The topic for this video has been chosen by
Megan Humble, because she won my SURPRISE! elemental competiton, and her prize was to pick the topic. And she picked: "The role of women in the past". Now, Megan, that's quite a big topic, so I hope you'll forgive me if I cut it down rather a lot. And necessarily I'm going to have to paint with very broad strokes. because you see there really was an awful lot of "past" I mean, really, years of it; and there were awful lot of places in the past for almost all of it, and most people at any given time in the past were women. You see, women lived longer than men, they live longer than men now. And in the past they really did live quite a bit longer than men Men, male babies, died more than female babies, men who were 80 died of old age more than women who were 80, And every year in between men were more likely to die. Yes, it's true that childbirth today is a great deal safer than it used to be, but the perils of childbirth in the past are often somewhat exaggerated, and there are so many things that kill men: they did more dangerous jobs, and in wars, and so forth, they did almost all the dying bit So, at any given time in the past, there were quite a few more women than men around. And that's one of the reasons that women had quite a bit of power. So that is what I've decided to talk about, if it's alright, I'm going to talk about the power that women had in the past. Now there is this term, you've probably come across it: "his story" - history - his-story; And most of the time, the people using it are being quite impertinent, annoying, and tiresome and I'd wish they'd stop, but there is a point to this, because, it is true, that particularly in the ancient and medieval world most historians were male. And so when they wrote down history they were writing down their story, so each wrote his - story, if you like, and so there's a male bias towards history, but to be fair to these men, I think actually, had women been writing history, they would have covered an awful lot of the same ground, because historians are interested in the big stuff, aren't they? They're interested in wars, and the forging of nations, and kings and rulers, and what they do how one group of people behaves to another, how this tribe dominates that tribe, and there's a war, or conflict, or trade dispute, or something between them -- and that's the stuff that gets written down: New technologies coming in, and so forth. It tends to be the stuff that men are doing that gets written down as history, whereas in fact in day to day life, an awful lot of power was in the hands of women; it's just that it wasn't the sort of stuff that got written down in history. Now, a lot of people, when they're trying to make some argument about women in the past, will point at exceptions. They'd go, "HWAH! Elizabeth I! There you go, you see!" "Women could be really strong and powerful and successful" and all the rest of it. And yes, Elizabeth I of England was a very powerful and successful monarch. She was extremely intelligent, and she got this country through a very difficult patch, and left it a great deal stronger than she found it. So, terrific! -- but she was quite definitely exceptional - most powerful monarchs were men. There are far more powerful and good kings in the past than queens. It just simply is the case. And though there are these amazing "rags-to riches" stories, like, a slave girl of the Harem who ends up becoming de-facto ruler of the Ottoman Empire - yep, yep! That happened! But again, you're looking at the exceptions. Wouldn't it be more instructive, really, to look at the generality? And some of the exceptions that get picked and get trotted out again and again actually do annoy me. I'll just talk about two: Boudicca, (she comes up again and again) Joan of Arc. People say, "AWW there you go, women could be strong, and they could fight in battle-" no, no, no. There is no evidence at all that either of those women did any fighting in battle. Joan of Arc, stood around, carrying a banner, in armour, and she inspired the men, and I think, actually, both those women were almost certainly pawns of other peoples' ambitions. And it's rather important, I think, to remember that both of them, quite quickly, came to sticky ends after becoming famous. Actually, a bit of an aside here, Megan, I hope you don't mind, but, could I just remind you, gentle viewer, just in case you'd forgotten, that yes, while it's true that Joan of Arc was tried and executed - by men - They were French! She was tried and executed BY THE FRENCH. That's something that's for some reason just keeps getting forgotten in retellings of that story. Right! Anyway. Now, one of the things I liked about the BBC / HBO coproduction called "Rome" was that there were three strands to the story: there was the "history" stuff, the stuff that we're all familiar with, you know, Caesar, battles, Pompey, Crassus, all that lot - and the stuff that got written down; and then you got the ordinary man: you got Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, and they're sort of the central strand running through the series about what the ordinary people were up to; and there's a third strand, the often-neglected strand, which is what the women behind the scenes were up to. It's about the aristocratic women, people like the evil Attia, granted, (who) is in "Rome", in the series "Rome", is largely a work of fiction - "based on a real person", but we don't know really what she was been doing behind the scenes. But what