“Arbitrary social constructs that have previously existed have previously existed, which is why we should carry them forward.”
Most of the reason people think this is because they don’t know history and the periods and cultures where women were badasses prior to patriarchal rewriting of history.
Cultures like the Minoans where women were paid equal to men for the same work, could divorce on their own, and seemingly felt safe from sexual violence given they walked around in outfits that accentuated their exposed breasts. A culture that had indoor plumbing over a thousand years before the Romans.
People like Nefertiti, the only woman in the history of Egypt depicted in the smiting pose who upended the entire religion and lines of succession such that there’s a pharaoh who follows with the only apparent qualification being that he’s married to her firstborn daughter. Had she been successful with the proposed second marriage to the Hittites it would have led to the largest kingdom in the region’s history - and without a single battle.
Or Paduhepa, the “great lady” of the Hittites in the time of Ramses II who was not only conducting diplomatic relations with other countries but was co-signing treaties with her husband.
Or Deborah (meaning ‘bee’), the prophetess and leader of the Israelites early on. Tracing back to a period when the archeology of an apiary in Tel Rehov indicates there was potentially awareness that the hive was ruled by a queen.
Most people, men included, have a false picture of history as one in which men built great empires that spanned the world. But this ignores survivorship bias and the great filter on our history by patriarchal revision of earlier norms. We only know of all of the above because of relatively recent archeology. Nefertiti was stricken from kept Egyptian history. Deborah precedes Asa deposing his grandmother the “Great Lady” and Josiah’s banning of goddess worship. We’re only left with the scraps and poorly covered up remnants of greatness for women, while male accomplishments are hyped up or literally stolen - such as Amenhotep II taking credit for an earlier female Pharoh’s accomplishments and he and his father trying to erase her from history.
So we’re operating from what’s effectively misogynistic propaganda treated as a blueprint carried forward and reinforced in the historical record. It’s not “how it’s always been” at all. It’s just how it’s been recorded as having been by one side.
I originally wasn’t going to respond to this post, but there’s so much revisionism, omissions, and outright inaccuracies here that I ultimately couldn’t ignore it, and that’s just when it comes to the Minoans and Hittites, which I’m most familiar with. As such, I assume your comments about the others are equally one-sided in order to serve the really odd, unnecessary narrative you have going on here.
First off, we know very little about the Minoans, since, y’know, Linear A hasn’t been deciphered yet, but from what we do know, they had an incredibly gender-segregated society, far more than we have today. In lists of family members, for example, the men and the women are in completely separate lists, which would be pretty weird for a place that didn’t have “arbitrary social constructs” like gender roles, and women seem to have been forbidden from most traditionally male jobs in their society.
Their art emphasized sexual dimorphism, and for you to assume that nakedness of the breasts in clothing trends implies the same thing for them that it would in our society today just adds to the evidence that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
They did have indoor plumbing, so at least you’re right about that.
For the Hittites it’s even worse, since their code of laws enforced separate punishments for crimes against men and women, with crimes against men carrying much more stringent penalties than crimes against women. Also, Hittite men wielded a large amount of legal power over their wives, which is indicated in their marriage ritual, where the man would “take” his wife so he could “possess” her afterward. Yes, it’s better than the ancient Greeks a thousand years later, but by how much is debatable.
Further, tawananna (queens) only ruled when their kings were away, or after they had died until the next king was chosen, and not a single queen is listed in Hittite histories as a legitimate successor to the dynasty at any point. Their role in court was mostly religious, and while they did conduct diplomatic relations with other countries, to act like Hittite queens were on par with Hittite kings in any way is completely false.
So we’re operating from what’s effectively misogynistic propaganda treated as a blueprint carried forward and reinforced in the historical record. It’s not “how it’s always been” at all. It’s just how it’s been recorded as having been by one side.
While there are definitely plenty of excellent examples of strong female leaders throughout history, and their achievements should certainly be celebrated, the ridiculous Bronze Age revisionism you’ve written here sounds much more like propaganda than what’s actually attested in the “historical record”.
