Writer of “Going Medieval” turns her attention to period’s attitudes on sex
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Wow – this is the best and most enlightened article I’ve ever read on a tech site. It’s this variety that keeps me coming back to read Ars Technica every day.
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Medieval to the author.
Current state of affairs in the islamic world and the bible belt.
Current state of affairs in the islamic world and the bible belt.
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This book sounds really interesting! It’s fascinating how our idea of the nature of women and men tends to be thought of as unchanging and inert at from day to day, but changes wildly over the years
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Who exactly thinks that we are monotonically progressing into a golden age? To reactionary conservatives things are going to the dogs, and have been for at least the 4000 years that we know of due to the invention of writing systems. To rational people some things improve sometimes, but we are far from any Platonic ideal world, (or even the Roman world of Galen). I would rather be alive today than in the Dark Ages as my chances of living to my current age, or even half of it, assuming my medical history was unchanged, would have been 0.0%, even before you get to plagues, pestilences, famines, Viking raids etc.. At least in the Western world, and probably China, women are less repressed overall than they were in the Dark Ages, and of course modern medicine and public hygiene means that they do not have to birth a dozen infants just to ensure that there is someone to look after you in old age, if you happen to reach it. Which is highly repressive for most. If the reactionary Supremes have their way, female USA citizens may end up with less rights than female Roman citizens. It is certainly true that many people simplify and vilify the past, just so that they can feel better about the present, but we vilify people in the present all of the time, just so that we can feel better about ourselves. It is a major slice of the unattractive side of human nature, and can be very dangerous.
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Her podcast on medieval history is also fun and informative: We're Not So Different.
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I haven't read the book of course, but my understanding of history is that it was very narrower, specific set of Greek thoughts, chosen because those particular philosophies agreed with the emerging Christian view of the world.
After all, Rome before them also had a bad case of Greekophilia, and whilst it had similar patriarchal social views, in that there was a shame and sin in taking a passive/receiving role in sexuality, but as a polytheistic society of more humanistic gods, a whole lot of whoring and debauching wasn't seen in quite the same negative way; you'd famously have mosiacs of orgies or the Rape of Lucretia above the family dining table, because that wasn't "ungodly" in the modern sense.
However, the article mentions Plato's view of what the nature of women supposedly was, but interestingly, Christian philosophy outright rejected Plato on one particular claim, in favour of Aristotle. And that comes down to the debate of "The Theory Of Forms".
Very very simplistically, it's a debate about what something "Is". Plato believed that there were abstractable ideals, that you could identify something by how closely it matched to that ideal... So a table with 3 legs is still a table in form, "something that supports objects placed upon it for their further use", just not as good a "Table" as one with 4 legs. But you can use other things as a table, a pile of books say, because it also has "tableosity."
Aristotle however believed that what something was, was defined by design; a pile of books is not, and never can be a table, not in any true sense, because it's main purpose is to transmit the written word. It's a much more absolutist position; objects may have abstract secondary uses, but the primary purpose is what it is.
Why am I detailing this? Well, the early Christian philosophers saw these debates, and decided Aristotle had to be right; because if something has a design, a purpose, that must mean there's a designer with purpose. This is something which is absolutely not settled or universal a belief in Greco-Roman thought, but to early Christians cherry picking to prove the validity of their certainty, they leapt upon Aristotle.
So yes, sexual organs can be used for pleasure. But that's not their primary purpose. What they do that other organs can't, is that they make babies. And God designed those parts. Therefore the purpose of Gods design must be for making babies. There is no "sexuality", only sex for reproduction; To do otherwise is to go against God's will for what he wants you to do with them. Hence the Catholic stance on contraceptives and abortion...
It should go without saying that this isn't a view that the Spartan Greeks would have agreed with; their ideal was warrior men in a homosexual relationship. And babies are only of use because some of them can grow up to be warrior men. But as an absolutist position, Aristotle did accord with the Apostle Paul's apparent sexual puritanism, and as everyone still admired Greek philosophy in general, co-opting one such philosopher (but not Plato on this) was a matching of thought that had a lot of social evangelical power; even the "enlightened Greco-Romans" can see the logic in Paul's teachings, eh? Maybe it's not so new after all?
