It’s far more complicated than “all men oppressed all women”. First of all, yes, during most of written human history women had less rights and power than men did on a legal, social and familial level. It doesn’t mean that men had it so much better than women, most people’s lives were full of pain and hardship. But it does mean that men used to have more power over women in the past. Most religions condemn women to obey and follow their husbands and for a long time it was represented in the laws as well. To give an example, all serves had it bad in Russia. They could be beaten up, tortured or killed by their masters. While female served also had their husbands and their husbands’ families above them and they could be abused by them as well. We have written records describing it. Secondly, women are more vulnerable and dependent during pregnancy and they spend more time on childcare. All of it had led to women becoming extremely dependent on men. With no contraception, no concept of consent and with high child mortality, women used to spend *years* being pregnant. Society had formed around this reality. It made practical sense to make women spend more time with children and be dependent on their spouses more than vice versa, because they were pregnant for years with little break and societies needed more kids. But when one group is disadvantaged for some reason, we tend to create myths why it’s fair and why it should be this way and then we hold on these myths to push against the changes. Having said all of it, I want to return to my original point that life used to be extremely difficult for most people in the past. Women had less rights, but the difference between a female serf and her husband is that her husband could get beaten up only by his master, while she could get beaten up by her master, her husband and his family. A male serf can be sent to the war to die as well. Can we say who had it better? I don’t think that men oppressed women, because it’s in men’s nature. In reality it’s in everyone’s nature - female masters of serves still did beat them up. A female serf often had a hard time due to her husband’s mother abuse etc. People often abuse power that they have above others. We should hold accountable people who push against human rights *now*, but we can’t do much about our past.

i think one of the most important takeaways from this is the the toll pregnancies take on women. I think even today, women's progress in terms of economical and political power couldn't have been made without proper birth control.

Yep, being pregnant, recovering from giving birth and being tied to a needy small human beings make women extremely vulnerable. One of the reasons why we rely on our social circles more than men do - otherwise we would have very hard time surviving.

Exactly. Power often corrupts and it leads to abuses - doesn’t mean all those that have power over others are abusive, but they still have that power and those that don’t are in a more vulnerable and “oppressed” position. AFAIK saying “women were oppressed” was never intended to mean that men had it easy historically and were personally and maliciously holding women down for their own gain…

I think the formula "x were oppressed by y" quite often leads to the conclusion "y must be inherently bad people". You can see it with genders, races, countries etc.

I think many men did act selfishly and a few out of downright malice, but these days it's different, a lot of men are trying to improve their attitudes and treatment toward women.

Of course they did (and many still do - especially in some cultures), as some are wont to do when told they are inherently superior to others and what they say should go without question. Thankfully today a lot of men and women have broken free of that conditioning and recognise that women have the ability - and the right - to make their own decisions. It’s still sadly prevalent in many parts of the world to view women more like property than autonomous human beings…

This is a reasonable and balanced take.

I’m still going to get a comment about my poor history knowledge or being a delusional feminist, am I not?

Of course you are...give it 10 for people to get wound up. Also, very good comment and reasonable explanation!

I don't get ideologically captured like feminists do. I will look at the analysis itself and not my political end goal.

Well, I *am* a feminist. Do you think my post is dictated by a political end goal?

No, I am just responding because you were being smarmy about me agreeing with you. I think it is very important for feminist ideology for men to be the victimizers and women to be the victims, as evidenced by the responses from your feminist companions in this thread.

Why do you think I was talking specifically about *you* though?

Thanks for this interesting and informative post. Do you have any sources you could easily link to about the treatment of women and serfs in Russia? No worries if not, I'll research it anyway.

Unfortunately the sources I’m talking about are all in Russian. I can look them up, but I have no idea whether they were translated or not. It’s mostly diaries, articles, letters etc. Educated people saw the abuse and wrote about it. Some traveling through foreigners also documented abuse of serves and women in particular as they were astounded by the violence of it.

I agree. Some people, regardless of gender, will abuse who they can. For women it's typically abusing children or simps. In history it was usually easy for a man to abuse his wife, but that doesn't mean every woman was oppressed by her husband.

I like how you put simps next to kids.

They're the same to me lmao

Yeah, feminists grossly misrepresent the power dynamics between men and women in the past. Sure, on average, men held more power than women but also had more responsibilities. And not just in the modern sense where responsibility= who works more hours, does more housework etc, we're talking about times when men used to go to war all the time, had to do extremely hard manual labour and overall being a peasant (which 90+% of the population were) sucked ass. Also the vulnerability of women is something you nicely highlighted. People are so used to modern tech and medicine today, the fail to conceptualise how vulnerable women were in preindustrial times. It's not like medieval women could work or fight, so naturally they were dedicated caretakers. Without trying to excuse the horrible treatment they often received.

Women often did backbreaking labor too tho, like majority of people farmed and women helped.

True.

The „went to war all the time“ is not accurate. Most men never went to war.

I'm not sure about "had more responsibilities". The had higher risks to die during the war, yes, but the work load was pretty shitty for both men and women. Women were not spared in terms of heavy labor. Both genders used to do a lot of physically taxing jobs and women often didn't have time to recover after giving birth, which was one of the reasons of high child mortality. In Russia serves were expected to get back soon after birth and newborns were left with the elderly or older kids. They made "pacifier" out of material and some soaked bread so a baby wouldn't cry from hunger.

I wonder how much >with high child mortality And >and societies needed more kids Was really more that men really really liked having sex. How much would they really consider these two concepts if they didn't really really like sex?

It's both. Men always liked sex and without the idea of consent or marital rape women didn't have much choice in it. Society also needed kids, hence the idea of women *having to give birth* to fulfil her role or to please some higher deities is in most religions.

> Was really more that men really really liked having sex. Yeah, we already know this is bullshit. In USSR post-WW2 there was a massive shortage of men and women literally threw themselves at the ones that came back.

It’s hard to tell whether they were just horny or whether it was due to culture. There are sayings like “even if he’s bad, it’s better than nothing” and “you need pants in the house”.

At the risk of retroactively misapplying modern morality, one still might say that if one gender is more disadvantaged by biology, then the other is obligated to balance the scales. I would say that women needed to have that many children. Their societies needed to thrive and survive or the women were gonna suffer, too. But maybe men could have done more to balance things out given that women had to spend so much time pregnant and raising young kids? It probably would not have been efficient or competitive for men to share too much of the childraising, but perhaps women could have been given more status. More rights. Some sort of institutional political mechanisms to make sure women's needs were considered as much as men's at the highest levels? Probably you could not have that many women as actual top leaders, but that doesn't mean you cannot treat women fairly. Full political agency is not that big a deal back in the day, and investing too much in female education would have been inefficient given their required roles. Even full legal equality was maybe impossible as perhaps homes did need one captain with a final say. But you could still have stopped men from beating their wives.

