I would suggest that it is the development of violent, warlike, aggressive societies which lead to the subsequent debasement of women, and not the reverse. That is, the development of rigid patriarchy follows the wétiko disease, even as the slave system in the southern United States led to a decline in the status of English women relative to conditions in the non-slave colonies. I would suggest that a feminism which does not also seek to alter the exploitation of poorer women is not feminism at all, but is simply a variant form of upper-class politics and self-privileging.
