Honestly Rus, it seems to me that you have fallen for the myth "the past is always better" which outside some clearly defined instances, is as silly as Lewis myth of evolution, or any Hegalian view of history. I'd say it was reverse Hegalianism if someone hadn't already used that to describe Marxism.
THat is the difference between TRadition, and tradition. Tradition is stable, and basically immune to getting better or getting worse. Small t tradition however is vulnerable in both directions, and in many cases is simply neutral in and of itself. There are many ways particular vestments could have developed, for example, and they would have all been morally equivalent. Church traditions can be valuable simply as a link with the past, but they are not protected from corruption in the same way Tradition is.
And family names are not even a tradition of the Church, they differ widely through the Christian world, and the so-called traditional Western practice is as recent as a few generations old even now.
As for the view of women. First, there is no contradiction in what I am saying about women being denied person-hood and being put on a pedestal. There may well be in the cultures that held those two things together, though I would say there is in fact a connection. But societies often hold contradictory views, so that should be no surprise. Sometimes it is different elements of the society, and other times the same people actually hold contradictory views.
As for the history itself, I am speaking pretty recently. Depending where in the West one lives, it is only in the 19th or 20th century that women were allowed to hold property, vote, were considered persons under the law, and so on. It is only in the 20th century that women were allowed to attend university in the West, and enter the professions. And this is the history of the West coming out of the medieval period with few exceptions.
Heck, up into the 1950s many women were given trouble by institutions like banks if they tried to deal with them without their husbands.
This is the same period where the use of male family names became the norm in some parts of the West - especially North America.
No one here in this thread is being dodgy with history and women, and I am a bit flummoxed that you think so. Did you not realize that 100 years ago I wouldn't have had your privileged of attempting to go to university for an MA, or voting? THat I might not have been allowed to go back to my job after marriage, or been paid the same for the same work? That I may have had to have a male relative represent me if I wanted to take legal action?
When I first came to Russia in 1991, I found myself in the middle of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those of you who have not seen a collapse of a civilization (and this was the most civil collapse I can possibly imagine - the enormous patience of the people prevented the anarchy from becoming what it likely would have become had it happened in the West) can hardly imagine what it means when all production and distribution stops, the government is in chaos, and people are thrown completely on their own resources. I have since chosen to live here. To save on all the stories, the upshot is that I have found that I can live in more primitive conditions, where I am a foreigner that has to report, in detail, to the local immigration office every year because I am denied complete personhood here (since I refuse to sign away my American citizenship) - and yet, I find that I can live, and even find happiness, though I am on a chain to a certain extent, I cannot vote, I cannot get a permanent driver's license or a loan (my residence permit expires every 5 years (less in actual practice) and so all "rights" extended expire with that residency permit).
In short, I AM the woman in 19th century England, and I tell you that the things you place importance on are not really important. But we have been told they are so often by our education system and the media (which is run by...products of the education system) that we can hardly imagine any other truth than the Matrix-like picture that has been woven for us.
That I say the past is not always worse does not mean that it was always better, though I am strongly tempted to say "usually". History wobbles.
The myth of Star Trek, or evolutionism, is alive and well, and nowhere is it more so than in our view of history, which really does paint the past as dark and ignorant, and the bright spots in that painted history are precisely the ones that rebel against God and authority - one could judge by the names given to periods, such as "the Renaissance", "the Enlightenment" and "the Age of Reason" - open praise for periods and moods that moved away from faith. Even "the Reformation" was accepted by unbelievers, I suppose precisely because that's not what it was, although in the very beginning Luther did hope to reform. So the very names in our history are lies. What then are we to think of the conclusions, the interpretations we have been given?
Now when you speak of "Lewis's silly myth of evolution", you show that you barely bother to read my words, and don't even read Lewis to see whether it is silly or not. Rather than take you to task, I'll ask you to go back and read exactly what I and Lewis wrote. A Christian of your caliber might call me silly, but should certainly take a few long deep breaths before suggesting this of CS Lewis. I think Lewis was wrong on a critical issue, but he certainly was not silly, nor were his ideas.
I have already said that names are not part of big 't' Tradition, and make no such claim. Wishing, again, that I were read more carefully by the people who would find holes in my arguments.
There IS a contradiction between being denied "personhood" - being treated as chattel, slaves, etc) and being put on a pedestal. The former denies human dignity; the latter affirms it.
When you say "persons under law", the problem is revealed, I think. Law only becomes necessary when there is conflict in society. Where there is no conflict, no law is made. The modern idea of absolute equality before the law presupposes law.
It is the drawing of the conclusion that the times before oppressive laws were dark, and the casting of modern ideas that men and women should be interchangeable onto cultures where such ideas were literally silly, impracticable and pointless that is, in fact feminist.
You are not quite correct that last names became common in that period - the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the most infamous laws denying women property and so on were enacted. Names, as a tradition, came much earlier, even in English society.
Surname:
early 14c., "name, title, or epithet added to a person's name," from sur "above" (see
sur-) +
name; modeled on Anglo-Fr. surnoun "surname" (early 14c.), variant of O.Fr. surnom, from sur "over" + nom "name." An O.E. word for this was freonama, lit. "free name." Meaning "family name" is first found late 14c. Hereditary surnames existed among Norman nobility in England in early 12c., among common people began to be used 13c., increasingly frequent until near universal by end of 14c. The process was later in the north of England than the south. The verb is attested from 1540s.
So we have a tradition of at least 700 years we are looking at here, by conservative estimates. They were already historic tradition when William of Stratford-on-Avon, was born.
And again, if women really WERE universally denied personhood, the stories, myths and legends I referred to would not exist today. This is a point which cannot be ignored by anyone who would claim that women were treated as chattel throughout history. But you didn't reply on that when I wrote on it, again.
On your last question, I think about the premises behind it, which assume a number of things that, it seems, are not questioned. Does voting confer real power? If it does not, then voting is worthless as a right. I might as well crow about having achieved suffrage in the right to make paper airplanes. But you assume that it does, without question. As a matter of fact, I think we are ALLOWED to influence certain events - those that do not involve big money and power - but the only kind of power that matters is power that lets us rule the wealthy and influential -literally rule, as in keep in line and restrain their appetites. So I dismiss women's suffrage as an achievement of any value. We have a mechanism of democracy without the substance of democracy - a faux-democracy that is a cover for a plutocratic oligarchy, and that keeps the common people passive by convincing them that they do have power.
As to the other things, yes I do realize them. But I may think (depending on which complaint you have) that you may have a just complaint against an unjust local law or merely an unjust employer, or that what you place great importance on may not be nearly as important as you think. I think human rights to be a good thing, that has been drummed into us in our time until we cannot see anything else. I get that if you, as you are now, were transported into 19th century England you would be quite unhappy. But if you were born there maybe not. (Note I said "maybe" - the influence of the Endarkenment had already spread throughout society telling people that man is the apex, not of a Godly Creation, but of a godless evolution, and so himself ought to become a god, and this affected thinking in both sexes.)
Again, I AM in practice the oppressed woman you read about in theory. And I find that loving my wife and family, and striving for salvation, is more important than "my rights" - and that fighting for 'my rights', would, in fact, conflict with those two much more important things.