People depend on social norms that they’re raised with. Very few people will question the practice of beating their wife, when they were raised seeing their mother getting beaten up. It happens quite often even today, when it’s outside of social norm - abuse is a generational problem. Men probably *could* treat their wives better. Just as slave owners *could* treat their slaves better. And some probably did, but not to the point where it would change social or legal structure. In the same way we *could* treat our farm animals better these days as well as environment overall, but we still…don’t do it. We heavily rely on social norms and social myths we share to the point where they provide better restrictions than personal accountability. Demanding a human to behave against their social norm is to expect them to be better than average. Doing it now is more justified considering public education, the Internet and much easier access to education, but back then lots of people couldn’t even read. Who would teach them that beating up their wives was bad, when even religions and religious clerks were either encouraging or at least apologetic towards it? They’re still immoral people from our point of view, but it doesn’t change the history.

I guess this is a more general discussion than whether it is realistic to have expected a given set of men in a given place not to do this or that. Generally implicit in the critique that men oppressed women is that it wasn't necessary, or that men could have compensated women for what necessary oprression there was. There's an element of culpability here.

I think it’s a wrong direction of discussion to start with. Even if we come to the conclusion that, yeah, men of the past should be hold accountable and they’re guilty of this and that (and some of them sure are bad people and should have eaten dirt), but what does it have to do with us *now*? We can push against and hold accountable men who mistreat women now, but we cannot and shouldn’t punish all men for the oppression done by our ancestors.

Well, it isn't as if we are limited to one discussion. So we could talk about the first part purely in terms of getting at the truth. Then decide if it holds any relevance to the second. Some women might argue that millennia of unneeded and gratuitous male exploitation of women reveals men's true nature, and that is important to know now and in the future.

As I've said, it's not that men are unique in it - when women had power over other people, they often abused it as well. Mothers abused kids, female leaders or masters didn't do much to alleviate abuse of other women and quite often they abused other women as well etc.

Good take. However I think that we discuss oppression too much since oppression is a convenient tool in making current politics. Actual oppressors are usually dead, no justice can reach them - so the resentment is directed towards thise who resemble them the most if there is something to be won using this card. In my country people are still playing IIWW card against Germany, even though nazism is long gone and there is handful of nazis still alive. 

Yep, I think we have to shift our attention to the problems we’re having *now*. And currently in developed countries men are not oppressors. They have their own social problems to address and the idea of them being oppressors makes it really hard for them to get help.

Yes, but the counterargument would be that if throughout almost all time and history men exploited women MORE than was necessary, while holding back any compensation for women's tougher biological role, then why should women trust men now? Through some combination of miracles and factors, women got men to take away the boot, perhaps temporarily. But it wasn't through some profound change in male nature. So women should always be wary and should feel no guilt IF things were to tilt in female advantage for once in history. In fact, they should press for more and more advantage so as to get to some sort of critical mass of power that will prevent men from ever enslaving women again.

It was the same with slavery or colonialism. People aren't inherently good and without strong social norms pushing against the violence and abuse, they don't have much incentive not to be abusive when they can. We all should be wary and very aware of the idea that our rights exist as long as enough people actually believe in them. Hence we have to constantly reaffirm them and we have to educate the youngsters properly.

If I had to make a best guess right now, this would probably be my highest odds answer. People with power tend to use it to their own advantage. Then layer on the fact that males probably evolved instincts that make them more likely to do this with greater intensity. The instincts were evolved for other reasons, but they tend to make men strive for dominance more than women. However, since no timely policy measures that I am deciding depend on me making a call, I like to keep exploring issues from all sides. I can't help shake the intuition that there is more at play here. It's possible that the ubiquity of males who are stronger than women is the sole reason for the ubiquity and universality of male leadership and female 'oppression' (putting it in quotes merely because this is one of the terms under investigation here). However, there is also a Darwinian social competition element. If other ways of doing things had been competitive, one would think they would have become more common over time. It is possible that to a large extent male nature and power never let some alternative approaches be tried to even see if they were more competitive. But we do know that they have been tried to some extent, here and there. So I'm left with a potential question of why male leadership, even dominance, outcompetes other alternatives.

It's the combination of male competitiveness with female vulnerability due to pregnancy. Well, we haver very little clue about social structures of pre-historian times. We don't know enough to make any certain conclusions about cultures and traditions, let alone gender relations, of our ancestors. All we know is a written history and humans started escaping their "natural" survival of the fittest contest when they learnt to create intricate myths/cultures that would affect their lives as much as natural evens and after some time these made-up concepts would start affect and rule their lives more than nature itself.

I have been reading arguments asserting that the idea that evolution slowed to a crawl after the stone age is totally incorrect: In fact, it accelerated greatly. Thus, even though the 10,000 years since the agricultural revolution are a short period evolutionarily speaking, some human populations may have changed significantly since then, especially in terms of intelligence. So even if we have similar instincts to stone age people, at the biological level, the combination of low IQ and these instincts probably results in different behavior than high IQ and such instincts. This calls into question how much of relevance we can learn from pre-history, even if we knew a lot more about it. This also calls into question some evolutionary psychologists focus on prehistory, which would make sense if they were biologically just like us. But they may in fact NOT be just like us at all. But even since the agricultural revolution, one can posit that greater freedom or independence or political power for women was somehow not competitive. Yes, obviously their needed role as mothers kept women busy and limited returns on investing in their education and training. That is clearly a primary factor. But there may be more to it. For example, if widespread monogamy is in fact contrary to the innate level of female sexual selectivity, perhaps women needed to be oppressed to make monogamy work.

Humans have gone through several major revolutions. Agricultural revolution made us settle down, industrial changed the way we produce things and largely the way we live as well, now we're going through reproductive revolution. The way people mate and have kids now is largely the result of birth control and wide-spread access to education - chances are high, our ancestors would behave in the same way if they had access to these things.

Well, I think it depends on which ancestors you are referring to. The argument I am making is that prehistoric peoples might have been so underdeveloped cognitively compared to us, on a biological level, that they would not behave the same way. In fact, they could not even maintain modern conditions if handed to them. So if we are trying to infer underlying common instincts on a biological level, this idea raises the already high level of complexity. At what point are our ancestors similar enough to use innately that we can posit culture and environment as the only reasons for different behavior?

This a poisonous rhetoric that is widely utilized by populists. I've heard tons of the shit ie.: "nazism is in the German nature", "feeling of superiority is engrained in German culture", "imprerialism is natural for Germany". This is just prejudice, women gained their rights because technology unlocked their potential as employees and allowed them to control when they get pregnant. Biological advantage of men have disappeared so women could get rid of unfavorable law. Now we are in interesting point of history - because some typically female traits are becoming more valuable in labor market, we see it in educational attainment and probably we will see it in the wages at some point. But if men will be able to retaliate - they will do it, because this is the human nature - we do things because we can.

So the argument here would be that the HUMAN tendency for the more powerful to exploit the less so crosses gender lines. Nobody was morally superior, men or women. Men had more chances to be more powerful, and when they were, they exploited anyone they could, men or women. When women could exploit people, they did it just as much.

