...women wore white at weddings in the Western world because as a colour it symbolises purity, virginiality and innocence...
...women wear veils when they walk down the aisle because in the old days, when women were chattel (the property of men, with no higher status than cattle), a man would not have chosen his own bride, but would have been married to forge bonds between men... if she was ugly- tough- your daddy and her daddy wanted you to make this work, so you had to... this is also why we use terms such as "given away" to describe what the Dad does when he escorts his daughter down the aisle...
as for womens work and men's work...
I find it rather amusing that some people here can say we have grown beyond defining occupation along gender lines- you only have to look at primary schoolteachers or nurses to realise men do not feature highly here, because looking after the weak and the young is a woman's job...
there is also a disparity in business, and finance, and politics- although things appear to be changing women are often included in these areas simply to play lip-service to equality...
I was reading in the paper today, that 1 in 4 women will be beaten or assaulted by their husbands.... that is all women, not just, say, muslims, or paupers...
As a woman you are more likely to be murdered by a male family member or friend than by a random stranger or a terrorist attack.
If there wasn't such a thing as gender inequality these statistics would not exist...
I am strong, and practical. I put out and put back all the chairs at a group I attend. I easily lift a stack of six chairs, with one arm, and yet... the men in my group cannot handle this... they cannot do it themselves without putting their backs out, yet they laugh at my strength... they tell me that a little woman like me should not try to impress, and yet the men then try to compete with me to remove said chairs, even though they cannot manage it...
I have explained to them I "work out"... I laugh along with them while they call me Charlie Dimmock (a UK celebrity gardener), or Pansy Potter (the strong mans daughter, a character from a comic)... but still, even though I have been doing this chair thing for about a year, they want to protect my delicate self... I find it both hilarious and annoying...
This is not the first time I have been treated like this... I drink pints of real ale... men find this curious, so too my hand rolled cigarettes... they ask if I have tattoos... they wonder whether I do girls, instead of boys...
I sing, in a group... Vocally, I'm a tenor... and a very fine tenor too. Yet my group will not let me be a tenor, as these parts are not written for female voices. I am prepared to dress as a man, bind down my tits and wear a fake moustache, like a drag king, but still, no.
As a relatively thin and relatively attractive woman, I am encouraged to sing soprano- sing the teen girls roles, yet I am a tenor. Soprano is too high for me. Alto is also a little too high for me. I can be a contralto, as a woman, even though technically I am not so good there, as its pitched just a little too high for me, yet due to my age, and my build, even if I was completely comfortable in this range I wouldl never get a role as a contralto anyway, because women with deep voices are old, ugly things. Comedy characters.
I gave up boxing, which I loved, because where I lived I couldn't get a fight-there were no women at my club, and I wasn't allowed to fight men of my own age and size, simply because they were men, and I was a woman. As a woman I am forced to wear a headguard if I compete, like an ameteur, even in high level competitions. Even though head injuries occur in men the same as in women. We need more protection, simply because we have vaginas. And besides, we wouldn't want to mess up our pretty little faces, would we?
As a writer, or as a director, I am surrounded by men. Yes, we have our feminist publishing houses, yet most directors and producers, and most successful authors, are men. If you want to be successful as a woman in these fields, then you have to write chit lit, or make chick flicks- you want to make horror films, write semi serious genre-less stories? You shouldn't. As a woman you should be making rom-coms, and girlie road trip movies. It's all about the emotionality, the relationships, the love between two sisters.
But... I want to make slasher pics. Gangster movies. Big guns, explosions, gruesome murders. I want to do what the boys do.
And yet- why is this? Most of the men I know are weak fools. They cannot outrun me, or out-think me. Yet because they have that little swinging set on the outside, they automatically feel they are better than me, with my bleeding and dirty gash.
And we all play along with it. Subconsciously or otherwise. Girls can't deal with spiders, or lift heavy things, or deal with serious issues, because women are seen as weaker than men, both physically and intellectually. Men are not gossips, they are not good at processing their own emotions...
It's all a con. It is just another division dreamt up long ago which then meant we could effectively dismiss half the population. If women are weak, and stupid, and less than men, then we only have to deal with men. If we then add the class system into the mix, we can then also discount poor men, too, as if they were not fools they would be rich and have higher status. Then we only have to appease 25% of the population.
Nice odds.
Of course, things are changing, but they are not changing as quickly as they should. It's the same for race, too. We pretend we're all liberals, but we're not really.
"All animals are equal. But some are more equal than others".
-George Orwell, Animal Farm.
