Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this forumThe narrative is made by erasure and exclusion. Erasure
Last edited Fri Jul 26, 2024, 08:18 PM - Edit history (2)
Men Explain Things to Me
By Rebecca Solnit
I am re-reading this excellent book.
The author writes
I think a lot about
obliteration.
I have a friend whose family tree has been traced back a thousand years, but no women existed on it.
She just discovered that she herself did not exist, but her brothers did. Her mother did not exist, and nor did her fathers mother.
There were no grandmothers.
missing sisters, aunts mothers, grand mothers, great-great grand mothers, a vast population made to disappear on paper and in history.
Thus coherenceof patriarchy, or ancestry, of narrativeis made by erasure and exclusion.
The narrative is made by erasure and exclusion.
What an excellent book, for this and other reasons.
![](du4img/smicon-reply-new.gif)
Skittles
(156,722 posts)wouldn't women be more definitive? I bet you cannot go back many generations where the "father" listed is NOT the father
Traurigkeit
(1,290 posts)suegeo
(2,795 posts)All life is essentially female.
CrispyQ
(37,512 posts)I'm not sure I even get it. What if a family has only daughters & they only have daughters? Are they just deleted from the family tree? What happens when one of them finally has boy. Does a new branch magically appear? ???
suegeo
(2,795 posts)The property flowed through women for thousands of years. Because women were certain the children they birthed, out of their own body were their children. Women could not be certain which male she might sleep with was the father. Was is Ian or was it Jacob or one of a hundred of men that woman was "with"
When the woman died, the property, the jewelry, the money of hers went to her daughters. Who she was sure were her own.
Then came the establishment of the patriarchy, where property and money flowed from the male to other males.
The bible (I'm no expert on that book) I believe is full of Boaz begat Obed of Ruth, and Salmon begat Boaz of Rachab.
The whole of Ruth reminds of Offred in the Handmaid's tale.
Women were to remain virgins until marriage. If they got impregnated, the man could be sure the male child was his. The property could move through the male lineage. If a women committed adultery, she could be stoned to death. The husband could not assume any child out of her body was his. I believe women who were raped met a similar fate.
The patriarchy made sure the money, the property, the everything, was made through the male lineage. Brutality ensured it.
English law 1765:
By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage.
She (the wife) doesn't exist anymore.
Her marriage is called her coverture. For this reason, a man cannot grant anything to his wife, or enter into covenant with her: for the grant would be to suppose her separate existence.
page 67 of "Men explain things to me" by Rebecca Solnit.
The woman does not exist anymore.
Today, my last name is my father's last name. My mother's maiden name got wiped out.
I have a cookbook of recipes submitted by women back 40-50 years ago. When the book was published all the female names were, for example, "Mrs. Arthur Nicholls" and "Mrs. Kevin Irwin".
Salute to Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo which Solnit describes in her book. Disappear. Erased.
Kudos to Hannah Arendt for not using her husband's last name. Was Arendt her mother's maiden name. Wow that would be sweet if true.
To get it, to better understand the world from a female's perspective, I recommend this book, "Men explain things to me" by Rebecca Solnit. Go purchase the book, and toss some money at a female.
Please note to the men here: I am not trying to be insensitive or bigoted towards men. As writer Mel (Melanie) Hamlett points out, women are groomed from birth to be super sensitive toward the feelings of men. We have to be. We have to tip-toe around men's feelings, lest the men get angry and dole out corporal punishment to women. Or worse.
The stress this causes women can take years off our lives.
Also Haidmaids tale:
Men are afraid women are going to laugh at them
Women are afraid men are going to kill them.
BlueSky3
(653 posts)I decided to take my husbands last name. One of my friends criticized me for this and I told her, Whats the difference whether I take one mans name or anothers? At least Ive chosen this one.
I recently read that the whole system of male domination has existed for less than 10,000 years. Matriarchal and egalitarian societies still exist in the world today. But not here.
I never married. I am quite happy. I hope you are too.
yes, were happy. DH is truly a gentle man.
suegeo
(2,795 posts)The music video of this song echoes the sentiment I'm feeling now.
Black women staring at each other through history. All the women who got erased.
Maybe I am misinterpreting Beyonce's art.
Mansplain it to me.
suegeo
(2,795 posts)Beyoncé Gives Kamala Harris Her Blessing to Use Freedom For Campaign.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/beyonce-kamala-harris-blessing-freedom-campaign
Some lyrics I find interesting:
I'ma wade, I'ma wave through the waters
Tell the tide, "Don't move"
I'ma wade, I'ma wave through your shallow love
Tell the deep I'm new
But mama don't cry for me, ride for me
Try for me, live for me
Breathe for me, sing for me
Honestly guidin' me
I could be more than I gotta be
Stole from me, lied to me, nation hypocrisy
I missed the American Ballet Theatre performance of Woolf-Works
Lucky for me, there are youtube videos of some of the performances.
https://www.metopera.org/season/2024-abt/woolf-works/
Tuesday
Grand and elegiac, The Waves (1931) is Woolfs most experimental novel, conceived in response to her own childlessness and the contrasting fierce maternity of her sister Vanessa. In the novel, the voices of six people growing from childhood to old age are punctuated by symbols of natural decay and renewal, the most important of which is the ever-returning sea. Responding to Woolfs unique fascination with underwater imagery in all her writing, Tuesday merges themes of The Waves with a portrayal of the writers suicide by drowning. As Woolf counts her steps towards the river Ouse and her final journey, so too the world of her novel moves towards abstraction and silence.
Tell the deep I'm new, painting things blue.
To me, Beyoncé is fighting on. The blue is external**. It is nothing similar to the trigger warning above.
I am not a scholar. I am just trying to keep up with history as it unfolds in front of me.
All the talk of the blue wave, Beyoncé painting white walls blue, brings up a memory I have about seeing Renoir's Two Sisters (On the Terrace) in Chicago.
https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/3a608f55-d76e-fa96-d0b1-0789fbc48f1e/full/1686,/0/default.jpg
The colors have to be seen in person. The painting stuck with me, so I did some research, for a few hours.
Red is the color of here and now.
Blue is the color of the eternal**. The woman is wearing a blue dress, a woman's body is external because it brings forth life.
The white, I am not sure. It might be about what color it might be painted in the future?