Feminism | Theoretical Frameworks

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Four Main Theoretical Perspectives

Feminism has four main frameworks. There is a fifth, which I will include towards the end of this thread. I'm hoping to make a few threads that cover the basics, not just for others to read and discuss on the forum, but to also clarify the basic positions for myself. I have posted it in the 'Philosophy and Psychology' Section, as there is no Sociology section, or human sciences section.

Before we commence the thread, I am aware of the internet raging war of feminists and anti-feminists, MRA's, MGTOW's, SJW etc...I ask that the threads I post on this subject be disassociated from these terms and their many, many meanings. Feminism is a social study, it also has philosophy associated with it. Some of the following forms of gender inequality may not exist, or exist in the same form, but in order to understand the frameworks, I will have to consider these analyses as they are. Patriarchy has shifted mainly from private inequality to public relations over the years.

Take this for example:


Women do more work in the household than men.


I emplore anyone reading this to not take offence, if you do happen to do equal or more housework and you are a man, good for you! This is a private issue for feminism to tackle and may not be a prevelant in society as it once was, but this is not to say that it isn't happening in the world today on large scales, take Islamic cultures for example, which have a very strict patriarchal structure of society.

I find feminism is only possible to understand objectively, if you can distance yourself from the considerations. While feminism, in its varying forms, may seem like an attack on men, even as if it is men-hating in general, I have to say I don't see it that way and niether do I proffer such a view. Feminism discusses issues where they happen and how they happen.

This thread is not going to tackle feminism as 'the fight for equality for both sexes', rather it is to explain the differences between the frameworks and how they approach the subject. It is not to be taken as an activist thread. I am only atempting to convey what is actually written about in feminist texts. Feminism is a subject that can't be discussed in isolation, the context is vast.

The four main perspectives are:

[list]
[*]Radical Feminism
[*]Marxist Feminism
[*]Liberal Feminism
[*]Dual Systems Theory Feminism
[/list]
The fifth perspective, which is the one I personally find the most interesting, is the Post-Structuralist school of thought on Feminism. We will get around to this.

Radical Feminism

Radical Feminists have an analysis of gender inequality in which men as a group dominate women. The system of domination is called patriarchy. Radical Feminists do not percieve patriarchy as being derived from any other social system of inequality; for instance, it is not a bi-product of capitalism.

'The personal is the political', is a slogan that questions who does the housework, who interrupts whom in conversation - these are seen as part of the system of male domination.

There are differences between Radical Feminists over the basis of male supremacy. This is often considered to involve the appropriation of women's sexuality and bodies.

In other accounts, male violence is seen as the root cause. Sexual practice is seen to be socially constructed around male notions of desire, not women's. Sexuality is seen as a major site of male domination over women, which men impose their notion of feminimity on women.

Heterosexuality is seen as the norm, socially institutionalised and this oragnises many other aspects of gender relations.

Male violence against women is considered to be part of a system of controlling women.

The main problems critics have raised about Radical Feminism is a tendency towards essentialism to an implicit or explicit biological reductionism and to a false universalism which cannot understand historical change or take sufficient account of divisions between women based on ethnicity and class.

Marxist Feminism

Marxists differ because they consider gender inequality to derive from capitalism, therefore patriarchy is not to be considered as an independent system.

Men's domination over women is a by-product of capital's domination over labour. Class relations and the economic exploitation of one class by another are the central features of social structure and these determine the nature of gender relations.

The family is considered to be beneficial to capital by providing a cheap way of taking care of workers, cooking food, washing clothes and for producing the next generation of workers. An important book to read is Silvia Federeici - Caliban and the Witch, in that book, she describes the onset of capitalism during enclosure and how women were subordinated into these roles in society. Women recieve maintainence from ther husbands, but pretty much perform these duties for free.

Capital benefits from the unequal division of labour in the home.

Other Marxists are not so economistic.

Some Marxist Feminists retain a materialist analysis of class relations and combine them with gender relations in terms of ideology and culture.

The main problem is that it too narrowly focuses on capitalism (although this does not make them irrelevant - see my threads on capitalism for more on this). It is unable to account for pre- or post-capitalist societies and it incorrectly reduces gender inequality to capitalism, rather than recognising the independce of gender dynamics.

Liberal Feminism

Liberalism differs from both of the other analyses. It doesn't have an analysis of overarching social structures, but rather percieves doination as being the result of numerous small scale deprivations. In other words, they reject false consciousness and instead focus on rights.

There are two main strands of analysis:

[list=1]
[*]The denial of equal rights for women In education, employment and other important concerns. Women's disadvantaged position is related to specific kinds of prejudice against women.
[*]Sexist attitudes that sustain situations Attitudes are analysed as traditional and unresponsive to recent changes in gender relations.
[/list]
Liberal Feminists have provided extensive documentation and data, empirical studies, on the lives of women.

The major surveys on women's employment and divsion of domestic labour might fall into this category.

Liberal feminism fails to give an account of deep rooted gender inequality and the interconnectedness between its different forms. The persistence of patriarchal attitudes is not systemactically addressed, leading to partial accounts.

Dual Systems Theory

This is a synthesis of Radical and Marxist Feminism. It argues that patriarchy and capitalism are both present and important in the structuring of gender relations in society.

They either analyse it as a capitalist-patriarchal system or as a system that is so symbiotically closely related that it eventually becomes one system.

Patriarchy sustains a system of law and order, while capitalism seeks the pursuit of profit. Changes to one part, will result in changes in the other. Increases in demand for women in the work force for example, leads to demand of political change, in the increasing contradiction of women who are both wage-workers and domestic labourers.

Other writers keep them seperate. On the economic level, order is maintained by capitalism, while on the unconscious level, patriarchy holds the law. This framework was taken from Sigmund Freud, whose work is often considered anti-feminist, due to sexist intrepretations of women's sexuality and desires, nevertheless was found useful for this framework.

Other writers consider patriarchy as operating at the level of expropriation of women's labour by men. Segregation of the workforce is also taken into account. Occupational segregation is used by organised men to keep access to the best paid jobs for themselves at the expense of women. Women also perform more duties at home than men do. Women's disadvantaged position in the workforce makes them vulnerable in marriage arrangements.

Dual Systems theorists state that patriarchy existed long before capitalism, so it cannot be reduced to it.

The main problem I have with Dualists is that they do not cover the full range of patriarchal structures. Sexuality and violence are not given much analytic space. Most suggest either material or the cultural levels are the basis for patrairchy. A broader range of structures needs to be addressed.

