“Men were free but women weren’t”

AnFGhoster · 2025-04-10T17:56:34+00:00

It's bullshit. This is idpol that ignores actual class conflict and stratification in societies passed.

They say this shit so nothing needs to be done about actual inequalities and they can promote their own ingroups instead. You can see it with any identity group, especially ones that gain some measure of institutional supports.

EsraYmssik · 2025-04-10T17:58:13+00:00

Yes, absolutely true.

Look back to WW1 and all those men enjoying their freedom to jump up in the air and scatter themselves over a large radius, or to play fun games of "Dodge the Bullet". /s

Seriously, this idea is absolute horse shit.

As far as ik only men from a particular strata were free in the society.

And the women in that stratum were more free than lower class men.

AbysmalDescent · 2025-04-10T18:01:36+00:00

In what sense is men working their lives away for the love or approval of women "free"? Women were free of the expectation to do hard or dangerous labor, and still free to choose who they wanted to spend their lives with(with the exception of arranged marriages which also affects men). That's more freedom than men have ever had. Plenty of men have been slaves or exploited for their labor and disposability as well throughout history. Plenty of men still are.

plaudite_cives · 2025-04-10T18:25:05+00:00

tell it to the serfs. And a couple of queens would disagree with the gender angle

Lightning77Plus · 2025-04-10T20:14:04+00:00

"Freedom" was dependent on social class rather than sex. Men and women of nobility and the upper echelons experienced life quite differently than peasants and working class folk.

Naive-Ad1268 · 2025-04-10T18:05:02+00:00

No one is free, man

Informal-Document-77 · 2025-04-10T18:41:53+00:00

Well, lets look at this from a historical standpoint:
Men were always drafted to the war, involuntarily and harassed if they tried to resist it, "white feather" type of movements existed for a long time.
Majority of humanity has always been "serfs" or any other type of word to describe it, there were many male and female feudal lords that possessed the said serfs in literal way, in no way different then a coin, a bottle of water or smth else, only a small amount of people were neither serfs or feudals - majority of those were either inhabitants of cities or overall rich people who couldnt become feudals due to not being born in such a family.
The top 1-10% were free for the majority of human history, everybody else - oh hell no, basically property.

New-Distribution6033 · 2025-04-10T20:06:19+00:00

Free how? All 4 billion?

RevolutionaryRip2504 · 2025-04-10T18:35:26+00:00

as a girl, neither were free.

Capable_Camp2464 · 2025-04-11T00:16:40+00:00

Apex Fallacy.

hendrixski · 2025-04-10T22:16:44+00:00

When we're we free from exploitation of our labor or from oppression by the military draft?

Vegetable_Ad1732 · 2025-04-10T18:10:59+00:00

Contradictory. Saying "men were free" implies ALL men were free. Saying "As far as ik only men from a particular strata were free" contradicts what your title says. Think more.

juuglaww · 2025-04-10T18:40:52+00:00

Men are only free if they are not yoked to a woman. Which is damn near impossible.

Fit-Commission-2626 · 2025-04-10T18:19:15+00:00

the interesting thing is even that phrase implies past tents or it is in the past and it is not wrong because back than the average woman in many cases was treated worse than men and especially rich men but if you had been working class or a worker you would had been treated pretty bad yourself and it is becoming that way again and male and female workers and poor people are being treated increasingly worse bur even back than many men had been treated horribly by the upper classes and society and much worse than even many women and circumcision came from them trying to detroy the male ability to gain pleasure from sex or even masturbation so they would work more pretty much.

Organic_Tea8264 · 2025-04-11T06:39:47+00:00

Yes but I feel like now it's the opposite in 2025 women are free but men aren't is there anyone that feels that way or is it just me? I'd like to hear everyone's opinion!

mrkpxx · 2025-04-11T07:27:49+00:00

The men were not free at all. They had to serve the state and were obligated to support a family, whose wives were often assigned to them against their will.

walterwallcarpet · 2025-04-12T06:34:05+00:00

My old man was free to work himself into an early grave, supporting his two kids, as mum didn't work. Every Friday, he'd hand over an intact pay packet, to receive his few pounds of 'pocket money'. Not that he was allowed to spend this as he pleased. Irrationally fearful that he'd 'meet another woman', she forbade him to go into town to meet his friends on a Saturday. If he ignored her diktat, he'd be slapped around on his return. On the one occasion that he'd had absolutely enough, and retaliated, she called the police, and he received 28 days in jail. That was how they dealt with it in the 1950s. Of course, he lost his job.

