#enslavement of women

[balkanradfem]

I experienced the biggest shift in my feminist consciousness when I stopped seeing women as the 'other' and start seeing us as 'we'. I realized it's not about how the world sees us or how my personality is different or whatever I couldn't relate to in other women; it's what's threatening and disadvantaging all of us. It's we, the women, who are fighting a common enemy and this threat surpasses any differences that we might have between us, it surpasses all my personal squabbles and disagreements, because this is bigger than that.

What happened to women historically are not distant and 'unfortunate' events that have nothing to do with me, they have everything to do with why my life is the way it is right now. M*n burned women, and because of this now we, the women, don't have reasonable or effective healthcare anymore. They didn't burn them in a craze or hysteria, they burned them for studying female illnesses and developing medicine, for keeping women healthy and sane, for benefiting us as a group. It's the reason why I suffer from menstrual pain today and the reason why there's not a ready cure, reason why me and others were not educated on our genitals or our sex-specific illnesses, it's why our health problems are not, and won't be taken seriously.

M*n also burned women for owning land, and during the history, did everything they possibly could to stop women from inheriting, owning and managing land. And it's the reason why I will not be considered to inherit my fathers land, why most of women will not gain land just by having family ties, while males absolutely will, they'll be the first choice to inherit both land and property. It's the reason I will have to fight for the most of my life to acquire a piece of land and not only it will be difficult, but most people will believe that I shouldn't own any. Because they've managed to create a standard where women historically rarely had land, and made this into our normal. They did it to give land to themselves.

The fact that women were barred from colleges and high education in the past is not unrelated to me and my situation today. It's the reason my female ancestors were subjected to poverty and servitude, with no way to free themselves – and by extension, the reason I am still in poverty today. If my female ancestors were from the start, well educated, owning both land and freely managing their health issues, I would inherit not only their knowledge, skills and property, but also the financial security that comes with it. My female ancestors would be able to invest in their children's future, to make sure their female descendants don't have to suffer and fight for food, or a piece of land to exist on. Instead, what they were forced to do was serve a m*n and hope that he would be kind to their children and maybe secure them some more financial safety than they had  - and he didn't. Because m*n save those things for their own class.

The fact that women were banned from their own last names and lineage cuts me off from my history and my heritage. I don't get to draw my female-centered family tree or know what my female ancestors lived through and how they got me here, and if they even did it purposely, or were forced into childbirth without ever having a choice. I don't get to be proud of their achievements, inherit their wisdom or read their life stories. Instead I had to hear about male war escapades and be disgusted that the male lineage was filled with violent offenders.

The fact that women were historically enslaved or trapped in various types of servitude, despite how it was being called, has huge impact on my life today. It's the reason why, from the very start of life, I've been taught that I would be better fit for a role of servitude. That my place is in the kitchen, keeping home, feeding others, cleaning and doing menial tasks that would never be rewarded or paid for. It's why even my reproductive rights have been represented to me as my 'duty to the humankind'. None of that would be happening if women throughout history weren't in a servant/slave class. But, this wasn't only ever true for women, was it?

M*n during history were enslaved too, and yet all m*n are not taught from birth that they would be much very well fitted for a servant role, and to act as a resource for others. They're not told that their only value is to keep house, serve in the kitchen and clean house for others. To sacrifice their reproductive rights for someone else's purposes. That's because our age of servitude never ended. They're still at it, teaching every woman what she is before she even knows there's possibly a choice of freedom. Where they can't enforce us legally, they do it by grooming, by tradition, by violence in our home. We have not been freed from servitude until no female child is ever told that she needs to be a resource, to pick up and clean and cook and please everyone around her. We are still being trapped into belief that we have no choice, that our servitude is normal, expected, and nothing to fight against because they made it a tradition. We still have our female children in servitude before they even understand that what is asked of them is a part of a historical oppression.

Whatever was done to women and girls throughout history affects every bit of my life right now, and what my life would be without it is almost unimaginable for a woman who never experienced living outside of an oppressed class. Our history is not only scarred but then cut away from us, we're being convinced that anything from the past is 'long forgotten' and 'no longer relevant since we can now vote', but it's only done to isolate us from the female class consciousness, to convince us that our life right now, is the best we could ever hope for, and there was never any way for it to be better, for us to have any more power than we do. While they give power to themselves.

We had the right to freedom, healthcare, knowledge, education, land and inheritance, for the entire history. All of it has been cut away and taken from all of us, resulting in us never being able to accumulate any security or safety for our own, not even enough to keep us out of life of poverty and servitude, not even enough to ensure that our children will be safe. And on top of that, we've been 'othered' and isolated from each other, so we cannot even work together on acknowledging what's been taken and how to reach safety. We're turned to self blame, and self loathing for our low status in the population, as if it's personally each of our faults that we couldn't overthrow the oppression or thrive in a hostile society.