Radical Feminists have contributed primarily analyses of sexuality, violence, culture and the state, socialist feminists on housework, waged work, culture and the state. A proper synthesis should include -

[list=1]
[*]waged work
[*]housework
[*]sexuality
[*]culture
[*]violence
[*]the state
[/list]
Post-Structural Feminists

These feminists draw from the works of Derrida and Foucault, while they were not feminists themselves, their texts contain many useful resources for feminists. Although Foucault makes few references to women or to the issue of gender in his writings, his treatment of the relations between power, the body and sexuality has stimulated extensive feminist interest.

The deconstruction of specific categories in texts by Derrida has advanced feminist analysis within the field of cultural studies.

Foucault sees discourses as power, but it is very dispersed and capillary. This is a very different view of power compared to all the other theoretical perspectives.  Foucault’s idea that the body and sexuality are cultural constructs rather than natural phenomena has made a significant contribution to the feminist critique of essentialism.

Judith Butler, another Post-Structural Feminist also works with Queer Theory. Queer theory is a multilayered, and rather complex, field of study. To assign a single-sentence definition to this theory would be incomplete as it would fail to touch on the various ways it is interpreted, applicable and used. In particular, Queer Theory’s overreaching goal is to be sought out as a lens or tool to deconstruct the existing monolithic ideals of social norms and taxonomies; as well as, how these norms came into being and why. In addition, it analyzes the correlation between power distribution and identification while understanding the multifarious facets of oppression and privilege. It is vital to understand queer and Queer Theory as an applicable concept providing a framework to explore these issues rather than an identity. Queer is an inclusive umbrella term for those not only deemed as sexually deviant in relations to a social hegemony but also used to describe those who feel marginalized as a result of social practices and identity. It is a “site of permanent becoming”.

Feminism, perhaps more than any other movement against domination, has thought hard about how projects of personal change can and must interact with social struggles. In some early forms, feminism was typically conceived of as the struggle of women to transform their relationship with men. A simple reading, along the lines of the Clausewitzian image of the duel, would see this as a project in which one social body (women) confronts another (men) and seeks to reconfigure the power relation between these two groupings. However, it has become apparent to more recent feminists that any such project is also a project of self-transformation, in which the identity of ‘woman’ is itself put into question.

The identity of ‘woman’, understood as a fixed natural kind, is a ‘myth’, an ‘imaginary formation’. At the same time, it is certainly the case that in our current world some people are identified – or marked, as Wittig puts it, citing Colette Guillamin – as women. They are identified in this way not only by (those marked as) men, but also by others marked as women and, in many cases, by themselves. And this marking is not merely a superficial naming but:


ideology goes far since our bodies as well as our minds are the product of this manipulation. We have been compelled in our bodies and in our minds to correspond, feature by feature, with the idea of nature that has been established for us.


The project thus involves a movement between two different schemes of identity, two ways of grouping a social ecology. Now, in the present, and formed historically by past relations of domination (and so also by past resistance), there is an identity scheme in which human beings are classed as men and women. The future goal of the project is a quite different identity scheme.


At this point, let us say that a new personal and subjective definition for all humankind can only be found beyond the categories of sex


In Nomadic Subjects, Braidotti's feminist project embarks from the point that ‘there can be no subjectivity outside sexuation, or language; the subject is always gendered: it is a “she-I” or a “he-I”’.

The tense of this ‘always’ is not entirely clear: if it means that we can't imagine any potential future form of language and sexuality without binary gender, this opposes Wittig's project from the start. On the other hand, we might read it to say that people living now have (with few exceptions) grown up gendered as male or female. Braidotti's account of sexual difference then deepens the conception of how humans are ‘marked’ by gender from birth through infancy and as we learn to move, to speak, to value and interpret the world, to experience and shape our bodies, to identify others and ourselves as subjects and as objects and as members of groups, and to practice domination and resistance.

Both projects develop around three distinct perspectives, or moments, of identity. For both, the starting point is a past and present definition of ‘woman’: an identity that is shaped by a history of domination and struggle, but that lives very much in the present as it is deeply incorporated into bodies and relationships here and now. Second, both projects move towards a future in which gendered identities will be transformed: whether, for Wittig, destroyed outright; or, for Braidotti, remade. Thirdly, to reach this future involves the formation of more specific alliances, communities and forms of life, that are actively engaged in resistance here and now: ‘feminists’, ‘lesbians’, ‘feminist women’.

The feminist projects, are collective projects: rather than isolating herself, the self-transforming subject finds or creates an alliance, a community of subjects. who work together on their overlapping projects. Here the project form of life is a collective form of life – perhaps indeed, a culture – that takes shape through the interactions of a group of allied bodies.

[Whisper]

Ecofeminism is something I'm glad I ditched for 3rd wave feminism. No longer a huge war against my body or any need to accept gender roles.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[atreestump]

From having a breif skim through, it seems it has esentialist problems, however it has moved towards more intersectional forms.

[Whisper]

Capitalism is a conundrum whose feminist idols rest at the top of pop culture but for me I personally admire the artistry of women who aren't divas but multi instrumentalists, producers, composers, and are for naught in capitalist societies.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kFoyauextlH]

This might be the appropriate place for me to say there is only One woman and I consider her my property always.

[atreestump]

lol, trust you!

[Socrates]

Bumped for relevance.

[atreestump]

test

[kFoyauextlH]

This might be the appropriate place for me to say there is only One woman and I consider her my property always.

So what I'm talking about there, so long ago now, was a multilayered idea that I think was maybe just overlooked as random gibberish bullsh*t which seems to be the general way in which anything I've ever said has been looked at for the most part. Besides mysticism, it also had to do with a large part of the human experience and the relationship with people, even numerous other human beings, who in actuality may amount to very limited "individual" or "unique" experiences overall, especially for people who end up knowing others who might represent the vast majority who may react similarly to things.

https://nextstepbiblestudy.net/index.ph ... nosticism/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieros_gamos

"
The term "poisoned chalice" is applied to a thing or situation which appears to be good when it is received or experienced by someone, but then becomes or is found to be bad. The idea was referred to by Benedict of Nursia in one of his exorcisms, found on the Saint Benedict Medal: Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas! ('Begone Satan! Never tempt me with your vanities! What you offer me is evil. Drink the poison yourself!').
William Shakespeare uses the expression in Act I Scene VII of Macbeth. It occurs in the opening soliloquy of the scene when Macbeth is considering the ramifications of the murder he is plotting.

