Have you ever experienced that ‘rock star’ moment?
I have only had said opportunity when engaged in my research at libraries and book stores. Such occasions to savor my dubious celebrity status are then generally ruined when the combined thickness of mine and the book curator’s glasses render meaningful eye contact impossible. Never-the-less, I am not one to deny a reader’s request to access the vast database housed between these attentive ears, particularly when she, well, when she is a she.
The Question
Josey Thomas, 21st Century Human Female, asked me [that would be Regal M-116-S, toiling away under the stifling conditions of this research grant—can I not deploy the nanobots at least once a millennium!]:
“At what time in history, before the 21st Century, was it ever ‘great’ to be a woman?”
By implication Josey regards the plight of current females in her experimental habitat, known as 21st Century America, to be enjoying a ‘great’ life. I would concur. Thus far, if one were to choose to be born in any time in human experience, as a random, median female, than 21st Century America would be the five-star destination.
I will further focus the question in terms of gender equity, which was the subject upon which Josey and I were discoursing. Permit me Josey, to reframe the question.
“At what time-and-place in the human experience, excepting the post women’s suffrage era in the West, has a woman’s lot been socially, physically, morally, and materially equal to, or preferable to, the lot of her male counterpart?’
The Human Gender Paradigm
First off, You People [As an alien zoologist I can say that.] are quite literally screwed by the whole sexual reproduction model of propagation. In fact, in your own best interest, I actually took a pilgrimage in human form to meet with your Designer. I know, some of you think he is a shattered singularity, and others that he resides on a cloudbank mysteriously unperturbed by airline traffic. Regardless I found him in 1981, sitting on a milk crate above a drainage ditch, behind a food market, in Northeast Baltimore. He did assure me that he was your Designer, and that he was mighty upset with how things were turning out with his planet. He was a huge man, smelled much like John the Baptist must have, and proved his supernatural powers by breaking a pallet over his knee. There was no combusting shrub in sight, but he did assure me that he could fry a hamburger under the hole in the ozone layer caused by the Freon leaking from the transformer that powered the frozen food case that my LaFond avatar was toiling to fill daily in his pathetic life-long service to my—but I digress.
Here it is in a ‘nutshell’, as your primordial ancestors must have thought, Josey.
You are just fragile little apes on a planet of canines, felines, bovines, etc. You need a ruthless half to go out and kill all of these hairy brutes, and a compliant half that is going to bend over for the most ruthless and then put up with the screaming and defecating of his resulting progeny. He kills ‘them’, then impregnates ‘you’ with that nasty little ape that is going to kill the next generation of ‘them’.
Now Josey, do you now more clearly understand my preference for transmigratory reproduction? Examine and consider the process above, which is the process by which your Designer [who I suspect had some issues—you should have seen how he went after that poor pallet!] apparently intended you to thrive. Really, if you were a feline, or particularly a bovine, and were to witness a nature film whereby the human male is shown impregnating the female [nasty business that is], then the female is seen painfully ejecting the little hominid from her belly, then through time-lapse effect we are treated to scenes of the male young attacking progressively larger prey from toy reptile, to house cat, to domestic dog, and then finally taking up his high-powered rifle and six-pack of beer to go kill skittish ungulates in rough wooded terrain, then you might feel a bit like Sigourney Weaver in any of her Aliens roles.
So Josey, taking into account that your were designed to be contested property, to be grappled and injected by the hairy killer that acquires you, you have indeed come a long way. Your species design, my dear, begs for coercion, and being the vessel of the next generation of habitat exploiters does tend to put the female half into an objectified social cul-de-sac. Next I shall address your enemy within.
Of Queens and Wenches
We must be careful, when considering the typical woman’s lot in life, not to wax too nostalgic about the queens of ages past. Think of the last ‘queen’ you worked with. As with any life form which claws its way up out of a situational cul-de-sac, a successful woman is very unlikely to extend a helping hand to those whose persons she just used as stepping stones in her ascent. Throughout history powerful women have been noted for their hatred of and cruelty toward less fortunate women. This is particularly prominent when a powerful woman’s position is due to her status as highly valued sexual property. In this light, the worst situation to be born into is as a female slave to a rich woman, who is only rich because she is the slave of a powerful man.
