PAGE IN PROGRESS What you see here is a page of my hypertext book POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power. Initially empty, this page will slowly be filled with thoughts, notes, and quotes. One day, I will use them to write a coherent entry, similar to these completed pages. Thank you for your interest and patience!
it’s easier to question class because it’s not biologically grounded, it’s more difficult to question gender because it’s hard to always know where culture ends and biology starts
Power and gender: in Pride abd Prejudice, father cannot give the house to his daughters; he is suffering from the rule that benefits men; Bingley sister mocks Lizzy’s independence when Lizzy comes alone to visit her sick sister; the distant neighbor who is to inherit the house is a priest in a parish of s rich lady who dictates his tastes and schedules. consider also the predicament of Anne’s father in Persuasion
Harari in Sapiens raises an important question. How come men came to dominate women in most societies? He lists three three theories that essentialize gender. Is essentialization (men dominate women because men are [insert description]) the only answer? If not, what can explain this consistency across cultures? Possible explanation: women were spending more time taking care of children (biology, human offspring need many years to become independent), while men were protectors, which meant that men were exposed to violence and needed to use violence to protect their families, which backfired as this lead to suppression of empathy and to trauma that (untreated) propelled men to use violent behaviors in their own families (paradox, since they were also using violence outside of the family to protect the family)
Under pressure: see Encanto song
Blanchett told BBC Radio 4, the film was a "meditation on power, and power is genderless" (TAR)
Men and war (find the controversial meme something like "she did not have right to vote, he could not have right to live" picture woman suffragist next to a soldier mutilated by war) All quiet on the eastern front (novel and film) Summer in the country (novel and film)
Conversation with my professor: Me: Both and women suffer from how the social system is My professor: but men have more power to change this system
"Fallen women" - they were ostracized by men and women alike (it’s not just men oppressing women)
Rich Men had more possibilities career while some rich women were supposed to stay at home, learn to dance, paint, etc. but it’s conceivable that some men might had to take careers they were not really enjoying or might have liked to be left at home and practice activities traditionally reserved for women (see Jane Austen wiki)
See Queen Victorian's era and her role in suppressing sexual expression [read her bio?]
it’s not uncommon for films /books to portray the disadvantaged situation of women; but how many show the challenges of being a man? One example that comes to mind, Countryside in the summer (?) with Colin Firth from The Seven Principles: “Anthropological evidence suggests that we evolved from hominids whose lives were circumscribed by very rigid gender roles, since these were advantageous to survival in a harsh environment. The females specialized in nurturing children, while the males specialized in cooperative hunting and protection.” “Anthropological evidence suggests that we evolved from hominids whose lives were circumscribed by very rigid gender roles, since these were advantageous to survival in a harsh environment. The females specialized in nurturing children, while the males specialized in cooperative hunting and protection. As most nursing mothers can tell you, the amount of milk you produce is affected by how relaxed you feel, which is related to the release of the hormone oxytocin in the brain. So natural selection would favor a female who could quickly soothe herself and calm down after feeling stressed. Her ability to remain composed could enhance her children’s chances of survival by optimizing the amount of nutrition they received. But in the male, natural selection would reward the opposite response. For these early cooperative hunters, maintaining vigilance was a key survival skill. So males whose adrenaline kicked in quite readily and who did not calm down so easily were more likely to survive and procreate.”
Possibly what happened in many societies. It started with biology: women are the ones who get pregnant, give birth to babies, and women are essential in the care of infants because of breastfeeding. Societies tend to creates categories and specifications for their members. Women were seen as caregivers who would stay home and take care of the kids (and women would have multiple children in their lifetime, so their stay would be extended). This does not mean that men did not take care of children, but women did it more due to their biology. Men would be the ones who (mostly) would go hunting and warring. These roles became institutionalized, stories were created to create and essentialize these roles, this order of things. These roles were not necessarily more beneficial for men than women. While women were seen as weaker, in need of protection, attached to home - and often unable to explore other options, men were seen as needing be strong, being able to suppress emotions in order to provide food and safety for those who did not participate as much participate in hunting and warring. Yes, on the surface, men as whole benefitted from this arrangement because they seemingly had more freedom to do things in the world and were supposed to be in control of women. But, same as not all women were happy being stuck at home and many suffered from the lack of freedom in many aspects of their lives, not all men were happy to have to be detached from home and display the characteristics that were expected from men. And certainly it has not been good for me to suppress their empathy and emotions to become strong warriors. Women were subjected to dangers and diseases associated with childbirth, and to violence coming from men. But men in warring societies were subjected to the cruelty of war. Men also have experiences pressures of being responsible for the safety and nourishment of their families. Obviously, that's not the only possible arrangement. Cultures of the world also developed matriarcal systems (systems, see about pre-Aryan India, Shakthi. We might be observing mostly patriarchal cultures because of certain randomness of cultural development as opposed to a sign of something essential about the human culture, or about men or women. Same as we can speculate that, biologically, different life forms and different aspects of these life forms could have evolved but did not because biology has followed one path of possibilities. But unlike with biology, we know that culture is malleable. Because we know that matriarcal cultures existed in the past, we can assume that they can arise again when cultures take a new path of possibilities as a result of a new random variation.
Many women were actively reinforcing gender roles: See ORE article "Nutrition and Reform in the United States" [add link]: "Catharine Beecher, sister of the famed abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe, was one of the architects of what became known as “domestic science,” a term designed to elevate the intellectual significance of the specific tasks associating with housekeeping. Beecher bemoaned that fact that women did not receive training about how to best perform household duties and, correspondingly, that such labor was both devalued and not performed as well as it could be. In her Treatise on Domestic Economy (1842), she did not try to challenge prevailing gender roles. She, in fact, reinforced the idea that women were uniquely suited for domestic work in the home, also arguing that the “natural head of conjugal association is man.” However, with her own actions she exemplified a different model of womanhood, one she had hinted at, perhaps, in her written assertion that American women “sometimes show they have the hearts and minds of men.” She certainly exemplified the purportedly “masculine” trait of being interested in occupational opportunities outside of the domestic sphere. Beecher, who never married, founded a seminary for women. Yet, ironically, she channeled much of her professional energies toward teaching other women to be content within the “quiet circle of domestic employment.”[i] Beecher’s deft melding of the skills of housewifery with those of a paid profession provided a model that others were to embrace as they sought to extend their activities and influence beyond the family sphere without completely rejecting societal understandings about the proper role of women.
[i] Catharine Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845), 29."
Also see about Louis XIV second wife (see the book King of the World) on how she was reinforcing gender roles".
Gendered patterns of speech—centered around adversarial, zero-sum styles of debate privileging of adversarial styles of political debate over cooperation and consensus