"It’s neither in pre-, nor late-medieval, but in recent history that supposed incontrovertible evidence exists that the lot of women was as the ‘oppressed’.

"Flagship status goes to the issue of the vote…[but] it turns out that the real struggle for the franchise was that of ordinary men – who paid the taxes and were drafted into the armed forces to fight the wars their taxes paid for. These were the people who for centuries, millennia even, were denied democracy, not women."
 
Norman L., one of the top blog commenters on my site (see the "Top Commentators" rankings in the right-hand column of my home page) is a big fan of The Woman Racket (pictured) by Steve Moxon. Moxon makes the point that because people are judged in large part by their "mate value," most men, being of low-status, have always been the victims of deep-rooted prejudice.

Norman sent me several excerpts from the book which I think are thought-provoking. One of them--"Historical Blindsight"--is below.

I don't buy Moxon's overall argument here, because I think there's been plenty of oppression of women in history, a portion of which continues today. However, he certainly makes an interesting point. And I think Moxon and I would agree that there's been far more exploitation of poor/low status men by wealthy/powerful men than there's been exploitation of women by men.

The Woman Racket - Chapter 7: Historical Blindsight

The position women are in today is so obviously a good one that those who argue men have ‘power’ over women usually resort to pointing out how clearly women were disadvantaged in the past. Mere mention of the vote or of marriage or child custody in times not so long ago, closes down debate. But it doesn’t take much probing beneath the surface of what apparently used to be the lot of women, to see that very far from disadvantage, women enjoyed privilege…

It’s a mistake to view the past through the eyes of today. Our own perspectives imposed, anachronistically, on the behavior and thinking of people in former times is unfair. It would be silly to take our notions of social justice in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and, finding such principles not apparent in Victorian and earlier times, to then castigate society in earlier periods for unfairly disadvantaging women. Disadvantaged compared to whom? You have to make comparison with others at the same time, and take account of what was then feasible.

This is exactly the mistake we make though. We’re blinded to the possibility that conceptions of social justice as they were at different periods in history may have secured the optimum benefits to women under the constraints that were then operating; and that in no sense were women ‘oppressed’, nor men unduly favored. It turns out that, if we take the blindfolds off, it’s apparent not just that people at the time perceived that women were not disadvantaged, but that indeed women were as privileged throughout history as they are today. The privilege that women enjoy is not contingent on any historical factors, but is biologically based.

It’s neither in pre-, nor late-medieval, but in recent history that supposed incontrovertible evidence exists that the lot of women was as the ‘oppressed’. Flagship status goes to the issue of the vote…[but] it turns out that the real struggle for the franchise was that of ordinary men – who paid the taxes and were drafted into the armed forces to fight the wars their taxes paid for. These were the people who for centuries, millennia even, were denied democracy, not women. Where women had a direct interest, they have always had the vote. So it was that from time immemorial women have been enfranchised in their local communities, and when issues that concerned women moved up to the national women, then women were given the parliamentary ballot in an historical blink of the eye.