MRA tells me, "Women have never been oppressed,"--any opinions?

Revoran · 2013-07-04T17:32:18+00:00

You won't find many MRAs claiming "women never faced any hardship ever in all of history", but you'll probably find a lot of MRAs saying something along the lines of: "both men and women faced hardship throughout history, but often in different ways".

When the word "oppression" is used it gives the connotation that women were oppressed by men and that they were the only ones oppressed.

It's also worth noting that throughout history class-based oppression is just as prevalent as gender differences.

At any rate, I agree that it's important to look at exactly what happened during certain periods of history rather than make generalizations.

For the record, I don't think feminism has never been valid, but I do think that feminism is

Not the solution to men's rights issues (because feminism is focused on women's issues) and,
In many cases modern feminists and mainstream feminist groups attack men's rights and hinder progress on men's rights issues.

2013-07-04T12:24:09+00:00

Lets take ideology out of it for a second; MRA or feminist.. you should be able to see the raw cold fact that the issue is a complex one.

Many people - ideology notwithstanding - make the assumption that women were brutally oppressed throughout history and that it is much better today. They see time as a linear progression from oppression to emancipation.

This isn't the whole story. Women had benefits in the past and this is undeniable. They were also oppressed in some ways, but so were men. Generally speaking, men had duties and obligations and women had expectations foisted upon them; but they were (on the whole) cared for.

Go back to our hunter gatherer days, and you'll see inequality in favour of women there. Men had to hunt and risk their lives for the good of the tribe. Sure, women cooked and prepared food and watched over the children; but I don't think you can seriously say that it was more risky than fighting lions or bears or whatever other beasts.

Skip forward to the Victorian era. A woman could have financial independence from her husband, and he would have no legal right claim any kind of ownership. A man could be punished with a whipping in the village if he abused his wife. He could be jailed for not paying the tax on the money that she earned through her own financial interests. He could be jailed for being a drunk, whereas excuses and tolerance were the order of the day for situations where it was the woman who was the drunk.

Women didn't work the tough jobs. They didn't stomp around in urine to dye clothing. They didn't build castles, bridges, or walls, risking losing their limbs. They didn't fight to protect their tribes. Now you could say that they were not allowed. But I'd say they didn't even try. Women only became interested in suffrage, feminism, and emancipation, when they already had a pretty good quality of life: indeed the vast majority of the founders of womens suffrage were middle class. The lower class women were still washing clothes and looking after babies.

In short: In our history life was oppressive for both men and women, but men bore the brunt of the physical results of this.

DerpaNerb · 2013-07-04T13:26:23+00:00

Define oppressed.

I mean, if "not being able to vote" counts as oppression, then yes women were oppressed.

I think the problem though, is that when people say "women were oppressed"... the context is that they were the ONLY ones oppressed, or that relative to males, they were much more oppressed.

So if we change the question from "were women oppressed" to "where women oppressed relatively/compared to men"... then I think I would actually answer no.

Yes women didn't have the right to vote, but neither did most men. It wasn't a long period at all between the time that all men (aka not land-owners/rich people) got the right to vote and all women did... and obviously men's right to vote came with that whole "get drafted and go die on a beach somewhere in europe" thing.

If you want to talk about whether each gender was able to work. Then yeah, it's true that women were almost forced to be stay-at-home moms. But saying that implies that men had a choice NOT to work if they so wished. I don't know about you, but if my choices were working in a coal mine or staying at home and cooking food and watching children while my SO risks their life to make money.... I'd pick the latter EVERY time.

And I think you'll find that with almost everything. Peoples lives were (and in many cases still are) shitty in the past... unless you were insanely rich. Men and women were treated differently yes, but to call one objectively better, when neither contained any element of choice... is a completely ridiculous statement to make.

As always, feminism only ever looks at the women's perspective.... and they've somehow managed to create this story where men were always living the high-life, and that it's only women's roles that need to be expanded. Compare the "acceptability" of a career-woman vs a stay-at-home dad... and I'll think you see that's full of shit.

Ted8367 · 2013-07-04T14:27:12+00:00

He talks as if women have never played any part in the physical work that needed to be done, which is simply not true (as I understand it, women have worked alongside men in the fields, factories and cottage industries since at least the Middle Ages, and I would imagine considerably before then).

Yes; back then it was all muscle power and physical work. The question then becomes what is the most efficient way to allocate tasks. Note that men and women differ physically.

