Piggybacking off violet’s post.
It took a few readings, but I finally figured out that the above statement is the thesis of Kathryn Jean Lopez’s article “What Feminism Wrought.” I’m not sure if it took me so long to figure that out because of the incoherent, disjointed way the author was trying to get that central idea across or because that central idea is so impossible to seriously assign to any reasonably well-educated, literate person. However, I finally Got It.
On the off-chance that the above masterpiece of journalistic commentary is the very first article read by an alien that crash-landed on Earth five minutes earlier and is desperately trying to assimilate enough of our history and culture to “pass” as an Earthling while he scavenges parts to repair his flying saucer, I am providing the following:
(Actual, real historical and cultural information about the frequency of men hitting women in pre-feminist western European culture and how men hitting women was actually regarded by those contemporaries.)
Enjoy.
When “feminism” first became something that anybody had ever even heard of, much less a driving sociopolitical force in the Western world:
In 1789, during the French Revolution, Olympe de Gouges published a ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman’ to protest the revolutionists’ failure to mention women in their ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’. In ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’ (1792) Mary Wollstonecraft called for enlightenment of the female mind. (via)
The word “feminism” appeared first in France in the 1880s, Great Britain in the 1890s, and the United States in 1910.[11][12] The Oxford English Dictionary lists 1894 for “feminism”, and 1895 for “feminist”.[13] Prior to that time “Woman’s Rights” was probably the term used most commonly, hence Queen Victoria’s description of this “mad, wicked folly of ‘Woman’s Rights’ “.[14] (via)
So, we want to head back in time prior to the late 1700s.
Reality. It bites.
This is one to keep, like, forever and ever and EVERR!
One to shove in the faces of people who still believe feminism has done not much more than give the women right to vote and to take the pill, if ever it did some good.
What about countries where feminism “still needs to be invented”? Countries at war or hunger where feminism is just a luxury that no-one has the time nor the energy for? Since there is barely a movement we can call feminism in these countries, does that mean that men don’t hit women there? Does that mean that men dont rape women? Don’t torture them? Is FGM a myth? Does this Ms. Lopez think that men actually get blamed for the bad they do to women in these (let’s call them:) pre-feminism countries?
This goes way beyond victim-blaming. This goes into the delusional idea that women actually are self-fulfilling prophecying their own evils! They are creating the stick to give to people to hit themselves with?
“By inventing oppression where there is none and remaking woman in man’s image, as the sexual and feminist revolutions have done, we’ve confused everyone. It’s natural for us to expect men to protect women, and for women to expect some level of physical protection.” What the… where… how… er… WHAT?!
When writing this comment, I just keep shaking my head in disbelief. How can someone be so unconceivably… what’s the word? blind? stupid? crazy?
Just to finish, my favourite part of the article: “Femininity and masculinity mix well together. And women are taking masculinity where they can get it, even if that’s in the arms of another woman.”
Ok, where’s the bucket, I need to puke…
This is the kind of stuff in our history that helps people continue to view hatred and violence toward women as normal, to the point that they fail to notice anything’s wrong with it. Including women.
I mean, I spend every spare moment I have reading blogs like this and until the other day I still couldn’t articulate why I felt sorry for Dee on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It’s pretty hard to erase the effect of centuries of burning women at the stake because men are scared of them, and it’s hard to explain to people that it has influenced their, and everyone’s, ways of thinking about what it means to be a woman. UGH. All I want is to be treated like a human being.
Please don’t erase the work of women working towards liberation in non-Western nations. Please don’t use their experiences as a thought experiment.
That last example is so cunning. God forbid a few men might exist who don’t like to beat their wives. It’s amazing we’ve even managed to come as far as we have since then.
And then the couple has to pay a tithe of beer. I mean, really. That’s inhumane.
It is a hell of a tithe, though–30 gallons.
Great article. Great fucking article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tables
The law of the twelve tables doesn’t say anything about having to raise all your son’s but only one daughter.
For a more comprehensive review of the law :
http://www.constitution.org/sps/sps01_1.htm
If you read it through you will find no mention of what your first source mentions.
If that’s inaccurate how can we trust any of the other ‘facts’ mentioned in your excerpts without researching each and every one of them first?
Hey, Mr. Research, Do Some–you’re citing Wikipedia, for one, and your citation is specifically excerpts, for two.
