Rainy days and Mondays...
Back to reality. My fishy exam was pretty easy, and I did just about the right amount of studying for it.
In women studies, we watched the beginning of a film called "Out of the Past" about the lesbian and gay rights movement. In 1995, a high schooler in Salt Lake City started a club - The Gay/Straight Alliance - that quickly prompted the school board to hold public meetings. They came up with two options: either allow the club to persist at the high school, or ban all extracurricular clubs. Guess what they chose? To ban all clubs, including the chess club, ski club, and a Christian club. Apparently the majority of those in opposition firmly believed that the Gay/Straight Alliance would actively "recruit" members. And by recruit, I mean transform the sexuality of students. RIGHT...I can just imagine a high schooler saying, "hey, this club seems pretty cool. I think I'll become a lesbian and join."
Another choice tidbit from our text, No Turning Back, on the emergence of patriarchy:
"In the second, more recent account, The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), feminist historian Gerda Lerner revised [Friedrich] Engels's theory. She agreed that male control over women gradually formed during the long transition to settled agriculture. A new farming system in the Middle East, based on private land ownership and domesticated farm animals, coincided with the emergence of a hierarchical state led by military elites and based on the rule of fathers in the family. Male gods and ultimately monotheism replaced earlier female deities. To this story Lerner added a critical point: Reproductive labor was key to men's subordination of women."
And on the double standard of sexuality surrounding marriage:
"In Lerner's view, children helped a family produce more crops, allowing the accumulation of surpluses that created family wealth. Since women's reproductive labor provided these workers, reproduction itself became a commodity, something purchased from a father when a young man's family paid a bride-price to a young woman's family. In order to ensure the husband's paternity, and with it his ownership of the wealth produced by children, women had to be chaste before marriage and faithful within it. "
I wonder about the ultimate origin of the ideal of female chastity before marriage - religion? Does the Christian Bible forbid female sexual freedom? Or is it just a social construct for the sake of control?
Back to reality. My fishy exam was pretty easy, and I did just about the right amount of studying for it.
In women studies, we watched the beginning of a film called "Out of the Past" about the lesbian and gay rights movement. In 1995, a high schooler in Salt Lake City started a club - The Gay/Straight Alliance - that quickly prompted the school board to hold public meetings. They came up with two options: either allow the club to persist at the high school, or ban all extracurricular clubs. Guess what they chose? To ban all clubs, including the chess club, ski club, and a Christian club. Apparently the majority of those in opposition firmly believed that the Gay/Straight Alliance would actively "recruit" members. And by recruit, I mean transform the sexuality of students. RIGHT...I can just imagine a high schooler saying, "hey, this club seems pretty cool. I think I'll become a lesbian and join."
Another choice tidbit from our text, No Turning Back, on the emergence of patriarchy:
"In the second, more recent account, The Creation of Patriarchy (1986), feminist historian Gerda Lerner revised [Friedrich] Engels's theory. She agreed that male control over women gradually formed during the long transition to settled agriculture. A new farming system in the Middle East, based on private land ownership and domesticated farm animals, coincided with the emergence of a hierarchical state led by military elites and based on the rule of fathers in the family. Male gods and ultimately monotheism replaced earlier female deities. To this story Lerner added a critical point: Reproductive labor was key to men's subordination of women."
And on the double standard of sexuality surrounding marriage:
"In Lerner's view, children helped a family produce more crops, allowing the accumulation of surpluses that created family wealth. Since women's reproductive labor provided these workers, reproduction itself became a commodity, something purchased from a father when a young man's family paid a bride-price to a young woman's family. In order to ensure the husband's paternity, and with it his ownership of the wealth produced by children, women had to be chaste before marriage and faithful within it. "
I wonder about the ultimate origin of the ideal of female chastity before marriage - religion? Does the Christian Bible forbid female sexual freedom? Or is it just a social construct for the sake of control?
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