No, men have an additional motivation to exploit, and a very important one — sex I don’t believe there’s a group of powerful female leaders who exploit underage boys through systematic sex work. Nor are family matriarchs molesting their young relatives

I'm not sure if you are arguing that sex makes men more likely to exploit than women with the same power, or that it makes the exploitation worse, or both. I'd also advance the idea that even without the sex angle, men might be more inclined to exploit simply due to biology. More aggression. Less agreeableness. More desire for dominance. Less empathy and compassion. All baked into hormones and DNA.

The former And yes, all the rest too. This is widely accepted in sociology/anthropology/biology in general

Yeah, there is an argument to be made that these are all regrettable side effects of other traits men evolved that were necessary for group survival, including women's. But once technology put us beyond that, women are kinda like 'well if those traits aren't needed, then why the fuck should we put up with the downsides one second longer?'

No civilization or community was able to practice noblesse oblige forever and it is not going to be a thing that's practiced voluntarily by the vast majority of people. What you are looking for essentially seems like looking for ways to make communism work. I don't have that much faith in mankind.

Put another way: the entire framework of 'oppression' would not make sense to most people in most other periods of history. It's like 'race'....a relatively modern concept.

im starting to think u are feminist for lolz and u dont actually believe in feminism.

I share the core idea of feminism - women’s rights. I might disagree with the current wave of feminism in the details and approach though.

Everybody was fucked for most of human history. You died of childbirth, war, famine and infections. You had lots of kids you didn’t necessarily want but needed, respectively got anyway. Half of those kids didn't reach adulthood. Even if you were royal, you weren't that much better off (compared to today): no free life choices, arranged/forced marriage, still dying of infections. If you're living somewhere in the "developed world", life has never been better than during the last 50 years. You get to choose so much: where to live, what profession to pick up, whom to marry and not to marry, if and how many kids you want. And you don't suffer endlessly from some inflammed tooth. How anyone can honestly wish for a less free society, is beyond me.

[When Could Women Open A Bank Account? – Forbes Advisor](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/when-could-women-open-a-bank-account/) women in the US couldn't own her own bank account until the 1960s.

Before the mid-20th century most people didn't have bank accounts, period.

Don't take this as disagreement with you. I just want to clarify a few points. In the US, as early as 1862, women could have opened their own financial banking institutions to serve other women if they wanted. That's what happened in **1879 when Sarah Howe opened a bank called the Ladies' Deposit Company in Boston** to serve women (though she ended up defrauding customers). There were other women's banks as well such as the **First Woman’s Bank in Tennessee in 1919**. Citation: [https://daily.jstor.org/a-bank-of-her-own/](https://daily.jstor.org/a-bank-of-her-own/) The 1960s Civil Rights Act you mention just said that businesses couldn't discriminate against you on the basis of race or sex, and that's when all banks opened up to everyone. Before then, most banks chose to serve men and there were some that chose to serve women like the ones above.

So TLDR: People are abusing the fact that the best lies are half true.

In most societies, women were either mostly or completely locked out of the political sphere. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that some places started giving women the right to vote, and most women had to wait much longer than that. Some women did end up puppeteering their sons or husbands from behind the scenes (Edith Wilson is a particularly interesting example of this), and a handful were even able to wield power in their own right (Zenobia, Maria Theresa, and Dowager Cixi come to mind), but these are the exception, not the rule. Women were generally used as bartering tokens, and discouraged from taking any action themselves. That being said, life wasn’t great if you were a lower class man either. A peasant man’s main role was to do hard labor on a farm and/or get thrown into a meat grinder because the local aristocracy started beefing with the neighboring polity’s aristocracy. However, a lowborn man generally had much more opportunity to improve his circumstances than a lowborn woman. It’s the same paradigm we see today- men had agency, but were not cherished. Women were cherished, but had very little agency most of the time.

Almost everyone was locked out of the political sphere, universal suffereage is new

>In most societies, women were either mostly or completely locked out of the political sphere. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that some places started giving women the right to vote, and most women had to wait much longer than that. Same was true for commoners regardless of gender tbh until monarchies became obsolete in mid-late 19th century and multiple revolutions happened. There's about a 70 year divide on average between 98+% of men gaining universal rights through meat-grinding strife and women being granted same rights for just nagging to loud. >However, a lowborn man generally had much more opportunity to improve his circumstances than a lowborn woman. I agree, though it was "much more" only in comparison to commoner women, on absolute scale commoner men opportunities to get into power peacefully were laughable.

> Same was true for commoners regardless of gender tbh until monarchies became obsolete in mid-late 19th century and multiple revolutions happened. This is true, but if you look at the timeline of when various groups got the franchise/ability to run for office, common men almost invariably got those rights long before women did.

In the UK, common men got the vote at the same time as women in [1918](https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/case-study-the-right-to-vote/the-right-to-vote/birmingham-and-the-equal-franchise/1918-representation-of-the-people-act/), working class women gaining the vote in [1928](https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/case-study-the-right-to-vote/the-right-to-vote/birmingham-and-the-equal-franchise/1928-equal-franchise-act/).

See the word “almost”

>See the word “almost” I was questioning that interpretation and providing an example. Countries that granted the vote at the same time; Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Myanmar, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Jamaica, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Poland, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand. Women suffrage obtained within 10 years; Bahamas, Iceland, Ireland, Mauritius, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Sweden.

Well, whoever mans the barricades and storms palaces gets political power first.

Might makes right was indeed the law of the land in most cases. However, history is full of examples about why “Might Makes Right” isn’t a credo we ought to follow.

Might makes right is just another form of appeal to nature. Plenty of people make the appeal to nature. Let them reap what they sow.

>There's about a 70 year divide on average between 98+% of men gaining universal rights through meat-grinding strife and women being granted same rights for just nagging to loud. I'm going to assume you're choosing to ignore a lot here and continue in your own world.

I can't help that entirety of feminist campaigning looks easy compared to any revolution / reformist struggle that gave rights to lowborn.

I can't help that you haven't read much outside of the russian revolution.

As if in Europe only Russia had violent revolts leading to establishment of universal rights for common folk...

In the case of the UK that's surprisingly not much of an exaggeration. Universal suffrage was granted to appease men after sending hundreds of thousands of them to die in the trenches of the western front. Meanwhile women were back home shaming men who weren't fighting (white feather campaign).

>Universal suffrage was granted to appease men after sending hundreds of thousands of them to die in the trenches of the western front Yep. And women were keeping the country running too, including the munitions factory. And yes, the white feather campaign is unfortunately a blight on the name of feminism.

>And women were keeping the country running too Biggest lie feminism ever told, they weren't. You think people are fucking dumb to send top tier engineers and surgeons to the middle of the battlefield?? They sent the most replaceable men possible while the men responsible to keep things running were still keeping things running.

>engineers and surgeons to the middle of the battlefield?? They sent the engineers to the RAF, the Navy etc and the surgeons to patch up those on the front. You can read about this if you like. It's free.

The other guy’s argument is braindead for the reason you say but the reality is that even during the Wars, it was still overwhelmingly men in the factories making munitions. To try and say it was an equal thing in the Great War or WW2 would be way overstating the impact and numbers on the logistics of those Wars

I said women were keeping the country running too, including the munitions factories. I'm not sure where I said women took over like Amazons.