Keeping in mind that man’s power over woman is vested in his proficiency with violent means, we shall consider prominent violent women as one sign of endemic social mobility for women within a society. Women are, we must remember, the half of this volatile human species that resides ‘within’ its groups, generally with little intercourse outside the group, except as an object of value. Therefore, prominence of women in war or other means of dealing with outside groups is indicative of women enjoying greater equity with men in that culture than has generally been common.
Josey’s Time-Place Holiday Menu
Now Josey supposing we had a time-place machine that could whisk you away to the past at a certain place, I have listed for you the occupation among the people in question that best expresses the greater status of women in that society than has been the human norm. This will not necessarily be the typical lot of a woman in said society. However, we might suppose that my patronage as an extraterrestrial dignitary would gain you access to this occupation. As I have never chosen to transmigrate into the body of a female fetus upon the expiration of my various avatars [although, when this LaFond unit hits the floor for good I might alter this arrangement, considering the way things are going among you humans] I will make no attempt to rate these favorable female plights.
Favorable Female Plights
The time-place destinations are divided by body type. Just as a male time traveler who weighed 90 pounds would not want to go back to 9th Century Norway, a petite woman would be best advised to avoid the Stone Age options.
Fat Girl Destinations
Josey, do not go back as a fashion model before A. D. 1600!
Bubble Butt Copoid Nomad
Your best bet is to go back about 40,000 years to the drier climates in Africa and Iberia where the ‘copoid’ people once roamed. Alone among humans you would have enhanced labial tissue and an extra ‘rumble seat’ for additional fat storage. You would be the primordial hip hop honey, valued a great deal by your men, who have been noted for being non-warlike. The downside is that your men all got slaughtered by the whites and the blacks after the invention of iron. It is likely that the African man’s obsession with large butts stems from 40 plus millennia of annihilating little copper-skinned dudes and appropriating their light-skinned bubble butt babes. You want to go early, or at least before the prehistoric equivalent of the NBA invents iron spearheads and goes on the warpath.
Paleolithic Sex Goddess
A feminist once wrote a book titled, When God Was Woman. If I wrote that book it would be titled, When White Guys Liked Fat Chicks! Fresh steak on the grille every day Josey! Sure, it was awful damned cold in Ice Age Europe. But every hunter in the band will be seeking your—well not exactly your hand at this stage in human evolution—and be out there slaughtering animals so big and hairy that your fur coat would break Jennifer Anniston’s back, and the rack of ribs your old man—if he still wants to be your old man—brings home could easily tip over Fred Flintstone’s foot-powered car at the Bedrock Diner! To be the prehistoric Marilyn Monroe all you have to do is sew, keep the fire stoked, haul your house around in pieces [you might want to invest in a few sisters] and maintain huge breasts, a big belly and a fat butt. You’ve got to keep an eye on your old man though. He’s sniffing around upriver after those redheads.
Neanderthal Wet Nurse
Based on the size of their heads Neanderthal children needed longer periods of care under their mother than other humans. Your correspondingly low birthrate compared to those tall skinny wives-of-murderers downriver does put you at an evolutionary disadvantage. Also, the fact that your musclebound men cannot throw weapons but must get inside and stab, and no smartass has invented the bow and arrow yet, has them taking too many casualties hunting and makes them outnumbered sitting ducks against the invading bone-racks. The upside is, those skinny dudes that murder your men every time they get caught out in the open, ‘like big butts’, and you’ve got that going on girlfriend. You want to be a Neanderthal babe before 40,000 years ago. Most of your people will be murdered and raped by those bone-racks between 35,000 and 27,000 years ago, leaving a 2% trace Neanderthal DNA in the modern human genome. I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of Neanderthal paternal markers, so don’t get too attached to your son if your time-place machine stalls out this side of 33,000 B.C.
