I dont find it weird because it's long been obvious to me. Toys and games are a way for children to learn and mimic behaviors that will be useful for them later. Animals practice hunting and chasing and being chased. Sports are about war.
It's not really a secret that for a long time women as a class served an essential economic role in socially reproductive labor (as well certain other industry, e.g. the history of textile production is dominated by women since antiquity.) Child-making and rearing was a uniquely important facet of this, since the number of births within a polity was directly dependent on the number of women able to bear children at any given time. Men don't have the same reproductive restrictions, so the number of them having children, being alive, etc. wasn't as important.
As an aside, this is a big reason I think why women-as-property was a large facet of cultures - they were simply very valuable, and to possess them, trade them, and extract value from all kinds of their labor, could make someone very rich.
So, while certain parts of the vast network of social structures that emerged to constrain women into these economic roles have largely ebbed, socialization through toys and play remains.
"Women were property because they made the babies" is kind of a TERFy/2nd wave feminist talking point though. Not all women can get pregnant/give birth/have uteruses. I don't think I'd tie womanhood to bearing children.
I might've misunderstood your point though so I don't want to attack you, if you want to expound further please feel free
Ok, maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but isn't "women perform this kind of reproductive labor" still a bio-essentialist argument? Because it hinges on the idea of women having certain hardwired biological roles, even though womanhood is a social category and women come in a vast array of different biological configurations? And for the record I'm not calling you or anyone else in this thread a bio-essentialist, personally, I'm just saying the argument, as I'm parsing it, sounds like such a kind.
What's being talked about is the broader social expectation that women perform reproductive labor. I don't think Bay_of_Piggies is claiming that to be fact or their own opinion. I mean, that this expectation was nearly universally held, and still is held by many, is not to say that it is right or good. Women were considered property in no small part because the majority of them were capable of and expected to make babies. That expectation is misogynistic and is a mainstay of the patriarchy. And yes, it would additionally be a TERFy thing to say if one were to claim that only women were capable of having babies, but it's not at all TERFy to recognize that this definitely was (and unforrunately still is to a degree) a widely held belief.
I may also have something wrong here, including the possibility that I may have misunderstood what you were even asking or unclear on. If so, I don't mean to unhelpfully explain the obvious.
Ehhhhhhhhh that's a pretty weird take and seems to erase a lot of women but at this point I'm convinced I'm missing something so in good faith I'm gonna disengage
The societal view of women throws out infertile women/trans women/and other groups as being functionally non existent. Of course in reality these groups are very real but by much of the mechanisms in patriarchal society, they might as well not be. Patriarchy values the woman as the mother and the baby maker first and foremost, and those women who could not fulfill this role are tossed to the side. Acknowledging this doesn't fall into gender essentialism, but rather critiques gender essentialist ideas.
I dont find it weird because it's long been obvious to me. Toys and games are a way for children to learn and mimic behaviors that will be useful for them later. Animals practice hunting and chasing and being chased. Sports are about war.
It's not really a secret that for a long time women as a class served an essential economic role in socially reproductive labor (as well certain other industry, e.g. the history of textile production is dominated by women since antiquity.) Child-making and rearing was a uniquely important facet of this, since the number of births within a polity was directly dependent on the number of women able to bear children at any given time. Men don't have the same reproductive restrictions, so the number of them having children, being alive, etc. wasn't as important.
As an aside, this is a big reason I think why women-as-property was a large facet of cultures - they were simply very valuable, and to possess them, trade them, and extract value from all kinds of their labor, could make someone very rich.
So, while certain parts of the vast network of social structures that emerged to constrain women into these economic roles have largely ebbed, socialization through toys and play remains.
"Women were property because they made the babies" is kind of a TERFy/2nd wave feminist talking point though. Not all women can get pregnant/give birth/have uteruses. I don't think I'd tie womanhood to bearing children.
I might've misunderstood your point though so I don't want to attack you, if you want to expound further please feel free
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Ok, maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but isn't "women perform this kind of reproductive labor" still a bio-essentialist argument? Because it hinges on the idea of women having certain hardwired biological roles, even though womanhood is a social category and women come in a vast array of different biological configurations? And for the record I'm not calling you or anyone else in this thread a bio-essentialist, personally, I'm just saying the argument, as I'm parsing it, sounds like such a kind.
What's being talked about is the broader social expectation that women perform reproductive labor. I don't think Bay_of_Piggies is claiming that to be fact or their own opinion. I mean, that this expectation was nearly universally held, and still is held by many, is not to say that it is right or good. Women were considered property in no small part because the majority of them were capable of and expected to make babies. That expectation is misogynistic and is a mainstay of the patriarchy. And yes, it would additionally be a TERFy thing to say if one were to claim that only women were capable of having babies, but it's not at all TERFy to recognize that this definitely was (and unforrunately still is to a degree) a widely held belief.
I may also have something wrong here, including the possibility that I may have misunderstood what you were even asking or unclear on. If so, I don't mean to unhelpfully explain the obvious.
deleted by creator
Ehhhhhhhhh that's a pretty weird take and seems to erase a lot of women but at this point I'm convinced I'm missing something so in good faith I'm gonna disengage
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
The societal view of women throws out infertile women/trans women/and other groups as being functionally non existent. Of course in reality these groups are very real but by much of the mechanisms in patriarchal society, they might as well not be. Patriarchy values the woman as the mother and the baby maker first and foremost, and those women who could not fulfill this role are tossed to the side. Acknowledging this doesn't fall into gender essentialism, but rather critiques gender essentialist ideas.