From: adric@access.digex.com (William Johnson)
Newsgroups: soc.women
Subject: Re: What does "Male-dominated society" mean?
Date: 23 Jan 1993 05:32:20 GMT
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: access.digex.com

In article <3364@devnull.mpd.tandem.com> dwelch@mpd.tandem.com (Dan Welch) writes:
>In article <1993Jan17.170653.28692@leland.Stanford.EDU> farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf) writes:
> [oops, deleted a little too much, ljf is saying "encourages men to
>  think of their wives and children as . . . "
>>possessions and to treat them accordingly.  And yes, I think children
>>in general are treated as possessions by fathers and mothers, and that
>>both parents often abuse children.  
>
>Actually, I think you have this completely backwards.  Men used to
>think of their wives as possessions, and treated them a lot better.
>Now, women have to be considered as equal people, and thus the
>protected status they had as possessions is gone.  In other words,
>as long as they were possessions, men wanted to protect them.  Now,
>a lot of men feel (quite rightly) that if women want to be equal
>as human beings, they should protect themselves.  It was the old,
>demeaning attitude towards women that kept them safer.  Kind of
>ironic, isn't it?

Well, I think you are both right.  Or both wrong.  Or something.  ljf says
that men used to consider their wives as property and treated them accordingly.
This is, to the best of my knowledge, true, although I've never experienced
it.  As such, Dan Welch says the women were better protected.  Also true.
Better protected FROM OTHER MEN.  Not from the "protector" himself.  People
love to talk about how men have in past (and some men perhaps still do)
considered women to be their property, but stop and consider what this 
really means!  Your car is your property.  If a friend wants to borrow it,
and you don't need it, and the friend isn't a raving lunatic in a motor
vehicle, you let him borrow it.  And how often do many people punch their
cars, or other belongings, as a way of venting frustration?  When my car
won't start, I'll wallop the hell out of the dashboard.  Doesn't help
any, just raises my blood pressure, but somehow it releases some stress and
helps me feel a little bit of revenge against the car.  Doesn't do any
permanent damage to the car.  

Now think about a woman whom you considered to be just as much property
as the car.  Taken to the extreme, might you not "lend" her to a friend
if you didn't need her that night?  That's harrassment.  Might you not
hit her if she (or something else) frustrated you?  Wouldn't cause any
permanent damage, she'll heal.  And there is the added bonus that when
a car does something wrong and you hit it, nothing changes, but when a
living, breathing, intelligent being does something wrong, and you hit
it (at least if it is "properly" submissive), it will do it's best to
fix what it did wrong.

I don't think any or all of this is RIGHT.  But there are elements of 
fact, repellent or not, in both your statements.

My guess is that the prime purpetrator of violence against females may
have shifted (at least in cases where the man DOESN'T consider her
property).

Oh, and a side note, while we're at it:  Men are not the only ones who 
consider their wives property.  I've known plenty of women who considered
their spouse/SO as property.  A good hint is if one member of a couple
does anything with another member of the oposite sex (not their partner,
and I'm not deliberately excluding homosexual couples), if the "cheated on"
member gets angry at the other partner, they may be pretty equal.  If the
"cheated on" member gets angry at the "other (man/woman)", then the 
psychological basis seems to be "you are stealing my property" instead of
"hey, she's (he's) supposed to be committed to me, why is he (she) talking
to that person?".

To finish this out, I point out that I put "cheated on" in quotes because
often this occurs not even through true cheating, but simply because a persons
SO TALKED to another person.  And anyway, my point was that I've seen quite
a large number of women get angry at "the other woman" instead of her SO.
Which I believe demonstrates that not only men are guilty of "property"
attitudes.

Damn, this post got mired down.

Will.
-- 
Copyright (C) 1993 by William Johnson  All rights wronged, all lefts made
adric@access.digex.com                     without benefit of turn signal.
Will Johnson, 307 S. Reynolds St Box P-216, Alexandria, VA  22304
"Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have included a quote in your .sig file."
Newsgroups: soc.women,bit.listserv.catholic