The big difference is that women give birth and men don't. Also, back then - and now, in poor third world countries - you needed to birth and bring up high numbers of children so that enough survived to adulthood to keep society going. It was a full-time job for a woman; best done at home; and it was physically strenuous there, too.

That left the other jobs for men. The division of labor came from economic circumstances, that "oppressed" everyone, both men and women.

Except to a limited extent in societies with a weak rule of law where armed attackers were a very real and regular threat, there is no reason why physical strength should make it ‘natural’ that one portion of society should have greater legal rights and cultural freedoms over another.

Where do you think this "rule of law" came from? In the absence of physical force, do you think that societies would be peaceful and thieves would not exist? And who was going to police the enforcers? "Attackers", and not only human ones, "were a very real and regular threat" everywhere, and that's somewhat true even today. It's "natural" that one portion of society - the portion that's built for exercising physical force and - when it comes down to it - is more expendable should specialize in defense and attack. Along with such "greater legal rights and cultural freedoms" - although, when you think about it, that's a funny way to put it - came the equivalent responsibility to restrain that force from women and children. You always seem to miss out that part of it.

It seems to have been a common view that women were, as well as physically weaker than men, also mentally and emotionally weaker. Women were barred from professions that didn’t require physical strength (e.g. legal professionals, doctors, etc.). I asked him how his thesis explained this discrimination.

They were too busy bringing up children.

Anyway, those old societies weren't stuffed full of doctors and legal professionals. It was more like thatchers and fullers, threshers and tanners. Things are different today.

Talking about changes being a natural result is to miss the entire point. We can talk about trends in society, but we shouldn’t ignore the actual living, breathing humans that fought for these changes.

Technology changed it all. The old way wasn't efficient any more. We had to change too; it would happen whether feminists "fought" or not. And I don't think we've got it right.

2013-07-20T16:29:45+00:00

I don't really think this is up for debate. In some cultures (Arab for one) being a woman means that you can be raped and abused with near impunity (still happens today. One case with a Scandinavian businesswoman being jailed for being a rape victim just made the news). Hundreds of years ago, women were severely at a disadvantage in almost every society.

If you guys wonder why you're not taken seriously, the fact that this is up for debate is why MRAers are maligned.

Deansdale · 2013-07-04T15:47:04+00:00

Problem is, nowadays the question "were women oppressed?" is synonymous with "did women have hardships?", and that is why almost everyone answers with an enthusiastic 'yes'. If you ask further, 99% of the time people refer to the right to vote. On global average women got the universal right to vote 10 years later than men, I'd say that's not much of a difference on a historical scale - but of course feminists depict things like it was a centuries long fight against teh evil men. (In fact many of their most vocal opponents were women, like Queen Victoria.) And of course men had to earn their individual voting rights by conscripting while women got it for free, so things are not black&white here either.

What is more important is thinking in broader terms. Men and women had different rights back then, and if you only look at specific details you will always found "inequalities". Yeah, men had the right to vote a bit earlier, but at the same time the husband were punished for the crimes of his wife. That's a plus for women, isn't it? Feminists keep eerily quiet about this though.

Women had apples and men had oranges. Feminists only focus on oranges and keep on repeating that women didn't have any. That's dishonest to say the least, but people are too ignorant to investigate things for themselves and are susceptible to believe anything. That's why "everyone knows" women were oppressed.

If you think about it, this feminist kind of oppression doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

It implies that husbands, fathers, brothers and sons were so cruel that they willfully harmed their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. It's stupid. And psychologically, sociologically, evolutionally impossible.
It implies that men gathered somewhere to decide on this, otherwise it wouldn't have worked. How can men oppress women if a large percent of them doesn't even know they should? It's the silliest conspiracy theory ever. How was this "knowledge" transferred from generation to generation in secret? How come none of us heard of it from our fathers? How come nobody ever talked about it in public? There wasn't a single man in history who was brave enough to confront this injustice?
This imaginary patriarchy didn't confer any privileges on 99% of men. Most men were poor, had to work all their lives and they had to support their family, including their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters - which they did. They didn't sit back to enjoy oppressing their loved ones, quite the contrary, it was them who worked the hardest to keep them safe and well fed. History is full with men's sacrifice for women.

I could go on but you should get the idea by now.

Mr_Rivers · 2013-07-04T16:47:46+00:00

oppression as a word can mean a million different things.

I think you covered many of the arguments myself and other MRA's make quite well. However, to say that women were NEVER been oppressed is intellectually lazy, just as it would be intellectually lazy for a feminist to say men have never been oppressed.