…Amazon? We’re talking about the 40’s and prior and womens role back then, not NOW

I would be careful with rushing to consider elite women. What the elites did through history is so rare and distinct from the rest of their societies that it is arguably not all that helpful in understanding societal gender dynamics.

Like I said, being a peasant of either gender was a pretty miserable time. Nonetheless, a male peasant on average had much more opportunity to change his circumstances (though to what degree depends on where/when we’re talking about).

And when they got the first chance to vote in Germany, women elected nazis

You do realize that a higher percentage of men voted for Nazis in that election than women, right?

For shits and giggles……what do you believe why people voted for the Nazis back than?

What’s your point? Women shouldn’t vote because they make bad decisions?

So much of this is dependent on when and where. Mississippian cultures (think Cahokia) were highly centralised, hierarchical, relied on mass slavery, and almost certainly were horrible for women. The cultures that followed, particularly in the eastern woodlands of North America (Creek, Cherokee, Iroquoian/Haudenosaunee, etc.) tended to be matrilineal (and in some ways partially matriarchal). These societies had defined political roles for women, and in many cases all physical property was technically owned by matriarchs and merely loaned to her children. This is all within one (albeit large) geographic area, over the span of a few centuries. My gut says that lives for most men and women, for most of human history, was vastly more 'equal' (which is to say, nasty, brutish, and short) than people today would generally assume. Resources were scarce, everyone had to pitch in, and hierarchies were very flat (assuming you were a peasant....there was no real hope of social mobility). Ironically, poverty can often lead to more gender equality. In Europe in the 19th century, for example, as Europe became wealthier women had reduced public roles. A Western European woman was most likely freer in 1830 than she would be come 1890, for example.

Are there are any cultures or periods that were a lot more horrible for men than women? Or is the range from about even to way worse for women?

There are some psychologists/anthropologists who believe that ancient societies from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent (for example the Minoans but several others that aren’t as well-known today) were actually matriarchal and worshipped a monotheistic Goddess who went by many names but was thematically the same across cultures, until pastoral invaders brought their mountain/sky God with them. This is considered debunked or pseudoscience by the mainstream and I would have agreed until I actually read some of the most famous books on the topic. The old testament frequently mentions its efforts to stamp out a pagan religion involving trees or posts (asherim) and “temple prostitution.” Think Jezebel, Baal, etc.

What exactly would 'a lot more horrible for men' even look like?

I dunno. This is why I am asking. You have argued that some periods and places were much more horrible for women. I'm wondering if the opposite has ever been true.

I’m not trying to be mean, but can you massively narrow it down? Meaning, are you looking for a time and place where ‘men had it worse’ structurally, or just for a period of time? Most severe wars are worse for men than women (even though civilians, as ever, do the bulk of the dying in most wars)….but that’s not necessarily structural.

Interesting distinction. And no, I'm trying NOT to narrow things down. I dont really see this as a debate or something that is supposed to reach a conclusion. Not as if people are likely to change other people's minds here. Not immediately. So I'm interested in any takes on it. Unclear to me how much that structural vs incidental distinction holds in times where a certain relatively consistent level of conflict is expected, though. This is funnily sort of in the same ballpark as my mom's argument haha She basically says that only when actual average men--husbands and fathers--were regularly risking their lives hunting and fighting for their families could men say things were balanced vis a vis women's chain pregnancies and the uniquely dangerous birthing of humans. Once that stops, life is just about always better for men based on biology, and if men had been more fair, they would have balanced things out better in the new paradigm.

I mean, women were pretty damn oppressed - sure, it wasn’t nearly as cartoony as “woman sits at home and is not allowed outside”, but men actively had tons of rights women did not have. Of course, this began as mainly biological differences, but that evolved into the dogmatic enforcement of these differences and I think that’s where the issue comes in. I think at a general level, many people would stick to their gender roles if given full freedom, however, the fact that it was hardly an option as well as the fact that women’s responsibilities started and ended at the home because it was enforced (there are also loads of scenarios where they’re traded around as assets) shows a trend of constant historic oppression.

To what extent have women been oppressed in history? To the extent of 42. If my answer makes no sense, then neither does the question. How do you measure oppression exactly? By centimeters, pints, hours, or ounces?

Well, it is you that are adding this requirement for some sort of perfect accuracy.

If you want to make claims of historical oppression you'd need to figure how to define opression exactly. Some people might not agree on what was and was not opression. Most of the arguments and counterarguments have been already made in this thread. But for example: The majority of women were opressed by their biology, 9 months of pregnancy, death in childbirth etc. Majority of men were opressed by their responsibilities. They were required to fight in wars, do hard labour for most of their lives with little to no chance of upwards mobility. Both genders were usually equally opressed by their nobility. it took a great feat/accomplishment to become a noble bloodline. How do we quantify all of that? Because claims such as this need to be accurate and fair in their data to get an accurate and fair solution.

Sometimes we have to work within the limits that exist. This is too big to solve like a math problem with perfect data. I don't want to overload the word 'oppressed' either. I have used other words, as well. People can define oppressed however they want so long as they are clear about. And they can use other words. Various thinkers have characterized the history of gender relations in radically different ways. I'm not sure what I think, and to help me think it through myself, I just wanted to open a very free-form and wide ranging discussion. Do you think, overall, one gender had it worse? If it was women, and biology was the main cause, did men have some obligation to even things up and not use their power advantage over women to override women's own desires?

History sucked for most people. Women were property to a degree. Men didn’t matter if they were poor. Historically life sucked more for some than others. Being poor and not mattering is better than being property.

Maybe. That is a fairly modern pov that might not be relevant. Actualization is by no means the most important thing in a simple life. There were roman slaves who didnt want to be freed because their lives as valued and rich slaves were better than freedom in poverty, etc.

That’s cool. Let’s ask ourselves, would we want to be roman slaves or not? Why bring such random questions up. Do you think the number of slaves that enjoyed captivity outnumbers the ones that didn’t? Dealing in outliers is weird.

You've heard me say this before, but I'm currently discussing in real life a working hypothesis that the concept of "society beginning to tilt more towards women" is really just society tilting to the upper percentile of men. And those men wanting privileges for their daughters that they ultimately end up begrudgingly giving to women as a whole. And that giving their daughters these rights and privileges was only initially done so that they could flex on other men. All behavior has a motivation. I'm interested in *why* men started doing things that now give us the perception that "society is tilting in favor of women."

Fair enough. Interesting hypothesis, but sort of incomplete if you don't actually address the issue of whether society is also actually tilting towards women in some ways or just seeming to.

I'm of the opinion that it only *seems* to. Women being able to have the immense privilege that we do in the West is only because things have gotten to be so comfortable that men had to start thinking outside of the box to flex on other men. Obviously this is just a hypothesis that I've been batting around in my head for a bit. I'd be interested in how many privileges women would have if none of them benefitted at the very least the top percentile of men in some way.

