Throughout history, woman’s self has been Other in discourse, literature, and doctrine. She has been designated this position in the world by those who hold social power. This dichotomy is maintained under a hierarchy that serves to benefit men. I will be attempting to support Beauvoir’s idea of the self as Other under a patriarchal society by looking at statements from philosophers and myths, as well as identifying shortcomings she may have.
Aristotle is one of the earliest philosophers to help establish woman’s place as Other. For Aristotle, individuals act as parts whose participation contributes to the good of the polis (Femenias, 165). Women are not beneficiaries of this relationship, rather, they are subordinate by nature which prevents them from sociopolitical gain (166). Patriarchy in the Greek family and society have influenced Aristotle to believe it’s impossible to change the nature by which women are confined
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Aquinas shares the Aristotelian sentiment of women being lesser than man (McGowan, 214). In fact, her birth conveys a failure to conceive the member of the perfect sex (214). If the body affects the quality of the soul, as Hobbes believes, and women are accidents, they are inherently inferior and destined for imperfection. Moreover, women contribute passively to their offspring (215). The father is to be loved more due to his excellence and authority (216). Women are not just subjugated through their body, but also under social order. Aquinas believes it is natural to subject women to male rule. After all, humanity requires some to be governed by excellent men (216). It’s no accident that women are excluded, since they can only passively contribute to society. The man-woman dichotomy is comparable to that of the free man-slave relationship (216). This division indicates woman’s status as Other from the moment she is born. She is to be nothing more than a weaker companion to
During this time period women were not respected at all and were belittled by all med in their lives. Even though men don’t appreciate what women they still did as they were told. In particular, “Women have an astoundingly long list of responsibilities and duties – th...
In Ancient Greece, women had little to no freedom in their lives. For instance, they had no role in politics, leaving that completely to men, were expected to stay indoors for the majority of their lives doing household work because they were under the control of a male relative, usually being their father or husband, and they were not allowed to study medicine. These standards were set by great writers such as Aristotle who wrote of women being inferior to men. He believed women were more emotional, which is why they would be useless in politics, and they were more deceptive and mischievous. Because only men were doctors, many women were dying during childbirth due to the fact that they felt uncomfortable about having a man handle their pregnancy.
Cole's article is not to attack Aristotle on his views of where a woman should be placed within the social and political order, in accordance to the Classic Greek period. Her intrigue is within "surveying some central values of that particular social and political institution," (Sterba 79). At first she begins with Aristotle's view on gender and class in ethics. Making a definite point among the social/political class, ancient Greek women and slaves were only allowed their male citizens to think for them. Being dependent on men silences the women and slaves without a voice to speak out, for the women work while the men socialize with others, the men assume that the women do not need a voice. According to Aristotle, even a woman's virtue is to be subservient to all males. As a part of common life the woman is considered the pack horse and the mother to raise the children, for the men. With all the work that women put into their specific households, some education and training would mature from the experience. It was thought again by Aristotle within; Deliberation, Education, and Emancipation, that woman did not possess the aptitude for practical reasoning. For whomever possessed practical reasoning carried with them authority on their decisions and the action pending. From these three classic Greek examples of how women were considered mentally and treated physically, the author Cole provides a progressive outlook of how women could have gained social and political power in a society of male dominant figures.
In learning about the feminist movement, we studied the three articles and discussed and reviewed the different authors perspectives on the topic and learned how important the role of woman in Greek Mythology. In presenting the feminist theory to the class we analyzed the three articles, Women in Ancient Greece; Women in Antiquity: New Assessments; and Women in Greek Myth, and discussed how although the three articles provided different views on Feminism in mythology, they all essentially are aiming to teach the same basic concept.
Most classical society’s political and social organization revolved around the idea of patriarchy, a male dominated social system. This system exacerbated the inherit difference between men and woman and assigned gender roles based on these observations. Men were generally regarded as superior to woman therefore given greater religious and political roles as well as more legal rights. As the natural inverse, women were subordinated and seen as week; their main roles reproductive and domestic. Information about patriarchy in the classical era, though abundant, was, for the most part, written by men, therefore history does not give us an accurate depiction of women’s viewpoints. Four societies of the classical era, India, China, Greece, and Rome, adopted a patriarchal system, however, due to many factors, each developed identifiable characteristics.
Assemblywomen, by Aristophanes, posits a system in which the institution for the transfer of wealth within a patrimonial line is subverted by a system that closely resembles the ordering of a Greek household. In Assemblywomen, the women take power and redesign the social mechanisms. Although the Assemblywomen radically change some elements of the Greek social institution, such as private property and sexual limitation, the women remain, although in an expanded form, within the structure of a household. Male dominance is tempered but gender roles are reinforced. The institution of the household in Assemblywomen is expanded into the body politic but its fundamental nature does not change.