GirlWritesWhat recently made a very interesting video highlighting the points far more eloquently than I could:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eqYEVYZgdo

I know it's a lengthy one, but she, in my opinion lays the theories of the MRM out incredibly well.

2013-07-04T20:30:21+00:00

Everyone except royalty was opressed. I don't think the <1% of non-opressed people being male means women were opressed that much more than men when men were the ones dying in the fields more often. That is probably much more significant than our modern draft. The modern sense of liberty we have didn't exist. If I've learned anything, it is that you have to feel opressed to be opressed.

Some weirdo living in alaska by themselves probably has a lower living standard than someone in an opressive society when it comes down to it. It really depends which part of history and where in the world you look at. Philosophically, if your freedom means more than your livelihood, then you could say women were opressed. I doubt they would agree with you though. They chose to divvy the rights and responsibilities out of the same bag and chose what they did because it worked. You will find what you are looking for anywhere.

If you were on family feud and had to think of what qualities would be associated with being a second-class citizen the answers would be exactly how society, namely the government (one of the more quantifiable sources of opression) treats men. Arrested more often. Harsher penalties for the same crime. Legal bias against them, none for them. Expected to do manual labor. When you turn around and try to acknowledge that, it sounds like crazy-talk.

Felisha232 · 2013-11-27T01:03:49+00:00

This belief that women have never being oppressed was also mention by girlwriteswhat. She's obviously wrong. Any historian or anyone who studied some measure of history will tell you otherwise. She says such nonsense so as to further propagate the existence of avfm and undermine feminism.

Simply put, women have always being oppressed in one form or another, whether it's by religion, patriarchy or 1000 years of foot binding in China, there's always being some form of subjugation where females are resorted to little more than reproductive cattle.

Yet excuses anti-fems make 'Well men have being oppressed in war!' blah blah blah. Yes I know that. But they've being oppressed by OTHER MEN, not women. And the whole 'dying for women' is bullshit. They're dying for their property. Should a younger, prettier, healthier girl come along, how many men do you think gave up their old saggy wives if they could afford it? Men have died for the beauty of women, not women themselves. This is just more attempts to glorify men by the manosphere so as to further undermine feminism.

sillymod · 2013-07-04T13:01:49+00:00

Are you sure they were a true men's rights activist activist [sic]?

/s

JohnPeel · 2013-07-04T13:49:34+00:00

Women not being able to vote wasn't universal.

In the UK for example a woman could vote if she owned property. However, if a woman became married she had to surrender the property rights to her husband. So a rich woman could get by without marrying. Some like to claim the social repercussions for this were severe but they are overstated.

Also it was very common for a widowed woman to inherit her husband's estate. Considering that the women almost always outlived the men this left a lot of rich women.

This is a fact you will have a hard time Googling, I found that out because a historian told me. And a woman historian at that.

Regardless it's pretty irrelevant whether women were historically oppressed, as we could argue that point forever. I mean at what point should the payback stop, if such a payback must exist? Forever? Until every man is dead? Within a few decades there will be no man or woman alive born where woman had legal disadvantages relative to men.

literallyschmiteraly · 2013-07-04T13:45:47+00:00

I agree with it in the sense that women as a class have never really been oppressed by men as a class or more than men as a class. We are oppressed, and so are men, by biology, fate, enemy tribes, psychopaths and our own mortality. We have to come to terms with that, in my opinion, as a team. It's only the luxuries of prosperity that allow us to be so destructive of the team that is marriage. For most of human history, it's been essential to survival.

avantvernacular · 2013-07-05T13:40:16+00:00

To say that no women were every oppressed is ridiculous. To say that no men where ever oppresses is ridiculous.

I think the best description of the historical potion on gender based oppression is: while there are obvious and substantial fluctuations specific to individual cultures, regions, and time periods for those cultures and regions, when considering the aggregate experience of human existence thus far, there is insufficient evidence to show that any one gender was substantially more or less "oppressed" than the other.

If you have other questions or would like to explore this further, I would be happy to do so.

NemosHero · 2013-07-04T18:39:09+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Eryemil · 2013-07-04T13:30:13+00:00

My views is that women have never been oppressed by men. Both men and women were used by society in different ways so while I agree with his reasoning it is not necessary for the reasons he gave.

2013-07-05T05:19:44+00:00

Of course women have been oppressed through history... As men have!