With little else to lose, he told her he was leaving. The kids were 12 and 10 years old, she'd have to get a job.

Suddenly, she was sorry. But she had cards left to play in this game.

Aged 41, she had another kid.... Hello!! My brother & sister are 13 and 11 years older than me.

Back to the grindstone for dad. His eyes were dead, until the day he caught up with them.

2025-04-11T00:43:10+00:00

Eh, men lived on a land that was owned/managed by some king/royalty and he had to do back-breaking work (serfdom).

Even if u were lucky to be born as a king (which probably had lower chance than getting struck by lightning) you still had lots of duties to attend to, kings were often near the battlefield and sometimes they even had to join the battle if the situation demanded it.

So if you were lower class men (which most were at that time) you basically had to work all year around to satisfy the lord and earn the keep on the land

If you were little bit lucky you could had the opportunity to learn some valuable skill and use thag knowledge, this would be as close as you could get to upward mobility. So maybe you were valuable blacksmither, but you still had to do a lot of work to meet king’s/lord’s demands.

If you were even little bit more luckier you could have been knight and maybe have ability to command a small division, but even then you had to show up to battles and put your life at the line.

At the top you have royalty, but even royalty was limited a lot. They had to meet high expectations, show up to battles and handle diplomacy (at the time when there were a shit tons of kingdoms and each wanting to expand)

Even during industrial revolution (which had greatly improved quality of life) most of the populations were often lower class people and they needed to work in the factories that had a lot of deaths on the skte (if you were lucky to be born in industrialized country, even if Industrial Revolution happened, only few countries had high production capacity, rest were stuck with mediaval tech)

SatisfactionNo7345 · 2025-04-14T17:16:30+00:00

Women conflate working risky jobs outside the home as "freedom" because in MODERN time mens blood has made safe civilizations with low crime and easy office jobs pushing paper. Meanwhile millions of men risked their lived and destroyed their bodies to get us to this point working in mines, manufacturing, forestry, erecting buildings, huffing lead and asbestos etc.

Typical short sighted coddled first world women problems. "Yeah but what are you doing for me RIGHT NOW"

ElegantAd2607 · 2025-04-11T00:58:42+00:00

I know that men were allowed to do things that women weren't allowed to do however, I think it might be over-exaggerated. For instance, women in Rome had some level of freedom. You can research it if you feel like.

miamor9 · 2025-04-14T10:49:24+00:00

In the context of the fact men have to fight odds for survival and women are more like nature choosing the best out of selection. It is akin to an inherent definition devoid of external constraints. Nevertheless, time will eventually reveal the consequences of one’s actions, as the principle of “what you sow, you shall reap” applies universally.

2025-04-17T00:39:21+00:00

Completely and utterly false even in the 1920s.

Medieval times is often pointed out as a time like that and it's especially false then. Women had more or less rights depending on the location.

But the Penitentials all but say that the husband and fathers are completely responsible for the women. So if your wife walked out in the woods cause she's crazy, you'd be punished if you didn't bring her back, and generally you couldn't get physical so you wouldn't be able to just drag her back, so if you couldn't convince her to return with you you'd have to pay some kind of penance until she came back.

The divorce due to impotance, if the church allowed it, often required a bed trial, and in those bed trials they'd bring in wise women or nuns and they would participate in the act, fondling balls and stuff, to see if the husband didn't just need a bit of help. It could be used by a couple to have an orgy, get divorced, but also let a wife legally gangbang a husband.

The few penitentials we have that do make women give pennance usually only do so for infidelity, and that still was shakey ground for divorce. And the husband would still be punished if his wife committed infidelity.

That doesn't even get into the serfdom, stuff.

Like, men weren't even allowed to masturbate with the thighs.

A man could be punished if he refused to sleep with his wife, and we know for sure the women were going to the priests and complaining about it because we have a penitential that explicitly states a husband HAS to sleep with his wife even if she's on her period.

Title	“Men were free but women weren’t”
Author	Responsible-Plant573
Upvotes	176
Comments	46
Date	April 10, 2025 5:51 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1jw446u/men_were_free_but_women_werent/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/men-were-free-but-women-werent.1549161 https://theredarchive.com/post/1549161

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