Friday, March 17, 2017
One of the scary thought that occurred to me while reading and discussing the fifth part of the Republic is how slowly feminist ideas seem manifest and travel. The fact that these ideas were brought up over 2,000 years ago and still we don't have an equal society is insane. And it begs the question, will we ever, as a species, get to a point where woman are truest equal worldwide? Or is there always going to be a fight? What do you think?
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I think that so long as traditional power dynamics are enforced by culture, women will have to fight for equality. It is quite shocking and saddening that we ha e reached this point in our history, and women are still truly not equal, particularly on a global level. If we continue to give women rights at this pace, women will not have full equality worldwide for at least 100 years, and even that is quite a conservative estimate. In order to combat this, cultures need to change. In a way, Socrates was proposing a cultural shift in gender in Book V, but it wasn't strong enough. I think a part of the solution to any fight for equality that is often overlooked is for the oppressed to show the oppressor how they also suffer under the same system. Men, who are of corse dominant in a patriarchal society, are also entirely defined by the gender roles of their society. Though they have political and economic enfranchisement, they do not have freedom of expression or the ability to explore different facets of their gender. Showing men who are resistant to gender equality that they too will benefit from enfranchising women and reevaluating gender may help them to rethink their biases.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Consider, also, that philosophy operates rather slowly: Plato does not advocate equality, but proposes arguments that -- contrary to any conventional Greek wisdom -- show how the idea must be taken seriously. In the seventeenth century, some women (and men), engaging with these arguments, start to dream of a way to make it possible. Then, a few centuries later, global economic changes make it practically a no-brainer, so now we can get to work.
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