A logic that absolutely falls apart in the modern age of science and understanding that gender itself isn't an absolute but rather a spectrum... And to make a rather contrived joke I just thought of, makes Plato one of the earliest SJWs; but more of a Socratic Justice Warrior, eh philosophy fans? No? I'll see myself out.
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After reading this article, my first response is ‘and water is wet’.
Given the dedication with which some seek to eliminate the few minor gains women have achieved since Hellenic times, someone saying ‘things haven’t changed’ is depressingly, but not perfectly, accurate.
Given the dedication with which some seek to eliminate the few minor gains women have achieved since Hellenic times, someone saying ‘things haven’t changed’ is depressingly, but not perfectly, accurate.
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
The present is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
Apologies to William Gibson.
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I am amazed that women in this country will put up with continued domination and oppression by us males- even going to the extent to ensure this oppression gets worse by backing the extreme fringes during any public election. It’s almost as if it is medieval times and there is no ability to organize, woman can’t read or write, and are too busy having babies to worry about it. These are normal educated women who are constrained to believe it’s okay to be treated this way. 42% voted for trump in 2020. After Jeffry Epstein, after grab your p*ssy, and after he spent his time in office ensuring that all protections for womens rights would be dismantled for 30 plus years in the future. (Yes, I know that this was even worse for immigrants and people of color etc.). Are you sure we aren’t in the New Dark Ages? I can’t handle another Ron desantos story today. Please. No more.
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It’s worth thinking about how they’re not the same. The flip from women to men being described as uncontrollable horndogs has implications for harassment and assault (consider how frequently that line of reasoning is used to defend a creep), and it’s especially important to remember any time you have some religious or evo-psych guy making arguments that the status quo is how it’s naturally supposed to be. A complete flip over such a short period of time shows that this is a social construct, since there’s no way biology is changing on that timescale.
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Without Plato we wouldn't have the dodecahedron, ergo, no D&D, thus no Satanic Panic, therefore no Dana Carvey's Church Lady, leading directly to "Well isn't that special?"
And things are special, therefore Plato was wrong.
QED.
(Plus he didn't make his CON save and died of
((Sorry, at work because a subordinate called in dead and my RVP is swinging his wang around and doing the micro-est micromanaging things today. ))
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To be clear the treatment of women to date across the planet varies but it is not (generously) close to equitable.
That being said, I think the viewpoint presented is shockingly narrow and I take some umbrage to it. Essentially, what I read states: our species’ definition of beauty came from Ancient Greece and Christianity? I feel the entire rest of the planet may have something to say about that. Both historically and contemporaneously.
That being said, I think the viewpoint presented is shockingly narrow and I take some umbrage to it. Essentially, what I read states: our species’ definition of beauty came from Ancient Greece and Christianity? I feel the entire rest of the planet may have something to say about that. Both historically and contemporaneously.
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Diana Gitig said:
Diana Gitig said:
I wonder if these were linked in their minds. "We're having loads of sprogs and...it's uh, because she wants to, not me."
Looking at pictures of kirtles, it looks like a dress–with sleeves.* So it doesn't seem that it's gone anywhere, thus illustrating the adage, 'If it's not Baroque, don't fix it.'Diana Gitig said:
* Or alternatively, what Belle from the hit film Disney's Beauty and the Beast wore.
Edit: spelling fixed
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And spinners. Even in a poor farming household, the women doing the spinning did probably significantly contributed to the household economy, especially as the technology improved with the move from spindle and distaff to spinning wheels and better looms. One estimate has it took over 7 hrs of spinning 24/365 for one spinner to provide basic clothing to a household of six. But add a surplus worker (e.g. a small girl, and there was always a surplus of workers in poor agri households, not having enough land to work, hence the big landowners using them as serfs), a spindle and a loom, and the women could have produced enough cloth to possibly contribute to the household even more than the men, financially (selling any surplus). All the while still doing other chores, especially during the harvest or seeding seasons when every hand was needed.
And with household cloth production being the vast majority of all the commercial cloth produced, at least until the industrial revolution, even these women "at home" would have contributed a lot to a small household's finances. Which kinda showcases how both the modern cultural notion of "always at home, never bringing any money" and the pre‑modern one of "always belonging below the man, even if possibly bringing more money" are culturally biased and wrong.