But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips. [1.7.7–12]
"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieva ... _mysticism

https://feminismandreligion.com/2020/09 ... male-path/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture

https://www.brandeis.edu/projects/fse/j ... erson.html

https://www.commonsnews.org/issue/797/797clift02

https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent ... Dconsensus

https://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777190170/

"
Women's Legal Rights in Ancient Egypt


by Janet H. Johnson


rom our earliest preserved records in the Old Kingdom on, the formal legal status of Egyptian women (whether unmarried, married, divorced or widowed) was nearly identical with that of Egyptian men. Differences in social status between individuals are evident in almost all products of this ancient culture: its art, its texts, its archaeological record. In the textual record, men were distinguished by the type of job they held, and from which they derived status, "clout," and income. But most women did not hold jobs outside the home and consequently were usually referred to by more generic titles such as "mistress of the house" or "citizeness." Women were also frequently identified by giving the name and titles of their husband or father, from whom, presumably, they derived their social status. Thus the New Kingdom literary text entitled "The Instructions of (a man named) Any" state, "A woman is asked about her husband, a man is asked about his rank."


Funerary statuettes of a husband and wife from the tomb of Nykauinpu from Giza (Dynasty 5, ca. 2477 B.C.).

But in the legal arena both women and men could act on their own and were responsible for their own actions. This is in sharp contrast with some other ancient societies, e.g., ancient Greece, where women did not have their own legal identity, were not allowed to own (real) property and, in order to participate in the legal system, always had to work through a male, usually their closest male relative (father, brother, husband, son) who was called their "lord." Egyptian women were able to acquire, to own, and to dispose of property (both real and personal) in their own name. They could enter into contracts in their own name; they could initiate civil court cases and could, likewise, be sued; they could serve as witnesses in court cases; they could serve on juries; and they could witness legal documents. That women very rarely did serve on juries or as witnesses to legal documents is a result of social factors, not legal ones.

The great disparity between the social and legal status of women can be observed in both documentary and literary materials. For instance, in the literary text entitled "The Instructions of the (Vizier) Ptahhotep," preserved in Middle Kingdom and later copies, a man's wife is seen basically as a dependent, of whom it behooves him to take good, and loving, care:

When you prosper and found your house and love your wife with ardor, fill her belly, clothe her back; ointment soothes her body. Gladden her heart as long as you live; she is a fertile field for her lord.
But next comes a jarring statement,
Do not contend with her in court. Keep her from power, restrain her--her eye is her storm when she gazes. Thus will you make her stay in your house.
This reference to contending with one's wife in court clearly indicates that women had legal rights and were willing to fight for them. This distinction between the legal status of women in ancient Egypt and their public or social status is of major importance in understanding how the Egyptian system actually worked.
Egyptian civil law
The Egyptian word which most corresponds to our word "law" (of which a possible definition is: a system of rights, i.e., individual claims, which are enforced by the "state" if they conform to certain conditions) is hp, which can also connote custom, order, justice, or right, according to its usage. In ancient Egypt all law was given from above; there was no "legislature" which would draft "legislation." In a New Kingdom court case, a man cites the "law of Pharaoh" as precedent and in another, when citing the law a man says, "The King said, . . . " Thus, "law" is the king's word (wd-nswt).

Contracts were written copies of oral agreements in which Party A spoke to Party B in the presence of witnesses and a (professional) scribe who copied down (and put into "legalese") the words of Party A. Although only Party A spoke, Party B had the right to accept or refuse the contract, thus making these agreements bilateral and binding on both parties. Copies of contracts concerning real property were filed in the local records office, under the ultimate jurisdiction of the vizier. These public records made it possible for the state to know who was responsible for paying taxes on the land; the documents were also available for consultation in any subsequent lawsuit.

Civil lawsuits involved an oral petition to the court by a private individual. The best-known example of a local court is the one at Deir el-Medina, the New Kingdom village on the west bank of the Nile at modern Luxor, ancient Thebes, inhabited by the workmen who carved and decorated the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. This court was composed of local people, usually the relatively important local citizens including the scribes and crew chiefs, but also some simple workmen and, even more rarely, women. Egyptian judges based their decisions on traditions and precedent and kept copies of their decisions.

The earliest contracts of which we have record are imyt pr documents, literally "that which is in the house." These contracts frequently have been identified as "wills," but a better translation is "(land) transfer document." They were used to transfer property to someone other than the person(s) who would inherit the property if the owner died intestate (i.e., without a will). These documents were sealed and filed or recorded in a central government office.

There is a fair amount of Old Kingdom evidence for women in the economy or "public sphere," including women shown as merchants in market scenes and women acting as priestesses, especially for the goddess Hathor. Much of the New Kingdom evidence for the economic role of women comes from documents reflecting their dealings with both men and women. That the government was also perfectly willing to deal with women is indicated by Papyrus Wilbour, a long text recording "taxes" due on farmland; each piece of land is identified by owner and (if different) by the person working the land. Of the 2,110 parcels of land for which the name of the owner is preserved, women are listed as owners of 228, just over 10 percent; the land frequently is described as being worked by their children. However these women originally acquired this land, what is significant is that they hold title to the land and bear responsibility for assessments due.

Property
It should be noted that the Egyptians not only had a concept of private property, they also developed a concept of "joint property," property acquired by a married couple during their marriage. The husband had use of the joint property, meaning he could dispose of joint property without his wife's permission. But if a husband sold or otherwise disposed of a piece of joint property (or of any of his wife's property which she brought with her to the marriage), he was legally liable to provide his wife with something of equal value. That it is the husband who has use of joint property reflects the social fact that men normally participated in the public sphere, whereas women did not.

The legal independence and identity of Egyptian women is reflected not only in the fact that they could deal with property on the same terms that men did and that they could make the appropriate contracts in their own names, but also in the fact that they themselves were held accountable for economic transactions and contracts into which they had entered.

In one case, a woman named Iry-nefret was charged with illegally using silver and a tomb belonging to a woman named Bak-Mut to help pay for the purchase of a servant-girl. Iry-nefret was brought to court and told in her own words how she acquired the girl, listing all the items which she gave the merchant as price for the girl and identifying the individuals from whom she bought some of the items used in this purchase. She had to swear an oath before the judges in the names of the god Amon and the Ruler. The judges then had the complainant produce witnesses (three men and three women) who would attest that she had used stolen property to purchase the girl. The end of the papyrus recording the court case is lost, but it is clear that the woman Iry-nefret acted on her own in purchasing the servant-girl and was held solely liable for her actions while the testimony of both women and men was held by the judges to be equally admissible.

Marriage and family law
Marriage in ancient Egypt was a totally private affair in which the state took no interest and of which the state kept no record. There is no evidence for any legal or religious ceremony establishing the marriage, although there was probably a party. The preserved portion of the first Late Period story of Setne Khaemwast tells how Ahure and Na-nefer-ka-Ptah fell in love and wanted to marry. Their parents agreed, so Ahure was taken to Na-nefer-ka-Ptah's house, people (especially the father of the bride) gave presents, there was a big party, the two slept together, and then they lived together and had a child. But basically marriage was an agreement by two people, and their families, that they would live together (hms irm), establish a household (grg pr), and have a family. The same vocabulary was used for both women and men. Although most marriages may have been arranged at the desire of the husband and parents of the bride, there is also a repeated literary image of a girl persuading her father to let her marry the man whom she wishes, rather than the father's choice.

