In an undergraduate paper (referenced) its author asks: ‘Why have men dominated women in all civilizations for all of recorded history? What happened in prehistorical times that females came to be subordinated by males....?’The commodification of women is nothing new, in fact, it seems to have emerged in Mesopotamia about 5,000 years ago. If most women were made aware of that they may be disgusted to realise that we are still living under a draconian gender-value system that determined cultural hierarchies in prehistoric times. The same drive for commodification, ownership and control is at the core of capitalism (and probably every other political system dominated by men) and the destruction of the (mother) planet.
The writer confirms what most of us suspect, that the ‘archaeological and anthropological evidence…. overwhelmingly indicates that, before the widespread permeation of a sedentary, agricultural way of life, males and females lived together in relatively egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies’. But when agriculture enabled ‘an economics of surplus’, it provided an ability and an ‘incentive’ for maintaining a tight hold on ‘certain types of property that could help to produce surplus goods, notably land and laborers’ in the form of - you guessed it - women. Basically controlling women and land ensured production of both children (more labour) and food.
The ability of women to reproduce ‘would have been among the first items of recognizable value in agricultural societies’ and it therefore became necessary to develop rules that regulated ownership of property and the right of a woman to reproduce. A woman was reduced to the status of a breeding pig where a man could now control her body. If women had demanded control and ownership of male genitalia I think I know what the response would be, outrage maybe?
As the ‘sociopolitical power structure’ developed in Mesopotamia there evolved a complex system of ‘class stratification, militarism, patriarchy, and political consolidation’….the result of which was a framework based on patriarchal rule and the patriarchal family.
When these practices became accepted cultural law, and then written law, the institution of marriage came with it, ‘marriage acted as the primary means by which subjugation of the female sex was written into law’.
I knew there was a reason I resisted marriage - it never felt quite right. When I did finally succumb I failed quite miserably - mainly because I had never previously considered what it actually was, or meant. Unsurprisingly it didn’t last long. I have no intention of getting remarried because after really thinking about it, I have even less reason to do so.
image: Celtic Goddess (Riding the Dragon), Frantom, oil on board, 2000.
reference: Jacqueline K. Hammack, Jackson State University Department of History, Spring, 2007. http://jkhammack.com/5-9body&cvrpg.pdf