In my opinion, the catastrophic fallacy of feminist theory is treating women and men as classes on their own right. This has required a silly oversimplification of history and a complete disregard of all the nuance that comes with all analysis of the past.

If I had to make a broad representation of my opinion on this it would something on these lines: Through history, the reproductive ability of women has been treasured and protected, both through the sacrifice of males and through a limited freedom of the women themselves (often in exchange of a greater safety). The drive to pass on a legacy and having children was above and beyond any whim and personal desire and many societies (specially primitive ones) were very aware of this fact, so they created social structures to make it happen.

But again, this would be a view without nuance and specifics, so of little value.

Quarkster · 2013-07-04T15:32:23+00:00

Except to a limited extent in societies with a weak rule of law where armed attackers were a very real and regular threat, there is no reason why physical strength should make it ‘natural’ that one portion of society should have greater legal rights and cultural freedoms over another.

When that strength gives you the capability to push a plow it leads to a natural division of labor, which in turn leads to different societal roles. I won't argue what should have happened, but I don't think you're seeing the whole picture.

Mytecacc · 2013-07-04T12:21:54+00:00

Well, there wasn't some scheme or conspiracy to make women spend most of their lives pregnant or breast feeding or both, that's just what happens without technology. There was no scheme or conspiracy to make getting the stuff men did near impossible when either pregnant or breast feeding for most of your life.

At one point more recently women that married had to retire, in order to spread a limited number of jobs around the families, as soon as technology made a surplus of jobs, the men in charge started moving women in to wage slave system.

andynewin · 2013-07-05T21:47:06+00:00

Sauce?

Demonspawn · 2013-07-04T13:20:10+00:00

[permanently deleted]

tacobacalao · 2013-07-04T13:27:26+00:00

If you believe that the contrary is true i.e. women were systematically oppressed please specify when and where did that take place so your assumption might be addressed.

philinspirit · 2013-07-04T16:10:20+00:00

In my mind, in the contemporary US the chief form that oppression of women takes is internalized oppression. Women's internalized oppression is exhibited in many of the women I know in their inability to assert themselves, in their passivity, their tendency to identify as victims. Their unwillingness to compete, to state their opinion, to engage in constructive conflict, to fight for what they want. Their tendency to self-evaluate in negative terms and worry about the negative judgments of others. Their unwillingness to step up to the plate and risk striking out. Their lack of ambition. Their tendency to resent others who exhibit healthy assertiveness. When I was a practicing attorney, my female clients often drove me crazy with their lack of fight. It seemed like they expected to lose and were all about giving up at the slightest hint of a setback. Sorry to be so negative about women, but I do see these general tendencies, while recognizing that there are many counterexamples. I see these tendencies as learned from society and culture, not as natural or inevitable. And to the extent that society and culture inculcate these tendencies, then women can certainly be said to be oppressed. Many women internalize helplessness and lack of ability to take control of their lives -- what could be more oppressive than that?

Demonspawn · 2013-07-04T17:37:26+00:00

The reason we see women as "oppressed" historically is that we've freed women from their traditional gender responsibilities (mind you, they've kept most of their rights). So, of course comparing women of today to women of yesterday women appear "oppressed" by those dang roles :(

Only once we free men from their traditional responsibilities will we be able to look back and view men of yesteryear as "oppressed" in the same way.

But you better do it quick, because another society which hasn't freed their men from traditional responsibilities will eat our lunch and destroy our society.

MockingDead · 2013-07-04T19:39:06+00:00

Just gonna leave this here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VupEC0cAWo

Nice woman, smart as a whip, discusses this subject. All her videos ought be required viewing

Typhon Blue has a lot to say about it too, but I cannot find the specific video http://www.youtube.com/user/Genderratic

literallyschmiteraly · 2013-07-04T17:33:58+00:00

I'd love to watch a feminist go back in time and try to convince women throughout history that they were being "oppressed" and that they should leave their husbands so they could work themselves from sunup to sundown in order to barely survive.

They would have hung her from the highest tree.

YetAnotherCommenter · 2013-07-05T05:09:44+00:00

I guess it depends on one's views of what constitutes "oppression" but I don't think its fair to say women have never been oppressed. Clearly there are plenty of situations where women have had their rights violated because they are women. This is beyond refute.

Pervasive gender stereotypes have repeatedly been used to rationalize this kind of thing. "Women are naturally less rational than men" became formalized into the psychiatric diagnosis of "hysteria" which was used to justify throwing women into mental asylums and removing their wombs surgically.