they give her to do was all quite feasible. You've got to imagine that they were powerful, intelligent, educated women who could read and write, and these were the mothers, and the sisters, and the daughters of the big players. Of course they knew loads about what was going on, of course they had the confidence of a lot of these people, of course they had influence. Do you really think that none of them could have influenced, in any way, anything that all these men around them were doing, that became part of history? I think that's frankly an insult to women to imagine they were just, I don't know, polishing their nails and weaving, or something - no, no, no, no. When you're that interested in the fate of those around you, you use what influence you can, and I'm quite sure that those women had a lot of influence on what happened. Now, the ordinary woman, so - most of the time, most people are not deciding with whom to go to war, or whether to fight a duel, or whether to invent a new amazing thing. Most of the time, people are interested in: whose turn is it to do some chore or other, what are we having for dinner tonight- those things, and therefore I put it to you, that most decisions, most power was influenced, most of the time - by women, partly because most people were women, that's one reason, but also, households were run by women. And - it's interesting, here's a nice example: in the Iliad, which you could say is a very macho world, you know, lots of big warriors, and it's taken, as read all the way through the Iliad, that if a woman is on the defeated side, she's very likely to be captured and enslaved and taken away. That is the fate of women of the losing side in the war, it seems in Homer's world. And yet, it is also absolutely taken for granted and goes unquestioned that women indoors rule. When Priam wanted to give Achilles a gift of some linen from the linen closet, he has to go to his wife to ask permission and get the keys. The keys to the treasury, they hung from the girdle of the queen, not the king. And you can imagine, in an ordinary household: "Keep out!" The pantry. Guys, you're not allowed to go in there. There will be some woman, some matriarch in the house, and she decides what we're having for dinner tonight, and tomorrow night, and no you're not to go in there, because the ingredients that you want to snack on now, they're for tomorrow's lunch, okay? and she's not going to let you in there, and after a while "Okay, fair enough, you rule the roost in here," "I'll go and do some ploughing, that's more my kind of thing." "Bye." And women had a lot of influence on very important stuff, for instance the hiring and firing. The hiring and firing and servants and slaves - that's a really big decision, that's very direct influence over the way someone else's life is going to go: "You're fired, we're hiring you." "We need a new scullery maid." Those sort of decisions are, by and large, taken by women. Now, today in Britain, estate agents know that if they're showing a married couple around the house that they're thinking of buying, with the exception of, if they're just married and this is their first purchase, but apart from that case, don't listen to the guy. Don't even talk to the guy. Just concentrate on the woman. She's the one who's going to be deciding whether the couple buys this house or not. Indoors, women rule. It was their domain, they decide what we had for dinner, they decide what - they often ran the household's expenses, which meant, If you are controlling the treasury of the household you have a lot of power. They also - if I use the word "gossip", that sounds pejorative, it sounds as though I'm criticizing women, and that's not what I mean to do - but there is this term "gossip", which is talking about what's going on: who's on the up, who's on the down, who fancies whom, who might be having an affair with whom, all that sort of stuff, monitoring the relations between all the people in a household, that was something that women did a lot, and it gave them information, useful information, which made it easier for them to get and hold onto power: the power to decide, what, by and large, happens day in, day out, in their daily lives, which for most people, most of the time, is actually the important stuff. `Cause most of the guys, don't forget, are actually deciding on whom to go to war with. Most guys are not operating at that level. They're not the generals, they're not the kings, they're just the lowly workers. So there you go, most of time, in the past, women ruled, and that's partly because men tended to get killed a lot. Granted, that was by other men.
I'm on mobile, I can't tell if he used annotations - did he give any sources at all on anything he said? Youtube is kind of a shit format for discussions like this.
Eh, my issue here is that the question is incredibly broad and, while he does sorta tackle the problem with answering it with any specificity, his efforts to argue toward his conclusion bypasses that issue and goes straight back to general statements. His conclusion is incredibly problematic, particularly if we understand a society as excluding women from a public/political role in society. We might say they wield a particular sort of power within the limits laid before them (private/domestic), and while men might be limited within that sphere, they're still the ones playing a lead role in the events he thinks matter most to historians. We might also ask why those events are regarded as more important (an assumption on his part).
