• TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    Even before the advent of the nuclear family or even modern capitalism the idea of women’s autonomy was viciously purged from European society over the course of a couple hundred years. I

    In the early 1300s there were women becoming physicians, owning their own land, and beginning to to accumulate personal wealth. By the end of the 1300s they were being persecuted and hunted as witches, and France had functionally legalized the rape of proletariat women.

    Caliban and the Witch by Federici, is a really neat book exploring gender and family structures during the primitive accumulation of capital. It’s a little dated, but still a really interesting read.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      Yep, excellent expansion! I by no means meant to minimize the historical devastation of women’s rights, I was specifically meaning the context of the 19th and 20th centuries with that comment. Women’s history is far more complex than just that period.