So yes, gender oppression against women is real, it HAS happened and it STILL happens (although it happens far less often/to far less a degree these days in the modern West than it used to).

But Men's Rights doesn't say that women don't or never had any reason to complain. Men's Rights doesn't say that women have never suffered because they are women.

Men's Rights says that men ALSO have reasons to complain. Men's Rights says that men do suffer because they are men.

It is quite possible to accept that both sexes have very valid reasons to complain about and oppose the gender system.

And to be honest, I think that is by far the more common position than "women were never oppressed" (unless you define "oppression" narrowly in terms of political oppression... although even THEN that would mean women were oppressed (men too)).

If I were to read the position you're talking about CHARITABLY, I think that what that MRA was trying to say was "men as a class didn't create the gender system to control women as a class." This statement is a refutation of Radical Second Wave Patriarchy Theory, and I also reject Radical Second Wave Patriarchy Theory.

However, I don't think it is fair to say women have never been oppressed because they are women. Women have been oppressed due to their gender.

All MR argues is that men have been too, albiet quite differently.

NWOslave · 2013-07-04T17:04:23+00:00

Women as a whole are physically, mentally and emotionally weaker than men as a whole. This is a biological fact. In the modern western world women's biologically disadvantages are offset by the state mandated artificial equality laws.

Physical employment/sports. Quota's with women doing easier jobs, or lowering of physical standards such as fed ex lowering the weight limit so women can lift boxes equally. Title IX in sports cancelling out boys sports to make equal numbers. Equal pay for three sets of tennis as opposed to five sets. And much more.

Mental standards/education/employment. Included in GPA assessments are behavior, extra credit work, homework, biased grading, not pure merit. Employments is more of the same, follow the flow chart to equal success.

Emotional standards everywhere. Make every place woman friendly. Women can't be upset. Say something that upsets a woman in school, work or the home and you'll be punished. Never treat a woman as emotionally equal, lower your standards and treat her like a child.

In the past men and women were treated exactly right according to their abilities. Most all employment was manual labor. The fraudulent gender equality gang compares the past using a modern lens. There were no cars, planes, computers, cell phones, running water, electricity, or toilets.

Taking just a single employment of lumberjack from the past, a lumberjack was paid piece work. At best, a woman in her prime might be able to do 1/4 the work of a man well past his prime which might be enough to feed herself, but nothing more. A man was able to provide enough skilled or manual labor to make enough to have hos family advance and prosper to some degree.

Pre the industrial age men and women worked together as husband and wife for the betterment of their family. It would have made no sense to have a woman bear children and then send her off to be a lumberjack to provide for the family while the man stayed home to care for the children and then the house. First off the woman could never produce enough logs to pay for anything more than her own meals. In fact that would've been oppression if that's how things were done back in those days.

Also there were no human resources, secretarial work, and so forth, which is the brunt of todays women's employment. Those jobs didn't exist. In the modern world we're inundated with paperwork, we have paperwork, to check the paperwork to correct the paperwork, to check the paperwork. Paperwork is an industry that feeds itself.

Paperwork, which employs mostly all women is the great fraud of the modern age. Take your car registration for example. Every car owner pays a yearly registration fee because there's a piece of paper that say you have to under penalty of law. Between private and public ownership there's probably a billion cars that are registered at an average yearly fee of $30.00 a year, which equals 30 billion yearly. So you do your paperwork so you can get paperwork that says you have your paperwork in order. If you don't you get fined, which is more paperwork, maybe courts and so forth which is more paperwork.

This 30 billion dollar a year industry might employ as many as a 1/4 million women between administration, human resources, lawyers and so forth. These jobs were created out of thin air and serve no purpose but to enforce the paperwork that was created out of thin air. And that's just one example amongst countless such fraudulent paperwork jobs.

BrambleEdge · 2013-07-04T20:40:02+00:00

I don't believe in women's oppression and I also don't believe that feminism ever has been a valid ideology, it's all a load of gynocentric thinly-veiled sexist revisionism.

I don't believe women as a group are currently oppressed, and I don't believe they ever were. If you have any questions I'll try to answer them.

rightsbot · 2013-07-04T12:12:18+00:00

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Title	MRA tells me, "Women have never been oppressed,"--any opinions?
Author	mra_question
Upvotes	5
Comments	162
Date	July 4, 2013 12:11 PM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1hmoci/mra_tells_me_women_have_never_been_oppressedany/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/mra-tells-me-women-have-never-been-oppressed-any.1169519 https://theredarchive.com/post/1169519

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