the oldest conception of what it means to "be a man" is to be a great warrior who can kill a lot of people.

"Where's all that 'male privilege' when it's time to get drafted?" is a complaint that belongs to the post-modern and especially post-industrial era where warfare has been stripped of all the glory and honor that historically attended it, and been reduced to merely an unpleasant duty not dissimilar from digging ditches or pulling wagons.

Occasional woman through history who have fought as soldiers or warriors, whether disguised as men or otherwise, tend to draw praise or at least neutral curiosity, while men who took on the role of a woman with regards to child-rearing or other tasks assigned to the female sphere were viewed as worthy of derision at best.

Nope, it was definitely not intended to be a reply. Omw likes sending private messages to engage in a point for some reason.

Thanks. This was my first.

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