Difference between revisions of "426--Week 5 Questions/Comments--Tuesday"
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I studied something along this line in an anthropology class. Around this time, white men generally grouped children, idiots, women and "inferior" races together in one intellectual and emotional group. George Fitzhugh does the same thing in his proslavery treatise. He basically wrote that women and children are not capable of being set free in a harsh society. Stevenson uses Fitzhugh's treatise as an example of what some writers wrote on the subject of women and slaves being essentially bound together as persons who were unable to depend on themselves. Though I do not think that white women were anywhere close to slavery, I do believe that they ''felt,'' and in some ways, were enslaved in a society and homelife where they were suppressed. -- Celia M | I studied something along this line in an anthropology class. Around this time, white men generally grouped children, idiots, women and "inferior" races together in one intellectual and emotional group. George Fitzhugh does the same thing in his proslavery treatise. He basically wrote that women and children are not capable of being set free in a harsh society. Stevenson uses Fitzhugh's treatise as an example of what some writers wrote on the subject of women and slaves being essentially bound together as persons who were unable to depend on themselves. Though I do not think that white women were anywhere close to slavery, I do believe that they ''felt,'' and in some ways, were enslaved in a society and homelife where they were suppressed. -- Celia M | ||
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| + | Thinking back on the readings we have done so far, I can't help but get the impression that Christianity was being systematically used to oppress women. Sure there are a couple examples of women using religion (and moral superiority) to negotiate a higher degree of social respect. But was that really an improvement? The "Madonna" part of the equation seems just as limiting as the "Whore" part. In general it seems that religion was used to reinforce distinctions between men and women, a process which always seems to take power away from the women. -- Rebecca | ||
The passage on page 55 about spinster women left me with an interesting question in my head that I feel the book never really addressed. If spinters were a good source of labor, as the book says, were women ever encouraged to '''not''' marry so that families would be able to maintain the cheap (read: free) labor? --Cash | The passage on page 55 about spinster women left me with an interesting question in my head that I feel the book never really addressed. If spinters were a good source of labor, as the book says, were women ever encouraged to '''not''' marry so that families would be able to maintain the cheap (read: free) labor? --Cash | ||
