Mars & Venus: Chronicles of an "Horror".

And here we are. Like any self-respecting YouTuber, I could have said, "I didn't want to make this video." In my case, it would be, "I didn't want to write this post!" But I, on the contrary, did want to write this post. I know I’ll probably draw the furious ire of one side of the world or the other, but I don't care at all. If we don't talk about something just because we're afraid of offending someone or of the consequences in general, then we might as well stay silent. And I have no desire to stay silent, so here I am to talk about a topic that still ignites discussion, even though it should be a dead and buried conversation.

The difference between "little men" and "sissy girls" is something that goes far beyond today's rhetoric. It is a very complex, very thorny theme and not so simple to resolve. And the approaches both sides are taking are incredibly opposite: women scream, rant, and insult, claiming that men are useless monsters and treating them as such, while men run away and distance themselves. We are living through a profound division between women who hate the male gender and men who are isolating themselves among each other for self-defense.

What we are experiencing is something that no longer has anything to do with the struggle for rights, but is merely a frontal attack on dominance to flip the world upside down. I am not against questioning dominance when things aren't right, but one must also look at the merits. Screaming for no reason is just a waste of breath, and attacking just because "that's what people do" isn't exactly the smartest move. Furthermore, manifesting one's superiority without any proof of it is just a way to make oneself look ridiculous.

But how did we get to this point? Why are women on the warpath, with that disgust for men flowing through their veins? Aside from the trend of humiliating men to grab a few more clicks and to feel less inept, what is the underlying reason? Was it really necessary for the women to fight for their rights? Was it always a proble, since the beginning of time? Let's discuss it and see when and how the world shot itself in the foot.

When we talk about "social inequality," people always say "it's something written in human history, something incontrovertible and unchangeable." What if I told you that for a large part of history, feminism was never a theme, nor a problem to be solved?

Let's take a journey through history and look at how the story actually unfolded.

He hunts, she's at home: on the same level.

The first act of human history was the period when males and females were embarrassingly hairy, looked at monkeys, and thought they were looking in a mirror (even though mirrors didn't exist yet). When people think about female segregation, they think it was naturally created in that period and that it lasted throughout the millennia until the present day. The idea we have is that men provided, while women "stayed home" (even though the concept of home didn't exist yet), with the sole task of cooking and taking care of children. We are very far from reality.

Strange to say, thinking that we're talking about "primitive" people, but they behaved much more refinedly than expected. Certainly, "society" (though really we should speak of a group) was much flatter than people think. Gender roles were equally divided. There was no hierarchy; the group was one, and everyone participated equally.

In the procurement of resources, the bulk was gathered by women and their children. The gathering of plants, eggs, and insects provided up to 70-80% of the total calories of the group, ensuring a constant food base. Because of this contribution to the group's survival, the social status of women was very high. Big game hunting by men was prestigious and perhaps more spectacular, true, but less reliable on a daily basis—because it could happen that men came back empty-handed. With everything the women gathered, the group could survive. Not to mention that women took the men's place if they couldn't participate in the hunt. It is also hypothesized that crucial tools like carrying bags (fundamental for moving children and food) and the first weaving techniques were purely feminine innovations.

Motherhood and pregnancy were seen as almost divine moments because they allowed for a future in the years to come. Child-rearing, even if it was a female prerogative, was a task for the whole group. There are traces of groups of men and women who, together, educated the group's children.

In that historical period, men and women were equals and had well-defined roles. One part could not survive without the other. There are no traces of women saying, "What a man does, we can do too!" No, it was natural to have tasks divided based on one's abilities. In this context, life flowed peacefully.

With the goats: he works, she's at home, but still equals.

In the following centuries, we moved from caves to stilt houses. Not only that, we cultivated, we raised livestock, and we cleared forests. Here the rules changed.

