The Biggest Conspiracy Created by Mankind.

What is mankind? When someone says mankind, most people's thoughts would be directed to the whole of the human race. Why is the word “mankind” used to describe the entire human race? Why not the word “womankind”? After all, there's approximately an equal amount of people of both genders living in the world. The reason that the word “womankind” is not used to classify “humankind” is because “humans” live in a patriarchal society. The definition of patriarchy is very broad but basically it means that men control everything in a very disproportionate balance of power (“Patriarchy”). Patriarchy is all around us, everyday, in all regions of the world. It controls the choices that people make through language, religion, and basic social structure. Our language was created by men, to benefit and further promote their dominance over women. Modern women perform unnecessary, dangerous, and excruciating medical procedures on their sexual parts for the pleasure of their future husbands. Women, alive now, are burned, tortured, and murdered for disgracing their husbands, in the name of religion. The signs that we live in a male dominated patriarchy are everywhere, and endless, one just has to be made aware of them to notice them. Women live as individuals, all we have to do to break the pattern of living in a male dominated world, is stop. Stop the pattern of sexism. Notice when you're about to use male oriented language, and don't do it. Think twice the next time you ask your “girl” friends to hang out. Don't call them “guys”, even though it's now common to refer to“girls” as guys, but never to men as “boys”. Notice the usage of the word “boys” there, does it seem misplaced? In context, it should not, but because our brains (even fe-males) are hard wired through a life time of subconscious male rule, calling men “boys” seems strange, but calling women “girls” seems normal.



That is a perfect example of the male as norm philosophy. Ever notice that when we don't know the sex of an animal, without even thinking about it, our brains categorize that animal as male? A way to break the pattern of female subjugation, in your own brain, is to recognize that you want to call the animal male, but to instead label it female. (Spender) Fight the force that has been put inside of you. When you consciously fix something, your subconscious will follow. Doing an exercise like that will help to train your brain to think of both sexes equally, breaking the reign of patriarchy in women's brains.

“Language is our means of classifying and ordering the world: our means of manipulating reality.” (Spender) The language that we speak has male euphemisms in too many words for it to be a coincidence. Think of words like HIStory, huMANkind, feMALE, woMEN, and sHE. All of those words have male associated words within them. Even the word for woman, a gender so different from that of man, but for some reason including “man” in the name of the gender. The awesome fictional book, Egalias's Daughters, talks about what it would be like to live in a Matriarchal society as opposed to a Patriarchal society. In the book, gender roles are reversed, and genders are given different names. Men take on the female gender suffix by being called “menwim”, while women are simply called “wom” or “wim” for plural. In that book, menwim are the ones encouraged to stay at home to raise their children, and curl their beards. Wim are the ones that are in charge of politics and business in society. In a Matriarchal society, menwim are the ones that “produce” children, therfor it is their responsibility to take care of them. The wom does give birth, but she has to grant the father “fatherhood protection”, and can just give her baby over to him to care for it if she does not want it. The father is responsible for the child through legislation, partly because the judicial system is run by wim. The book is called a satire of the sexes, but really it's an example of the reversal of patriarchy, which is called matriarchy.

Women all over the world modify their bodies, and sexuality, not for heightening their own sexual awareness, but for heightening man's sexual pleasures. In the US, women undergo physically morphing breast enhancement surgery in hopes of conforming to a society where men view women with large breasts as more desirable. Some women have even gone as far as to surgically reconstruct their vagina's to make them look more appeasing to men. This surgery, although degrading is not as bad as the forced female genital mutilation (FGM) that happens in parts of Africa and India. In those countries, girls as young as seven years old, are forced by their own mothers to undergo life threatening despicable, and painful procedures to remove parts of the vagina. They do this for multiple reasons, the procedure is done according to the cultural beliefs of the area. Mostly, it is done to encourage, and ensure virginity before marriage because any sexual act done to a woman who has undergone FGM is excruciating. The entire hellish procedure is therefor done, not to promote women's health, but to denote their sexuality, to the preference of men (Monagan). This is a further form of living in a patriarchal society. Imagine if little boys were getting parts of their sex organs cut off to make sex more pleasurable for women? Imagine how barbarically that would be viewed? There you will find insight into the problems associated with patriarchy.