As always, a nice and very deep dive on the subject of pre‑modern cloth production on the Acoup blog.
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I'm trying to make sense of the drawing of the woman on the left. Why does she have a letter slot in the front of her skirt? That's really weird looking....
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Pretty sure that is a purse hanging from the waist. Much like a sporran on a kilt.
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Nah, you should own that shit that you posted.
For the latecomers, it was very simple and very direct victim blaming. There's no other possible reading of what you originally posted.
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Very much appreciated. The extent to which Aristotle was appropriated by Christianity and therefore, could have had a better fate in history, is still very much up for debate. He was hated because of the non-scientific essentialism, even when later notions were not Aristotle's and out of proper context (biology and broadly, politics including ethics). Spinoza showed a different attitude not pointing essentials so much at a personable, creating god as at nature. Nature is still our most enticing (philosophical?) abstraction.
So, philosophy fans, there is lots to get into here. Oh, I forgot. Aristotle is one of the few who put his domestic, family, wife before other 'more enlightened' forms of friendship.
Edit: spelling
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Who exactly thinks that we are monotonically progressing into a golden age?
Oh, generally a certain strain of neo-liberal technocrat. It is, after all, the end of history.
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Probably (maybe even a chatelaine). Most people don't know that "pockets" were something you wore in addition to your clothes, not built into them.
The shifting and even opposed reasons used by society to keep women "in their place" over the centuries is really telling. What's most important is the result; the justification can be discarded or even rotated 180 degrees, as long as the function remains the same. Women subordinate to men in society and the home.
What I found interesting is the ping-pong of attitudes about women's sexuality. According to this review of medieval attitudes, women were sex fiends. Yet by the 19th century, women were seen as virtually sexless (and sexual desire was seen as a disease to be treated). Somewhere along the line, religious views of women and sex went in opposite directions. I wonder if it has anything to do with literal Puritanical beliefs that became en vogue in the late 17th and 18th centuries.
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I suspect a more universal element of beauty has much more to do with the subconscious perception of a woman's fertility and health, hence why most men prefer women who are "curvy" but not obese.
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XSportSeeker
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I think it's good to review these mainstream images that are often conjured up by works of fiction that demonizes or degrades a bit too much the medieval ages and "ancient" history, setting it down as basis for comparison to our own world, but I've seen more than a few articles, videos, ideas, books and whatnot that in turn also starts painting a too rosy or romanticized picture of what it was... to the point of almost being revisionism for revisionism's sake.
It's hard to strike a good balance there, that I'll give to any author trying to do this.
And while I do completely agree that it's not an uniform all encompassing progress, for people not willing to dig further into the subject, it seems to me that this general idea, while being erroneous, is also the most useful to continue having. Not the conformism about some things mind you, more about the general concepts and ideas.
The general subjects overall covered about medieval life times tends to fall into plagues, the dominance of church over peoples' lives, more stagnant progress in comparison to nowadays because of religious beliefs, constant wars, the disparity between social classes, how political system worked back then, morbid curiosity tales, stuff like that.
These are all broad generalizations and in some of those we didn't really make much progress, modern societies sometimes seems to be returning to some of that stuff, and there are points that we are certainly not in a moral higher ground to criticize or look down upon, but I think it serves a purpose of establishing a baseline for understanding why we changed certain things to establish modern democratic societies, and to point out the way we should be going.
So, I understand trying to get a bit deeper into the subject, breaking misconceptions, trying to see technological progress back from that time, integrating it into part of our history, and perhaps revealing some stuff that we did better back then than we do today... but there is a huge risk of trying to revise this mainstream portrait of the past to justify the continuation of bad practices of back then to today, or to justify that we should go back to the good ole times, over romanticize things, be contrarian for being contrarian's sake or something like that.
Which understand, is exactly what some radical and extremist groups do.
It's our past. Arguably seeing things that are happening today, we should've learned more about it. Less looking down upon or separating it as something alien to us, but as an integral part of what we are. I fully agree on that point - we are nowhere near perfect in anything just because some superficial progress was made, there roles created in the past aren't "divine providence" or something set in stone - it's all just done with the biases and views we had in the past.