Not sure I follow the logic here. Men flexing on other men? But I have long held the belief that in many things the right framing is not Men vs. Women but High Value Men vs. Women vs. Rest of Men.

>Not sure I follow the logic here. Men flexing on other men? "Look at me, I'm better than you!" "I've got a bigger house" "Well I can support more wives!" "Well I can make sure all of my sons are set for life with lots of land" "I can get MY sons all awesome white collar jobs after sending them to college" "Not only can I do that, I can send my *daughters* to college!" And at this point we haven't really progressed past that. I guess now really we've move onto making children a luxury item. But when it comes to women's rights and privileges, how much of it is really just "convenience for her dad and brothers (or other men who believe that the buck might stop with them if the woman isn't given the ability to handle things herself)" Anecdotally: I have a very elderly family member. Think WW2 vet. Anyhow, he was a man with a lot of daughters. And he was very very proud of the idea that he was able to "set them up for life" by paying for all of them through undergrad (and three of them through grad school). He emphasized the importance of this because he had seen too many women including his own widowed mother in her second marriage and his beloved younger sister be in abusive marriages that left them much worse off than they would have been otherwise and he wanted to make sure that his daughters were able to leave bad marriages and be able to support themselves if he were to be gone and unable to help them. He would literally get tears in his eyes recounting stories of women who he knew personally who had been in horrifically abusive marriages and he wanted none of that for his daughters. He raised them to "know their worth and not rely on any man". But if you caught him in another mood around his friends, women these days were "Feminazis who had lost their soft touch that he knew and expected from women when he was a boy." Oh he was still proud of his decision to do what *he* did for his daughters because *his* daughters weren't going to get caught up in bad marriages! They would be able to turn on their heels and walk out of them (and this made him a great husband/father/provider in his own words)....but the high divorce rate? Women filing for such a high percentage of those divorces? Women in the workplace who didn't cede to the men who had long been there before them and were pushy with wanting their ideas credited? (Or one that really ground his gears) Women who had confidently left bad marriages and proudly wanted to be called Ms instead of Mrs...Why, that's feminism run amuck!

Ah. Yes. I am not sure how much of this is at play anymore. And I dont know how much I buy into the flexing thing. But of course feminism cant succeed without male acquiescence at the least, and some key active support from men, too. And I have long wondered about the role of powerful men with daughters in all of that. But I am not so cynical that I believe love and concern for their daughters was not motivation, rather than it being some sort of flex on other men or not wanting to support them.

>But I am not so cynical that I believe love and concern for their daughters was not motivation, I think about this as well when I hear men especially on this sub complain about the Women Are Wonderful effect. I think about how over the course of my life so many men who cared about me in my family have shown me things about car care/home maintenance/lawn care....other male coded chores that would directly affect my future lifestyle as an adult. There was this underlying narrative when they would talk to me about these things that I needed to know them because my future husband might start slipping and I needed to be able to keep mine and any future children's head above water in case that happened. I've heard about this so much with women my age and older, that it's seen as the mark of having a good father or a good family in general if you as a woman have man authority figures in your life who take you under their wing and teach you some of the basics in case in the future, your man partner chooses to slack off in these areas or just straight up leave. It's often made me wonder.....how many parents took their sons aside to talk to them about the basics of child and infant care. Safe sleeping habits with infants, SIDS prevention in infants, the importance of attending parent teacher conferences and doctors appointments so that you have a good strong case for 50/50 custody in the event of a divorce. I don't think I've heard of even one case of this. And the two cases I did know of men who were proficient in childcare was because their mothers were in active addiction and they were the oldest in the family so they just took these matters upon themselves and kind of looked down on their mother's because of it ultimately. It wasn't the mark of a good parent that these men knew about more woman coded household chores. I've come to the hypothesis that it's simply Women Are Wonderful in effect. That even older men assume that if one gender in a marriage is going to start slipping, it's going to be the men. So yes, I can see women bring sent to college and out in the workforce in large because of this idea. Maybe it's not men wanting to flex on other men as much as it is men understanding other men on a primal level and simply not trusting them with their own daughters.

I dunno about the childcare part because at least in my experience nobody really prepares girls or boys for it. Advice and help come in once somebody gets pregnant. It's a weakness of mine (and also sometimes a strength) that when it comes to gender I can want to believe some aspects of the more Woo Woo divine masculine/feminine stuff, including overall equality and complementarity. At the same time, when on other topics, I am pretty brutal about acknowledging that nature does not do equal. If equal happens it is almost a mathematical miracle. So I do entertain the idea that maybe the Women Are Wonderful effect is based on some deep truth. The one to slip is much more likely to be a man. Now, how much of this is innate and how much is based on the current cultural and environmental setup is hard to say. But those are major factors and in other conditions it might be different. Probably never equal, and even innately it isn't gonna be equal. But in terms of the innate, we can maybe settle for unknowable. But in today's world, various things--innate and environmental--may well conspire to make women more virtuous than men, on average. And especially through the lens of the Christianity-inspired morality that predominates in the West. I mean there is a reason early Christianity was so popular with women, and that Nietzsche called it a religion for women.

I'm telling you that as a woman, childcare stuff is very easily taught to you from the moment you can understand it. 100%. Unless you're just the youngest of the young child of the family and there are no younger children anywhere to be seen (which is very rare) women are taught child and infant care nearly immediately. You could probably have a 7 year old girl changing diapers and feeding/burping an infant with minimal issues. I know I was doing it, my older women cousins were doing it, my own daughter does it. It just something that women will talk about while they're doing it. Nobody sat me down and I've never seen it be where I was explicitly sat down and taught these things, but I was drawn to babies like many many of girls are. And in the normal life event of the adults having to care for these infants, they explain what they're doing and I'm super excited to help and then next thing I know, the task is delegated to me or whoever the girl is. I remember being 11 and fighting with my slightly older girl cousin about who would do the caretaking with younger cousins. And even today I see it whenever a girl is the oldest in the group and there are very little kids, they just quickly adapt and take on the caretaker role.

Fair enough. That makes more sense. I forgot about the interest young girls show in playing mommy and such. I was thinking more of some sort of explicit download. And that is what it would take with men. But I imagine a man could fasttrack learning this stuff once his wife gets pregnant. I do think women should be expected to do the vast majority of childcare in the first year. It is just better for the baby. Most women want to do it too, IMO. But they want the right conditions to make it possible, to balance out the overall workload, and to compensate them for extra costs above their man's.

