The Intimately Oppressed

The Intimately Oppressed The Female Fight for Equality NERY LEMUS 4/3/2014 CHS 245: Buelna Spring 2014 (14004) ChS 245 OL-Spring 2014-14004

Male Dominance • Zinn states from the very beginning, “The Explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men.” (103) • Zinn highlights the historical stress of men’s dominance within realms of Exploration, Politics, Economics, and Defense. Men held all realms of power while the women were overlooked. This demonstrates a skewed power structure forcing “the invisibility of women.” (103) NERY LEMUS

Zinn refers to “standard histories.” These infer and read ownership, patriarchy, white supremacy, racism, sexism, and abuse of power among other things. • Males used the characteristics of slave women as a “convenience.” They were used at the same time as servants, sex mate, companion, and bearer-teacher-warden of his children.” (Zinn 103) • Women were influenced by Christian teachings and English Doctrine. Male Dominance was seen in doctrine such as “The Lawes Resolutions of Women’s Rights” where it states “a married woman, Her new self is her superior; her companion, her master…” (Zinn 106) • Education helped perpetuate male dominance. While 90 percent of the white male population were literate around 1750, only 40 percent of the women were.” (Zinn 110) NERY LEMUS

WOMEN INVISIBILITY • Women invisibility was shared with Black Slaves. • Therefore, what was a black slave woman? • They faced double the invisibility, hence double the oppression. (Zinn 103) Due to their biology, the ability to hold children, on top of their skin color, it was used against them as a control mechanism to hold their place in society. NERY LEMUS

FEMALES of Early Societies • Earlier societies treated women more as equals than the civilized white society that came later. (Zinn 104) • The Zuni Tribes of the Southwest were matriarchal where the women owned the houses, the fields belonged to the community, while everything produced was shared equally between men and women. Women could also divorce their husbands when she wanted and keep their property. (Zinn 104) • The Plains Tribes of the Midwest saw their women as “healers, herbalists, and sometimes holy people who gave advice.” (Zinn 104) When they lost male leaders, women would rise in power as chieftains. A woman, ultimately, had the power to defend themselves with the practice of using knives and bows. • Women were treated with respect and their communities gave them a more important, valid role within society. (Zinn 104) NERY LEMUS

FEMALES of Early COLONIAL SETTLEMENTS • First settlements were comprised of almost entirely all men. According to Zinn, “Women had to be imported as sex slaves, child bearers, and companions.” (104) • Ninety Woman came on one ship to Jamestown in 1619 as “young and incorrupt” who sold “with their own content to settles as wives.” (Zinn 104) • Women in the early colonial years came as young indentured servant, teenage girls who lived the life of slaves. The only difference was an end that existed. • Poorly Paid and Often treated harshly with no privacy or food. (Zinn 105) • Sexual Abuse of Servant Girls was a common practice from masters. (Zinn 105) NERY LEMUS

Relationship between husbands and wives • As Julia Spruill claims, Husbands reserved the right to give her “chastisement” without “permanent injury or death.” (Zinn 106) • Husbands, once married, owned his wife’s personal property and any other income she may earn. They combined their wages and all wages “belonged to the husband.” (Zinn 107) NERY LEMUS

Father role within the Family • The Father was the head of the family. He dominated the household in all regards. Ultimately, they made decisions and gave orders to their wives and children, and it was their job to follow through. • As expressed in The Spectator, “Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion; and as I am the father of a family… I am perpetually taken up in giving out orders, in prescribing duties, in hearing parties, in administering justice, and in distributing rewards and punishments… In short, sir, I look upon my family as a patriarchal sovereignty in which I am myself both king and priest.” (Zinn 108) • It was a crime for a woman to have a child out of wedlock. The Colonial Court Records highlight cases of “Bastardy.” The father ultimately unscathed by the law. (Zinn 107) NERY LEMUS

Female Roles in Society • Woman were not just home keepers. When they were home keepers, and when they were not bearing many children, they worked as outsourced seamstresses, at home, for factories in the nearby area. (Zinn 111) • Women had jobs as shopkeepers, innkeepers, bakers, tinworkers, brewers, tanners, ropemakers, lumberjacks, printers, morticians, woodworkers, and staymakersamong others. (Zinn 111) NERY LEMUS

Lack of Female Rebellion • Women never rebelled because of the constant watch of their masters, isolation from other households and other women, ultimately preventing support from developing. (Zinn 108) • Women that spoke up and had the ability to do so were women of status that already had a platform to speak more freely. • Working Class Women had very few means of communication, and “no means of recording whatever sentiments of rebelliousness they may have felt at their subordination.” (Zinn 110-111) NERY LEMUS

CULT OF TRUE WOMANHOOD • Women were being pulled out of the house and transferred into a industrial environment. • Clothing developed for both the rich and middle class, and it was imitated by the poor. (Zinn 112) • Women were expected to move with the times, while remain in their place as a result of the male-female power matrix. • Religion was used as a control mechanism to give her “that dignity that best suits her dependence.” (Zinn 112) • Women would bare a special virtue of sexual purity while the men would sin due to biological nature. (Zinn 112) NERY LEMUS

The woman’s job was to keep the “home cheerful, maintain religion, be nurse, cook, cleaner, seamstress, flower arranger. A woman shouldn’t read too much, and certain books should be avoided” as “Such reading will unsettle them for their true station and pursuits, and they will throw the world back again into confusion.” (Zinn 113) • The notion of “true womanhood” represents the mindset and expected goals for all women living within that society. • “True Womanhood” ideology worked by creating some stability in a growing economy. • It gave woman a “sphere” to supply the needed space, time, and preparation for a new kind of life. • Despite the “cult of true woman hood,” it still kept woman at a inferior level. Woman were still not allowed to own property or vote. When woman worked, it was not equal pay. Typically it was ¼ to ½ for the same work that a man earned in with the same job. (Zinn 115) NERY LEMUS

The Feminist Movement • Women from the middle class, who were barred from higher education, started to profit on their teaching professions. Teaching allowed them to read and communicate more, therefore developed newer ways of thinking. • Literacy doubled between 1780 and 1840 and women began writing for newspapers, magazines, and entire ladies’ publications. (Zinn 117) • Women became health reformers and civil rights activists. The movement capitalized on organizers, agitators, and speakers forming a force by the 1840s. • Women fought to enter all male professional schools in realms such as Medicine. (Zinn 118) NERY LEMUS

Women gained traction in their own movement by working within the anti-slavery societies around the country. These events “carried the movement for women for their own equality racing alongside the movement against slavery.” (Zinn 122) • After the exclusion of women at the World Anti-Slavery Society Convention, the vote to exclude women forced plans to congregate the first Woman’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. NERY LEMUS

Women Rights Convention: Seneca Falls, NY • After an announcement that took place in the Seneca County Courier calling for a meeting to discuss the “rights of women,” three hundred women and some men congregated on the 19th and 20th of July. (Zinn 123) • The result of the convention was a Declaration of Principles that was signed at the end of the meeting by thirty-two men and sixty-eight women, using the language and style of the Declaration of Independence. (Zinn 123-124) Within the Declaration came a series of grievances and resolutions resisting against notions of “true womanhood.” NERY LEMUS

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The resistance in the 1830s up until the 1850s provided a platform for woman to resist the notion of a “woman’s sphere” and the resistance of submission to the chauvinistic, male dominance. • The fight for women fueled movements for all kinds including the imprisoned and the insane. • The fight was not restricted for only white women, it sought equality for all women. (Zinn 124) NERY LEMUS

References Zinn, Howard. A people's history of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classic, 2005. Print. NERY LEMUS

The Intimately Oppressed