Weren’t women bought and sold as property? I mean read the old testament
iamretrograde-deactivated201610:
Yes, some slaves happened to be female.
My computer isn’t letting me click on links other than the most common sites (Google, Tumblr, YouTube, etc) again so I can’t really get any other links (but I will later) but here’s something I was able to access
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_buying
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_selling
Even in England and the US
“a way of ending an unsatisfactory marriage by mutual agreement that probably began in the late 17th century
…
until the early 20th century”. “the custom had no basis in law and frequently resulted in prosecution”. “there was “no trace at all in our [English] law of any such right”
neither at common law nor under the marriage laws then in force in South Carolina would the sale of a wife have been valid".[5][a] The document likely was a way, wrote Morris, for “dissolving the marriage bond”[6] since the state forbade divorce
Uuuuh…
The whole bride-selling thing is something which was first mystified in the 19th century, and as with many myths, feminist bought into it, republished it over time, so that angry tumblrinas can find it later.
I read the diary of David Livingstone who explored South Africa, and he mentions how Europeans misunderstood the idea of bride-selling among certain African tribes – usually to feel superiour over the savage blacks (”buying a wife – how horrible of these lowly Africans!”).
He then explained that among the cases he observed, the man did not pay for the woman, but for the children he got or would get from that woman. The tribe traced ancestry through the maternal line, but was patrilocal (so the wife lived with the husband). If the man stops paying a regular tribute to the woman’s parents, they would take his children away, since they belogn to her side of the family. If he wants to keep his children, he usually has to raid and plunder in order to gather enough tribute to give to his parents-in-law.
Germanic tribes in European antiquity did not possess a written language, so in order to show that a man had not eloped with or stolen a woman from another household, the marriage ceremony (or before) included a transaction of gifts between husband and bride’s father as a visible sign of a friendliness. In the small Germanic communities, people knew who lived where and what who possessed. Unless the bride’s father somehow caused the goods to vanish, there would be no possibility for a mob to come to the husband’s house for rape (rape = the taking away of a woman with or without her consent). To finish a deal or contract with the exchange of gifts was custom among cultures without a written language, and even continued long into the time when they did develop writing.
Outsiders could misunderstand these practices as an exchange of goods for a bride, which is where the mythification comes from (things people just take for granted about the past because they are repeated often; e.g. that medieval people didn’t wash, that a knight in armour cannot move on his own etc.).
LOL someone didn’t read their sources
They don’t have the attention span to read past the headlines.
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