Women are not the 'other'. M*n are. We the women are robbed of our property, inheritance, resources and right by m*n, systematically and consistently. It's affecting each and every one of our lives. It's why we can't care for our children, why we get turned away from our doctors, why each of us has to heal their own organs, why our mothers and grandmothers can only give us horror stories of survival and tell us we should make peace with a life of servitude, for they've never seen a woman survive any other way. It's why we had and still have to rely on m*n for housing and survival, even though there would be absolutely no need for this had they not robbed us of our half of the land. It's why developing class consciousness is necessary, we cannot recognize or fight this while we're othered from each other.

[finelythreadedsky]

wait i think actually madeline miller's circe is the heir to margaret atwood's penelopiad, unintentionally, in the way it thematizes the impossibility of real solidarity among women.

bc it's such a major part of the penelopiad how penelope creates what she thinks is a real community, a sort of family, with these young women in her household only be to reminded and continue to reinforce that they are slaves over whom she (among others) holds the power of life and death. and penelope ultimately does not or cannot hold a lasting grudge against odysseus on their behalf. she aligns herself, or circumstances force her to align herself, with odysseus instead of with other women whose positions are even more dangerous than hers. the world they live in does not allow solidarity between women across lines of class and enslavement, and penelope is also complicit in maintaining that world and her place in it.

and then the thing i found so frustrating about circe was that at every turn miller forecloses the possibility of real connections between women-- but the thing in this world that prevents that is just, like, jealousy over men. and totally needlessly. the other nymphs are prettier. glaucus loves scylla and not circe. her mom never liked her. hermes doesn't really think she's hot. athena is a rival for odysseus' attention. and the book doesn't do anything with this, it's not due to structural power imbalances or a society built on enslavement or even how patriarchy pits women against each other (circe lives alone on an island outside of society that could be another writer's lesbian separatist utopia!), it's just that circe doesn't like other women and they don't like her. end of story.

much as i don't love what atwood does with helen, it does make sense in the context of the penelopiad! thematically and in terms of characterization. atwood's penelope has internalized this idea of what it means to be a good woman and, willingly or not, she's staked everything on being seen by men as a good woman. it makes sense that she's desperately trying to pull herself up or even just cling to what little she has by dragging other women down. she does to helen what she ultimately does to the maids. she's with and for odysseus, always, not helen, and not the maids. that's the kind of world she lives in, and while she likes to think that she's resisting it with a sort of radical female community, in the end she is its agent. even if she feels bad about it. she's here to tell a story about odysseus, not about the girls he killed.

[tthelady]

"Jade saved aventurine" "Jade is like an older sister to aventurine" "Jade's like a mother to aventurine" you have lost the plot 😭

[marzipanandminutiae]

okay but now I'm so happy I know about Elizabeth Bigley/Cassie L. Chadwick, 19th-century American con artist (okay she was Canadian, but she mostly worked in the US)

favorite thing she did: ran a brothel and then, when she set her sights on marrying a wealthy doctor, pretended to believe that it was a boarding-house for respectable women only to be SCANDALIZED when he told her it was a well-known House of Ill Repute. oh she would never have intended such a thing! he must rescue her from here at once! could she possibly impose upon his hospitality to stay at his large elegant home?

the marriage plan worked

[women-throughout-history]

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley's journey began when she was seized from Senegal/Gambia at the age of seven and brought to Boston as a domestic servant. Despite her circumstances, she displayed exceptional intelligence and was taught to read and write by her owners, the Wheatley family. Her talent for poetry emerged early, and she gained recognition with her published elegy for English evangelist George Whitefield.

Facing obstacles in America, Phillis and the Wheatleys sought a publisher in London, where her collection "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" was published in 1773, making her the first African American to publish a book of poetry. Despite her literary success, Phillis faced personal challenges, including the deaths of her benefactors and financial struggles. She married John Peters, a free Black man, but their life together was marked by economic hardship and tragedy.

Throughout her life, Phillis continued to write and express her views on freedom and equality, addressing themes of slavery and injustice in her poetry. Despite facing increasing hardship and poverty, she remained committed to advocating for social justice until her death at the age of 31.

Phillis Wheatley's legacy as a celebrated poet and voice for the oppressed continues to inspire generations, reminding us of the power of literature to illuminate the human experience and advocate for change.

[mylittleversaille]

Every day I see more and more pop myth takes that make me want to pull my eyelashes out. No, Ares was not a protector of women. No, Aphrodite was not a war goddess (and you know what, being the goddess of sex and lust and beaut is okay!). No, Hera is not an irredeemable villain. No, Zeus is not evil incarnate. No Achilles isn’t without fault or some ‘gay softboi’ icon (he’s literally presented in the Iliad as someone who is proud to a fault. You’re supposed to recognize that he’s selfish and arrogant). No, Demeter was not an overbearing mother nor was Hades some sort of misunderstood, brooding knight in shining armour. Medea is allowed to commit heinous crimes and still be a sympathetic character. Jason… deserves all the hate he gets, respectfully.

