5 ms·

They weren’t ignored. For most of recorded history the basic unit was the family. The men were in charge of public affairs of the family, while women were in c

by j7ake 4y ago

They weren’t ignored. For most of recorded history the basic unit was the family. The men were in charge of public affairs of the family, while women were in charge of private and domestic affairs. It was only recently the basic unit has been further subdivided into individuals, which required many to rely on institutional support on matters that used to be within the family, eg education, pensions, restaurants, clothing shops, apartment complexes, birth control. The truly ignored throughout history were the peasants and serfs. Most men of significance were from aristocratic or upper class upbringings. The divide is not between men and women, but haves vs have nots.

mxkopy 4y ago
- j7ake 4y ago
  The life of women in the upper class were objectively better than the male serfs. The major form of oppression back then was by class, then by gender. It is of course better to be a male aristocrat than a female aristocrat (measured from today’s individualism values ie domestic duties have zero value), but both lived vastly better lives than serfs. Being a lower class woman was an extremely oppressed state, illustrated vividly by books from Victor Hugo.
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    Nobody is arguing that being rich doesn't entail privelege. So why are you pointing that out? What purpose does it serve other than to distract from the original statement? To that point I'll not get distracted. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace Did you know that the world's first programmer was a woman? She published the first algorithm for the Analytical Engine.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      I think Ada Lovelace is actually the perfect example of what the OP is talking about. There are fewer famous women in history because women were given less opportunity to excel (and sometimes had achievements they did make stifled or their contribution hidden). Ada Lovelace was both an extraordinary person, and in a very privileged position. Had she just been extraordinary, she wouldn't have had the tools to leverage her abilities. Her pedigree and circumstances allowed her access to the private education and social circle that allowed her to apply her abilities and excel. The issue is that so fewer women were ever given the opportunity to excel, and that still remains the case! I felt this was an interesting article about how women were stripped of the opportunities to get into software in the 80s to much the same effect as likely many women were stripped of their opportunities during Ada's time: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - carschno 4y ago
    You might want to look into intersectionality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality > Intersectionality opposes analytical systems that treat each axis of oppression in isolation. Edit: I am not saying that explains all the complexity, and there has been a lot of criticism, justified or not. However, it is at least a good starting point.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    > Being a lower class woman was an extremely oppressed state, illustrated vividly by books from Victor Hugo. This is true, but also read The Road To Wigan Pier to see the lives of lower class men in England. Go to work, crawl 2 miles underground (unpaid) to get to your work site, work for hours in a small space mining coal, crawl back, get home, scrub off as best you can, eat, sleep, repeat. Almost nothing that wasn't either a crime or being sent to war was as bad as that nightmare of a life.
- daptaq 4y ago
  > Honestly this comment was a very long winded way of saying "women aren't oppressed" Important discussions ought to have more nuance than a assigning a binary value of being oppressed or not. One step towards this direction will have to be to abandon the notion that you can say X is "more oppressed" than Y, especially when talking about different categories, societies and historical periods. There is nothing to be gained from these comparisons, except for infighting and wasting opportunities to improve one's understanding of the issues that are being dealt with.
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    This isn't a nuanced important discussion rife with opportunities to learn or some such BS If the conversation was about how this map doesn't have a lot of women on it, how open and nuanced are you being when the first thing you say is "women aren't being ignored"? Talk about assigning binary values. I'm not the one denying anything. I'm just pointing our the non sequitur
    - zarzavat 4y ago
      They are saying that you have to look at the past from the perspective of the people who lived in the past, and not from the perspective of the present. While from your perspective as someone living in an individualist culture in 2022 there are few women, someone in the past would not have perceived it from that viewpoint as modern individualism had not yet been developed. The history of our culture and in fact all of humanity is the history of kin groups, that then developed into families, then into individualism (in some places).
      - BowBun 4y ago
        If you look at the past from the perspective of the people who lived in in, then it's plain fact that many cultures oppressed women and that women were often seen as less strong, able, smart, etc. which led to reduced opportunities for whatever education existed at the time, learning specialized skills, or ability to hold positions of power. All of these circumstances existed because of how people in the past thought and acted. This has a direct impact on the map we're looking at, which has mostly famous men. Men who had education, learned specialized skills, ascended to positions of power, etc. So again like GP said, it's a bad-faith argument to try and shift to talking about class issues when the original point was simply about the gender inequality. They are different issues.