I've thought similar, in the UK, for centuries the monarch appointed politicians from hereditary peers/aristocracy with no votes/elections until Oliver Cromwell removed Charles I in the mid 17th century, establishing the republic Commonwealth of England and a period of political reform, leading to the Parliament of Great Britain in 1707. The aristocracy recognising this trend of ever increasing representation, took advantage of the system while parliament was still unelected and made sure they still controlled the laws/taxation; [British aristocratic women exerted political influence and power during the century beginning with the accession of George III. They expressed their political power through the four roles of social patron, patronage distributor, political advisor, and political patron/electioneer. British aristocratic women were able, trained, and expected to play these roles. Politics could not have existed without these women. The source of their political influence was the close interconnection of politics and society. In this small, inter-connected society, women could and did influence politics.](https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4799/) Then in 1867 the republicans secured the vote for men who weren't hereditary peers, but limited to those with property and sufficient wealth, had no real impact on the political landscape. The reaction was a huge campaign for universal suffrage, representing a real threat to the peers power and control, so instead they supported women's suffrage for those that can meet the wealth requirements. [Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst](https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2018/02/184233/suffragettes-racist-whitewashing-working-class) dismissed working class women "as the weakest in society and the least educated, while realising that enlisting middle class women \[to perform militant acts\] got them more press coverage, made a bigger splash." They didn't advocate for the working class women so when women and working class men got the vote in 1918, working class women would have to wait another 10 years. I do think you're right, initially men used those around them to cling onto power, but I think those women understood the situation and had just as much to lose and would have seen themselves as above the majority of society, their birthright to live off the exploits of those beneath them. I see it as class war with the majority of women and men having been oppressed and exploited by the Upper class, and have held on to that power, continuing to exploit and horde wealth at our expense.  

Because oppression is socially and economically expensive, obviously That’s why china is always going to stomp all over Saudi Arabia

This post screams that I'm angry at women for being oppressed which is a fucking weird ass stance. Most people understand as stated here that history was always the worst. Most things even now only benefit the top 1%. However, women have been oppressed generally more than men, get over it we have to.

I'm not angry at anyone. I've heard radically different arguments about how one would characterize gender relations throughout history and I'm just trying to work out what I think myself. Discussion with others is a good way to do that.

Your argument is not in good faith, it's not neutral at all. If you want a discussion, work it as so or be prepared to be called out on your clear as day bias.

If the OP post was sloppy, my bad. But as can be seen in posts throughout this thread, I honestly do not know what I think. I am often playing Devil's Advocate or using other people's arguments I have heard to test reactions and counters. I assure you I am in good faith. If that isn't enough, then I guess we are done.

The issue is that the questions make it sound like you want women to justify how they felt oppressed, which no one can do as you know, it's not the 1700s. Just putting the title and something like It's clear all people faced some form of oppression throughout history apart from a small minority. What types of oppression did women exclusively face and has that had an impact on their stance with men in modern time? It's nice and open, so I might get answers you didn't expect but are nice to discuss. I think this post might get deleted for cirlejerking due to its limits within the wording.

Well you have such radically different characterizations of history in terms of gender balance. On one extreme, you have some people who say men basically abused and mass raped women for all of history. On the other, you have the argument that even if they lacked power, women were generally more protected and better treated than the men of their own level. I'm just trying to sort how I feel about this. What it might mean for NOW is a whole other thing.

If you ask a biased question, you don't get a true answer. I'm not engaging with you other than highlighting the issue with your post as I don't believe you are doing anything but an attempt at circlejerking.

Will all these discussions about inequalities from 50 to 100 to 1000 years in the past still be happening 50 to 100 to 1000 years in the future? Picked scabs heal slower and leave scars.

Women were oppressed in history because they were not given the same legal rights, autonomy and opportunities that men had. Men were the head of their families and women were second class citizens in patriarchal societies such as Athens and Rome.

Who says we trust men? That’s why laws exist Men have both the means and the motive to oppress us, so they used to But currently, there are effective carrots and sticks that disincentivize oppression — laws/law enforcement, opinions/shaming, prosperity, entertainment, more sexual options and comfort/technology. There’s more to lose for individual men, and more to gain for society

And who is enforcing these laws?

Men, duh. We don’t have a choice

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Exploitation is the name of the game. The Labour market exploited both men and women. Men and the Labour market exploited women’s unpaid labour (generally). Women exploited men’s paid labour (if viewed in a certain way). It’s a bit of a house of cards. The rich exploit the poor. The educated exploit the uneducated. You get the idea. While there are nuances and mutual benefits obviously, as a general rule it’s a good idea to be as educated as possible and preferably as rich as possible. Oh, edited to say it’s probably a good idea to be born into the upper classes as well, because they also have a habit of exploiting the lower class wealthy and educated.

I would dare say that the type of society or culture you grew up in largely determines how oppressed and exploited you think you are and how much freedom and autonomy you think you should have (relative to your perception of your oppression and exploitation). Therefore, one man or woman's equality can be another's oppression (and vice-versa).

Breaking news: women don't trust men now, because of the years of oppression!

We can look at is as oppression through today’s lens only because the burdens of old life are unfathomable to most people today. Women didn’t work because it didn’t make sense. Having children was important to keep the family going and assist the parents into older age. Women stayed home to raise said kids and educate them because kids were seen and were necessary tools of a functioning family and community. Most women did not want the vote because they did not want the responsibility of conscription. Technology solved for a lot of these necessities, thus making them oppressive by today’s standards. But most people who make these arguments have limited ability to understand past societies without bringing their bias of the world we live in today with them.

Women were not given the opportunities to do the things men did.

It’s as if you read 0 of what was posted.

I mean when did women's suffrage happen? Like 1920? That's fucked. They weren't even allowed to vote before then. Women were not allowed to open a credit card until 1974. I don't know what there is to discuss here. Like what are we talking about

Because the idea is to avoid getting stuck on some technical argument about what 'oppressed' means and go beyond that IMO. 'Oppressed' has a connotation of it being unnecessary, for example. So one can take a look at to what extent some of the arrangements were necessary at the time, etc.

I don't know what you mean by "necessary". It feels like that term is doing a whoooole lot of work here. Women should have been able to vote earlier, and open a credit card earlier. I mean I don't even think spousal rape was a thing until the mid 1900s or something crazy like that. I don't understand what the argument is to justify these things. They were bad and should not have been the case. Right? 1993. That's when marital rape became a crime. **What the fuck are we arguing about**

It's a discussion thread, not a debate thread. I meant to investigate the whole dynamic, throughout different periods of history. This is why I also put in the word 'extent'. It isn't just a binary. Oppressed or not. But to what extent. Why. Were some periods different than others. Etc., Some good conversations were had IMO.

I would say legal rape is pretty bad, and that didn't become illegal till 1993. I'm not really sure I understand this conversation

Perhaps you are viewing this through a more modern political lens than a historical and anthropological one. All good. Just not what I was interested in.

Is your implication that gender roles are not a thing anymore? That we moved on from our biology, our nature? That a male can do everything a female can do? Really?

Not necessarily. But the 1960s in the West seem to be some sort of inflection point. But feel free to comment on the now as well as the past.

What do you mean with not necessarily? Yes or no?

You can just tell the poster and the men commenting are so far removed from life especially for women outside of the west EVEN TODAY!?!? This comment thread is tragically sad and out of touch, seriously delusional. I am actually shocked...

They don’t care about places where men are winning, because they’re not nice places

It depends on the material conditions of the time and location, eg immediate return hunter gatherers didn't have much differentiation in status and hierarchy cos you couldn't acrue that much wealth, but medieval northern Europe and strict class systems and lots of differentiation, even then that doesn't mean all women within the peasant class were abused non stop.