Agriculture, livestock, and carpentry were activities that required physical strength—something women didn't have when compared to men. Genetics hit relentlessly. At that point, autonomously and wisely, roles changed: the man broke himself physically, obtaining pronounced abs from everything he did, while the woman was predominantly at home. But she wasn't relegated to nothing. If the man cultivated and raised livestock, those raw materials had to be processed. Women had the task of creating ceramic containers to store raw materials and processing wool and grain to create clothing and food for meals. The survival of the family was equally distributed between both sexes. As in the past, one could not survive without the other. Furthermore, women were responsible for the growth of humanity in a much more massive way, given that this sedentary lifestyle led a woman to have a child every two years instead of four.

In this period, there was the advent of private property, and the protection of lands, family, and livestock was a male task. Furthermore, men became warriors; clans were created with the aim of protecting what they had, giving the man an aura of importance. But it was a relative importance, because without a woman cooking, those warriors wouldn't be defending anything, as they would be completely out of strength. Moreover, without children, there was no growth and no future.

It certainly cannot be said that during the first phase of our history, women were relegated to nothing or were used and humiliated. On the contrary, they were the necessary half for the present and for the future. Up until now, equality was preserved: two halves of the same coin collaborating for the same purpose.

With the law: he dominates, she's submissive... or not?

And finally, we are at the ancient kingdoms. When we look at Rome, Athens, and Cairo, we think of kingdoms and empires where male dominance (the much-hated patriarchy) took over and threw that gender equality from the Paleolithic down the toilet. Well, it's not exactly like that.

Egypt

In ancient Egypt, Egyptian women could inherit, own property, manage businesses, and even divorce autonomously. Before the law, man and woman were substantially equal. Egypt had powerful female pharaohs (like Hatshepsut or Cleopatra). We have very clear evidence of all this, thanks to Egyptian art, which testifies to how equitable Egyptian civilization was. Even married life was on equal footing. Husband and wife were often depicted as the same size, hand in hand or embracing—a symbol of a domestic harmony considered sacred.

We all know that ancient Egypt was a kingdom quite ahead of its time. So it might not be representative. How did it go in other kingdoms?

Rome.

In ancient Rome, things got slightly more complicated. During the pre-imperial period, the head of the family had power of life and death over his wife and children. The ideal woman was the matron, dedicated to the home and to chastity toward others, but she had to be always ready for her man. In short, "Woman, fly to the kitchen and open your legs, because I feel like it!" Cum manu marriage meant that the woman legally became the "daughter" of her husband. He had the ius vitae necisque (right of life and death).

I want to say one thing, though: women accepted this idea without blinking. Sure, they were forced, but they didn't rebel.

With the Empire, things changed significantly. Roman women obtained much more freedom of action. It had nothing to do with some protest for social equality. Simply, men widened the walls of the cages. Sure, voting was out of the question (and would be for another couple of millennia), and being single and independent in Rome was impossible, but widows or women with three or more children could manage immense fortunes and heavily influenced politics through their family ties (think of figures like Livia or Agrippina). OK, the voting part sucks, I agree, but if I had to choose between a billion euros and the possibility of voting, I’d choose the billion. You can't eat a vote, but you eat with money... and with money, you command. A wealthy woman was a powerful woman... and if she was in a powerful family, even better. Figures like Livia (wife of Augustus) or Antonia Minor didn't need to vote: they owned mines, lands in Egypt, and entire cities. They pulled the strings of the Empire from their triclinium.

Mesopotamia

In Mesopotamia, the situation was quite controversial. There were women, often from noble families and of high rank, such as the priestesses (Naditu), who administered enormous assets and temples, proving that social prestige could overcome gender limits. Furthermore, laws protected women in case of unjustified repudiation. It all sounds nice, too bad the same laws also sanctioned their submission to their father or husband. Furthermore, no woman could climb the social pyramid on her own unless she joined with a man and inherited. On the one hand, you could have a potentially powerful and very rich woman, but always under the control of the oldest penis in the family. Here, too, the definition of a free and independent woman as we know it is not applicable. However, as in Rome, no woman ever raised the issue. In that period, people identified more with social rank than with gender. A noblewoman, a worker, or a slave identified more with a man of the same rank than with a woman of other ranks.

Ancient Greece

In ancient Greece, the role of women was almost funny because it was so grotesque.

