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2:07 PM - Saturday, May. 27, 2006
The continuation of a deep thought....
Sorry for the delays. I'm in a presession class right now that is in session everyday of the week. We have a total of 9 days with 5 tests so I've been extremely busy. Only 3 tests and 4 days to go, so I'll probably be slow on updating again this week.

Part II

In order to understand Christianity's patriarchal laws, one must first look at how patriarchal societies came into existence.

In the beginning.....

There is archeological evidence that supports the notion that women have not always been subordinated by a patriarchal society. In fact, women were held in high esteem as far back as the Paleolithic Age. They were regarded as divine because they had the power of creation, which is one of the reasons why early civilizations could only trace lineage through them.

No one is certain when the rise of patriarchy first took a hold on society. Many experts believe that it happened during the agricultural revolution when egalitarian societies developed into societies with a sexual division of labor.

During this time, the ownership of private property became common. Men began to overpower other men. They also began to overpower women. It is believed that woman relinquished much of her power when she attempted to obtain security from an "open season of rape." As far back as the fifteenth century in England, a man took possession of a woman and staked claim on her body by raping her. This was considered an acceptable practice for acquiring a wife and became known as bride capture. It was also the beginning of the concept of private property and ownership because as woman chose protection over power, the men who protected her began to see her as nothing more than chattel.

In order to achieve more dominance over women, men began to push women out of the workforce based on their biological differences. These differences were used to justify their discrimination. Because women are 10 to 15 percent smaller than men, their skeletons tend to be thinner and shorter. Their joints are looser and their necks are longer and slimmer. Women are less likely to be color blind, but more likely to be right handed. Thus, women were perceived to have less autonomy than men. These biological differences allowed men the excuse to see women as less than equal.

However, women have the ability to bear children whereas men do not. Because of this, women became valued only through their ability to produce. Their reproductive potential suddenly became a service to family and a commodity to be exchanged. A woman's main function was to produce male heirs and to supervise their husband's households. Man wanted nothing more than to secure his paternal lineage through the production of legitimate heirs, therefore making the practice of acquiring a wife through payment common.

Women were inherently the property of men, and this can be viewed in the very definition of family. Family is derived from the Latin word familia, which did not apply to the leading couple and it's children but to slaves alone. In order to designate a new social organism, the Romans invented a new expression from the word family. Famulus means domestic slave, and familia is the aggregate number of slaves belonging to one man. While men belonged to a lineage or household, women were seen as belonging to the men who had acquired the rights to them. From this domestic subordination came the model out of which slavery evolved.

The subordination of woman to man was considered the foundation of the family unit. To maintain order within the family unit, the laws of Rome, the works of Greek philosophers, and the first five books of the Bible were used to justify woman's subordination. These works would carry on to shape the views of later generations, transmitting values, morals and images that were grounded in the assumption that women were subordinate and inferior to men.

The next section will deal with the Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Old Testament.


 

 

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