First off, we know very little about the Minoans, since, y’know, Linear A hasn’t been deciphered yet, but from what we do know, they had an incredibly gender-segregated society, far more than we have today. In lists of family members, for example, the men and the women are in completely separate lists, which would be pretty weird for a place that didn’t have “arbitrary social constructs” like gender roles, and women seem to have been forbidden from most traditionally male jobs in their society.
There were distinct gender roles, all the way to the top (such as the lead religious figure as female and the lead ruling figure as male), but in accounting records where there was overlapping labor they were both paid the same (don’t need to know Linear A to read numbers).
For the Hittites it’s even worse
You’d be wise to keep in mind that these kingdoms cover a very long period of time when history and social norms shift around. A given individual in one generation does not reflect the society as a whole, but in turn the society at other periods doesn’t necessarily reflect all the individual generations within it.
We can’t look at America as a whole and use the records of women being denied the right to vote at one period of time to reflect a woman’s role in America in a different time.
The historical reality is that Paduhepa was co-signing the treaty of Kadesh with Egypt alongside her husband, when the Egyptian pharoh’s wife was not. Whether or not that was anomalous in the context of the entire Hittite empire is besides the point of whether or not at that point in time it was a political reality.
to act like Hittite queens were on par with Hittite kings in any way is completely false
I didn’t say that. But I did say that she cosigned the first treaty in the historical record, and I think you’ll have a hard time showing another example since where the wife of the ruler was co-signing a treaty unilaterally.
Their role in court was mostly religious
Here I think your modernism may be showing. In cultures where the chief deity was a goddess and the chief religious official for that goddess was the queen, you don’t think maybe in antiquity the impact that religious role would have had would be more than superficial?
For example, you have Akhenaten inscribing in the dedication of Amarna an assurance that his wife didn’t tell him to build the city there, but the Aten himself. So clearly at the time there were allegations that his wife, who had been depicted worshipping the Aten directly without her husband before this, was influencing his building of an entire new capital for the country.
Much like the paradigm outlined in Marinatos’s Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess, bringing us full circle to another society with empowered women within their society.
In fact, in pretty much every place you find one of the empowered women in antiquity there’s a connection to female deities.
So I think you underappreciate those “religious roles” in relation to the topic at hand.
“Arbitrary social constructs that have previously existed have previously existed, which is why we should carry them forward.”
Most of the reason people think this is because they don’t know history and the periods and cultures where women were badasses prior to patriarchal rewriting of history.
Cultures like the Minoans where women were paid equal to men for the same work, could divorce on their own, and seemingly felt safe from sexual violence given they walked around in outfits that accentuated their exposed breasts. A culture that had indoor plumbing over a thousand years before the Romans.
People like Nefertiti, the only woman in the history of Egypt depicted in the smiting pose who upended the entire religion and lines of succession such that there’s a pharaoh who follows with the only apparent qualification being that he’s married to her firstborn daughter. Had she been successful with the proposed second marriage to the Hittites it would have led to the largest kingdom in the region’s history - and without a single battle.
Or Paduhepa, the “great lady” of the Hittites in the time of Ramses II who was not only conducting diplomatic relations with other countries but was co-signing treaties with her husband.
Or Deborah (meaning ‘bee’), the prophetess and leader of the Israelites early on. Tracing back to a period when the archeology of an apiary in Tel Rehov indicates there was potentially awareness that the hive was ruled by a queen.
Most people, men included, have a false picture of history as one in which men built great empires that spanned the world. But this ignores survivorship bias and the great filter on our history by patriarchal revision of earlier norms. We only know of all of the above because of relatively recent archeology. Nefertiti was stricken from kept Egyptian history. Deborah precedes Asa deposing his grandmother the “Great Lady” and Josiah’s banning of goddess worship. We’re only left with the scraps and poorly covered up remnants of greatness for women, while male accomplishments are hyped up or literally stolen - such as Amenhotep II taking credit for an earlier female Pharoh’s accomplishments and he and his father trying to erase her from history.
