It's the reproductive cycle.

Faulty sexist values enshrined by thousands of years of excuses, male insecurities and a need to be seen as macho. Women don't help themselves by not protesting, but luckily women my age are pissed off with the situation and tend to expect equal treatment right down to sharing the chores. Most chauvinists by today's standards are considered little dicks.

That said, this is a bit rich coming from a gay man who has only seen how his friend's relationships seem to work. Glad I don't have to deal with PMT though, my lesbian friend at uni used to punch me and get so nasty.

Doubtdispelled wrote:I had a similar thread on RDF enquiring into the origins of misogyny, which reached no satisfactory conclusions.

Why are male humans considered to be the ultimate of all that is good, and females the opposite, i.e. all that is bad?

I just want to know.

Because having babies is really scary. How does it work? Even today knowledge of womens health lags behind that of mens. My wife has been dealing with menopause for over a decade with hot flashes and she takes oestrogen and that whole reproductive biology is still not well understood. And women are vulnerable in that process and it hurts when babies are born and there is bodily fluids on a regular basis and a fair number of women would die in the childbirth process due to poor hygiene as much as anything and finally it means folks have to grow up and care for someone besides themselves.

It is sooo much simpler for guys.

And people always scapegoat what they don't understand.

Ms Greer put forward some convincing suggestions in The Female Eunuch, DD. It's probably still worth a read even after all these years as those still bear scrutiny, I think.

I'd start with menstruation. It's worth noting that the 72 virgins that are supposedly awarded to islamic martyrs never menstruate.

Doubtdispelled wrote:

Steve wrote:
Because having babies is really scary. How does it work? Even today knowledge of womens health lags behind that of mens. My wife has been dealing with menopause for over a decade with hot flashes and she takes oestrogen and that whole reproductive biology is still not well understood. And women are vulnerable in that process and it hurts when babies are born and there is bodily fluids on a regular basis and a fair number of women would die in the childbirth process due to poor hygiene as much as anything and finally it means folks have to grow up and care for someone besides themselves.

It is sooo much simpler for guys.

And people always scapegoat what they don't understand.

I understand what you are saying, Steve, especially the scapegoat bit, but to me it still doesn't explain why women - and here I'm talking historically, because as Paul points out, it's all changing now thankfully - became negatively labelled, described, and villified. After all, they would not have understood men's biology either.

I'm glad you qualified your original post with the fact that you are speaking historically. I think there is a common problem in discussions of issues like this that some people cite events and issues from thousands of years ago as "evidence" for a particular state of affairs now. Most men I know my age or younger would be baffled by your OP.

Anyways, historically:

Sex is an incredibly powerful force affecting the deepest aspects of what it means to be alive and human. In conjunction with death, probably the most powerful force there is. It is after all our only comeback against death, being the means by which our genes survive our death. As such, it's been extremely important to people to control it. Men have attempted to control it largely by controlling women, and projecting everything that is dangerous about it onto women.

[One could also point out that women have, both historically and currently, developed extremely sophisticated ways of controlling men. But that's probably a topic for another thread.]

Furthermore, in order for sex to function for the perpetuation of a man's genes, he needs a woman to be faithful, so that he knows that the children he is putting resources into rearing are his own and not somebody else's. Thus the whole cult of virginity / woman as chattle passed from father to husband / control of woman's actions and sociability / distrust of woman's individuality and self-expression / hatred of woman when the whole business doesn't turn out as intended - which informs so much western history and culture, and can still be seen overtly in many non-western countries.

Beatsong wrote:Most men I know my age or younger would be baffled by your OP.

You do make it clear that you're talking about your peer group by saying 'most men I know' but just to observe that a vast number of men of your own age and younger in non-western cultures would only be baffled by the fact that DD was questioning this state of affairs. Misogyny is certainly alive and well in many parts of the world.

Sure. That's true.

Beatsong wrote:
Anyways, historically:

Sex is an incredibly powerful force affecting the deepest aspects of what it means to be alive and human. In conjunction with death, probably the most powerful force there is. It is after all our only comeback against death, being the means by which our genes survive our death. As such, it's been extremely important to people to control it. Men have attempted to control it largely by controlling women, and projecting everything that is dangerous about it onto women.

[One could also point out that women have, both historically and currently, developed extremely sophisticated ways of controlling men. But that's probably a topic for another thread.]

Furthermore, in order for sex to function for the perpetuation of a man's genes, he needs a woman to be faithful, so that he knows that the children he is putting resources into rearing are his own and not somebody else's. Thus the whole cult of virginity / woman as chattle passed from father to husband / control of woman's actions and sociability / distrust of woman's individuality and self-expression / hatred of woman when the whole business doesn't turn out as intended - which informs so much western history and culture, and can still be seen overtly in many non-western countries.

Mostly this.

I would add that my personal theory is that this behaviour probably started around about the time of behavioural modernity/during the population bottleneck. Men realised that intra-group fighting over women was counter productive, so therefore sought to control "the supply" as it were. The rise in culture and the spread of complicated ideas would allow them to figure out, near enough, their role in reproduction. My theory would be in a population where there is not a scarcity of resources or fertile partners, in theory monogamy would decrease culturally as would misogyny.

Is this trait prevalent across all viviparous species where the females suffer a slight disadvantage due to the burden of childbirth?