[ExI] Women

ablainey at aol.com ablainey at aol.com
Tue Jan 1 20:08:55 UTC 2013


 

-----Original Message-----

From: spike <spike66 at att.net>
>A big part of the problem in a lot of places is the culture itself, and very
>likely the religion.  Those religions that cherish ancient writings for
>instance have an inherent difficulty changing with the times.  

 To me that's not just a big part it is the fundamental issue.
The treatment of Women is a direct result of a foundation stone of human philosophy, Ownership of the self. In a culture where the self has any sort of ownership by higher authority such as God. Thus ownership of others descends from God. It is then by extension 100% logical to see ownership of others as a basic and perfectly moral right. Even to see it as beneficial for the owned, which it usually is. Culturally as society and trade evolved we reinforced ownership of others through contracts such as marriage. The male gives his sweat equity to provide food, shelter, protection etc. In return the women gives her reproductive ability, loyalty and subservience as laid out in the marriage vows. Somewhat antiquated notions by our modern eyes and loosing favour within western religion.
While it originally stemmed from the basic natural male dominance and gender roles it was given moral support by both religion and law.
It's only really due to the recent decline in religion in the westernised world that these "fundamental" moralities have been overturned. This has come about due to the realisation of self ownership.
God doesn't own me, No one owns me. No one has responsibility for my life except me. SO THERE!....ah ok, then Likewise if I extend that logic to all other people, I cannot morally justify any sort of sexist oppression, or any other oppression and so on.
While movement like the suffragettes (>you go girls!<) and feminism (>insert rabid comment here<) have done their bit. They were really secondary as they were top down rights arguments that left the underlying problem in place. 

So until other cultures get their heads around total self ownership, the problem is not going away. We can throw as much money and new law at it as we want, but the moral/logical foundations which it stems from will remain and it will be a persistent and recurrent problem. People will continue to follow the logic from a flawed starting point and will ignore laws we put in place designed to fix this. Such laws won't make sense to them and they will see it as an immoral attack on both them and their culture.

 








 
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