Ugandan Beauty Queen
If you go back to pre-colonial Uganda, and have a large enough frame to get immensely fat, than you can drink milk all day long, have gangs of skinny girls lotion your skin while male slaves turn you over so you don’t get bed sores, and be an actual—if not very mobile—beauty queen.
Little Girl Destinations
In any society the accepted body image for women has much bearing on the actual status of individual females. Little girl time-place occupations have more to do with doing than being. Lazy urban women beware.
Native American Interpreter
The relative plasticity of female language skills had important applications for the advanced stone aged peoples of North and South America. While there were some matriarchal Amerindian societies, most were patriarchal. However, the vast variety of languages due to the small scale societies of these vast wildernesses made the interpreter invaluable. The female interpreter became even more valuable when the Whites came. So when the apocalyptic shit hits the fan your stock soars. Many Native women married trappers and combined the interpreter role with that of mobile house manager and enjoyed actual 50/50 partnership arrangements with these White men, who were very lonely and under actual diplomatic pressure to treat their Native wives good.
Iroquoian Housewife
Relax! It’s a big house, a long one actually, and you don’t have to clean it yourself because you live with your sisters, each with your own apartment. You own everything in it and get to vote! The only thing your husband owns is his weapons, and he is away half the year wiping our rivals from the cousin or alien tribes. You do work outside the home in your gardens, and the senior women basically run the towns. Your men are the most feared warriors in this land, because you are such a nagging bitch that he can’t stand to stay home and goes raiding for hundreds of miles around. The Whites fear your men and make deals with them, meaning you get a lot of good White People tools and nic-nacs for your nice warm house. When your warriors bring home captives, you even get to torture and kill them in case you woke up on the wrong side of the bed—and you actually have a bed! In what became the Carolinas there was even a woman, the Princess of Cafitachequi, who headed a confederation of towns.
Spartan Woman
A woman of Sparta managed the property—including the slaves—and came of age playing sports, largely in the company of other girls. Her older female relatives selected a husband for her. She was important because she was a breeder of warriors. So if you are terrified of pregnancy and can’t stand boys under the age of seven, find another gig. No woman had a better life in the Greco-Roman world than a Spartan wife. Not only did she not get pregnant as soon as physically possible as in most other societies, she was in better health. And, as an added bonus, when she was too old to have children, she served as a sexual instructor for the 20-year old men. If you like the idea of teaching a squad of young soldiers how to have intercourse, then being a 45-year-old Spartan woman sounds a lot like a middle-aged woman’s version of a modern American college girl’s trip to Cancun. I guess at this point, you realize that you want to be on good terms with your aunt, because she is the chick that’s breaking in the young guys and recommending one as your husband.
Hellenistic Philosopher
There was at least one notable female philosopher from the 200s B.C. The era was one in which many atheistic notions were entertained, and motherhood was not regarded as paramount for a woman by certain affluent communities who hired mercenary soldiers. This was a blink of the macro-cultural eye, and seems to have been similar in some ways to our age of change and angst. Don’t leave any daughters behind for the Romans.
Scythian Amazon
Don’t get too attached to your right breast, because it needs to come off! Yep, as long as you can ride and shoot a composite bow, you’re a man with the ability to have children. You will give up any boys to be adopted by the men, and keep the girls to be raised as female warriors.
These women were the inspiration for the Greek legend of the Amazons. Gene Wolfe in Soldier of Arete, and Steven Pressfield in Last of the Amazons, did nice fictional renderings of this half-mythic culture. We know the Scythians had female warriors, and chiefs. I doubt if they were all Amazons, but the existence of a female warrior society among them speaks volumes for their gender equity situation. These were Caucasian nomads. Later Asian nomads had a less extreme tolerance for female leadership.
