I recently started looking through 'A History of Medieval Sexuality' while on my way to and from work, which began with a look into sexuality in the early medieval period (ball-parking from memory around 600-900 in and around Italy).
What struck me from looking through the first essay is that many of the texts that came from the period revealed already engrained misogynistic attitudes. Commentary on society tended to be pro-male, anti-female.
It's a given that commentary tended to come from males so this is more likely to be the case than not, but it's made me wonder what the origin is of this type of sentiment toward women amongst men.
On the one hand the biological relationship between sexes tends to innately put women in a position of less power than men, especially in primitive societies where they have less means of protecting themselves, and this would seem to give sway to men to oppress women and structure society in such a way that furthers that oppression.
On the other hand, there seems to be social systems out there which aren't so patriarchal, so maybe while an aspect of randomness and biological power tends toward patriarchal, oppressive gender relations, biology isn't necessarily the root cause, and there is some other path which leads to a misogynistic social environment.
Would be interested in the others thoughts.
What struck me from looking through the first essay is that many of the texts that came from the period revealed already engrained misogynistic attitudes. Commentary on society tended to be pro-male, anti-female.
It's a given that commentary tended to come from males so this is more likely to be the case than not, but it's made me wonder what the origin is of this type of sentiment toward women amongst men.
On the one hand the biological relationship between sexes tends to innately put women in a position of less power than men, especially in primitive societies where they have less means of protecting themselves, and this would seem to give sway to men to oppress women and structure society in such a way that furthers that oppression.
On the other hand, there seems to be social systems out there which aren't so patriarchal, so maybe while an aspect of randomness and biological power tends toward patriarchal, oppressive gender relations, biology isn't necessarily the root cause, and there is some other path which leads to a misogynistic social environment.
Would be interested in the others thoughts.