So we’re operating from what’s effectively misogynistic propaganda treated as a blueprint carried forward and reinforced in the historical record. It’s not “how it’s always been” at all. It’s just how it’s been recorded as having been by one side.
I originally wasn’t going to respond to this post, but there’s so much revisionism, omissions, and outright inaccuracies here that I ultimately couldn’t ignore it, and that’s just when it comes to the Minoans and Hittites, which I’m most familiar with. As such, I assume your comments about the others are equally one-sided in order to serve the really odd, unnecessary narrative you have going on here.
First off, we know very little about the Minoans, since, y’know, Linear A hasn’t been deciphered yet, but from what we do know, they had an incredibly gender-segregated society, far more than we have today. In lists of family members, for example, the men and the women are in completely separate lists, which would be pretty weird for a place that didn’t have “arbitrary social constructs” like gender roles, and women seem to have been forbidden from most traditionally male jobs in their society.
Their art emphasized sexual dimorphism, and for you to assume that nakedness of the breasts in clothing trends implies the same thing for them that it would in our society today just adds to the evidence that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
They did have indoor plumbing, so at least you’re right about that.
For the Hittites it’s even worse, since their code of laws enforced separate punishments for crimes against men and women, with crimes against men carrying much more stringent penalties than crimes against women. Also, Hittite men wielded a large amount of legal power over their wives, which is indicated in their marriage ritual, where the man would “take” his wife so he could “possess” her afterward. Yes, it’s better than the ancient Greeks a thousand years later, but by how much is debatable.
Further, tawananna (queens) only ruled when their kings were away, or after they had died until the next king was chosen, and not a single queen is listed in Hittite histories as a legitimate successor to the dynasty at any point. Their role in court was mostly religious, and while they did conduct diplomatic relations with other countries, to act like Hittite queens were on par with Hittite kings in any way is completely false.
While there are definitely plenty of excellent examples of strong female leaders throughout history, and their achievements should certainly be celebrated, the ridiculous Bronze Age revisionism you’ve written here sounds much more like propaganda than what’s actually attested in the “historical record”.
There were distinct gender roles, all the way to the top (such as the lead religious figure as female and the lead ruling figure as male), but in accounting records where there was overlapping labor they were both paid the same (don’t need to know Linear A to read numbers).
You’d be wise to keep in mind that these kingdoms cover a very long period of time when history and social norms shift around. A given individual in one generation does not reflect the society as a whole, but in turn the society at other periods doesn’t necessarily reflect all the individual generations within it.
We can’t look at America as a whole and use the records of women being denied the right to vote at one period of time to reflect a woman’s role in America in a different time.
The historical reality is that Paduhepa was co-signing the treaty of Kadesh with Egypt alongside her husband, when the Egyptian pharoh’s wife was not. Whether or not that was anomalous in the context of the entire Hittite empire is besides the point of whether or not at that point in time it was a political reality.
I didn’t say that. But I did say that she cosigned the first treaty in the historical record, and I think you’ll have a hard time showing another example since where the wife of the ruler was co-signing a treaty unilaterally.
Here I think your modernism may be showing. In cultures where the chief deity was a goddess and the chief religious official for that goddess was the queen, you don’t think maybe in antiquity the impact that religious role would have had would be more than superficial?
For example, you have Akhenaten inscribing in the dedication of Amarna an assurance that his wife didn’t tell him to build the city there, but the Aten himself. So clearly at the time there were allegations that his wife, who had been depicted worshipping the Aten directly without her husband before this, was influencing his building of an entire new capital for the country.
Much like the paradigm outlined in Marinatos’s Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess, bringing us full circle to another society with empowered women within their society.
In fact, in pretty much every place you find one of the empowered women in antiquity there’s a connection to female deities.
So I think you underappreciate those “religious roles” in relation to the topic at hand.