Nordic Battleaxe
If you are big, bitchy, and sexy than any number of Celtic and Germanic pagan societies would provide a sensibly assertive woman avenues for a better standard of living and limited autonomy, if she hooked up with the right man. One particular she-devil took over the last expedition to Vinland and scared the death out of the Natives by beating her naked breast with a sword. The Roman writer Tacticus complained a thousand years earlier that there was a tribe of Germans who actually tolerated female opinions! Celtic and German women sometimes earned the right to fight alongside their husbands. Famously, Boudicca, in A. D. 73 had enough clout to convince tens of thousands of fellow Breton men to throw away their lives battling the Roman legions.
Pre-Islamic Berber Woman
The semi-nomadic people of Northwest Africa famously resisted Muslim invaders under a queen. There is reason to believe that at some time before A.D. 600 that a culture of limited political tolerance for women was thriving in his area. It probably would not seem like equity to a modern American woman. But to a modern Muslim woman, or for most women throughout history, it would be a liberated life, if it produced a warrior queen who men were willing to fight for against men who held women as veiled property. The women of this region, as late as the early 1900s, were hated and feared by men of the French Foreign Legion, who, if captured, would be given to the women to torture.
Dahomey Amazon
You get to have sex with the king, push men around, belong to an elite military unit, and even marry a woman who can raise that baby that results from His Majesty’s kingly attention. I realize that this option is more for the ghetto girls. But I had to put something low rent on the itinerary Josey.
I hope this helps.
Extraterrestrially Yours, Regal M-116-S
Iroquoian housewife FTW.
Dear Jamie, as your mother's brother, you have no idea how agreeable I am with you staying behind the town walls. Based on the picture your mother sent me I think I'd be up to my elbows in the gore of your suitors. I'm getting a little old for that kind of thing.
Seriously, the Appalachian Trial was called 'The Long War Way'. Warriors from as far away as New York and Tennessee would roll out for months at a time to make small-scale war, and perhaps abduct a bride. Just make sure you don't go out to weed the pumpkin patch without an escort.
I am smart-phone illiterate. What does FTW mean?
If I were able to pick, I'd go for the Irouquian Housewife. I enjoy hanging around the house- minus the old man. :)
You country girls seem to be opting for the Irouquian Housewife. It might not shock you that the city girls I have polled are opting for Spartan Woman, apparently okay with the onerous task of instructing Gerald Butler in the cozy arts.
FTW means "for the win".
I haven't had to deal with any suitors for quite some time, so I think we're safe. Perhaps I should change my answer to Iroquoian Spinster?
For The Win Jamie, traditional societies tended to put more pressure on individuals to marry than we do. Those rare women who chose the single life would usually have a choice between attaching to a brother's or sister's or son's household, or of living alone in some unconventional way as a 'crazy woman'. In Europe in the early colonial period that would get you burned at the stake. In the Americas, a crazy woman, would evoke a sentiment more along the lines of our regard for lone women who live with cats.
Now I'm intrigued. What would this 'crazy woman' lifestyle entail? (I ask with a cat on my lap)
The cat is a start!
In pre-modern Europe being a mid-wife or healer [the equivalent of a nurse/nutritionist today] would be enough to get you burned at the stake. Basically, anything that puts you outside of the traditional female role in that society, and that also makes you valuable to someone, makes you taboo. If you just rejected the society and did not engage now you're nothing, ostracized.
In agrarian [farming] level cultures you need some form of useful engagement to be assigned some menacing identity. This is perilous as you will be competing with some established caste of service provider, as with the village nurse competing with the faith-healing priest and getting burned at the stake for her trouble, because her herbs work sometimes and his holy water never works.
In modern societies nobody cares. You are just the crazy chick with the cat on her lap.
In a hunting society, in which people believe in the transmigration of souls, animal spirits, and ghosts, and do stuff like eat enemy hearts to absorb spiritual power, then just appearing to be insane is enough. Nobody wants to live with you or kill you because they are afraid that evil cat spirit will jump into them and take over, kind of like a cross between The Thing and The Exorcist.