- ehnto 4y ago
  It's not really fair to put words into people's mouths like that. It's a pithy thing to do in places like reddit to get laughs and "gotcha" moments but I think HN prefers to give people the chance to explain themselves, and the benefit of the doubt. If you think that's what they believe, then if you ask questions instead you give them the opportunity to explain it better. When you tell someone what they're saying rather than letting them say it, they have to spend time defending themselves against things they never said.
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    When, as a reaction to the simple statement that there are less women on this map than there could be, someone says "[women] aren't being ignored, poor people are being ignored", I don't need to assume good faith in that individual. The goal of downplaying doesn't have to be stated to be obvious. If they wanted open and constructive discussion, they shouldn't start out with a destructive statement. Your apologetics are frankly worrying. If you really think lines of reasoning that downplay the importance of taking note of women and shoehorn male victimhood into those discussions should be given a chance to breathe, I don't think we can have a productive conversation.
    - ehnto 4y ago
      > When, as a reaction to the simple statement that there are less women on this map than there could be, someone says "[women] aren't being ignored, poor people are being ignored", I don't need to assume good faith in that individual. The goal of downplaying doesn't have to be stated to be obvious. Fair enough, I'm not going to argue too hard on that matter since I do agree with your original statement that there could be more women on the map. > Your apologetics are frankly worrying. If you really think lines of reasoning that downplay the importance of taking note of women and shoehorn male victimhood into those discussions, I don't think we can have a productive conversation. You're assuming a position I don't have. I was pointing out that your discussion style is counter-productive, that doesn't mean I side with the other commenter, or yourself. But since your point wasn't to engage in discussion, I guess it doesn't matter.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
Fame is such a bizarre and frankly perplexing concept. It does not equate to achievement, to competence or success per se. It says nothing of the goodness or value of a person, the wealth they created, the families they raised, the hearts they broke, and very little of the suffering and joy they experienced as actual people. It's an ever-fading trace left in the (mostly) written records of institutions, where the narrow spotlight of social consciousness shone at some time. What I find most interesting as I explore history and civilisation is the marginal web that supports what is "notable". Almost every breakthough has a "revisionist" version of someone else who made a simultaneous advance. Or allegedly had the limelight stolen from them. Every Crick and Watson have their Rosalind Franklin. For every Charles Babbage and Alan Turing there's an Ada Lovelace or Mavis Batey. And yet those are at least "noted". Who and what lies behind those figures in the third and fourth rows of history's group photograph, "fame"?
- j7ake 4y ago
  When people used to live in small villages and interacted with no more than 50-100 people in a life time, what was valued is completely different from what is valued today. Back then they valued honor and integrity. Now what matters is first impressions, “clout”/fame, and standing above the crowd. In today’s society we no longer value things like domestic affairs, honor, integrity, and humbleness. Now we try to maximise visibility, fame, and brand. There is probably a huge forgotten mass of people who humbly did their work, improved their local communities as they needed, and raised the next generation. Those who specifically seek fame will easily outcompete these humble people.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > Back then they valued honor and integrity. Now what matters is first impressions, "clout"/fame, and standing above the crowd. I think you're right about all those things J7ke. Values have really shifted. Yet that still leaves strange unanswered questions that puzzle me. Most all of the intelligent people I know are deeply unhappy about it. And I've worked with a good few "famous" people. They were all unhappy too. Now we're all older, and great levellers like health, children and life fulfilment have come into play those that survived (drugs and more money than they could handle) are happier being "nobody" again (or at least getting recognised occasionally on the bus by strangers who say "Didn't you used to be...?"). I actually think many who were "successful" and had their 15 minutes feel tricked. Even though they "made it", in the sense of "Being there", they were never there. The cake was a lie. By contrast, my father and grandfather's generation lived through awful, awful times, in wars, rationing, brothers and sisters died, and they were certainly never "on" the TV or Internet. If they had recognition it was a medal and a parade. However they seemed to go to their graves with a sense of having lived. What does it mean then, when we talk about "what matters"? Is "what matters" a cruel trick and illusion? Perhaps a way to rob us of the ordinary well-lived life that really does matter?
wahnfrieden 4y ago
you say this as a linear progression, but you're only paying attention to certain written histories and ignoring a lot of anthro/archaelogical research of (large-scale post discovery of agriculture societies) cases where it was otherwise
edmcnulty101 4y ago
Thank you for having a nuanced take beyond just the notion of groups being surpressed.