Modern scholars have analyzed the role of women in many societies, ancient to modern, as that of a commodity, sold by the father and bought by the husband. Some Egyptian evidence could suggest that this was or had been true in Egypt, as well. For instance, a man might give a gift to his prospective father-in-law, which could be interpreted as "buying" the man's daughter as wife. But the gift which a man might give to his future father-in-law has also been analyzed as serving to break the bonds of the woman with her biological family, so that the new couple could establish their own family as the center of their life and loyalty.

Although women were legally the equals of men, and could deal with property on equal terms with men, the social and public role of women was vastly different from that of men. Although there are examples where the wife of a couple is stronger or more important than the husband (by family, fortune, or personality), most Egyptians tended to marry a person from their own social class; thus, a woman frequently would marry a man in the same or similar profession as her father and brother(s). This resulted not from formal laws or restrictions but simply, presumably, from the fact that this was the group of people with whom one had the most contact and with whom one was most comfortable.

Annuity contracts
Although women sometimes helped their husbands with their jobs (whether the equivalent of the modern "mom and pop store" or the wife filling in for her husband when the husband was "on the road") and although women had ways of acquiring some wealth through their own initiative (especially through textile production), they needed some assurance that the father of their children would provide for their (hers and their children's) material future. Thus there developed what have been called "marriage contracts," although such documents are purely economic and embody no social expectations at all.

These documents were not designed to legitimize the marriage--they were not a prerequisite for marriage nor did they have to be contracted at the time of the union since some refer to children who are already born to the couple. They were not intended to establish the social/personal rights and responsibilities of either party toward the other, as did both the Greek and Aramaic Jewish marriage contracts preserved from first millennium Egypt.

Such concepts certainly existed; they are presented in wisdom literature from the Old Kingdom on, and in a New Kingdom letter a man spells out what he considered the obligations of a man to his wife: fidelity, (loving) attention, the responsibility to provide well for her and their children, to take care of her medically, to take pride in her, and not to treat her as a master treats a servant.

The so-called "marriage contracts" concern themselves only with economic matters--the annual responsibility of the husband to feed and clothe the wife (and their children) and the right of their children to inherit his wealth--and are better called annuity contracts. As such, they were extremely advantageous to the wife and one may assume that the woman and her family exerted as much pressure as they could to ensure that the husband made such a contract. Because Egyptian women were full participants in the legal system, not chattel and not dependent on a man to handle their legal concerns for them, such contracts were made by the husband directly with the wife, not her father or any other man on her behalf. This is in sharp contrast with other ancient "marriage documents," whether these documents were purely economic or also embedded social concerns.

In an annuity contract found in the Ptolemaic "Family Archive from Siut" (a town in Middle Egypt), the man addresses the woman. He lists the value of all the expensive property that she brought with her to the marriage, he notes that he will give her an amount of money as a "bridal gift," and he declares that, if they divorce (and whether the divorce was instigated by him or by her), he must give her money equivalent to the full value of everything which he had mentioned; if he doesn't give her all the money, then he must (continue to) feed and clothe her (the amounts of grain, oil, and money for clothing which he must provide every month are spelled out) until he does give her the full amount in silver. If he defaults on his payments, she remains legally entitled to any and all arrears. By implication, if they divorce, then once he has paid her the full amount of silver included in the contract, she returns the contract to him and all obligations are canceled.

Note that although the wife "owned" the property, the husband had use of it. Thus, in case of divorce, the husband had to repay the value, not return the specific items. It has been suggested that the "bridal gift" (in this case 20 pieces of silver), and similarly the earlier fine imposed on a husband who divorces his wife, was intended as a deterrent to the man's divorcing his wife. In either case, the man would have had to actually hand the money over to the woman only at the time of divorce. The contract is confirmed by the husband's father: since the husband would not actually come into ownership of the property to be inherited from his father until his father's death, the father must confirm that he approves of his son's marriage and will not use this marriage as an excuse to disown his son (thereby leaving the son's new wife high and dry).

Divorce
Divorce and remarriage were common in Egypt at all periods and contention between siblings and half-siblings, frequent. To stress the close nature of siblings, both literary and documentary sources frequently specify that they share both mother and father. To resolve potential disputes before they might arise, the somewhat practical or pragmatic expediency was chosen of making it incumbent on the father to secure the permission of his older children, who stood to lose part of their inheritance. Since men, even full grown men, remained economically dependent on their parents, and especially their fathers, until the parents died, it would also be in the best interests of the son to agree to his father's remarriage (and not risk rupture and complete disinheritance). Thus, everybody's wants or needs were satisfied by getting everyone to agree to what at least some people wanted. This pattern fits with the observation that agreement and resolution of conflict, rather than "abstract justice," often seem to have been the aim of Egyptian court decisions.

Divorce and remarriage seem to have been relatively easy and relatively common. There is little convincing evidence for polygamy, except by the king, but extensive evidence for "serial monogamy." Either party could divorce a spouse on any grounds or, basically, without grounds, without any interest or record on the part of the state. The vocabulary for divorce, like that for marriage, reflected the fact that marriage was, basically, living together; a man "left, abandoned" a woman; a woman "went (away from)" or "left, abandoned" a man.

Although neither party had to provide legal (or social, moral or ethical) grounds for divorce, the economic responsibilities spelled out in the annuity contracts made this a serious step. Thus, normally a married woman was supported by her husband for as long as they remained married and his property was entailed for their children. Since even remarriage after the death of a first wife could lead to wrangling over property and inheritance rights, a bitter divorce and remarriage could lead to major legal contests.

If a man divorced his wife, he had to return her dowry (if she had brought one) and pay her a fine; if she divorced him, there was no fine. A spouse divorced for fault (including adultery) forfeited his or her share of the couple's joint property. After divorce, both were free to remarry. But it seems clear that, until the husband has returned his wife's dowry and paid her the fine, or until she has accepted it, the husband remained liable for supporting her, even if they were no longer living together. Some (ex-)husbands, then as now, tried to avoid supporting their (ex-)wives, and we have several references to a woman's biological family stepping in to support or assist her when her husband can't or won't.

The ancient Egyptian concept of adultery consisted of a married person having sex with someone other than that person's spouse. It was just as "wrong" for a man to commit adultery as for a woman. The Egyptian system was family centered, and the terminology for marriage and divorce was the same for both sexes; adultery was defined in family terms and condemned for both men and women, and sex by unmarried individuals seems not to have been a major concern.