Though some view it as something that is concrete and cannot be changed, gender is an idea of how each human perceives themselves. Gender is nothing but a concept that is very fluid and can change throughout each generation. Unfortunately, though there is potential for change, human kind has barely made the effort to do so until recent years (barely) and continues to pretend as though these views of the sexes are set in stone. There is still this idea remaining that men should be the “ideal citizen” that brings honor, and that women should be meek and seen not heard. When comparing the views of these gender roles Christine de Pizan and Thucydides (through the voice of Pericles) have differing yet similar views on what is considered to be the
“A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view” (Ibsen). This saying also applied to the times of the Odyssey, an epic constructed by the blind, eight century B.C.E. poet, Homer. As one of the few representatives of ancient Greek social order, the blind, Homer witnessed women as substandard to men, regardless of their actions; many of them existed as seductresses, prostitutes, or slaves. He engraved into his poem women’s roles; the roles of women, as mothers, wives, seductresses, and goddesses are exemplified in this epic, when shown in comparison to the men of that era.
...herself as a man and has misogynistic tendencies. Fortunately, the role of women in society today has changed very much from the roles that they played in classical mythology. Women are now seen as being able to play any role they desire, whether it is the role of a housewife or the role of a workingwoman with a successful career. It is no surprise that achieving the roles that women play today took such a long time when for so long even in mythology women’s roles in society were constantly pushed in the direction of domestics and when for so long women were portrayed as less then pleasant creatures. The fact that these sorts of roles were pushed on women in the Greco-Roman society was proof enough that it was a patriarchal society. It is astoundingly wonderful that the roles that women play in modern society have evolved so much since the times of classical myths.
When thinking of ancient Greece, images of revolutionary contrapposto sculpture, ornate lecture halls, and great philosophers in togas are sure to come to mind. As the birthplace of democracy and western philosophy, ancient Greece has had an inordinate influence on the progression of the modern world. However, the ancient Greeks’ treatment of women is seemingly at direct odds with their progressive and idealistic society.
Aristophane’s Lysistrata is a flawed classic filled with the power struggle between man vs. woman. It is entirely focused and written from the male perspective, in which male-privilege dominated and disregarded the women’s outlook entirely. This “classic” is full of misogynistic perspectives, and should be disregarded as a great piece in Athenian literature.
Women in the ancient world had few rights, they differed from country to country or, in the case of the women of Athens and Sparta, from city-state to the city-state. The women of the city-states of Athens and Sparta had profound differences in their roles in the political and the daily lives of their families and their cities. When it came to the difference in levels of power and the rights of women, Sparta was a leader in its time. At the same time, their rights as citizens were almost the same. While they did not take an active part in politics, they had opinions and ideas like women all over the world. Their thoughts, deeds, and opinions rarely recorded or if they were, the male historians or philosophers of the time recorded them. What were roles did the women in ancient Athens and Sparta? Were they citizens, did they have personal freedoms? On the other hand, did they in a time when the beginnings of democracy were happening were they less than a second-class citizen? The misogyny and patriarchal societies continued throughout the ancient and classical periods only beginning to change in the Hellenistic era.
There has been a long and on going discourse on the battle of the sexes, and Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex reconfigures the social relation that defines man and women, and how far women has evolved from the second position given to them. In order for us to define what a woman is, we first need to clarify what a man is, for this is said to be the point of derivation (De Beauvoir). And this notion presents to us the concept of duality, which states that women will always be treated as the second sex, the dominated and lacking one. Woman as the sexed being that differs from men, in which they are simply placed in the others category. As men treat their bodies as a concrete connection to the world that they inhabit; women are simply treated as bodies to be objectified and used for pleasure, pleasure that arise from the beauty that the bodies behold. This draws us to form the statement that beauty is a powerful means of objectification that every woman aims to attain in order to consequently attain acceptance and approval from the patriarchal society. The society that set up the vague standard of beauty based on satisfaction of sexual drives. Here, women constantly seek to be the center of attention and inevitably the medium of erection.
At times, women can take action to either preserve the reputation or emphasize the importance of some well-regarded man. In other situations, it is the actions of a man towards a woman that helps preserve or increase the influence that he has. Even symbolically, women have importance in defining the standing of man, as they highlight what made a man of value to the community. Neither the Greek nor Anglo-Saxon depictions of women are too positive; nevertheless, they are accurate depictions of the times these societies lived in and of a time when women were considered to be inferior to
Women’s lives are represented by the roles they either choose or have imposed on them. This is evident in the play Medea by Euripides through the characters of Medea and the nurse. During the time period which Medea is set women have very limited social power and no political power at all, although a women’s maternal and domestic power was respected in the privacy of the home, “Our lives depend on how his lordship feels”. The limited power these women were given is different to modern society yet roles are still imposed on women to conform and be a dutiful wife.