By Stephen L. Hall
Previous installments discussed, in general terms, the workings of matriarchies and patriarchies; the proponents of the battle of the sexes would like you to believe that there are only two options available. However, prior to the development of feminism and the matriarchal driven society, feminists will tell you that western societies were patriarchies. They would be wrong.
Feminists and their apologists try to rewrite history to pretend that western societies treated women and children as chattel, i.e. property, as on gentlemen on another blog tried to maintain the other day. They often cite things like the “fact” that women could not sue in the courts, and that men traditionally earned more money than women, that women were not permitted to vote, et cetera.
These myths need to be dispelled before we can proceed to the real topic.
Women could, in fact, actually sue in court, but only widows or adult women who were unmarried and who’s fathers were deceased. It was for the husbands or the fathers of unmarried women to sue on their behalf.
The idea was simply that the husband or father could sue on their behalf so there was no reason to subject a woman to the rigors of court unless there was no man to stand for her, a holdover from the days of trial by combat. However, a simple consultation with Hans Talhoffer’s work on combat techniques clearly shows that women also engaged in trial by combat, thus women clearly made regular appearances in courts of the day.
What the modernists fail to recognize is that traditional societies were fundamentally different from our modern society. Society traditionally viewed the family as a unit, not as a mere collection of individuals. So suits at law were between families, not individuals within those families.
While feminists lament that a woman could not sue her husband, or a husband be charged with rape, they fail to connect this disparity to the concept of the family as a unit, not merely a collection of individuals. The Biblical passage that a man and woman were one flesh gave them sufficient justification that a man could not sue himself, and as a legal concept husband and wife were one, not separate. Plus, it simply allowed the court to stay out of domestic situations.
In the same vein, the franchise was not extended to women for much the same reason of the family unit as opposed to the individual. On the one hand, it was argued that a suffragette wife might cancel out her husband’s vote simply out of spite; on the other hand, it was argued that some husbands would tell their wives how to vote and thus effectively voting twice, where a bachelor could not do that. A family should just have one vote.
While feminists complain that women did not traditionally get paid as much as men, they are deafeningly silent on the tradition that single men were paid significantly less than married men, and were far less likely to get promoted at work. The theory being that a married man had a family to support, but a single man, or a woman, married or not, did not have that family to support.
With that, it is important to understand the nature of support in the legal realm of traditional civil law and its relationship to the relations between men and women. The traditional view of the marriage contract in Common Law views the relationship between men and women as complementary and conjoined rather than competitive and individualistic.
The Common Law viewed the duties as the husband and wife separately but related in the context of marriage.
The husband was held to have the duty of support for the family; it was his duty to make certain that his wife and children had the basic necessities of life: food, clothing, and shelter. It was the father’s duty to make sure that his children were educated, even if it was the wife who was educating the children. It was the husband’s duty to oversee the family’s finances and upkeep on the family’s properties.
The wife was held to have the duty of service for the family; it was her duty to make certain that meals were prepared, laundry was washed, floors swept, clothing mended, children bathed and dressed. Traditionally, women were expected to be educated not only in domestic work, but in music and literature so that in times before computers, the television, or even the invention of the Marconi, the family would have entertainment.
Support was about providing the necessities of life, where service was about improving the quality of that life. The traditional view of marriages and family divided the responsibilities and duties of the family between the genders in their respective roles. Men and women were equal but not equivalent.
Perhaps that last statement requires a mathematical explanation: Equivalent implies more than equality, but being identical in every respect. Equality before the law simply means that the laws are implied impartially, not that the laws treat everyone as if they are the same, as if they were equivalent.
It is this view of marriage which is extrapolated to the society as a whole, the marital relationship as a proxy for the general relationships between men and women in society at large. The roles of men and women have been divided upon gender lines in society for thousands of years. This approach of gender division occurs more or less in all cultures, but has been a mainstay of western cultures.
Reading the Iliad or Odyssey it becomes clear that ancient Hellenic culture was very patriarchal, while when you look at the laws it becomes clear that Roman culture was of this equal but different perspective, as the powerful women of the Roman Empire attest. Queen Boudicca attests to a long-standing tradition of strong women in western societies.
So from the ancient world to the US in the fifties, it is the tradition of western culture to treat women and men as companions, not as domineering one or the other. It is this tradition which conservatives seek to re-establish, to convince the indoctrinated populace that life was better when little boys played stick-ball, Cowboys and Indians, and rode bikes while little girls played with dolls, tea sets, and played dress-up.
There are always statistical outliers who don’t fit into, or more likely want to rebel against, the gender roles society has formed for them. But, we discount the roles of society which have worked for so long at great peril, because it is a denial of basic human nature. I am reminded of one other analogy which illustrates the traditional approach towards gender relations and the legal environment that some would rip apart.
The Prinz Eugen.
Who or what is that, you ask? The heavy cruiser which accompanied the battleship Bismarck which most people do not even recognize. “Late in the day Bismarck briefly turned on her pursuers (Prince of Wales and the heavy cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk) to cover the escape of her companion, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen to continue further into the Atlantic.” Ships are not typically sent to sea on their own but in fleets, at least two, so that if something goes wrong with one ship the sailors are not stranded at sea on a sinking ship.
The companion ship serves a complimentary function, a division of labour just like in the relationships between men and women in any society, professional or private. That is what the traditional concept of the battle of the sexes entails, not a competition but a companionship. Reasonable people seek a consort battleship to travel with in life. Reasonable governments treat people as equal in value, but also recognize real differences which are often based upon a person’s gender.