This brief overview on women's rights, which has necessarily omitted many questions and much detail, only touches upon the complexities of this ancient culture, where women's remarkable legal equality and ability to own and dispose of property must be seen in the light of the social world in which they lived--a world dominated, at least in the range of records which have been preserved for us, by men and men's concerns.
"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_r ... in_history

Pretty weird seeming that these obvious human being were being questioned as if they weren't, similar to slaves, to people "of color", of Palestinians, Muslims no matter their color or appearance.

There is only One Woman, and I consider her my Property, what ever could that be as a meditative path?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_(ethics)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_ ... ientations

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sense_of_Beauty

https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Aesthetic

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaze

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_gaze

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_privilege

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_God

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_ ... ristianity

https://gender.fandom.com/wiki/Godgender

https://mushokutensei.fandom.com/wiki/Hitogami

https://mushokutensei.fandom.com/wiki/Six-Faced_World

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Lady

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simp

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-kid

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domination

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unattractiveness

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookism

"
Lookism is prejudice or discrimination toward people who are considered to be physically unattractive, and can include basing one's judgment of another person's other qualities, such as intelligence and abilities, on a person’s physical appearance. It occurs in a variety of settings, including dating, social environments, and workplaces.[1] Lookism has received less cultural attention than other forms of discrimination (such as racism and sexism) and typically does not have the legal protections that other forms often have, but it is still widespread and can significantly affect people's opportunities in terms of romantic relationships, job opportunities, and other realms of life.[2] The same concept from the opposite angle is sometimes named pretty privilege.[3]

Physical attractiveness is associated with positive qualities; in contrast, physical unattractiveness is associated with negative qualities. Many people make judgments of others based on their physical appearance which influence how they respond to these people. Research on the "what is beautiful is good" stereotype shows that, overall, those who are physically attractive benefit from their good looks: physically attractive individuals are perceived more positively and physical attractiveness has a strong influence on judgement of a person's competence.[4]
"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_symmetry

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_phobias

"
Teratophobia fear of giving birth to a monster[33] or a disfigured foetus[34]
"

"
Discrimination or prejudice against unattractive people is sometimes referred to as lookism, cacophobia, or aschemophobia,[6] and if it is a result of one's disfigurement, ableism.[7] Teratophobia is an aversion or fear of people who appear monstrous, have blemishes or are disfigured. When such an aversion is coupled with prejudice or discrimination, it may be viewed as a form of bullying.[8] With the dating world or courtship, judging others purely based on their outward appearance is acknowledged as an attitude that does transpire, yet is often viewed as an approach that is superficial and shallow.[9] Some research indicates a sentencing disparity where unattractive people are "more likely to be recommended psychiatric care" than attractive people.[10] Prejudice against ugliness is complex: Gretchen Henderson suggests that there is, paradoxically, a cultural suspicion towards both beauty and ugliness. [11]
"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_law

"
From 1867 to 1974, various cities of the United States had unsightly beggar ordinances, retroactively named ugly laws.[1] These laws targeted poor people and disabled people. For instance, in San Francisco a law of 1867 deemed it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view."[2][1] Exceptions to public exposure were acceptable only if the people were subjects of demonstration, to illustrate the separation of disabled from nondisabled and their need for reformation.[3]: 47 

The Charity Organization Society suggested that the best charity relief would be to investigate and counsel the people needing assistance instead of providing them with material relief.[4] This created conflict in people between their desire to be good Christians and good citizens when seeing people in need of assistance. It was suggested that the beggars imposed guilt upon people in this way.[3]: 37  The educator William F. Slocum wrote in 1886 that "Pauperism is a disease upon the community, a sore upon the body politic, and being a disease, it must be, as far as possible, removed, and the curative purpose must be behind all our thought and effort for the pauper class."[4] Similarly, other authors suggested that one who gave charity to beggars without knowing what was to be done with the funds was as "culpable as one who fires a gun into a crowd".[5]

The term ugly laws was coined in the mid-1970s by detractors Marcia Pearce Burgdorf and Robert Burgdorf, Jr.[3]: 9 
"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_(philosophy)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminine_beauty_ideal

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronormativity

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_body_shape

"
The feminine beauty ideal is a specific set of beauty standards regarding traits that are ingrained in women throughout their lives and from a young age to increase their perceived physical attractiveness. It is experienced by many women in the world, though the traits change over time and vary in country and culture.[1]

The prevailing beauty standard for women is heteronormative,[2] but the extent to which it has influenced lesbian and bisexual women is debated.[3][4] The feminine beauty ideal traits include but are not limited to: female body shape, facial feature, skin tones, clothing style, hairstyle and body weight.

Handling the pressure to conform to particular definition of "beautiful" can have psychological effects on an individual, such as depression, eating disorders, body dysmorphia and low self-esteem that can start from an adolescent age and continue into adulthood.
"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_One_Woman

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walls_Fell_Down

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Ideoligion

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-35787730





Women are now largely what many have seen giving them news:



All the ways in which women are received now impacts what people may typically understand is associated with "woman" as a form:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulpa

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_friend

"
A major concept in metaphysics, the theory suggests that the physical world is not as real or true as Forms. According to this theory, Forms—conventionally capitalized and also commonly translated as Ideas[4]—are the timeless, absolute, non-physical, and unchangeable essences of all things, which objects and matter in the physical world merely participate in, imitate, or resemble.[5] In other words, Forms are various abstract ideals that exist even outside of human minds and that constitute the basis of reality. Thus, Plato's Theory of Forms is a type of philosophical realism, asserting that certain ideas are literally real, and a type of idealism, asserting that reality is fundamentally composed of ideas, or abstract objects.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism



https://www.lakeforest.edu/news/everybo ... s-on-women

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It was the Renaissance humanist Francois Rabelais who proclaimed, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” In this same way, it is impossible for humans to formulate theories outside of societal influence. The works of Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and Plato (427-347 BCE) were significant in that they either reflected or refuted the perceptions held of women within the Ancient World. Although many critics have deemed one man a misogynist and the other a champion of the feminist cause, a careful inspection of both men’s work leads one to conclude that their standpoints were muddled at best. Aristotle, while clearly labeling women as the inferior sex, may have simply been interpreting the scientific observations of his time. In stark contrast, Plato radically promoted equality of opportunity, yet he frequently contradicted himself when making degrading remarks towards women.

Aristotle deviated quite drastically from Plato, his teacher of nearly two decades, when he determined women’s role in society based solely upon their flawed anatomy. Drawing upon the work of other Greek writers, Aristotle strongly subscribed to the belief that the universe was composed of opposites. According to Anne Carson, “…in the document cited by Aristotle that goes by the name of The Pythagorean Table of Opposites, we find the attributes curving, dark, secret, ever- moving, not self-contained and lacking its own boundaries aligned with Female and set over against straight, light, honest, good, stable, self-contained and firmly bounded on the Male side” (Carson, 124). Extending this to the biology of the sexes, females were fundamentally colder, wet, and passive, while men were hot, dry, and active.

