Catholic view of women's liberation

[DMB]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-the-washing-machine-liberated-women-1640134.html

“In the 20th century, what contributed most to the emancipation of Western women?” questioned the article. “The debate is still open. Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine.”

Anyone feel like going into the church's attitude to women in general?

[Stout Drinker]

WTF!!!!

Are you sure that wasn't the onion?

[DMB]

It's a sort of Poe, isn't it!

[Christina]

I don't know how they say this stuff with a straight face.

[Lisa0315]

I believe that God created man and woman as equals, each with complimentary gifts to each other. Man has taken that and destroyed that balance, so that women have had to fight for "equality". We were not created weaker or inferior, but merely different.

One of the most beautiful passages in Scripture is Proverbs 31 in which the ideal woman is described. She works and makes her own money, invests that money, she raises the children, she is able to defend the home when hubby is away at war. She is skilled, trustworthy, beautiful, and a treasure.

Modern man has turned women into some kind of shrewish manipulative whore who deserves no respect.

Lisa

[DMB]

I really think modernity hardly comes into it, Lisa. Oppression of women, particularly by patristic religions, goes back a very long way.

[Lisa0315]

I really think modernity hardly comes into it, Lisa. Oppression of women, particularly by patristic religions, goes back a very long way.

Yes, modern as in Christianity. Not so, Judaism. Women were judges. Women were taught to fight, not go to war, mind you, but to defend the inheritance. The man was the head of the home, and laws that seem so brutal to us were to protect the women from rape, etc.

Had Christian men done as they were instructed, i.e., love their wives as they loved themselves, as they loved their own bodies, then, the repression of women would have not occurred. When priests (prolly pedophiles to begin with) began to preach that women were less than human, the source of all sin, unsavable except by the wrath of their husbands, and fit only for childbirth, well, you get the picture. It was not so from the beginning.

Lisa

[DMB]

I think you have an extraordinarily rosy view of the position of women in ancient Hebrew society. They are clearly subordinate to men and treated as commodities.

[Anne]

uh... the washing machine is a fantastic labor saving device and did liberate women from daily drudgery.

My mom remembers her grandmother visiting and watching the washing machine clean my brother's diapers. And crying.

We're talking hours/ days of backbreaking work, reduced to a few minutes of loading and unloading.

[Lisa0315]

I think you have an extraordinarily rosy view of the position of women in ancient Hebrew society. They are clearly subordinate to men and treated as commodities.

Perhaps. It is something a Jewish Rabbi taught me. Perhaps, it was not HOW they were treated, but it was how they were SUPPOSED to be treated.

Lisa

[Uthgar the Brazen]

A quick run through the Levitical laws indicates how women were supposed to be treated isn't an improvement. They were property. Valuable property, but still property.

[Lisa0315]

A quick run through the Levitical laws indicates how women were supposed to be treated isn't an improvement. They were property. Valuable property, but still property.

Yes, property, but VALUABLE property nevertheless. :evil:

I are repeating you. :dunno:

[Joykins]

Laundry before washing machines was total shit work. Anyone who could afford to, hired it out to a laundress, women well known for their beefy arms.

Automating household labor certianly was a great stride forward for women.

The Catholic Church's attitude toward contraception, on the other hand, is medieval.

[DMB]

I can remember what wash-day was like in a household without electricity where water had to be brought up from a well by means of a pump. So yes, the washing machine was a great help, although as a result we tend to wash a huge selection of stuff that previously would not have been washed more than once in a blue moon or at all.

But getting women off the treadmill of endless reproduction, with all its health risks, has to be of greater importance. (Don't forget that contraception did exist before the pill!) But looking at my own family, one of my great-grandmothers gave birth 22 times and another 13 times. Of course, not all the children survived to adulthood.

[Christina]

Each of my mother's devout Catholic brothers had 9 children when they could barely afford to support one because they couldn't use birth control, and it was a never-ending struggle just to keep a roof over their heads. One of them died from a bad blood transfusion in the 50s and my aunt had no means of support other than the small settlement from the hospital. She started drinking and things went downhill from there until the oldest girl finally called my mother and told her that they never went to school anymore and had no food or clothes, mom had been gone for a week and her new boyfriend beat them all and was starting to go after the older girls. In that day in age it was a complete crisis that no one knew how to deal with because nice Catholic people just didn't talk about things like that. They went and got the kids and then my mom went to our parish priest to ask for advice and for him to pray for them. He told her that her family's problems were disgusting and to never speak of things like that again and told her to leave. She never told me this until decades later when we were discussing why I was an atheist. I asked her how she could ever go back after that, and she said that she managed to convince herself that it was just one bad priest. Shortly after that my aunt committed suicide.

My other aunt with 9 children is half nuts from the stress of her life, and my grandmother also had 9 siblings. Thankfully the only times that I saw my dad in church were weddings and funerals and I only have a brother and a sister. I swear could populate a small city with first and second cousins.

[Anne]

I swear, Italians are a different Catholic.

Everything you are describing is alien to me and my family, but common for my Irish friends.

The line basically was that the Italians raised the Pope's bastards, they didn't have any illusions about him.

[Christina]

Come to think of it, none of my Italian friends had huge families but most of my Irish ones did, although they didn't appear to be racing for double digits like my family was. I don't think that any of my first cousins are serious Catholics but at least half of them have more than 4 kids because they wanted a big family. The Catholic church had nothing to offer them but to be shamed when they followed the rules and then couldn't control or manage their lives.

[Joykins]

My Ukrainian and Polish Catholic ancestors weren't particularly crawling with kids and many of 'em became Baptist at the first available opportunity :D

[DMB]

The modern Demographic transition began during the 18th century in France and is believed to have come about partly as a result of the widespread use of coitus interruptus, despite its being seen as a huge sin by the Catholic church.

