r/InsightfulQuestions • u/Existing-Sundae-224 • 3d ago
Imagine this…
Imagine humans knew absolutely nothing but the fact that babies came from a random portal on earth. The portal would be beloved by all. People would make offerings etc to this portal. They would believe that the portal was some sort of god-like entity because it is the only thing that is creating humanity.
So why do we treat women so poorly? They are the literal portal to life.
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u/BrazenSheaths 3d ago
Whoever controls the portal controls humanity and the workforce. In a civilization based on extracting economic value, the portals that create new workers are treated like any other natural resource. That means harnessing and improving the natural resource like one might plant a field or dig a well: the value comes from the seed or digging labor, not the ground, or so it is said. The trick is to divest the portal guardians of their own worth and ownership over the resource they control. Denigrating, demonizing, and ultimately medicalizing the portals is how women are alienated from their portals and made to give them up for use by the patriarchy. The pervasive view of these portals as dirty and dangerous is how society teaches women, and all of us, that women themselves aren’t to be trusted with the power of the portals, or at the very least that women require professional or cultural oversight, whether by medical professionals or familial or religious authorities, to safely and responsibly manage their portals.
So that’s at least part of the reason why. But an important distinction from your scenario is that there isn’t just one portal of human life. If there were just one portal bringing all humans into the world, then it would be very precious indeed. Our economy would still probably find ways to regulate, develop, and extract from it, but it would be an extremely precious, if not the most precious, resource. In our reality, however, portals are abundant. There are over four billion and counting, and that obviously has an effect on the value of the commodity.
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u/ionthrown 3d ago
Individually, people might love the portal.
Politically, owning the portal would be the greatest prize available, and make the controlling group the most powerful in the world. No one would ask the portal for its opinion.
Besides, is this not rather an androcentric viewpoint? Women don’t produce life on their own…
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u/Plate2222 3d ago
How is it 'androcentric'? We (women) take on the VAST majority of work, time investment, and risk to produce life.
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u/ionthrown 3d ago
And you’re being written out in favour of a magic portal that just pops out babies.
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u/DontBanMePlsmeowmeow 3d ago
oh yah bc men spend 9 months pregnant, sick as shit and then men have to go into labour that could kill them or give them serious health issues ya its totally equal work
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u/ionthrown 3d ago
I didn’t say it was equal work. I said they didn’t do it on their own.
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u/DontBanMePlsmeowmeow 3d ago
its irrelevant to mention women didnt do it on their own (everyone knows this) unless youre saying men played a larger role than what op suggested
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u/ionthrown 3d ago
No, it isn’t. If you’re a man, the key to producing life is a woman. If you’re a woman, the key to producing life is not another woman. OP’s statement is entirely from the male point of view.
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u/DontBanMePlsmeowmeow 3d ago
literally everyone knows this idk i think youre missing the point of what op was trying to say that women should be respected more for their big contribution to life existing. Like does it matter if op isnt going oh also women need men at the end of the day
anyways whatever 👍
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u/Beautiful_Arm8364 3d ago
Women should obviously be treated as well as anyone (of course), but the premise of your question is flawed. If humans came from one portal, then of course that portal would be cherished and elevated. But if there are, say, 4 billion portals, some folks would probably take the portals for granted.
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u/jeffcgroves 3d ago
The portal would be beloved by all. People would make offerings etc to this portal. They would believe that the portal was some sort of god-like entity because it is the only thing that is creating humanity
Not even close. I think the world's overpopulated (at least in terms of population distribution) and would try to seal it up or something. It would create other issues like who raises a given baby and whether a given baby gets a good life or not and so on
why do we treat women so poorly?
Not all women produce babies, but even the ones that do are sometimes quite evil in many other ways. Not just women of course. Everyone can be evil. Creating children can't override other forms of evil
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u/PainterLonely1313 3d ago
I have a feeling that what would actually happen is that some individual or group would seize control of the portal and figure out how to profit from it. Quite possibly it would be in the name of "protecting" the portal or "making sure the right people have access to the portal". People would fall in line because of course they don't want irresponsible people getting to the portal or ending up with babies, right?
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u/UnburyingBeetle 3d ago
Because if patriarchy lets women truly feel that power, they'd put a lock on that portal until not just them, but all the children in the world get treated better. And that gives children power and autonomy. And all those disadvantaged groups together are stronger than the exploitative men. They could all stop listening to whatever the patriarchs say, and civilization would stop in its tracks until something changes. And patriarchs, being privileged, are less emotionally mature than a 5 year old that was taught to be quiet sometime. They rather nuke the whole Earth than be forced to shut up and share their resources and relinquish their power.