by j7ake 4y ago

mxkopy 4y ago

j7ake 4y ago
The life of women in the upper class were objectively better than the male serfs. The major form of oppression back then was by class, then by gender. It is of course better to be a male aristocrat than a female aristocrat (measured from today’s individualism values ie domestic duties have zero value), but both lived vastly better lives than serfs. Being a lower class woman was an extremely oppressed state, illustrated vividly by books from Victor Hugo.
- mxkopy 4y ago
  Nobody is arguing that being rich doesn't entail privelege. So why are you pointing that out? What purpose does it serve other than to distract from the original statement? To that point I'll not get distracted. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace Did you know that the world's first programmer was a woman? She published the first algorithm for the Analytical Engine.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    I think Ada Lovelace is actually the perfect example of what the OP is talking about. There are fewer famous women in history because women were given less opportunity to excel (and sometimes had achievements they did make stifled or their contribution hidden). Ada Lovelace was both an extraordinary person, and in a very privileged position. Had she just been extraordinary, she wouldn't have had the tools to leverage her abilities. Her pedigree and circumstances allowed her access to the private education and social circle that allowed her to apply her abilities and excel. The issue is that so fewer women were ever given the opportunity to excel, and that still remains the case! I felt this was an interesting article about how women were stripped of the opportunities to get into software in the 80s to much the same effect as likely many women were stripped of their opportunities during Ada's time: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- carschno 4y ago
  You might want to look into intersectionality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality > Intersectionality opposes analytical systems that treat each axis of oppression in isolation. Edit: I am not saying that explains all the complexity, and there has been a lot of criticism, justified or not. However, it is at least a good starting point.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > Being a lower class woman was an extremely oppressed state, illustrated vividly by books from Victor Hugo. This is true, but also read The Road To Wigan Pier to see the lives of lower class men in England. Go to work, crawl 2 miles underground (unpaid) to get to your work site, work for hours in a small space mining coal, crawl back, get home, scrub off as best you can, eat, sleep, repeat. Almost nothing that wasn't either a crime or being sent to war was as bad as that nightmare of a life.
daptaq 4y ago
> Honestly this comment was a very long winded way of saying "women aren't oppressed" Important discussions ought to have more nuance than a assigning a binary value of being oppressed or not. One step towards this direction will have to be to abandon the notion that you can say X is "more oppressed" than Y, especially when talking about different categories, societies and historical periods. There is nothing to be gained from these comparisons, except for infighting and wasting opportunities to improve one's understanding of the issues that are being dealt with.
- mxkopy 4y ago
  This isn't a nuanced important discussion rife with opportunities to learn or some such BS If the conversation was about how this map doesn't have a lot of women on it, how open and nuanced are you being when the first thing you say is "women aren't being ignored"? Talk about assigning binary values. I'm not the one denying anything. I'm just pointing our the non sequitur
  - zarzavat 4y ago
    They are saying that you have to look at the past from the perspective of the people who lived in the past, and not from the perspective of the present. While from your perspective as someone living in an individualist culture in 2022 there are few women, someone in the past would not have perceived it from that viewpoint as modern individualism had not yet been developed. The history of our culture and in fact all of humanity is the history of kin groups, that then developed into families, then into individualism (in some places).
    - BowBun 4y ago
      If you look at the past from the perspective of the people who lived in in, then it's plain fact that many cultures oppressed women and that women were often seen as less strong, able, smart, etc. which led to reduced opportunities for whatever education existed at the time, learning specialized skills, or ability to hold positions of power. All of these circumstances existed because of how people in the past thought and acted. This has a direct impact on the map we're looking at, which has mostly famous men. Men who had education, learned specialized skills, ascended to positions of power, etc. So again like GP said, it's a bad-faith argument to try and shift to talking about class issues when the original point was simply about the gender inequality. They are different issues.
ehnto 4y ago
It's not really fair to put words into people's mouths like that. It's a pithy thing to do in places like reddit to get laughs and "gotcha" moments but I think HN prefers to give people the chance to explain themselves, and the benefit of the doubt. If you think that's what they believe, then if you ask questions instead you give them the opportunity to explain it better. When you tell someone what they're saying rather than letting them say it, they have to spend time defending themselves against things they never said.
- mxkopy 4y ago
  When, as a reaction to the simple statement that there are less women on this map than there could be, someone says "[women] aren't being ignored, poor people are being ignored", I don't need to assume good faith in that individual. The goal of downplaying doesn't have to be stated to be obvious. If they wanted open and constructive discussion, they shouldn't start out with a destructive statement. Your apologetics are frankly worrying. If you really think lines of reasoning that downplay the importance of taking note of women and shoehorn male victimhood into those discussions should be given a chance to breathe, I don't think we can have a productive conversation.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    > When, as a reaction to the simple statement that there are less women on this map than there could be, someone says "[women] aren't being ignored, poor people are being ignored", I don't need to assume good faith in that individual. The goal of downplaying doesn't have to be stated to be obvious. Fair enough, I'm not going to argue too hard on that matter since I do agree with your original statement that there could be more women on the map. > Your apologetics are frankly worrying. If you really think lines of reasoning that downplay the importance of taking note of women and shoehorn male victimhood into those discussions, I don't think we can have a productive conversation. You're assuming a position I don't have. I was pointing out that your discussion style is counter-productive, that doesn't mean I side with the other commenter, or yourself. But since your point wasn't to engage in discussion, I guess it doesn't matter.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Fame is such a bizarre and frankly perplexing concept. It does not equate to achievement, to competence or success per se. It says nothing of the goodness or value of a person, the wealth they created, the families they raised, the hearts they broke, and very little of the suffering and joy they experienced as actual people. It's an ever-fading trace left in the (mostly) written records of institutions, where the narrow spotlight of social consciousness shone at some time. What I find most interesting as I explore history and civilisation is the marginal web that supports what is "notable". Almost every breakthough has a "revisionist" version of someone else who made a simultaneous advance. Or allegedly had the limelight stolen from them. Every Crick and Watson have their Rosalind Franklin. For every Charles Babbage and Alan Turing there's an Ada Lovelace or Mavis Batey. And yet those are at least "noted". Who and what lies behind those figures in the third and fourth rows of history's group photograph, "fame"?