Perhaps more useful to this entire discussion is opening up to see the history and past of non-western civilizations.
I was just reading some stuff the other day about the history of sexuality in Asian nations. You start seeing how different things were there before westernization and globalization took over, with the adoption of western or middle eastern churches puritanical and dualistic views inside conservative governments that took over - it's actually a regression of what it was.
This is specific to homosexuality and church views, how some governments seems to be absolutely against things like legalizing same sex marriage when the history of those nations are not overly religious, and what the concept of morals and good behavior became in those nations.
Anyways, it's an interesting topic to look into, to be treaded carefully.
It's hard to strike a good balance there, that I'll give to any author trying to do this.
And while I do completely agree that it's not an uniform all encompassing progress, for people not willing to dig further into the subject, it seems to me that this general idea, while being erroneous, is also the most useful to continue having. Not the conformism about some things mind you, more about the general concepts and ideas.
The general subjects overall covered about medieval life times tends to fall into plagues, the dominance of church over peoples' lives, more stagnant progress in comparison to nowadays because of religious beliefs, constant wars, the disparity between social classes, how political system worked back then, morbid curiosity tales, stuff like that.
These are all broad generalizations and in some of those we didn't really make much progress, modern societies sometimes seems to be returning to some of that stuff, and there are points that we are certainly not in a moral higher ground to criticize or look down upon, but I think it serves a purpose of establishing a baseline for understanding why we changed certain things to establish modern democratic societies, and to point out the way we should be going.
So, I understand trying to get a bit deeper into the subject, breaking misconceptions, trying to see technological progress back from that time, integrating it into part of our history, and perhaps revealing some stuff that we did better back then than we do today... but there is a huge risk of trying to revise this mainstream portrait of the past to justify the continuation of bad practices of back then to today, or to justify that we should go back to the good ole times, over romanticize things, be contrarian for being contrarian's sake or something like that.
Which understand, is exactly what some radical and extremist groups do.
It's our past. Arguably seeing things that are happening today, we should've learned more about it. Less looking down upon or separating it as something alien to us, but as an integral part of what we are. I fully agree on that point - we are nowhere near perfect in anything just because some superficial progress was made, there roles created in the past aren't "divine providence" or something set in stone - it's all just done with the biases and views we had in the past.
Perhaps more useful to this entire discussion is opening up to see the history and past of non-western civilizations.
I was just reading some stuff the other day about the history of sexuality in Asian nations. You start seeing how different things were there before westernization and globalization took over, with the adoption of western or middle eastern churches puritanical and dualistic views inside conservative governments that took over - it's actually a regression of what it was.
This is specific to homosexuality and church views, how some governments seems to be absolutely against things like legalizing same sex marriage when the history of those nations are not overly religious, and what the concept of morals and good behavior became in those nations.
Anyways, it's an interesting topic to look into, to be treaded carefully.
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Hard Thoughts
Ars Scholae Palatinae
David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years has some interesting ideas on how valuing people in terms of money (specifically as slaves) helped erode the rights of women and also has connections to how sex went from a gift from the divine to virgins being full of virtue.
I'm mentioning this as something to add to the views in the article.
I'm mentioning this as something to add to the views in the article.
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Albino_Boo
Ars Praefectus
This is untrue. Petrarch coined the phrase the dark ages describing in his words the then 1000 years of barbarism between him and the fall of Rome. Petrarch's contention was only by studying classical authors in their context and in full could a return to the light of the classical past be possible. This was in contrast to medieval scholasticism of reducing classical authors to a series of statements out of context of the author's wider arguments and life and times. The term dark age itself is reference Hesiod's Gold, Silver and Iron age. The Enlightenment Humanists, like Voltaire, where the secularised successors of the Renaissance Humanists.
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If you are into books about the history of sexual culture, I can recommend "Sex and Punishment" by Eric Berkowitz.
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I think there is more variation in attitudes if we include eastern societies and African societies. IE. societies that were not completely reshaped by Abramic religion.
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Considering the constant and increasing attacks on women's reproductive freedom today, I'd hardly think anyone is going to mistake the modern status of women as "spectacular" or any sort of "pinnacle." A pinnacle, by the way, is something that you fall off of. That's not what we're trying to achieve.
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