When I see most of human history, I see a miserable life for both men and women. I saw a study that in 1895 according to the UN the average person had about the equivalent of less than the US dollar a day. I mean there were wars that consisted of death, injury, sexual violence, malnutrition, illness, and disability, etc. I read about disease and pandemics, lack of medicine, lack of education, poor sanitation and hygiene, etc. I see fundamentally that men and women were cooperating with each other to survive on a day to day basis against the plight of nature. I realise that women did work in the households (taking care of kids, making food, etc) and men did farming(for most of history (besides being in wars) involving tiring labor in the field such as clearing, plowing, sowing seed, harvesting, and threshing) and I see this partly as opressive and sexist, but primarily as cooperation (with a slight rationale in biology as no modern technology was available ) in the battle to survive to the ripe old age of 30-40. I also see elements of oppression where men were being sexist and were trying to exert power over women, however I don't FUNDAMENTALLY see history in the light of an opressive(or tyrannical) patriarchy which is so often the picture that modern feminists try and paint on all of history and I was wondering if people can tell me what they think of the idea of history as cooperation among the sexes vs oppression of women by men and support their views (especially those that can establish or explain how history was fundamentally an opressive (or tyrannical) patriarchy). Despite what conclusion we may or may not reach let me just say that I think we are all happy to live in the 21st century where by historical standards most of us are living quite comfortably to say the least.