This book was difficult for me to get through. Not because it was boring or poorly written, quite the opposite. It was difficult because it was so compelling and fascinating and sad and frustrating. I often had to stop just so I could process. That being said, I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO EVERYONE. I don't know how else I can stress that enough. I recommend this to everyone over the age of about 13/14, men, women, old, young, every shade and color and back ground, every religion. There is so much here I can't even begin to offer a "best of" or "let me save you the time", so I'll briefly mention a few key points. It's even hard to write this review. You just need to read all of it!
Women are the most shit on group of all time. No other group has been so widely systematically murdered, insulted, and disenfranchized anywhere else in history. This was not always the case, despite what you may have heard. All the oldest gods are robustly female. It isn't until about the rise of agriculture that men seem to have stolen and then eradicated the female god. This book moves chronologically across the ages and spans the earth documenting the attempted destruction of women. If males could reproduce without females, I firmly believe we would not exist today.
Living today, it is easy to think things were always as bad as they were in recent history, but this book lays out the argument that the industrial revolution really cemented the lowest point for women. Being a wage slave was bad for everyone, but particualarly those the society deemed expendable: women and children. Prior to this, women ran the farm while her husband did specialized work or at worst they worked the farm side-by-side. Women have almost always been the driving powerhouse of commerce and markets as both sellers and buyers. But this we stripped from them when they were corralled into factories. There were no extra eggs to trade at the market anymore and the work often left them maimed and ill, unable to run a side gig. ( a lot of this is documented incrediblly well in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle which I have on this list too)
But you may be saying to yourself, "Psh! What about like... Islam where women have been traded as a commodity and murdered at the discression of her family? If women had always been so important, why did they come underfoot of such a repressive religion?" Fun fact: Women were the initial adopters and primary spreaders of both Christianity and Islam. Why? Well, male-centric gods had already been in these locations for a long time and particulary early Islam offered women more freedom than the local religions. The founder of Islam even named his youngest wife to take his place upon his passing. Guess who balked at that? In both religions, once they were established, women's rights were rapidly erroded and to call them out meant you weren't a true member of the religion along wiht all the standard dangers associated with that. A Christian example would be how convienently we have no new testiment books of the female early saints (spoiler alert: they even had whole books) and how the most misogynistic of Paul's writings are believed to be forgeries because he worked with one of those sainted women.
I just saw an article last night about 2 more female warrior burials being unearthed in Armenia. The public acts surprised but the people who study this point out that it seems to be not uncommon. Studies from the early 20th century assumed any warrior's burial was male and anytime they could tell remains were female chalked up the wounds to being attacked by a band of males. But this whole idea of "women aren't fit for battle" really stems from the 19th century ideas of feminity, being delicate and fainting and all that silliness. So when looking at the ancient past, we are actively warping in through modern ideas (that frankly need to die). I can think of several women off the top of my head the would prove this idea wrong: Catherine of Aragon (pregnant in battle nonetheless), Budicca, Aethelflaed of Mercia, women lead the storming of the bastille during the French revolution, a Madagascar queen who held a party with all her enemies and then just masscared them (a la Red Wedding style, possibly where Martin got the idea from?) and a middle eastern queen whose name escapes me that lost her husband, the King, to an invading force that I think also captured her son so she just walked in there and murdered them all. As I finish one mention another comes to me and I could keep going for a while, but you get the idea.
Ironically, the more women pushed for equal rights, the harder they got the door slammed in their collective faces, continually shoved further down until there was nothing left. The tide began to turn with women being given the right to vote, largely in the early 20th century in advanced countries, but in the US, I would say it didn't really take effect until, in an effort to make it as unpalletable as possible, a southern congressman included women in the protected classes of people in the civil rights bill. So in 1970, when that bill passed, women were given full rights only because some men thought it would be so outlandish that they could keep a bill protecting people with African heritage from passing. 1970. That's only 15 years before I was born.