Aristotle found women to be inferior due to the fact that their bodies were too cold to produce seed (or semen). In his acclaimed work On the Generation of Animals, Aristotle states that, “For the first principle of the movement…whereby that which comes into being is male, is better and more divine than the material whereby it is female. The male, however, comes together and mingles with the female for the work of generation” (Aristotle, Book II). Thus, women merely function as a depository for sperm and a nourishing receptacle for a developing fetus. If this was not enough of a compliment, he goes on to make the argument that a woman is a “…deformed male; and the menstrual discharge is semen, though in an impure condition; i.e. it lacks one constituent…the principle of the Soul” (Aristotle, Book III). In addition to possessing soulless semen, women would inevitably reach puberty, maturity, and old age quicker than males due to their imperfection.

Aristotle threw women a bone when he contended that both sexes had a soul that was capable of reason. However, women were doomed to be subservient to men because that they were unable to “…control themselves physically and psychologically through the exercise of reason the way men can” (Whaley, 16). Interestingly, Aristotle used his biology of sex to determine each gender’s role in society. He felt that the rational, strong, active, and perfect form of humanity ought to receive an education and hold positions of power. Women, being endowed with irrationality, weakness, passivity, and imperfection, were not capable of abstract reasoning and were bound to the domestic sphere. Unfortunately, this assessment was the prevailing view until the Middle Ages.

Aristotle’s biology has earned him the title of Most Acclaimed Misogynist by a vast majority of scholars. However, some individuals contend that passed judgement too quickly. Johnannes Morsink argues that Aristotle did not simply observe the natural world and then formulate a theory; instead, he attempted to reconcile the competing biological theories of his day. Morsink also states that, “Aristotle failed to see that the connection between the ‘biological inferiority’ of a woman and her alleged social and political inferiority is not at all a straight- forward one…His biology was therefore sexist in that it had pernicious consequences which Aristotle failed to challenge” (Morsink, 85). Such a claim makes the philosopher appear to be a passive bystander. In my eyes, Aristotle clearly stepped beyond the bounds of his observations and extrapolated his vague knowledge of human anatomy in order to define an individual’s capacity as a human being.

Aristotle failed to challenge the consequences of his theories because he actively promoted ideas that benefited other aristocratic white males such as himself. According to Maryanne Cline Horowitz, “…Aristotle’s belief in the mental and biological superiority of free men to both women and natural slaves, which was his ultimate justification for male rule in the household and state, gave sanction to a hierarchy of servitudes, including wifedom and slavery” (Horowitz, 187-188). In this, Aristotle’s anatomical descriptions with misogynistic overtones may have been one means of reinforcing typical patriarchal power structures. Who would not promote a system that ensures your own prosperity?

Not only are Plato’s views of women highly contested, but the term used to describe him as well. Dorothea Wender, featured in Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers, defines a feminist as “…a man or woman who believes that women should be given a ‘better’ place in society (legally, politically, professionally, etc.) or one which more closely approximates that held by men of the same class” (Wender, 213). By this definition, Plato was one of the earliest “feminist” writers. The philosopher found the soul to be sexless and he focused little of his efforts on defining the anatomical differences between men and women.

Within the Republic, Plato made a bold statement when addressing the superiority of either sex in form or ability: “…if the difference consists only in women bearing and men begetting children, this does not amount to a proof that a woman differs from a man in respect of the sort of education she should receive; and we shall therefore continue to maintain that our guardians and their wives ought to have the same pursuits” (Plato, Book V). Plato radically promoted the idea that in an ideal society, all worthy individuals would receive training and an education, regardless of sex. While Plato believed women to be physically weaker than men, he establishes in Laws that women would inevitably become more equal to men if they received appropriate training.

Plato did not align with Aristotle’s philosophy that women were created to serve in the domestic sphere. He viewed the suppression of women as a waste of human resources and denied society access to the best possible guardians (e.g. philosophers). The prospect of women thinking abstractly as well as holding positions of power was nearly unheard of during Plato’s time, which makes many of his philosophies revolutionary. However, this is not to say his works are not littered with contradictions. In Timaeus, Plato quipped that men who were cowardly and unjust in this life would certainly come back as women in the next. Wender is also keen in noting that in Republic III, Aristotle “…says that our future guardians should not imitate women acting ‘womanish’ nor slaves acting ‘slavish.’ Implication: the typical behavior of women, like that of the other major class of inferiors, is bad. Free-born men do not form a ‘class’ as slaves and women do; they are mankind; they are the species. Slaves and women are peculiar varieties, deviant form the norm” (Wender, 218). All throughout his works, Plato referred to women as secretive, inferior, irritable, crude, overly emotional, promiscuous, and poor educators.

There is no way to discern Plato’s true feelings towards women, but we can postulate the reasoning behind his inconsistent views. Greek philosophy was characterized by the capacity to see both sides of every argument. This is clearly demonstrated with Plato’s tendency to write in dialogue form. The philosopher could easily argue for the advancement of women as well as give weight to the misogynistic views of his time. In addition, Plato’s Republic aimed at ending nepotism through demolishing the family, arbitrarily loyalties, and property. Utilizing the talents of women would help improve the State as a whole, but that does not mean Plato himself harbored purely positive feelings towards the female sex.

It is extremely difficult to ascribe modern terms and definitions to men who lived in entirely different geographical locations, time periods, and social contexts. When reading through their works, much is lost in translation. Perhaps there will never be a definitive answer to the question of whether Aristotle was a true misogynist or Plato was a true feminist. What can be stated with certainty is that Aristotle’s blatant degradation of women produced a philosophy that dominated Western civilization for centuries to come, while Plato quietly laid the foundation for women’s movements far in the future. It is truly frightening how powerful words can be.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristot ... s_on_women

https://www.yorku.ca/horowitz/courses/l ... ender.html

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Plato on Gender: Three Different Views

We’ve seen that Plato insists that justice means exclusive specialization and hierarchy, but we’ve also seen that the Myth of the Metals indicates that Plato recognizes that he cannot prove that nature dictates this hierarchy. Earlier as well we saw that there was reason to question exclusive specialization when Socrates was beginning to found the city of words.

Given all this it might not seem so puzzling, then, that Plato seems to challenge exclusive specialization and hierarchy in one of the forms in which they were most deeply rooted in Greek society, that is in the social role assigned to women. In Book V, Socrates proposes that the ideal city faces a choice. It can either leave the wives of the guardians in the same domestic roles as women in contemporary Athenian society, or else it can allow women to take on all the roles of the guardian class. The second alternative is the one Socrates pursues and since it implies a substantial equality between female and male it has led, over the years, to the view that Plato is the first and one of the few feminists in the history of political philosophy until recent years.