Religion is another tool invented by men to control women. The Quaran states that “...men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other” (Papas)
Similar sexist quotes can be found all throughout the Bible. Since Christianity and Islam are the two leading religions of the world, that statement holds a lot of weight. The very religion that women believe in subjugates them as inferior to their gender counterparts. When an Islamic woman has been raped, it is considered to be an insult to her husband, and the woman is either burned alive, or stoned (with stones!!) to death. This is called an honor killing. In the Islamic religion, men can have as many sex partners as they want, but a woman is to be tortured, or murdered even if they are sexually violated (Papas). Christianity may have more subtle sexism, but it is still a patriarchal religion where a man is worshiped as God, and a woman must submit to her husband.

Throughout this essay, the answer has been given to the biggest conspiracy created by mankind. Through a societal, linguistic, religious, and cultural standpoint, women are treated as inferior to men. That is the biggest conspiracy ever created by mankind: the illusion of equality. Even after the Woman's Rights Movement, even after the supposed “liberation”, women and our language, are ruled over by men. There is no reason at all to classify a person based on their genitalia. Therefor, why do both sexes continue to do this? Why do women call each other “guys”? Why do men rule the political and business systems? This continues to happen because we arrange the language, and events of this world according to the rules laid out for us by men, which further promotes male supremacy. We do this, without realizing what we are doing. The only way to eliminate the male-geared-way of thinking, and speaking, is to be aware that it exists.

Watch this as a reminder to how our children are being indoctrinated into this patriarchy.

I dont think theres one person who thinks of 'mankind' and doesnt think of both women and men.

Originally posted by WakeUpRiseUp
I dont think theres one person who thinks of 'mankind' and doesnt think of both women and men.

That isn't the point. The point is that we say the word mankind and are subconsciously putting males as higher than females by doing do. It is all about our language. People don't even realize how much our language shapes our thoughts. Language is not a neutral force; the way that a society speaks is indicative of how a society is. The fact that we say mankind or automatically revert to "he" when we don't know gender is indicative that we as a society promote males first and females second. The OP is completely right in their analysis (although, I don't think the word HIStory is actually right... it comes from the Latin "historia" but in Latin they do not use "his" to mean male possession. but the rest of the analysis was pretty spot on.) I would challenge you to think of all the ways that women defer to men and men assert their authority over women. God the Father? Male as head of household? Man as breadwinner? Men as presidents and CEOs? Men in pants and women in skirts? Studs as sexy and sluts as horrifying? I could go on for days.

OK but I disagree, the biggest conspiracy ever made by man is, "it costs to live".
I think we were fine walking about and doing as we please.
Heck, there are still folks that do this.

Originally posted by spacekc929

Originally posted by WakeUpRiseUp
I dont think theres one person who thinks of 'mankind' and doesnt think of both women and men.

That isn't the point. The point is that we say the word mankind and are subconsciously putting males as higher than females by doing do. It is all about our language. People don't even realize how much our language shapes our thoughts. Language is not a neutral force; the way that a society speaks is indicative of how a society is. The fact that we say mankind or automatically revert to "he" when we don't know gender is indicative that we as a society promote males first and females second. The OP is completely right in their analysis (although, I don't think the word HIStory is actually right... it comes from the Latin "historia" but in Latin they do not use "his" to mean male possession. but the rest of the analysis was pretty spot on.) I would challenge you to think of all the ways that women defer to men and men assert their authority over women. God the Father? Male as head of household? Man as breadwinner? Men as presidents and CEOs? Men in pants and women in skirts? Studs as sexy and sluts as horrifying? I could go on for days.

Exactly, THANK YOU!

reply to post by chanel


...wallets compared to purses. Why are there different names and genders associated with objects?