In Sparta, you’d expect a male-centric, chauvinistic, and very patriarchal city. With this idea, you’d expect women to be relegated to the home, only to clean and have children. Instead, it was a very "feminist" city: there were damn powerful women with almost total freedom and deep veneration, because childbirth was considered as honorable as war. Since men were often at war or in the barracks, women took care of the family's assets and often the city itself, and when they were widows, they became damn influential. They were free to do gymnastics, participate in public life, and even criticize men. A small example: when a foreigner said to Gorgo, wife of King Leonidas, "You Spartan women are the only ones who command your men," she replied, "Yes, because we are the only ones who give birth to real men."

In Athens, where you’d expect freedom comparable to that of Sparta, the reality was the opposite. In the city of philosophy, women were 'slaves' of the system: although officially free citizens, they had no autonomy. They were used by families for arranged marriages, and once married, the law forced them into silence and domestic seclusion. The only ways to be truly free were to be a foreigner or to become a 'Hetaera.' These were cultivated companions who participated in philosophical and political discussions, often writing theses or speeches for the most powerful men. Although they could not marry by law, the smartest Hetaerae accumulated great fortunes in their youth. Once they were elderly, thanks to the possession of slaves and real estate, they became powerful figures capable of educating new generations.

From a political point of view, the idea was simple: if you can hold a weapon, you can vote. A woman couldn't do that, so no voting and no access to politics. Not to mention the fact that, especially in Greece, it was thought that the man was the one who had the life, while the woman was only the one who provided the body for gestation. Incredible how no one noticed that women had periods.

Blogger's Note.

Here is something I omitted that ties together all ancient kingdoms: female finance. If you are a woman, this part won't be pleasant to read. Everything was based on wealth. A landowner could only pass his inheritance to legitimate children, thus born from the union in the couple, in whatever form was defined at the time. Therefore, it was "fundamental" that the man had control of the woman to prevent her from becoming pregnant with illegitimate children. Which was a mere utopia, given that many women cheated anyway, even back then.

The second problem was entirely political. Marriages at the time were not "loving," but "political." Two young people married only to ensure that the two families had more power. Only after millennia was importance given to sentiment. But at the time, a daughter was an asset to be used.

And the women didn't blink. No one cared. Their battles were purely legal, to enforce the law. But none ever, ever raised the issue of gender equality. For a woman, this "submission" was accepted. For a woman of that era, the fact that the man commanded was considered as "natural" as the fact that the sun rises in the east. They didn't rebel against the idea of equality for the same reason we don't protest because we can't fly: it wasn't contemplated among the possibilities of reality. Furthermore, a noblewoman felt infinitely more "equal" to her noble husband than to a female slave. Her battle was not for "women," but for her family's power. If her clan became richer, she became more powerful.

Jesus, the Middle Ages, and Nothing... or not?

The Catholic Church reigned supreme throughout the Middle Ages. Many think this put women in a situation of horrible submission. It's not exactly like that. Obviously, religion reigned supreme with all the hypocrisy that follows. The idea of woman was seen with an almost bipolar dualism: on the one hand, she was blamed for original sin, while on the other, she was venerated like a divinity. The consequence was that the woman was indeed controlled by the man—more for a mere control of assets—but she had many freedoms. They weren't free, but certainly freer than in good old Athens.

Women worked. They were in command of controlling and managing the harvest and livestock at home. She was responsible for transforming raw materials to feed the family. Without her work, there was no way the man and children would survive. While men created societies and died in heaps on the battlefield, women produced. In the Late Middle Ages, exclusively female guilds appeared for things like silk weaving. Speaking of death, in the Middle Ages, there was a law that allowed widows to manage the assets and all the activities of their deceased husband and had full freedom to decide whether to remarry or not.

Women, especially daughters, were still considered assets to be managed, but they could decide whether to marry or not, if two families had agreed on a marriage which, as in the ancient kingdoms, was still a mere contract. Rebellion almost never happened, but the girl could say "no."