Somewhere – I believe it was in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 -- Marx once said you can get a true picture of a society or an epoch by the way its women and children are treated. It might make sense to apply that to the Republic in order to get a better sense of what Plato is above all pursuing. But first of all, it would be important to get rid of the notion that, like a modern liberal feminist, Plato is appealing to a general notion of equality of opportunity. Plato is not interested in freeing women from the shackles of traditional restraints they might compete for opportunities for self-realization, no matter what these opportunities are conceived to be. Had that been the case, he would have had to extend this principle to the ideal city as a whole, which would then have taken on a radically different appearance.

Yet Plato does here challenge directly one of the most deeply entrenched, if not the most entrenched actual hierarchical practices of the Greek polis, which was as much a part of Athenian democracy as of other constitutional arrangements. Athenian women, “free” women – those who were not slaves -- lived at that time in a situation we today would instantly label domestic servitude. Not only were they denied any public role in the life of the polis, they were kept hidden and secluded at home to manage in a secondary way the work of the household. Beyond this, the law and custom considered women to be virtually a form of chattel property under the authority of fathers and husbands and they were subjected in matters of sexuality to a flagrant double standard. One small indication of the latter: the word for adultery meant a married woman having sex with a man who was not her husband. In other words, men, by definition, could not commit adultery. The egalitarian tendencies of some of the Sophists, although it extended to slaves, did not seem to extend to the conventionality of womanhood.

It is in a context like this that Plato’s modest proposal for equality between male and female guardians appeals shockingly radical and feminist and egalitarian. So what was Plato doing? Following Socrates we can pursue knowing the nature of a thing by looking at its function or purpose. Why could Plato not have left the whole issue alone? Or else have come up with something else?

In the past, whatever reaction male interpreters felt to Plato’s scheme, they on the whole assumed he was a feminist. Recent arguments from women theorists have offered a number of more interesting interpretations. Among such recent interpretations, there are basically three views: 1. Plato was in some sense a feminist, but an inadequate one. This is a view well-expressed by the liberal feminist theorist Susan M. Okin. 2. Plato was not a feminist. His putting forward of apparent feminist arguments in Book V, when looked at more deeply in terms of the esoteric (or hidden) meaning of the Republic as a whole, reveals those arguments to be secondary to his main purpose. His main purpose was to point out the relation between the city and politics on the one hand and those things that permanently cannot be accommodated to them, i.e. nature, the passions, as well as philosophy – or the love of universal truth. This is the interpretation of a conservative woman theorist, Arlene Saxenhouse. 3. Plato was not a feminist, but because he ends up making women into men for the sake of the unity of the ideal city. Women once more, and only apparently not, are subordinated to their reproductive roles in a new form of the family. Two feminist theorists who put forward this view are Linda Lange and Diana Coole, who in different ways could be called radical feminists.

A. -- Let’s look first at the liberal feminist view. According to Okin, Plato is an inadequate or failed feminist, or possibly a reluctant feminist. He is forced to reconsider the role of women only because he has already opted to abolish the traditional family. That family must go because it is one of the primary institutions that would draw the guardians away from dedication to public life and the good of the whole society. But this leaves Plato in a quandary. What is he to do with the women and children of the guardians? Obviously, there must be women and children of the guardian class if this society is to subsist beyond one generation. There can be no families for individual guardians because of the need for unity, so how can this class reproduce itself?

This opens up the possibility of considering that there be female guardians, especially because for the guardian class there will be no domestic role to perform. Child-rearing will be done in publicly organized day-cares. The material needs of the guardians are minimal and are to be supplied by the producing class. Maternity need not be a full-time, but only an occasional occupation.

According to Okin, because of all this, Plato is forced to recognize individual women as persons in their own right. Socrates therefore goes back to the main principle guiding the construction of the ideal city, which is fitting a persons function to their nature. The whole question of a female human nature must then be opened up. Are there specific female and male human natures, and if so how do they differ, and what follows from these differences in nature (not differences in education or differences in opinion about what each sex should do). Socrates does agree that males and females differ in their natures, but then introduces the crucial distinction, which is the one concerning relevant criteria. The question is which differences are the ones that matter? According to Socrates (and the other discussants agree) the main natural difference concerns the procreative function. Women bear and nurse children. But this turns out to be irrelevant or at least largely irrelevant to the tasks that female guardians would be asked to perform.

At the very least then, Socrates has shifted the burden of proof to the other side. The other side, the traditionalists, let’s call them, would have to demonstrate how this one difference in nature which is incontrovertible can be used to subordinate all women to a purely domestic role. The upshot is that Plato has introduced the revolutionary thesis that biology, at least the biology of reproductive differences, is not equivalent to destiny. Like the Sophists Plato here makes a clear and sharp distinction between nature and convention and from this perspective all the traditional gender roles can be questioned. And Plato even thought that men as well as women guardians should share equally in the care of the youngest children (460b).

In this reading of Plato, it is his already perceived need to abolish the family that opens up the question about convention and that leads to an at least implicit recognition of sexual equality and to the idea of equality of opportunity. Why then does Plato turn out to be inadequate as a feminist in Okin’s interpretation? For the liberal-feminist, Plato in the end fails basically because he does not push through to all the implications of his own environmentalism. Given the enormous stress that Plato puts, throughout the Republic, on the power of education (see e.g. 455d), and also given the Myth of the Metals (which indicates that actual differences are in reality far from being innate – although that’s not what we’ll tell the lower classes), one should, and legitimately, expect Plato to use environmentalist arguments to simply assert the equality of women and men. In fact, Plato implicitly argues that men and women have the same natures and that therefore there are no differences in kinds of tasks that can be assigned to them. Individual natures should decide the outcome. However, Plato does not go the whole route here. Women are characterized as on the whole being weaker versions of men, some of whom, however will be able to meet the criteria of membership in the guardian class, by nature. Okin does not attempt to explain Plato’s reluctance here. He is simply not yet convinced that women can in fact do anything traditionally assigned to men. In here eyes, Plato then ends up being inconsistent in the ways he argues about men and women. He applies environmentalist arguments to men, but not to women.

B. – Okin’s interpretation is basically built around the question of the degree to which Plato agrees with modern liberal feminism . She sees some essential agreement. Biology is not the source of conventional differences, and women are therefore, however reluctantly, essentially equal to men. But Okin cannot account for how so radical and consistent a thinker as Plato avoids following through on the implications of his own arguments. This leads us to the conservative interpretation. In the conservative interpretation, the whole issue of the equality of women is treated as merely a dramatic and rhetorical device to raise a different question. This is the question of the essential tension between the city/politics on the one hand and women and philosophy on the other. Both philosophy and women share a common alienation from politics. Each therefore brings into question the value of the polity and its pursuits. Its pursuits are supposed to be power, fame, action, glory, war and conquest. Philosophy brings these into question from the point of view of a “higher”, “spiritual” nature. Woman brings these things into question from the point of view of a “lower” or “original” nature.

