Women’s Rights are Human Rights pt. 1
Women are deprived of human rights. Legally and socially they are subsumed to or included in the category of man, while being explicitly not treated the same as men in society. ’Man’ is said to be a descriptor that includes women in law and other texts, but women are not afforded any of the practical rights and privileges that men receive. Women are not understood to have the same human rights as men, and only recently in some countries have women gained some practical rights that normally are only permitted to men, including the right to vote, the right to own money and to manage this money on their own in bank accounts, to inherit money from their parents, and to work.
Women still do not have the following rights in most countries: to be explicitly acknowledged in the founding document of the country to be human beings, to be paid fairly for their work, to be free of male violence in the home and other places, to have full control over the use of their bodies and reproductive function,
Because women historically have been slaves appended to men, it is hard to define women as a ‘class’, even though dividing women and men socially is the first class division that existed in history. The fundamental trick is that each woman individually is possessed by men individually, and also men as a whole. A woman belongs to her father/brother/male relatives first, and than belongs to the man she is married to. If she is seen as being without ‘protection’ of an individual male, then she is owned my males in general, to be used as they see fit.
The recent gains in some countries have obscured this stark truth. However, it persists in the world, despite that I and some other women have been able to gain some rights within law and social structures, which allow me to be economically independent and married in a lesbian relationship, and therefore live relatively free from the influence of men. My father and brothers are no longer my legal masters, I am able to form a legal economic unit with another woman, and in the particular country I live in, men are not allowed to overtly assume my ownership or use, although there is always the threat.
The limited number of women in my situation is the exception that proves the rule: the feminist project has barely begun, and gains we make are swiftly subverted to fit the status quo [see: the gender identity project, which seeks to reify gender roles as innate to human beings, which if codified in law would legalize women as second-class, inferior human beings, obviously not a desirable result for women.]
For the feminist project to advance, we need to recognise in a systematic way the different ways women are deprived of human rights, and then systematically assert our humanity, as individuals, and as a group.
[this is part of a longer essay in development. I enthusiastically welcome any feedback, especially on how to describe things more precisely and accurately, to include examples and ideas that I have missed, or anything else you see as lacking. Please either pm me or reblog with your feedback.]