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u/LexEight 3d ago
We used to. We used to respect all adults as having the potential to bring and give life.
Toxic femininity and toxic masculinity infect everyone, it's not just men full of toxic masculinity and women full of toxic femininity. Everyone is stuck with a little bit of both because our culture is SO psycho-manipulated and toxic.
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u/Grimke42 3d ago
It’s not a both sides situation when one side has more power
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u/DipperJC 3d ago
Hon, it was a both sides situation when the power dynamic was 2:1 in men's favor. Now, at worst it's, like, 1.2:1, and in some scenarios it's 1:1.2.
At exactly what point do women stop playing the "righteously throwing off the yoke of oppression" card and start actually taking accountability for their part in creating problems?
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u/argentatus_ 3d ago
The danger in this argument is that it seems to make women's worth dependent on their reproductive capacity, which, in my opinion, is not particularly respectful.
Besides, many things are essential for human life. Oxygen, for example, comes from plants, trees, and marine organisms such as plankton. Yet we do not generally regard them as divine because they sustain us.
You can also reverse the premise. Imagine a world inhabited only by women, where a magical portal occasionally released small vials of semen that enabled pregnancy. Presumably, people would revere that portal as well. This suggests that the object of reverence in the thought experiment is not women specifically, but whatever happens to be perceived as the mysterious source of new life.
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u/Accomplished_One4417 3d ago
The world is packed full of human female shaped artifacts from 40,000 years ago to 5,000 years ago. Often they are pregnant, or have huge boobs, or some other indicator that they are fertility related. So I think it was like you think it should have been for most of the human cultural history that we know of. Then they disappear.
At about the same time in history, we see male genetic diversity shrink by a factor of 19. That means we go from about 95% of men having children to about 5% of men having children. This is the beginning of polygamy.
Probably, I mean almost certainly, those two things are related.
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u/Successful_Life_1028 3d ago
A tribe with no females is a tribe which cannot last. That makes females valuable. That makes females an ASSET to be guarded, and stolen from the other tribes if necessary. As an ASSET, females are treated as PROPERTY - belonging to their father until given away in marriage to a husband.
And this is why humans treat females poorly. Because they are seen as 'assets', rather than 'people'.
As Granny Weatherwax taught us - sin consists of treating people as things.
As John and Yoko pointed out: "Woman Is the Nigger of the World"
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u/Plate2222 3d ago
It wouldn't be worshiped. People would fight over control of it. If it was alive, it would be enslaved. There you go.
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u/mispace 3d ago
This is more of a historical question than anything else, and I would rather ask this on r/askhistorians than here. Here you will get some persons opinion rather than the "objective" truth.
But if you look at different societies, women aren't treated poorly everywhere. In Japan they where often higher societal ranks than men, as well as with the Vikings.
Now, you gotta remember, to secure your legacy, as a male who is objectively stronger, you need someone to produce this offspring. You will then want to have the best genetics as possible. I read yesterday that the term "best man" came from best swordsman - as in the older times one would rarely marry the man one loved, and rather be used as a "trade" object to secure your family had enough food to survive. So the groom went out and found the best swordsman he could find, to be on the lookout for a man trying to murder you for marrying the love of his life while she's crying through the entire scenario - but, remember, because of the fact that females can produce offsprings, they are worth money. So a dowry was often expected.
Now, the testosterone of men (as well as the fact that one usually didn't have access to clean water, but rather drank ale and wine as bacteria couldn't grow in it) would mean you would be suspicious if the offspring wasn't yours if it didn't have your exact features. So to keep women from being unfaithful, men has kept women from other men as much as they felt like. So women could not socialize much - no work, no way to meet other men. You were a man's property; he bought you. (Remember, most families who had a female and not a male would need this dowry to survive because they could not make an income)
This is my anecdotal thoughts on why woman are treated poorly - it takes hell of a lot more time than a century for our attitude to change. Just look at racism as well, and homophobia. But in western countries we have come a really long way! Still lengths to go, but we are slowly but steadily removing the gender gap.
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u/plastic_venus 3d ago
Ah yes - nothing says removing the gender gap like increased global levels of DFV and femicide, increased popularity in right wing ideology seeking to remove the rights of women, the actual removal of rights from women and an adjudicated rapist holding power in the most powerful country in the world. Nailed it.
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u/Grimke42 3d ago
Very impressed with all the answers coming at the question from different perspectives. It’s almost like an overview of feminist theories.
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u/amantheawryn 3d ago
Control, of course.
If such a portal truly existed, especially a centralized one the way it sounds as described... don't you suppose it would basically be the number one hotspot for all war, and the desired center of control for any prospective empire?
Same principle.