This approach – Saxenhouse’s – is part of a broader interpretation of the Republic as a dramatic device Plato is using to justify the withdrawal (or at least partial withdrawal) of philosophy from the political arena. From this conservative position, power and knowledge should be almost wholly dissociated, because these thinkers (not only Saxenhouse, but Bloom and Strauss from whom she draws) assume that bringing politics and the pretension to knowledge together will always lead to dangerously radical political experiments. The conservative interpretation therefore tries to establish that Plato could not have meant literally most of what he proposes for the ideal city. This goes beyond his treatment of women to issues of property as well.

As evidence for this reading, which sees a vast difference between the exoteric or manifest meaning Plato communicates to non-philosophers and the esoteric or hidden meaning he reserves for the philosophic souls who know how to read him, such interpreters point to a number of suggestions and possible hints in the text that Socrates is proposing something that is patently absurd in order to point out something else. The something else would be pointed to indirectly.

The patent absurdity they cite with greatest frequency is that for the Athenians of that time, an equal education for men and women would mean that men and women would exercise naked in the gymnasia of the city [because men at that time did so; women did not go into the gymnasia at all, except as servants or prostitutes]. Now, according to the conservative interpretation, this is not an absurdity because of logic. It is a hint about the absurdity of the whole proposal for the ideal city. The ideal city is absurd, for one thing, because of the radical abstraction from sexuality and from the body that it would demand for sexual equality to be made real. In a way, the conservative interpretation is saying that once you start off on this road to the impossible, ridiculous and wrongheaded idea of sexual equality, you will find yourself radically denying nature, the nature of the body and the nature of sexual difference, and this cannot be the intention of a good conservative thinker like Plato. Saxenhouse connects the apparent absurdity of this abstraction from the body to Plato’s proposals about eugenics and breeding. Guardian mothers would not be allowed to know their biological children. Even more than the male guardians, the female guardians would have to extract themselves from all private life and bodily connections.

The conservative interpretation ties Plato’s treatment of women and his treatment of communism to the apparent elimination of all private life from the city. All individual distinctiveness is destroyed for the sake of unity. “By equating the male and the female,” she says, “the public and the private are made one”. Females are integrated into the unified city not in their specificity as females, but as “weaker men”.

But what is the point of this elaborate charade on Socrates’ part? It would be to convey the esoteric doctrine that philosophy must not try to become political; that the political values of honour and manly prowess and glory are exclusive of both philosophy and the love of universal truth on the one hand and of the unavoidable bodily and privatistic basis of human life on the other.

The advantage of this sort of interpretation is that it tries to read the Republic as a dramatic narrative, as a story in which things are happening to complex characters. [Glaucon is being led here from harboring a certain contempt for philosophy and goodness into at least a respect for the value of philosophy and a recognition that the life of the just man is its own reward --- but we are still too early in the book to see well how something like this is working] This sort of interpretation also tries to avoid reading back certain modern or liberal ideas into Plato. On the other hand, it becomes a little too easy to have Socrates believing the exact opposite of what he clearly asserts: that a large amount, if not all of what was commonly believed to be female human nature is simply the product of convention and education. In this way, the conservative interpretation also tends to take certain assumptions [not so widely held now] about what is possible and natural in human life and read them back into Plato’s true though hidden intentions. For this interpretation, the ideas that Plato presents about sexual equality can be dismissed because Plato is not talking about sexual equality at all. He is only using the idea of the body or privacy to outline the nature of politics as corrupting – something that philosophers may criticize, but not engage in.

C. – The third kind of interpretation manages to avoid much of the question begging of the first two. In this “radical feminist” interpretation it is clear, like in the conservative one, that Plato does not represent an early flowering of liberal ideas of equality of opportunity. His main concern in introducing the possibility of female guardians is not one of equal participation from women in any and all of the functions of the ideal city. His theoretical concerns are not those of a feminist. And his proposals in fact do not require a belief in the equal worth of both sexes. They also do not require strict equality even within the guardian class between males and females. For example, many passages indicate that Plato did not in fact believe that women were as good as men. Especially in books VIII and IX they are identified (along with children and slaves) as being dominated by the irrational, appetitive, weak part of the soul. (see also 431)

Why then is Plato concerned to argue on behalf of the inclusion of women as equal partners in guardianship. Well, the first thing you might notice is that although Plato does argue forcefully that individual women might qualify for guardianship, it turns out that there is no real need for anything like an equal number of men and women in the guardian class. There are no monogamous relationships. Sexual intercourse is to be strictly controlled (up to age 65) (!!) The best age for women to bear children is held to be between the ages of 20 and 40; the best age for men Plato holds to be between 30 and 55. This means that women are finished with bearing children before the age of rulership. Therefore, Plato may intend older (ruler-type) male guardians to mate with promising females who may or may not go on to become rulers themselves.

So why, if he is not concerned with justice between the sexes, is Plato arguing for treating women as equals in this peculiar set of arrangements? The answer is in the whole set of institutions that define the guardian class. Above all the guardians are to be denied those elements of private life that could separate them from each other, turn them against each other and therefore against the polis. They are to own no houses, land or productive property. Also sex and love are to be separated in such a way that individual guardians should not find it possible to develop exclusive bonds that might lead to disunity within the guardian class. Plato was so insistent that no factions threaten the unity of the ideal city that, seeing the relations between exclusive sexual relations, private property and the family, he wishes to transform this force for disunity into a unifying force. He will do this by making the guardian class as a whole as much as possible into a substitute for the traditional family. The conflict between private and public life and the conflict between the irrational and exclusive passions and reason are overcome by making all private life public. Or, more accurately, they are overcome by eliminating any distinction between the public and the private.

The guardians’ “private life” is totally subordinated to the need for unity; but the public life of the city is contained within the quasi-familial private life of the guardian class. Here, once again, women are subordinated to the reproductive function. Except here, in the guardian class, this subordination is expressed through a denial of of the mother-child bond and by a strict regulation of fertility. The particular reproductive role is a different one than in the traditional family. It is reproduction of familial/quasi-familial unity as well as biological reproduction . But the female guardians are every bit as subordinated to their new reproductive function as were the traditional mothers, some of whom Plato may appear to be emancipating. For this third approach, turning women into bearers of the traditionally male virtues and functions as well as bearers of babies does not amount to an emancipatory intent for women.
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