Off the top of my head, I think Helen is one of the few people who gets complex, interesting characterization in modern retellings and discourse, ironically enough. She’s allowed to be vain and aware of her own beauty while also often having a great deal of agency. At the same time, she is frequently depicted as both victim and as offender. She’s allowed to want to be in Troy, but also to miss her husband and daughter.

Some days I feel like I could write essays about pop mythology and the way people reduce mythological figures to one dimensional caricatures. And how these retellings are never as progressive as people think, fixing some issues but exacerbating others. I do think retellings end up being an excellent resource for identifying what social issues bother us and how we would like to address them.

For example, we see a lot of feminist retellings that want to show women as capable of the same things as men, and in so doing they reject or deride their own femininity. But a retelling that is ultimately saying that masculinity is more interesting or valuable than femininity isn’t a truly feminist retelling, but it does show us that our society struggles to find femininity compatible with strength or courage.

[bedlamsbard]

okay what I've learned from this semester and this round of grading is that if I ever use an essay prompt about premodern women again (extremely likely) I'll have to say "you cannot talk ONLY about how women were oppressed by the patriarchy or I will fail the essay" instead of "talk about the ideal woman of [insert historical time period + geographical location] vs. the reality of women in [time period/location] based on the evidence that we have" (obvs it was better phrased than that on the actual prompt and it would probably be different in another context).

I...I restructured the entire class so that we'd be able to talk about stuff Greek women actually did based on the evidence. thanks for showing you didn't come to class that day, look at the powerpoint online, or do the reading.

[edwardseymour]

Catalina de Motril, credit to sheebsfeedandseed on Instagram

“In the records, Catalina is identified as a slave and royal bedmaker. She is not accorded a surname and Catalina was probably not her real name. She was born in Motril, Granada, which until 1492 was an autonomous Muslim kingdom. As such, she almost certainly grew up a Muslim moor. But before 1501 she was enslaved, probably converted and placed in the service of Catherine of Aragon.”

[prolibytherium]

I don't want to read retellings of Greek mythology that are 'feminist' by virtue of the protagonists having weirdly contemporary perspectives on gender and misogyny or that tries to make men who fully participate in a culture of enslavement and rape in war Not Do That, I want the characters be fully of the historical culture that is being engaged with, with the 'feminist' component being from the narrative and a nuanced handling of an extremely misogynist society and finding the humanity in people who are very unlike the contemporary reader in terms of culture and context.

And yet 90% of it is like, the 'good' women being like "I think women are badass girlbosses and should vote and also I am SOOOO nice to my slaves" (if the slavery that is near-ubiquitous in the ancient Mediterranean is even acknowledged) and the 'good' men being like "I'm not like other guys: I think women should vote too"

[theodysseyofhomer]

pisses you off by reading lots of greek drama and loving medea the most in every translation

[measureformeasure]

like wrath goddess sing is not considered part of the modern feminist retelling [tm] genre but none of those books have the guts to have a scene like the one where achilles remembers beating someone enslaved to her, because the girl was also trans and was dressing as a woman and achilles perceived that as mockery of herself. the internalized transmisogyny being projected outward into class violence...

[streets-in-paradise]

Researching about roman beauty standards for fic got me thinking on that " Venus would have hated the Venus razors " post that sometimes circulates here like ... Oh, no. Sis, i don't know how to tell you this.

[bijoumikhawal]

watching TOS episode 0 because I never have before and Pike considering becoming a trader on Orion and his doctor immediately like "oh so slaves. You want to trade slaves" really. Puts in perspective the utopia problem again

[littlesparklight]

I kinda feel bad for Briseis because imagine being enslaved by a massive man child

dfhbjdf I mean, yeah, Achilles' temper isn't going to make anything easier at all (especially taking Patroklos' "he even blames those who have done no wrong" comment in account).

But also... :V She, and all the other women, are slaves.

It doesn't matter who their master is, being a slave is like... I sure hope we're feeling bad for all these women just on that single principle. Extra for those of them, like Briseis, Chryseis, Tecmessa and Odysseus' unnamed geras and all the other commanders who would have a female captive of this sort, that would be sleeping with their master. (I'm not even sure I'd except Hecamede here; considering that Nestor, uh, clearly fucked right up until the war started, given Pisistratus' age, and he's the one to dangle "raping Trojan women when we have sacked Troy" in front of the general army.) And they don't even need to be that special sort of personal captive to end up having to sleep with their Achaean master, as Diomede has to deal with.

But even without the sex angle, these women have lost their homes, their families, and are now enslaved. That's plenty to feel sorry for them about.

[maslows-pyramid-scheme]

Sometimes I think about all the activists who lived, fought, suffered, and died before seeing any change, and I just sad, particularly when the changes they fought for are things we take for granted - starting and ending relationships, seeing our friends and family grow up, choosing where we want to live and who we want to live with.

[firelise]

Ronke Adekoluejo as Nanon aka Mama Joseph Bologne CHEVALIER (2023)