ples ignore if i come off like idk… this has been just really fascinating to me and talking to people about this has been a fucking nightmare…and i have been craving to infodump on somebody… im sorry please forgive me. im really not trying to explain anything with any authority, but reading about this was kind of very low key mind blowing, more like “well of course…” :
… so I have almost finished this book (1) about how misogyny became so normalized through history… and like the books’ theory, based on archeological findings and studiyng various ancient texts, including the bible, so that theories starting point is before agriculture made us settle down, includes all the history up to when the romans okayed christianity into their statemodel and loads of other stuff that i started to write down in an editor until i realized i was trying to recap a book of 620 pages, 20 pages of references and 30 pages of additional literature… im sorry i love this book in a way… and i hate it in a way… i can only recommend it
… so i already typed this and it is basically a deep dive into a recap and the starting point of the book kinda…
before agriculture made us settle down, we had to be very egalitarian in regards to gender roles, there didnt exist any societal expectations yet except that of the little group you belonged to, but that was exclusively of cooperative nature, eventually the early humans realized left behind seed would sprout vegetables, and those places would be more often frequented and eventually we would settle at our favourite spot and for the first time we would call something our own, property was invented. some settlements would develop to be matrilinear, others would be patrilinear, but since women had always been the ones tending to the plants and little animals, while the men had been hunting large game, it would be the women who would have to grind the seeds they harvested into flour, so due to this hard work and the already higher exertion due to child birth, women would die earlier than men by about 10 years or so, men wouldnt become older than 40 or something…
… yeah hm
(1 “Die Wahrheit ueber Eva, Die Erfindung der Ungleichheit von Frauen und Männern” Carel van Shaik, Kai Michel) am on page 580 and i want to murder some specific men. they already are dead though
I’ve definitely heard that theory before!
Another big cause was mass infantry warfare - you can see in low-density sedentary societies and nomadic pastoral societies (which generally had strong traditions of mass horsemanship, rather than infantry combat) that oftentimes (though not always) women can still hold very high position.
It’s when the norm of warfare changes from “Who’s better with a sword” (in which women can very much remain competitive with men) to “What massive group of human meat on foot can roll over the other” that women begin to be pushed out of military roles (due to the triple-problem of women being shorter and lighter on average, women having less dense bones, and such stage 1 societies prioritizing ridiculous birth rates to maintain or gain advantages over neighboring societies). And, as the saying goes, power flows from the barrel of a gun. Or, in this case, the edge of blade!
I just watched a YouTube video about the history of Carhartt and the host made a really amazing point: Almost all of men’s fashion is either derived from military uniforms or work wear. Cardigans, T shirts, men’s suits, field coats, wristwatches, bomber jackets, and trench coats are all based on military clothing.
Just thought this fact dovetailed neatly into your point about how toxic masculinity grows out of warfare.