If a woman married someone rich, or was a widow, the nobility gave great opportunities. Noblewomen were the ones who managed castles, collected taxes, and organized defenses when the man was at war or dead. In practice, they were the rulers in all respects, given that the men were often at the front killing each other as if it were a sport. And they could also have influence in politics. An example was Matilda of Canossa.

There was also the option of being single. Yes, a woman could also decide to remain single, but there was a price to pay. That is, to become a nun. It sounds bad, but it wasn't that horrible. In a monastery, women had a deep education, they made money, and abbesses were advisors to kings, emperors, and the Pope's men. Not to mention that, often, romantic flings occurred.

If you think about it, in such a dark period as it's often represented, a woman was an important part of a family and, with power, she became so powerful that she even commanded entire kingdoms.

The Renaissance and the Death of (the little) freedom.

The Renaissance brought with it the rediscovery of the Classical Age. While the arts, politics, and architecture saw a flowering, for women it was a dark age. The return of Roman and Greek law pushed women to be locked in the house. Not only that, the icing on the cake: the woman was no longer even an equal being, as she had been for centuries in the Middle Ages, but became just a mere object, like a vase or a painting. A woman had to be cultured, refined, and elegant, but she was only a complement to the man.

Female guilds were closed; women gradually lost the right to work that they had during the Middle Ages and were once again under the control of the man—something that wasn't true in the Middle Ages, since a woman was the boss of everything when the man was alive, at war, or dead. The only "free" women were the rich ones, like the Scholars, or the Courtesans, who offered their beauty to men, entertaining them with refined philosophical discourses, like the Hetaerae in Greece.

And then we have the witch hunts. A moment of highly refined collective delirium. A woman who was a free mind was a danger and was burned at the stake. Either you were a servant in the man's service or you were a walking dead person. A woman with a brain was a problem, given that "female deviance was a demonic danger." Because a woman who knew herbs (medicine), who lived alone (independence), or who expressed strong opinions (free mind) was a threat to the new rigid order that was being built.

Here I can agree with women when they say that "history has punished us." The Renaissance was a moment of "death" for women. Good thing it didn't last that long.

The Light of modernity.

The eighteenth century, the "Century of Enlightenment," is the moment when the contradiction between the legal submission of women and their intellectual power definitively explodes. While laws remained anchored in the past, women became the true directors of European culture, preparing the ground for the first claims of civil rights.

If in the Renaissance the woman was an "ornament" of the court, in the eighteenth century she became the mistress of the house of the famous Parisian and intellectual Salons. Women like Madame de Pompadour or Madame Geoffrin were not just guests of these salons; they decided whom to invite, which themes to discuss (from politics to the new science), and even financed the publication of the symbol of the era: the Encyclopédie. They were basically the PRs, the bouncers, and the planners.

But what were these salons? In these private spaces, nobles, philosophers, and bourgeois discussed on equal terms, men and women. For the first time, female intelligence was not an exception to be admired, but the engine of social progress.

But that ornamental and decorative vision was hard to throw down. However, the first cracks were seen. On the one hand, many philosophers stated that a woman should be educated and instructed only for male pleasure—reasoning and thought typical of the Renaissance. However, the light was slowly appearing. There were other philosophers at the time who, rightly, considered the exclusion of women from politics as a mere act of tyranny contrary to reason. A woman has a brain and a soul, so she must have the same rights. It was the first time in centuries that a man had spoken out in favor of women.

And we have the French Revolution. In 1789, women were on the front lines. It was the women of the Parisian markets who marched to the palace to demand bread and bring the King back to Paris. All-female political clubs were born where reforms, education, and the right to vote were discussed. If you think about it, in the painting "Liberty Leading the People," there is a woman holding the French flag.

Despite their contribution, the newborn Republic did not grant them civil rights. On the contrary, in 1793, women's clubs were declared illegal and many activists ended up on the guillotine.

In this climate of ferment, the two founding texts of modern feminism were born: the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, written by Olympe de Gouges, provocatively stating that "If a woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she must also have the right to mount the speaker's rostrum." She paid for her ideas with her life. In 1792, in England, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, arguing that female inferiority was not natural but due exclusively to the lack of education. I would say it was due only to the man who saw the woman as an asset and not as a social resource.