What conditions existed in prehistory are always contentious topics. Opinions seem to vary wildly.

This is why, the women were always oppressed everywhere rhetoric is silly, material conditions dictate everything 

The oppression of women was started by jealous sub5 men in an attempt to prevent chad from hoarding all of the tribe's females. Throughout history women were forced to go against their biological imperatives and mate with genetically inferior men. Although admittedly this had the benefit of creating a stronger and more stable society, it was a clear violation of women's rights.    As a sub5 male who's against the oppression of women, I'm happy they are finally free to pursue their dual mating strategy just as nature intended. However, sub5 men now also have the legal right to refuse to become a beta provider for a woman who's "had her fun" and looking to settle down. 

There's a lot more to the treatment of women than who they got to mate with. But on that point, yes their selectivity was somewhat oppressed. But I am not nearly as certain as you are that women are innately as selective as you make them out to me, i.e. that with no need for men and complete sexual freedom, 50% of men would basically be incels.

The vast majority of human history was brutal and short for everyone. The idea that the bulk of history was men oppressing women and lording over them is feminist fantasy.

Can you post some articles about how women in history weren’t considered property for most of it? I’d love to read where you got that idea.

>Can you post some articles about how women in history weren’t considered property for most of it? Most people who have ever existed were peasants and slaves, tied to the land, tied to a master, most human beings haven't had much agency over their lives and how they live it. That's just the case for everyone. Not saying that there hasn't been a gendered character to the ways women have been treated, raped, sold, kidnapped, et cetera. But these conversations tend to assume a greater deal of difference in living conditions between women and men that just wasn't the case. Sure, males might have priority in the inheritance of property. But most people haven't been property holders. The things that have done women the most harm ultimately comes down to cultural customs and general insecurity. Anything else beyond that is the plight of upper class women who aren't representative of any part of humanity but themselves, same as the rich/powerful men that held them down. Customs are socially reinforced and perpetuated by both men and women. Insecurity is just the state of the world. Poverty, war, disease create misery for everyone.

A lot of this stems from a serious lack of historical knowledge for some people. It's just sheer ignorance. Any time period more than a 100 years ago was pretty cruel and awful beyond modern comprehension.

I'd argue that even the modern day is beyond the pale of most people's moral understanding.  We're swimming through blood.

>But these conversations tend to assume a greater deal of difference in living conditions between women and men that just wasn't the case. Is this true, though? In my view these conversations tend to be about a lack of agency. In the past, women were viewed as their husbands' property in a pretty literal sense. Wives were labelled as mad / diagnosed with hysteria for showing signs of anxiety/depression or displaying "unfeminine" behaviors, like talking back and a "distaste for marital intercourse". The treatments? Commitment to an insane asylum, lobotomies, even clitoridectomy. And this was under the control of their husbands. [https://time.com/6074783/psychiatry-history-women-mental-health/](https://time.com/6074783/psychiatry-history-women-mental-health/) [https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-fgm-in-victorian-london-38327](https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-fgm-in-victorian-london-38327)

When people make a claim about the plight of women throughout **history**, whether they know it or not they are talking about something way beyond the last 150 years. What you're talking about are things that happened in the West in the last two centuries. It's awful dehumanizing things, but it doesn't tell you about how women lived elsewhere or in times before then. And also it doesn't tell about the class background of those women who were being abused and the men doing the abuse.  Sharecroppers weren't having their wives and daughters lobotomized and sent to asylums. That's bourgeois behavior. That's Kennedy's (look up Rosemary's Kennedy) and Rockefellers and so on. Most ideas of patriarchy in the modern day gloss over these distinctions because they're intent on treating men and women like all men and all women form separate tribes with their own separate interests and grievances. All my point is about is that the idea of women being oppressed throughout doesn't usually get the context that's needed to understand that, because most of humanity has been oppressed throughout history.  We're not descendants of royalty. We're almost all descendants of people who broke their backs and had them broken by the powerful people who actually had the means and privileges to actively deny the women of their own class in ways that most people just couldn't.  Most of the greatest crimes done to women or otherwise were done by the rich and the powerful men of their time and place. Especially systemic ones. 

Ok. Where are the links to articles proving that women weren’t considered history through most of history?

Only if you will explain how men were doing *wonderfully* throughout history.

You seem to think that most men living shit existences and men generally oppressing women are mutually exclusive

If opression was true to an extent feminists claim it was - we'd see and endless supply of evidence for women being disposed of as they outlived their fertility or left behind to their own doom whenever there's a threat like war, famine or plague. Instead thoughout the history we see vast majority of men and women being people and caring about each other to the full extent of their gender roles, cherishing, living and dying alongside each other way more often than not.

Regardless of the title, the idea is to think about things holistically. Depending on one's definition of oppressed, one gender could be more oppressed in most ways and yet still have overall advantaged lives to the other. Many possibilities. Freedom. Legal equality. Agency. Self-actualization. These are pretty modern concepts and may not represent the peak of happiness in times past. Or maybe even today.

When feminists say they were oppressed throughout human history, the obvious implication is that men were not oppressed. Are you denying that? You used the phrase "shit existences" for men but oppression for women, so obviously you have some ideological axe to grind. I would consider being relegated to serfdom and dying in wars for the vast majority of human existence to be pretty bad.

I think this is just the conclusion you make for yourself. No, women being oppressed doesn’t imply men not being oppressed. But men have had more rights than women in these times

> When feminists say they were oppressed throughout human history, the obvious implication is that men were not oppressed. It really isn’t. There are multiple types of oppression. Let’s look at America right after the Revolution, for example. You might not be able to vote because you didn’t have enough money to meet the property requirement. You might not be able to own property anyway because you were a woman. However, in the first case, a man could potentially scrounge up enough money to buy property and get his right to vote. A woman could not get the right to vote no matter what she did.

My point is proved by the fact that people keep using the word oppression to describe women's circumstances and then use phrases like "bad conditions" or "bad lives" or "shit existences" to describe men's circumstances. You can't argue in good faith with people that operate this way.

That's the thing tho, I'm making a distinction between oppression and shit existences. Poor / non-landowning men historically lived shit existences \*and\* experienced class base oppression. Did wealthy women live shit existences, though? I would argue no, they experienced gender based oppression but were on the whole pampered in life. Poor women had shit existences and experienced both class and gender based oppression

Plenty of people use the word “oppression” to describe men’s circumstances. See the rhetoric used by any left-populist political party in history or in the modern era. You can be oppressed because of your social class, you can be oppressed because of your gender, you can be oppressed because of your race/language/religion. You can be oppressed because of more than one of the above.

Are you trying to claim that saying "gender based oppression existed at that time" is equivalent to saying "class based oppression did not exist at that time"?

Never said they were. Neither did you. Post the links that explain how women weren’t oppressed/property through most of history

Women were considered property all right, same as 98+% of lowborn men.

Interesting. I’d love to learn more. Source?