j7ake 4y ago
When people used to live in small villages and interacted with no more than 50-100 people in a life time, what was valued is completely different from what is valued today. Back then they valued honor and integrity. Now what matters is first impressions, “clout”/fame, and standing above the crowd. In today’s society we no longer value things like domestic affairs, honor, integrity, and humbleness. Now we try to maximise visibility, fame, and brand. There is probably a huge forgotten mass of people who humbly did their work, improved their local communities as they needed, and raised the next generation. Those who specifically seek fame will easily outcompete these humble people.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > Back then they valued honor and integrity. Now what matters is first impressions, "clout"/fame, and standing above the crowd. I think you're right about all those things J7ke. Values have really shifted. Yet that still leaves strange unanswered questions that puzzle me. Most all of the intelligent people I know are deeply unhappy about it. And I've worked with a good few "famous" people. They were all unhappy too. Now we're all older, and great levellers like health, children and life fulfilment have come into play those that survived (drugs and more money than they could handle) are happier being "nobody" again (or at least getting recognised occasionally on the bus by strangers who say "Didn't you used to be...?"). I actually think many who were "successful" and had their 15 minutes feel tricked. Even though they "made it", in the sense of "Being there", they were never there. The cake was a lie. By contrast, my father and grandfather's generation lived through awful, awful times, in wars, rationing, brothers and sisters died, and they were certainly never "on" the TV or Internet. If they had recognition it was a medal and a parade. However they seemed to go to their graves with a sense of having lived. What does it mean then, when we talk about "what matters"? Is "what matters" a cruel trick and illusion? Perhaps a way to rob us of the ordinary well-lived life that really does matter?

wahnfrieden 4y ago

you say this as a linear progression, but you're only paying attention to certain written histories and ignoring a lot of anthro/archaelogical research of (large-scale post discovery of agriculture societies) cases where it was otherwise

edmcnulty101 4y ago

Thank you for having a nuanced take beyond just the notion of groups being surpressed.