Honestly, I just don't think 5 minutes is enough to address such a question. He admits somewhere in the comments to somewhat exaggerating in his conclusion; it's certainly more provocative, which makes for an interesting video, but just raises too many issues for me.
This really reminds me of ASOIAF - I think George RR Martin captured this kind of thing rather well.
I agree with this guy in many ways, but I think it's only one perspective. His conclusion of 'women ruled' is kind of false as an objective statement, but tbh I don't think he was trying to make a 'definite statement forever' - just another perspective that isn't seen that often.
I think from those kinds of things you can go 'a lot of women had power, but they held the power in particular ways - generally in a pretty indirect way.' A woman might be more able to influence particular powerful men than a lot of other men could, but an important thing to remember is that he could simply choose to ignore her and she would not be able to actually do anything. (She might be able to influence other people with her opinions, and possibly servants more directly, which might then influence the powerful man - but it might not. Also men would be able to have that kind of indirect influence as well. Not that anyone really had that much control over their lives back then!)
I think it's important to tell this kind of story because it's interesting and not something we usually hear about (and I am bloody sick of the 'women were helpless and useless' narrative that some people stick to - sure I hate the word 'herstory' because it's etymologically not correct, but I think there should be more discussions of 'behind the scenes' women, as well as non-powerful people generally) - but I don't think it should be used to justify anything, which I think people with ulterior motives might try to do. Also, I like his story-telling - it's very easy and enjoyable to listen to!
Lindibeige is pretty awesome. I haven't seen him talk about gender related things before though. He is mostly about weapons and armor. He brings up some logical points.
Dear ever loving lord, the comment section.
It is an interesting subject, though it is rather subjective. Well I should say that the power necessarily isn't but power means authority or even recognition. The lower class makes up a large power, those low wage unwanted jobs are not looked at well, but they are absolutely critical. You probably could knock off a CEO and have more of a democratic thing for a company, or a smaller "family company" both having each individual holding more power. But good crap luck keeping a building intact without maintenance workers.
Does this mean that a maintenance workers are viewed more highly, have more rights, and opportunities than CEOs?
Cattle are rather important to cattle ranchers, does that mean cattle ranchers see cows as equals?
What I'm trying to get is yeah, I can see women gossiping strongly influencing politics, french Salons are a good example. But does that mean the same woman will have the same recognition when they try to directly influence politics?
As for some of the examples he gave I do question the authority it supposedly gave women. The most obvious was the linens. Have you ever tried to make those things from scratch using the tools you had back then? It takes a bit of effort. If you spent days making one thing, by yourself for the most part. It is not surprising that it would expected that a man asked permission to give them away. This does not mean that this shows women had power over men. Because I seriously doubt if her husband was a farmer, she could tell him, "By the way I thought your tools were getting old, so I used them as fire wood. If you have a problem deal with it." And it would go over well. This doesn't seem gender specific. More just a basic idea of if you make something and it wasn't for an employer, it is yours, or at least common courtesy to ask before using it.
He used the example of the treasury that was apparently the queens domain. But if the country had strong hostility with their neighbor, could a queen could prevent the king from declaring war by refusing to give him the keys of the treasury in order to fund it? I seriously doubt it. And I don't think the queen could over rule the king into going to war by saying the treasury will go to funding a war.
As for cooking meals, what power does that really give, choosing what to make? At worst you say, you make your own meal. Now the guy does the same thing she does. The horror.
The only thing that stuck out to me was the person to hire and fire servants.
Don't get me wrong I am not saying they were not influential. I have talked before of courtesans that played a large role in politics, they influenced the king. But in end they were courtesans, the king had no obligation to listen to them. They just did so because people tend to listen to people they care about. Their power and influence was indirect.
Lastly in the end society chose who most important. And it wasn't the courtesans that are in the text books. Or the really good female chefs and tailors who got to serve royalty. It was the high male positions that were deemed worth remembering.
I'm not sure what he meant women had lots of power. If he was saying that in general terms or only in comparison to absolute zero that is inaccurately reported at times. If his argument was comparing it to nothing, that's what I'd agree with him on.
Lindibeige (the guy in the vidoe) uploaded a second video on the topic that's a bit less rambling - Women's realms in the ancient world - I think it's a bit better than this one.