A curious thought about feminism, women, and police states:

[underlankers]

One of my fundamental beliefs about human nature and the genders is that women, in the right circumstances, can be just as brutal and vicious in power as men can be.

Comments

[telemann]

The second is the curious to me exception in feminism where in talking about powerful women one sees a conspicuous absence of those figures of the Ancien Regime. It would seem to me in particular that Catherine the Great

You left out Maria Theresa of Austria.

[underlankers]

The most famous examples are of course Maria Theresa and the Russian Tsarinas Elizabeth and Catherine the Great.

to the point that they actually in the case of Maria Theresa provided one of the only instances where a particular dynasty won any wars at all and under Catherine the golden age of a society that rather lacked them.

the age of Theresa

______________

Um....I actually did not leave her out.

[telemann]

My apologies! Blurry eyed, skimming too quickly, and a lack of coffee does that :P

[underlankers]

No worries, lack of coffee does a lot of things. ;P

[blue_mangos]

So why is it that feminism at least as far as I've read about it, tends to neglect those women in general, given how few powerful women actually get any mention at all?

Because feminism isn't about celebrating any particular woman, it is about the celebration and advancement of all women. Feminist icons tend to be those who work towards that goal, not just those who work for their own advancement and glory.

[underlankers]

A fair point. Though couldn't it be argued that Theresa and the Russian Tsarinas did at some level advance women at least in high places by showing that women could do just as well running states of the time as men (and in Catherine's case actually expanding the barriers of states)? I mean there is one potential argument that states that produce a number of women rulers, like Russia or the UK, tend to do better as states than ones that don't.

[underlankers]

I think the criticism's more that these were less women breaking barriers and more the same opportunistic power-grabbing seen by men, just with breasts instead of balls. They weren't breaking barriers so much as showing how much continuity the Ancien Regime actually could and did have. Either way it's hard to argue with excluding them altogether when one can't exactly explain the survival of Austria without Maria Theresa or Russia's gaining the Black Sea without Catherine, but I digress.

[underlankers]

That's precisely my point-women in politics are just like men. There will be great female statesmen of a democratic sort, but there will also be dictators. Women haven't been dictators due primarily to lack of opportunity, not anything more or anything less.

Again, a fair point, though I'd note that feminism at least in England started with things like hypocritical treatment of the Queen's extracurricular activities relative to those of the King. It would seem a fair appraisal of women and their role in history should count the bad as well as the good, as if women are indeed the equal of men then it doesn't behoove people to count only the Jane Addams and Marie Curies and neglect the women of influence and power who were......not nice people. At all.

[a_new_machine]

That's precisely my point-women in politics are just like men. There will be great female statesmen of a democratic sort, but there will also be dictators. Women haven't been dictators due primarily to lack of opportunity, not anything more or anything less.

So, will feminism increase the prevalence of dictatorship? If not, then why care? Of course not all woman leaders will be strong, just and wise leaders of free democracies. And? When we're talking about great Africans, we don't talk about Bokassa, we talk about Mandela. I don't see why doing the same with women is problematic.

[underlankers]

From a pedantic viewpoint, yes, as with women getting greater rights and equality, it will give women the opportunities they never had beforehand. It's the shadow-side of equality that being equal with men does not mean equality under the law and moral superiority. People do not, as a rule, talk about Great Africans at any point here in the USA, most people don't even think of Africa as anything but a space-filling Empire.

The problem with avoiding the shadow-side of how things work in practice is that it creates illusions waiting to be dispelled and thus leading to far more problems than they solve.

[sophia_sadek]

Like men, women tend to be more brutal as they are less educated. What are your opinions on Eva Peron and Justinian's wife Theodora?

One of the things that you have not considered are the men who have acted brutally at the behest of women. I suppose this is only fair since such stories may have been told to diminish the guilt in an otherwise admirable governance.

[underlankers]

Eva was a piece of shit, Theodora was the brains behind Justinian. His reign started degenerating from the moment she croaked. I don't count women scheming behind the scenes because that's technically not what the OP's about: it's about the women who openly exercise power on the spectrum from Thatcher and and Merkel on the one end to Indira Gandhi on the other.

[underlankers]

I would dispute strongly the degree to which the variety of feminism you speak of is revolutionary in a meaningful sense. When it comes to matters of say, race, this group of feminists tends to rather strongly and sharply balk at inclusion of race-issues in practice as opposed to rhetoric in theory.

I would also note that the omission of the ones you refer to has reason because 1) the histories of those black African rulers falls more into European colonialism than US history after the ratification of the Constitution, and for a good-sized chunk of time before that, and 2) this is actually rather untrue. The black history class *I* took did note that there were black slaveowners at the start of the slavery area and at various times in the slavery era, and noted that they were anomalies generally seen as such at the time.

[underlankers]

OK, where to start: 1) That black history class was African-American history. The East Africa-Horn of Africa reason was completely and utterly irrelevant. It did not that slavery existed in Africa prior to colonialism and the role of Islam in that slave trade in the one chapter dedicated to Africa at the time of the start of African-American history. After that Africa proper was as irrelevant as European history is in histories of Euro-America after 1783.

2) Europe's not generally credited with that, no, in no small part because the Algerian colonization process was settler colonialism (i.e. reduce the natives to poverty in their own land because we're white Christians, fuck yeah!) and because in the general history of the region European colonialism tends to be neglected so Islam-bashing is much simpler that way.

3) Um, American slavery was ended second-to-last in the Americas. Mexico abolished it upon receiving independence from Spain, the insistence of the first Texans on bringing their slaves with them is what helped touch off