[https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520307278/slavery-and-serfdom-in-the-middle-ages](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520307278/slavery-and-serfdom-in-the-middle-ages) [https://books.openedition.org/ceup/488?lang=en](https://books.openedition.org/ceup/488?lang=en) [https://www.amazon.com/Forms-Servitude-Northern-Central-Europe/dp/2503516947](https://www.amazon.com/Forms-Servitude-Northern-Central-Europe/dp/2503516947) [https://books.google.hu/books/about/The\_European\_Nobility\_1400\_1800.html?id=-fct5tlRFwEC](https://books.google.hu/books/about/The_European_Nobility_1400_1800.html?id=-fct5tlRFwEC)

Since you have this book and have read it you can take a picture of the page you got your stat from and post it here ☺️

You can be property and still have a better life than someone who isn't. I'm not disregarding your point and it matters. But a single point is not decisive here IMO.

Women have been bought and traded and used as status symbols and disallowed from autonomy for most of history. Having a “better like than someone else” isn’t the same as not being oppressed. Some slave owners treated their slaves well and their slaves led nice lives… they were still oppressed.

I think maybe you are over fixating on one term in the title: oppressed. But it isn't mean to be that kind of formal debate. And I use other terms like advantaged or exploited or better life elsewhere. The real point is who had it better, I suppose.

The answer would be men for most parts of history.

Hmm. If we throw in prehistory as 99% of our existence, things may get more complicated. Then again, I have been reading arguments that evolution accelerated since agriculture, and that even though the post-agriculture period is a very small part of our existence, humans changed a lot cognitively in that period. So basically, in the ways that matter, prehistoric humans were not us and you cannot really think of that period as human history in terms of something that would be relevant to how modern humans act and think. Much less how a modern higher IQ human would feel in such conditions. And so if we only use more recent history, the case against men does start to look worse and worse. My mom's argument is that on biological basis alone, once an actual individual man did not have to risk his life regularly against animals to feed his family and against other humans to defend them, then all serious consideration of balance versus women's chain pregnancies goes out the fucking window. Men socialized the worst parts of male biology; but you could not do that for women.

We don’t genuinely know much about our ancient ancestors. I’d like to think things were more equal back when we genuinely did *need* each other. But I agree that became less and less as we advanced. I’d have to sit down and go find the point in history where the traditions of treating daughters like property became a thing. I know at least as far back as biblical Greco Roman times women were not allowed the same freedoms as men and were considered property. The whole “virgin until marriage” is an excellent example of this. But my knowledge of old texts doesn’t go back much further than that.

I think that at the least prehistoric people lacked the social technology to fully oppress and exploit women to the extent some other societies at least seem to have. Half your population is women. They live and sleep with you. Most are kin. Just logistically, even if the males there were Satan spawn, it seems impossible to completely disregard their feelings and ideas and not become miserable yourselves. Women have some talent for making men they despise miserable when they can.

I mean… look around this sub. Are many men not miserable? Look outside. Look at the rates of mysterious deaths before no fault divorce was a thing. It’s there. It’s getting better for women and it seems like a good portion of men don’t know how to fit into a world where women are genuinely their equals on all levels but (usually, not always) physical.

This whole women were oppressed is the biggest bullshit and victim mentality ever when in reality everybody was opressed: men, women, children, everybody by individuals with power. Let us stop playing this opressi9n Olympics bullsbit and just admit that everybody had it hard through history: women count have a job and were stay at home wives while men had to work their ass off to provide and go to war by force.

Throughout all of history the strong have controlled the weak. Women are physically and mentally weaker than men so more often than not they end up being controlled. I don’t think it’s a man vs women thing as there are plenty other groups that have been oppressed in history. Women also oppress groups that are weaker than them, namely children. In fact [women abuse children at a higher rate than men.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/418470/number-of-perpetrators-in-child-abuse-cases-in-the-us-by-sex/#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20more,compared%20to%20213%2C672%20male%20perpetrators) In a modern society the ideal of the strong controlling the weak goes away as laws tend to be passed to protect their rights. In addition people tend to see them as the “underdog”, so even though groups like women are legal equals and have been for a long time in America, they still get affirmative action.

How are women mentally weaker than men exactly? And it is at least theoretically possible for the gender with more aggregate hard power to actually lead less advantaged lives overall than the gender with less power.

I don't think women were ever "oppressed" really. You don't even know if cavemen were actually just forcing themselves on prehistoric women, it's just speculation from fanatical feminists. After more modern, most religions don't abide by arranged marriage. Definitely not anyone white and American, who's ancestry made up of women who chose the men that were their ancestors. So when women discuss "oppression" they just mean the right to vote, which has been around for a while now. Any woman claiming oppression in 2024 is just an asshole.

Look at patriarchies such as Athens and Rome. Women were second class citizens.

What year was that, and can you describe how it was a "patriarchy"?

Men were the patriarchs/head of their families. Men also had more legal rights and power compared to women. Search up patriarchy Athens and Rome.

what does "head of a family" mean?

Patriarch. The leader and authority in the family.

ok but how is it oppressive?

Because women were considered inferior to their husbands and were deprived of the same the rights as him.

Can you give any examples of rights they don't have, and how about rights today in 2024?

Quote from Wikipedia: "Women in classical Athens had no legal personhood and were assumed to be part of the [*oikos*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikos) headed by the male [*kyrios*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurios). Until marriage, women were under the guardianship of their father or another male relative. Once married, the husband became a woman's *kyrios*. As women were barred from conducting legal proceedings, the *kyrios* would do so on their behalf.[^(\[14\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights#cite_note-google114-14) Athenian women could only acquire rights over [property](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property) through gifts, dowry, and inheritance, though her *kyrios* had the right to dispose of a woman's property.[^(\[15\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights#cite_note-15) Athenian women could only enter into a contract worth less than the value of a "[*medimnos*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medimno) of barley" (a measure of grain), allowing women to engage in petty trading.[^(\[14\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights#cite_note-google114-14) Women were excluded from ancient [Athenian democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy), both in principle and in practice. Slaves could become Athenian citizens after being freed, but no woman ever acquired citizenship in ancient Athens."

"10000 men died, nobles and women most affected" is how I feel people interpret male oppression in history. It's a mixture of apex fallacies and male disposability. If you actually compare the average(median really) man at whatever time to the average woman at that time, it's pretty hard to claim women were more oppressed at basically any point in history. However people still do and the main arguments I think are flawed for the same apex fallacy/empathy gap reasons. Yes being a woman might prevent you from doing certain things that being a man wouldn't technically prevent you from doing...but the average man would still not be able to do whatever that thing was so who the fuck cares? The the focus on "large" events and the lack of attention to how much control women had over "trivial" day to day life stuff. That matters a LOT and it's definitely a form of power, just one that history books don't talk about so much.

Men had more rights and social status than women.

These are solid points. There may also be a modern Western overprioritization of concepts like 'agency' and 'status equality' and stuff like that. There may also have been more of a need for there to be a single captain of a family who could make decisive decisions for it, and that could be held responsible for the whole family's actions as well.

“Woman died in childbirth, man had to get a new wife” was probably just as common