this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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Just a small correction: most people look at relationships in terms of some very rigid ideals that were set a couple centuries ago at most.
I thought about that for a bit as I typed that out, and even though the social details of modern relationship standards were for the most part similar in male/female dynamic a couple centuries ago, the roots of how and why we preserve a lot of the gendered dichotomy originated in the much further past, and I tend to side with the theory that our feminine/masculine binary started somewhere around agriculture when there were actual tasks that needed to be divided, and the systems that resulted from those survival needs.
Since we don't need people managing the crops and defending the babies from cave bears while other groups go out to hunt or do war, a lot of the ideas we have about who "should" do what in relationships isn't a survival imperative anymore, but we still cling to a lot of the values that developed during those millenia.
That does make intuitive sense, but archeology shows otherwise. There was a much bigger diversity of gender roles and relationship structures/child rearing systems, including in agricultural societies.
The modern almost universal ideal of romantic monogamous nuclear relationships was born from romantic (as in the movement) puritan petit bourgeois ideals in the 19th century.
Working class women during the medieval age for example, worked and lived outside the home, had affairs etc. This changed around the 18th century with the hegemony of the bourgeoisie and working class mirroring of their ideals.
Basically while it’s true that patriarchal strictly dichotomous societies existed for as long as we can tell, And that they have prevailed and “won out”. But doesn’t mean they are the norm for humanity. Their universality is extremely recent.