Originally posted by g146541
OK but I disagree, the biggest conspiracy ever made by man is, "it costs to live".
I think we were fine walking about and doing as we please.
Heck, there are still folks that do this.

I would love to be a freegen.

In my language (Southern England) most everything takes the "feminine" form, and we have a jovial expression that "everything in Sussex is female, except a tom cat and she's a he" so while I can follow the logic of what you are saying and agree, I would also dispute it is fully encompassing.

The Old English wifman meant "female human" (werman meant "male human". Man or mann had a gender neutral meaning of "human", corresponding to Modern English "one" or "someone". However in around 1000AD "man" started to be used more to refer to "male human", and in the late 1200s began to inevitably displace and eradicate the original word "werman").[1] The medial labial consonants coalesced to create the modern form "woman"; the initial element, which meant "female," underwent semantic narrowing to the sense of a married woman ("wife").

Link

Interesting

Don't flame me please.

I am just going to ask a very simple question to promote discussion.

Why is it that we are dealing with patriarchy as a problem? Since women do deliver the children, why is it that I don't find myself 'under the thumb' of a matriarchal society?

Women are weaker and dumber than men, without us the world might be awash with cushions but you'd all die pretty quickly.

You have your role, it's to have children and keep the home. I'm not saying that you should adhere to that role, after all we have moved on from that. But your body and basic skills have not, you are born with them and can't change it by protesting.

There's not a job in the world that men do well that women are also good at without us making it easier for you. Sure you get the odd butch woman who is stronger than some men, but I'm talking generally.

It's also a shame that as more women work full time that there are less jobs for men and their children suffer as a mother should be there for them, we're not really designed for that.

reply to post by ReeceIkyle
I guess I don't need to worry about getting flamed, since you have posted.

The very idea that men are in control, shows that the world emerged purely out of brute force or trial and error if you like. This is in great contrast to people who try to sell the greatly flawed theory of religion. It is the survival of the fittest. But in my honest appraisal, the world must be in this state to maintain balance. Many years ago, I considered myslf a man, a feminist. I believed that women should be given equal rights as men. But how wrong I was. Feminism leads to a decline in society in every aspect. Women when given rights as men would want to even boss the men, they stop bearing children. Think of it, in America and many european countries, men can no longer cope with marrying their women. They instead go to Thailand, Hong Kong and Russia to look for future partners. The natural order, I think, is for the female sex to be submissive, talk of two captains being in a ship. But then I would never support a woman being buried up to her head and stoned for adultery.

What is mankind? When someone says mankind, most people's thoughts would be directed to the whole of the human race. Why is the word “mankind” used to describe the entire human race? Why not the word “womankind”?

Because mankind rolls off the tongue better than womenkind, which is a mouthful. Though Humanity is also a accepted term, if you want to be gender neutral. Personally I shake it up and switch between the two. Now I'll be honesty I haven't read through the whole post yet, but something about male oriented language? Thats just how language happen. No real conspiracy just history and culture. In the past women were consider inferior, just they way it was. Now we can either reconstruct the way we communicate so its not so male oriented to be more "PC" or we can just let it slide and focus on changing real social issues.

EDIT: Personally I'm against changing up language through a force rather than the natural course. Double speak is dangerous ground to trend. No matter the cause.

Originally posted by pro-all
The very idea that men are in control, shows that the world emerged purely out of brute force or trial and error if you like. This is in great contrast to people who try to sell the greatly flawed theory of religion. It is the survival of the fittest. But in my honest appraisal, the world must be in this state to maintain balance. Many years ago, I considered myslf a man, a feminist. I believed that women should be given equal rights as men. But how wrong I was. Feminism leads to a decline in society in every aspect. Women when given rights as men would want to even boss the men, they stop bearing children. Think of it, in America and many european countries, men can no longer cope with marrying their women. They instead go to Thailand, Hong Kong and Russia to look for future partners. The natural order, I think, is for the female sex to be submissive, talk of two captains being in a ship. But then I would never support a woman being buried up to her head and stoned for adultery.

