To start off with, this is not a completely fleshed out piece that I was hoping for. However, it is a piece that I hope with get some men out there to realize reality. Reality in many areas, some you may not even know I was going to come at you with. Eventually I’ll get that well formed piece of work with all the notations, citations, and other tions, but for now, here you have it, from a man in the middle of his worst Fibromyalgia Flare in years.
Society is a bunch of institutionalized isms. I hate the word ‘institutionalized’ these days. But, it’s a fact and we can’t avoid it and shouldn’t. Avoidance is one of the ways we are the way we are now.
Depending on whether you believe in some type of faith or you’re an atheist that believes in the evolution of man from molecules to man, at some point man flexed his muscles and put woman in her place. Okay, he put her where she couldn’t do him any harm and couldn’t have power over him.
In the beginning, as soon as there was both male and female on this planet, they were partners. One hunted, the man, and the female gathered, probably because she was smarter and was stuck taking care of the kids because men didn’t want to be bothered by the task, and thus couldn’t really travel to far. So, right there is the first sign of sexism and the oppression of women.
Many scientist and historians don’t think of men exerting authority until agriculture became a reality. At that time, men wanted to make sure the kids that would inherit his lands would have his DNA and not the neighbor’s.
Being a man of faith, the Christian faith, I believe God intended man and woman to be partners. After all He said;
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”
27 So God created man in His own image;
He created him in the image of God;
He created them male and female. —Genesis 1:26-27
The word man here is not speaking of a male, but of people, human beings. Then you see God created human beings in His own image, male and female. You see God doesn’t look like us, at least not as far as I know. When we are made in His image, I believe this speaks to the aspects of God, the characteristics of God. After God has created male and female, saw everything he had created, and it was very good. He didn’t say this before Eve was created, but afterward. This means it all wasn’t very good without female, without Eve, the female characteristics of God.
And before anyone decides to jump to the comments and say God is a man and not a woman, I’m not saying anything to the contrary. What I am saying is that God is the mother and father of us all. He has all those characteristics in Him.
Eve was created to be Adam’s mate, his partner in taking care of everything. God gave everything to man, human beings, to have dominion over, not just the men. But once humans were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, that’s when things began to change.
People have used religion to oppress women for as long as there has been religion. In the Old Testament of the Bible, you see multiple wives, selling and trading women and daughters, and a lot of demeaning things. God didn’t approve of the idea of the whole multiple wives thing, it’s just what was happening so that’s what was written in the Bible. Then since the Ten Commandments apparently wasn’t clear enough he gave a set of laws for the Jews to follow, which included some pretty bad things. I’m just happy Christians don’t have a reason to look to Leviticus as a guide for our own way of handling things. The sad thing is, some Christians use the Old Testament to put women in a subservient role in the household.
I think in those very early days, like when Adam and Eve were first out of the Garden, the dividing of duties was simply a case of what made sense. Adam could travel farther to hunt, while Eve was able to breast feed the children and stay in the same area while she gathered, which research says provided as much as 70% of the calories for ancient human beings. Yep, women were the boss in that aspect.
As the centuries past, men exerted their strength over women to become more and more in control, to the point there was no questioning what was happening. It was all seen as a given. Oppression of women was part of the fabric of society, part of the institution of society.
In ancient Rome, during the 1rst Century AD, women were not even allowed to speak in public gatherings, which is in part commented on in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians in the New Testament of the Bible. Some men in Christian churches these days look to these letters to show that women are not supposed to speak in church, or even to teach. The fact was Paul was responding to a letter he had been given about problems in the church of Corinth. They had all sorts of people speaking at the same time, trying to take control of the church meetings. Not only women, but people speaking in tongues, which meant they were speaking in foreign languages. Paul basically said for everyone to be silent while whatever leader had been given the most recent incite to the teachings of Jesus took the lead for that meeting.
I speak about Christianity because that is my faith. Other faiths also oppress women, but they are not my area of expertise so I don’t feel I have a right at this time to comment on them.
As the centuries have past and scholars have been enlightened about many things regarding genders being equal in all the ways that matter, the Ignorant White American Man somehow believes that all things are equal in the systems of America. They should be, but, there are men who don’t want to give up their power to women. They are afraid of women for some reason. I suppose they think women may take some type of revenge on men of today for the millennia of mistreatment of women. Those men in power, in control of changing things for equality are basing women’s reaction on what they would do.
The Ignorant White American Man looks at Supreme Court Justices being female, governors, Senators, members of the House, Cabinet members, CEOs of major corporations and other positions where women are still in a very small minority and say, “see, things are equal.”
In the 2018 Fortune 500 list of CEOs, only 4.8% were women, a drop of 25% from 2017.
23% of the Senate are women.
19.3% of the U.S. House are women.
12% of the U.S. State Governors are women.
23% of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. have women as mayors.
Just these numbers alone show that we, as a country, are not equal.
In music 2017:
16.8% of artists are women.
Of 2,767 songs 12.3% were credited female, a 6-year low.
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