The thing about coitus interruptus is that although it is not a hugely efficient means of contraception, it can be effective at the population level. Through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, French governments were worried that the French were being outbred by rival nations. This worry intensified after the Franco-Prussian War.

[Joykins]

C.I won't guarantee you won't ever get pregnant, but it tends to reduce the frequency. Child spacing. I wonder what role was played by stopping using wet nurses.

[Mung Dynasty]

Modern man has turned women into some kind of shrewish manipulative whore who deserves no respect.

Lisa
You seem to have a low opinion of most of your sex. Interesting. Questions are:

1/ Do you really think most modern women are whores?

2/ Even assuming the answer to 1/ is yes, do you think whores deserve no respect?

3/ Do you really think modern women are not able to take responsibility for themselves, and therefore anything that is wrong with them is the fault of men?

[Cath B]

C.I won't guarantee you won't ever get pregnant, but it tends to reduce the frequency. Child spacing. I wonder what role was played by stopping using wet nurses.

Good point, but only the better-off could afford wet nurses.

I wonder what role was played by trends in length of breast feeding.

Weaning fairly early, or breast feeding only at infrequent intervals, "liberates" a woman to work elsewhere in the short term but without contraception leaves her vulnerable to more frequent pregnancies.

Lengthy breast feeding, like coitus interruptus, is not a very reliable contraceptive but would have an impact on the population level.

Three of my four babies were breat fed till they were around two and a half: my periods did not return till they were gone two.

[DMB]

Breast feeding is effective at the population level, but in my case it wouldn't have worked. My periods came back after two months even though I breastfed one child to 20 months.

For centuries in western Europe wetnursing is thought to have had a demographic effect in that upper-class women, who did not breastfeed their babies, had higher fertility rates than the lower classes, who mostly did.

[Cath B]

For centuries in western Europe wetnursing is thought to have had a demographic effect in that upper-class women, who did not breastfeed their babies, had higher fertility rates than the lower classes, who mostly did.

Yes, that figures. And in some cases the wet nurses may have been pressurised into neglecting their own babies in favour of their charges.

All the Pretty Little Horses
Many female slaves served as nursemaids to their masters' children. The second verse of this version refers to the nursemaid's own baby, whom she is unable to care for because of the demands of caring for the master's baby. This poignant song is a fine example of passive rebellion.

Ch:
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby,
When you awake, you will have cake,
And all the pretty little horses.

1. Black and bay, dapple and grey
Coach and six-a little horses,
Hush-a-bye, don't you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
2. Way down yonder, down in the meadow
There's a poor little lamby,
The bees and the butterflies peckin' out its eyes,
The poor little thing cried mammy.

from http://www.mariner.org/captivepassage/legacy/leg016.html

I don't know whether there is any accuracy in this story about the song's origins, but can see the general drift.

[Lisa0315]

You seem to have a low opinion of most of your sex. Interesting. Questions are:

1/ Do you really think most modern women are whores?

2/ Even assuming the answer to 1/ is yes, do you think whores deserve no respect?

3/ Do you really think modern women are not able to take responsibility for themselves, and therefore anything that is wrong with them is the fault of men?

No, I was trying to represent what men until very recently have felt about women. Catholics LITERALLY used to teach these things. I don't think this about my sex. Good God, no. Are you kidding? I have raised a strong, strong daughter and I am purdy damn tough myself.


Lisa

[Christina]

Those words were never used but 40 years or so ago those sentiments were conveyed to us quite clearly. From 8th grade on we were bombarded with warnings that if we let boys touch us in any way we were "bad girls" with no self-respect, no one would ever marry us and we were going to hell. Then they'd tell us a story of a fallen woman being stoned to death in the bible. The only career choices ever mentioned were teacher and nun, and unless we had a 'calling' we better be mommies and defer to our husbands or we had failed at life. They wouldn't let us off the bus on our senior trip until we had all prayed to Saint Agnes, the patron saint of virginity and learned all about how she became a martyr rather than sleep with someone she shouldn't. The nuns then took turns guarding the hallways all night so that we couldn't sneak out. We could be respected but only under some stringent conditions. There was a clear message that we were the inferior sex and needed guidance.

[Joykins]

For centuries in western Europe wetnursing is thought to have had a demographic effect in that upper-class women, who did not breastfeed their babies, had higher fertility rates than the lower classes, who mostly did.


I think this was actually the desired effect, after having seen "The Duchess."

I conceived my 2nd child within a month of weaning my first. Boy was I happy to get my body back 2 years after that ;)

[Garnet]

As International Women’s Day is celebrated, the Vatican had a novel message for the women of the world: give thanks for the washing machine. This humble domestic appliance had done more for the women’s liberation movement than the contraceptive pill or working outside the home, said the the official Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano.

Labor saving devices have certainly enhanced the lifestyles of both sexes. But the washing machine as the technology that had the most effect on the women's liberation movement is simply absurd. Yes, washing clothes used to be a hugely intensive labor. So was cooking, ironing, cleaning and gardening to name a few of the more traditional chores my ancestors performed. Many women in my family also worked side-by-side with the men during planting and harvest seasons.

So what is this reason that it's supposedly the washing machine? Bah. Rather it's the combination of labour saving devices coupled with better education coupled with improvements in health care (including reproductive care and choices) coupled with changing political environment coupled with activism coupled with...

What it boils down to in the end is that some women finally said, "Enough!" And they laid the groundwork for the rest of us. That started long before the washing machine was a common household appliance.

*grumbles, mutters and kicks the wall*