edit on 20-11-2011 by pro-all because: (no reason given)

Oh, I suppose it's okay that you are advocating women to be lesser than men because you want to protect them from being stoned. Listen, it isn't the "natural order" for women to be submissive. Yes women are more fragile than men in some aspects, but without them in states of power, even over men, our world falls into violence and chaos. Masculinity and femininity balance each other out, and as such, it makes perfect sense in a household and in government for their to be "two captains" as you so put it. Look at the history of our Earth, the history before 1920, and tell me things were all hunkydory and that life was great without women in positions of power and that our society was at its peak. For example, during the crusades. It's pretty great the Muslims and the Christians didn't allow the peaceful, nurturing half of the human soul into positions of power..... or maybe during Ancient Greek wars. Or Ancient Rome. Or colonialism. Or any of the events of our ridiculously violent history.

You are wrong if you think that you can do it all alone without the help of females. Women and men aren't meant to be equal in terms of "the same" but they are meant to be equal in terms of their influence on situations, because when you look at a situation from only a masculine or only a feminine point of view, you miss things and cause chaos such as, oh I don't know, our entire world history....

Originally posted by Mcupobob

What is mankind? When someone says mankind, most people's thoughts would be directed to the whole of the human race. Why is the word “mankind” used to describe the entire human race? Why not the word “womankind”?

Because mankind rolls off the tongue better than womenkind, which is a mouthful. Though Humanity is also a accepted term, if you want to be gender neutral. Personally I shake it up and switch between the two. Now I'll be honesty I haven't read through the whole post yet, but something about male oriented language? Thats just how language happen. No real conspiracy just history and culture. In the past women were consider inferior, just they way it was. Now we can either reconstruct the way we communicate so its not so male oriented to be more "PC" or we can just let it slide and focus on changing real social issues.

EDIT: Personally I'm against changing up language through a force rather than the natural course. Double speak is dangerous ground to trend. No matter the cause.

edit on 11/20/2011 by Mcupobob because: (no reason given)

I wouldn't necessarily advocate for changing our language all at once or anything, but I think it is equally dangerous to keep in place rituals with no meaning. It is "just how language happens", an astute observation, but you are remarkably blase if you think that it is okay that our language is coming from a male domainted culture and that we should just keep it that way. It's not about becoming more "PC", its about recognizing that language is not neutral and that it shapes our values. This is actually one of the biggest social issues, because if we don't change the way we speak, we will never change the way we think. Cultures are different because of their languages - people in Japan have completely different ways of expressing things and it changes how they think because we are taught to think in language. I am not saying we need to get out on the streets and protest language, but we need to be made aware and to make others aware that the things we say, such as mankind, have a tremendous effect on the social structure of our entire culture, and are as such, very very big social issues... then we need to make changes in ourselves, we need to actually say "humankind" instead of just reverting to mankind because we are lazy.

Originally posted by spacekc929
Cultures are different because of their languages

Cultures are different for a variety of reason not solely because of language. In fact one could argue language is just a by-product of culture.

"humankind" instead of just reverting to mankind because we are lazy.

Humanity, mankind, humankind. Words or meaningless in less you put meaning to them. As of right now the meaning of mankind is

man·kind/ˌmanˈkīnd/Noun:
Human beings considered collectively; the human race

Word are not a form of control but a form of expression and commutation. They only become a form of control when you force people to say different words or forbid certain words. Which is what you are trying to promote. Like I said, I'm never for double-speak no matter the motivation behind it.

Originally posted by butcherguy
reply to post by ReeceIkyle

 

I guess I don't need to worry about getting flamed, since you have posted.

I was thinking it too, but did'nt dare say it

So I'm confused at what the conspiracy is? That men have men the dominate gender throughout the history of humanity? That's just the way our society functions the men were the ones who would be more likely to go out and do physical labor and provide for the family, so they became pretty dominate in the process. I'm not saying that sexism is good or anything like that, I'm just saying it's no conspiracy.