COMMON ATTITUDES OF MEN TOWARDS WOMEN
MISOGYNY literally hatred, or distrust of women. The
concept is as old as the Greeks who coined the term and, no doubt, a
good deal older.
RELIGIO MEDICI a book published in 1642 that expounded Thomas Browne's attitudes.
"The whole world was made for man;
but the twelfth part of man for women: man is the whole world, and the
breath of God; women the rib and crooked piece of man."
*NOTE equality among the sexes
continued to appear an eccentric notion for a long time after 1405.
Forest murmurs of female emancipation are scarcely to be heard until
the eighteenth century, explicit arguments in favor of it only surface
in the nineteenth century. The Enlightenment did revive certain
Renaissance ideas, not least that of female access to wisdom and
virtue. Of greater importance was the fact that among the upper
classes, influence and status depended more on birth (and wealth) than
on sex.
WOMEN PROMOTERS FOR EQUALITY AND
THEIR NEMESIS
LOUIS SEBASTIAN MERCIER published in 1770 a utopian novel about what
Paris life would be like in the year 2440:
The Bastille has been replaced by a
temple dedicated to Clemency; religion is rational, and the Supreme
Being is worshipped in a temple roofed with glass, through which His
creation can be appreciated better than through stone arches; politics
and economics are rational and just, with no one idle and no one
exploited; libraries, public and private, have been expurgated,
corrupted or worldly works burnt, history banned altogether. Marriage
customs, too, have altered, with love the only basis for a union,
dowries abolished and divorce legalized. But the fate of the women has
scarcely improved. Mercier is sentimental, moralizing, and pretentious.
His portrait of women in an ideal age reflects his intellectual
standards, which would be those of several generations.
OLYMPE DE GOUGES wrote a Declaration of the Rights of
Women in 1791. It came to nothing. Its author died under the
guillotine two years later, not for her feminism, but for having taken
the defense of the king, Louis XVI. Following are the first three
articles of the preamble of the Declaration of the Rights of Women:
ARTICLE I Woman is born free and
lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only
on the common utility.
ARTICLE II The purpose of any
political association is the conservation of the natural and
imprescriptible rights of women and man; these rights are liberty,
property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.
ARTICLE III The principle of all
sovereignty rests essentially with the nation, which is nothing but the
union of women and man; no body and no individual can exercise any
authority which does not come expressly from it [the nation].
PETITION DES FAMMES DU TIERS written in 1789 by the women of the French Revolution.
" We ask for Enlightenment and jobs,
not to usurp man's authority, but to rise in their esteem and to have
the means of living safe from misfortune."
EMMANEUL SIEYES spokesman for the third estate during the French Revolution wrote:
"Woman, at least as things now stand,
children, foreigners, in short those who contribute nothing to the
public establishment, should have no direct influence on the
government."
MARY WOLLENSTONECRAFT wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792.
"Women are told from their infancy,
and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of
human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward
obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety,
will obtain for them the protection of man, and should they be
beautiful, everything else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of
their lives. Youth is the season for love in both sexes, but in those
days of thoughtless enjoyment provision should be made for the more
important years of life, when reflection takes the place of
sensation... The woman who has been taught to please will soon find
that her charms are oblique sunbeams, and that they cannot have much
effect on her husband's heart when they are seen every day, when the
summer is passed and gone. Will she then have sufficient native energy
to look into herself for comfort, and cultivate her dormant faculties?"
A. WALKER wrote in 1840 Woman Physiologically Considered as to Mind, Morals, Marriage, Matrimonial Slavery, Infidelity, Divorce.
"It is evident that the man,
possessing reasoning faculties, muscular power, and courage to employ
it, is qualified of being a protector; the woman, being little capable
of reasoning, feeble, and timid, requires protection. Under such
circumstances, the man naturally governs; the woman as naturally
obeys... It would be as rational to contend for man's rights to bear
children, as it is to argue for woman's participation in philosophy or
legislation."
JOHN STUART MILL wrote The Subjection of Women in 1869.
"...We may safely assert that the
knowledge which men can acquire of women, even as they have been and
are, without reference to what they might be, is wretchedly imperfect
and superficial, and always will be so, until women themselves have
told all that they have to tell."
CHARLES DARWIN
confirmed the conclusion that the on average the female incline to
passivity, the males to activity. In his view, males are stronger,
handsomer, or more emotional, because ancestral forms happened to
become so in a slight degree. In other words, the reward of breeding
success gradually perpetuated and perfected a casual advantage.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR wrote The Second Sex in 1949. In it he traced the role of women in societies that kept them dependent, married, pregnant, tied to children, home and men.
"Men control society, condemn women
to secondary status, and prevent them from becoming autonomous
individuals capable of claiming equality with them."
LETTER ON WOMEN written by the Catholic Church in 1988. The Church remains one of the great institutions with a say on women's image and selfimage.
"Women not only continue to carry the
bulk of everyday work in the parish; they are also renewing the
church's traditions of feminine spirituality as a source of inspiration
and growth. Women of scripture and recognized saints are important in
their personal and spiritual renewal."
Credit: Larry Treadwell,
thecaveonline.com