And then there was the apparent final blow. With the Napoleonic Code, the woman returned to being "the property of her husband," deprived of all legal capacity. A woman could not travel, sell goods, or work without the written permission of her spouse. That turmoil of the revolution was swept away with a stroke of the pen. But it was only an apparent stop.

The end of the war... right?

From the nineteenth century onwards, the doubt was planted and the walls crumbled one after the other.

The first great contradiction was the Napoleonic Code and the Industrial Revolution. On the one hand, women could not work without written consent, but expanding industries were crying out for women. The first proletarian women were born, capable of working exactly like men. Sure, exploited twice as much and paid half, but a woman had the right to work.

The second great contradiction was the relationship between politics and work. A woman could work like a man, she risked her life like a man in factories, but she could say nothing about politics. From here the first women's movements, the "Suffragettes," were born to obtain that much-desired and deserved right to vote. The men pretended not to hear, but they were forced to hear very well shortly after.

Between 1914 and 1918, the First World War saw millions of men at the front. Question: who was "at home" tending the wounded, producing weapons, and maintaining the industrial structure? Women. When the war ended and the men returned from the front, they found women who had driven trams, managed banks, and directed factories. Denying the vote to those who had kept the nation on its feet had become politically impossible and morally indefensible. It was impossible to continue to deny the vote to those who literally saved the European economy. In the early 1920s, in Germany and England, women finally had the right to vote.

The 60s and the dilemma of the Body.

But nothing was resolved yet. Over the following decades, laws did not change. Sure, women had the right to work, to vote, and a return to that freedom that hadn't been seen for centuries. However, that veiled control of the man over the woman was still there. Especially regarding one's own body. Women waited silently for a few decades.

In the 60s and 70s, the second feminist revolution hit, again. The vote was no longer the problem. It was one's own body. Until that moment, abortion was a crime, contraceptives an insult, and marriage a prison without bars. All because of male laws put there for centuries to protect their assets. By now, Babylon had fallen and times had changed. They fought! They fought hard, but they won. In the 70s, what was missing was finally obtained: the right to divorce, to abortion, the abolition of the honor killing, the rehabilitative marriage, and the attainment of that family right that declared women equal.

The Modern Crystal Prison.

Beautiful, we're all happy, but only up to a point. Legal barriers have disappeared. Now it's about social barriers—those unwritten ones that are very hard to kill. Barriers like the role of woman and man in the family, the Gender Gap, and so on.

Now it's just a matter of knocking down the last walls. All it takes is a minimum of calm, a table, and a good compromise. I hope to be still alive to see that historical moment.

Last Words.

This passage serves as a sharp, modern postscript to your historical journey. Here is the translation, maintaining your direct and provocative tone:

When I started this post, I thought debunking certain clichés would be simple. The reality is that today we are witnessing a narrative I would define, with a touch of irony, as "hyperbolic." If we analyze history without the filter of modern victimhood, a different picture emerges: with the exception of the regressive parenthesis of the Renaissance, men and women have almost always walked in step, adapting to the limits and necessities of their eras.

Were there injustices to be healed? Undoubtedly. Were there dark periods? Certainly. But the course was corrected with a collective effort that is unprecedented.

The idea of a "universal female solidarity" against a tyrannical patriarchy is a recent projection, almost a narrative invention. For millennia, women fought for the power of their own clan, their own family, or their own rank—not "against men." The systematic contempt we see today toward the male gender is not a historical legacy, but an anomaly of the present.

Humiliating the other is not a strategy for progress; it is merely an exercise of power for its own sake. The rhetoric of the "always oppressed woman" falls apart the moment we realize that, for centuries, that concept of oppression simply did not exist in the minds of those living it: it was cooperation for survival.

Today, paradoxically, people scream the loudest precisely when the walls have already fallen. I would be happy to return to discussing a feminism that analyzes data and history with intellectual honesty; the current one, based on frontal attack and prejudice, unfortunately resembles a sterile waste of time.

M.