I would strongly recommend that you take your own advice, my brother. Here is another research articles that agrees with my original citation:
http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/wlgr/wlgr-romanlegal107.shtml
For more info about why there might be some disagreement about what exactly the Twelve Tables say:
“The Twelve Tables (XII Tabulae), or Law of the Twelve Tables (Lex XII Tabularum), is the earliest known law code of Rome. It is lost except as reconstructed from references by later Roman writers. For them it was obsolete, being written in an earlier form of the language (conventionally called Old Latin), and thus at times unintelligible. Festus (late 2c, epitomizing Verrius Flaccus, the tutor of Augustus’s grandsons) notes several archaic usages in Roman writers which were based on the wording of the Twelve Tables.”
http://www.umass.edu/wsp/comparative/law/rome/twelve/index.html
I am a big recommender of doing your own research!
By all means, trust no facts you read that you don’t like and cherry-pick evidence that, rather than refuting it, simply fails to mention whether or not that was a law–that’s really impressive.
The wikipedia link was just for anyone who didn’t feel like wading through the second link I gave, which is not a collection of excerpts.
The first link you give is describing The laws of the kings, specifically the ones attributed to Romulus, dating from 753-716 B.C. – this link:
http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/wlgr/wlgr-romanlegal108.shtml
is from the same website and describes excerpts of The Twelve Tables dating from 450 B.C.
So your link doesn’t support your citation. The corrected link doesn’t confirm that the citation is wrong, as it is like the wikipedia article, just excerpts.
If you check the second link I gave, which does not indicate that it is incomplete:
http://www.constitution.org/sps/sps01_1.htm
There’s no mention of a law duplicating that Law of Kings law.
Your second link is interesting, obviously the knowledge of the Law of the Twelve Tables is incomplete, perhaps there is a lost law that is a duplicate of that earlier one.
To have any reason to believe that though, we need at least one reasonable piece of evidence that it was included, and that same webpage has no reference to it in the ‘family law’ section. (Or others)
http://www.umass.edu/wsp/comparative/law/rome/twelve/table04.html
So that’s three links that don’t agree with the cite so far. And one link that attributes that law elsewhere. It’s not comprehensive, but I’m not on a mission to refute it. It looks pretty unlikely to me.
I agree with you about doing your own research, and trusting no facts that you read (at least not more than 80%, if they’re just asserted). But it’s really the responsibility of the person posting the information to be careful about what they post (nobody’s perfect)
As you imply, people don’t trust facts they don’t like, and then they do the research. If they like or don’t feel strongly about a fact they mostly just go along with it. Trust it as much as they trust the blogger.
I was bored, I’ve been thinking about how the internet is going to start limiting the use of incorrect information, as people can check at the click of a button, and that sparked my momentary interest here. You can’t rely on everyone who doesn’t dislike the facts to do that all the time.
And yes, I did parse the sarcasm, I’m ignoring it. Nothing useful will come out of me being sarcastic back.
Lessee, this is a long one…can I summarize it…I think so…”Yeah, I’m an MRA and that one fact that you posted was the only thing I could come up with to refute, and damn you for pointing out that you do actually have a backup citation that confirms your original info–but people are damn lazy as I’ve been saying all along so maybe you won’t bother to pull the quote from your citation that directly demonstrates I’m lying my ass off when I say that your backup citation doesn’t contain corroborating information–”
(Lisa’s backup citation: “The laws attributed to the kings of Rome and the Twelve Tables, which follow, have been reconstructed by modern editors from these later citations.
Laws attributed to Romulus, the founder; traditional dates, 753-716 B.C.
4. Romulus compelled the citizens to rear every male child and the first-born of the females, “)
“–Yeah, so, I’m lying, so what? Blah, blah, passive-aggression, I’m an MRA, arf arf!”
Lisa, I think you are misunderstanding your own source. Your “Another research article” describes “laws attributed to the kings of Rome and the Twelve Tables”. That’s two sources. Research is correct that the Twelve Tables mention no such law.
The Laws of the Kings says, in pertinent part:
Note the elipsis. Part of the original Latin text was illegible and the sentence may not mean what we think it does. Even if the passage does mean what it appears to, Romulus was a mythical figure. It doesn’t follow that his purported pronouncements were ever actually practiced.
A Latin Scholar might be able to throw more light on these matters.
Oh sigh.
Look up a little farther in the comments, Daran. You will see that I did indeed note the issue that you are raising here already.
Further wilful dyslexia on the part of MRAs will result in blanket banning. For more info, see blog post:
http://punkassblog.com/2008/10/24/the-derailing-train-stops-here-folks-or-how-to-get-banned-from-commenting-on-lisas-blog-posts/