I dislike the way that people dance around the oppression of women when it comes to conversations about history. Lots of people acknowledge that women were seen and treated as property, but the horror of that experience is rarely conveyed. When teaching about women's rolls in ancient cultures there is always that comment about women not being able to own property, that they were property themselves, and were expected to be submissive to men. But what does this actually look like?
It looks like rape. Like mothers being seperated from daughters. It looks like being forced to cohabit with and serve an owner who will force himself on you and breed you like stock. It is the sadness of miscarriage and the realisation that your body won't hold up. It's mutilation and violence. It's watching the deaths of your friends knowing that none of them lived a truly happy life. It's watching your daughter grow up knowing that she will be sold into servitude and raped until she dies, the same fate you face. In some cases you didn't even have a name.
Women's oppression is the oldest form of oppression, and yet we are still so strongly gripped by patriarchy that there is a refusal to acknowledge what that actually means. We have barely even started earning our rights in the west, and our sisters still face the terror of what I have described above. Women are always one step away from losing everything, and yet the movement meant to fight for women's liberation is being overun by men and misogynistic women. It's easier for them to uphold the status quo than challenge it.
Women need to learn their history, the grim and horrifying reality of it. The truth of our existence under patriarchy. If we don't seek out this truth, then history is doomed to repeat.