can you generalize all of human history like that? in your last post?
have all societies had the same attitudes towards women, gay/lesbian people, and trans people?
why are we so allergic to specificity when making wide historical claims?
Read the Creation of the Patriarchy and Trans and we can see a historical view of women, men, and homosexuals. Prior to 12000 BC tribes have found art (hinting at what they worshipped) equally featuring women, men, and combo of both. Meaning a 1/3 of group had females gods, 1/3 male, 1/3 both. So thereâs a hint of some equal judgement against men and women there. At that time, we didnât really understand (and we didnât precisely know until modern science) reproduction. It was kind of seen as just a miracle from god. And at that point having slaves wouldâve been really hard. Bc you need food, resources, etc. to have an enslaved population so there isnât strong evidence that slavery occurred during that time.
And then came the agricultural revolution ~12000 BC. Where farmers realized roughly how reproduction works. Male ejaculates in female and then boom, babies. And once they realized how they can capture and breed mammals, they learned they could forcibly impregnate women. And because of the boom of resources from agriculture, suddenly they had resources and the means to house/feed enslaved individuals. So they forcibly raped women, got them pregnant, and withheld their babies from them or threatened their babies if they didnât comply with their demandsâand boom slavery was born.
And from that point, when hunting/gathering was replaced with settling in one spot long term and farming the land with crops and livestock, a new system was born. Permanent housing was born. Land boarders became visible with fences. The gods (as depicted in their art) were suddenly male dominated. Itâs thought they then subjected women to doing labor like child care and labor around the home and farm. The systems included men owning women and that later became apparent in law.
Then in ~3000 BC they started writing. They wrote laws. Those laws included how to sell slaves, what women were supposed to do and not do, who could have sex with wives or sex slaves. Raping a wife (who wasnât yours) for example was a crime, not because it hurt her but because if defiled the husbands property.
And related to gays and homosexuals that varied from time and culture. We find when we started wearing clothes and when those clothes became sexed (meaning one skin covers breasts or whatever they deemed important to females), that there were often males who wore the females clothes for entertainment. It was like ancient drag. It was described in paintings as amusing like a funny performance. Which we still see today as endless movies with the joke being a man in a dress (despite the fact dresses arenât inherent to women just what is defined as female fashion).
In Rome, they had laws about homosexuality. Male on male homosexuality was common and accepted, but rulers had to be âthe topââcausing one ancient Roman king (who likes to bottom apparently) to âbecomeâ a woman and demanded to be called as such and the palace addressed him as such even though he retained the rights of a man and ruling when women couldnât legally. Lesbians, on the other hand, were frowned upon at that time.
Fast forward to a time where the western world was ruled by Catholicism which had its own set of laws, being gay was frowned upon. The biggest religions now in the world have a male god. And in America, from the beginning, women couldnât run for democratic seats in most places. BY LAW We couldnât hold office, own land, have bank accounts, even go into a court house, and work outside of the house. And homosexuality was a crime punishable by death (as it is still in some places) or jail. So no, I donât think a woman in the 1800s was trans, I think she knew she couldnât have rights or independence unless she disguised her sex. And god forbid if she was a lesbian, it might have been easier to be perceived as male to avoid persecution.
If I had to marry and have kids with the first dumbass who asked, I too would disguise my sex so I could own my land/money and work. But because women fought for generations for our rights, women in the US can own their land and work legally so I take advantage of those new found rights without having to deny my sex. Do I think there were really some people who disguised their sex solely because they just felt like it ? Maybe but itâs very hard to parse out given most women were oppressed.
For a fictional but similar example, Mulan wouldnât have dressed as a man if women had been allowed to fight. She disguised herself as a man to skirt the law and protect her elderly father. And then at the end it was like âa woman actually saved china, women can be badass tooâ not âshe was actually secretly mentally a man the whole timeâ
It turns out, a good slice of history has been written and studied and instead of speculating if gays were accepted in a certain time or place you can read about it.
