I’ve heard “gentlefolk” used in communities where outright “cultural re-write” for less sexism and racism is tolerated or encouraged (rather than inducing apoplectic sputtering by some of the reactionary participants). Lesswrong, with the semi-regular and un-commented use of spivak, is one of these places.
On the other hand, to my ear, the penumbra of connotation included by “gentlemen’s agreement” includes elements of feudal virtue and the glamor of evil, where gentlemen on hard times might become highway brigands rather than shop keepers or farmers, because it would be ignoble to work for a living rather than finding some way to prey on the productive members of society “like a proper gentleman”.
Legitimate prey, in that era, only vaguely includes women, because women were mostly just “points” rather than players, formally existing as willing or unwilling chattel, rather than official players of the game. The residuum of this era seems to be what relatively sane feminists are talking about when they speak of “the patriarchy” and “rape culture”.
There were exceptionalwomen, but “gentlefolk” doesn’t make me think of barely restrained rampaging female nobility, the way “gentlemen” subsumes a historical panoply of somewhat foppish, honor obsessed, sociopathic dukes and princes, who had “always winning at ultimatum games and games of chicken” as the essential business model of their caste.
The caste, to persist over time, needed a way to not tear itself completely to shreds through internal squabbling and so develops cultural norms regulating internal strife… hence, a “gentleman’s agreement” could occur between its genuine members. Figuring out a way to identify genuine members (by some method other than never backing down when a peasant tries to get an even deal) loops you back to signaling, completing the circle of game theoretic horror.
With the terminological question, I think its worth comparing a “feudal horror” understanding of “gentlemen” with someone like Jeanette Rankin, the first female ever to be elected to the US House of Representatives, who was a pacifist and the lone vote against declaring war on the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. The word might have no cognate because it is inherently gendered? I think it’s distinctly possible that there are few female gentlemen for basically the same reason that there are few female serial killers.
I’d appreciate links to essays or summat that give a clear-eyed assessment of the extent to which women were or weren’t willing or unwilling chattel at various points throughout history. You seem to be referring to background knowledge that I don’t have—the only “knowledge” of the history of the lot of women (and the culture of gentlemen) I have comes from clearly ideological narratives. Excepting the classical era, it seems like it’d be difficult for me to find analyses that avoided implicit moralizing and stuck to factual description. I’m especially interested in the lot of women during the High Middle Ages, which I tend to think of as a high-point of civilization. I would be surprised to learn that the lot of women then was as bad as it seems like it was in classical antiquity, or as it seems like it is today in much of the world including many Western subcultures.
(Interestingly I notice a small “arguments are like soldiers” effect going on on my part: when you say “yay for progress” you’re specifically talking about women’s rights, but my brain automatically reached for cached counter-examples to “progress” that have nothing to do with women’s rights, and wanted to ask why someone who’s studied complex systems and group epistemology is going along with the progress narrative, even though you never actually said nor really implied that you were going along with the progress narrative in general. I hope this is because I care about historiography and not because I’ve been mind-killed by ideology.)
I’m confused that you linked to the Wikipedia section on the influences of the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. From what it says Prussia’s subsequent reforms were primarily military in nature, and the occupation by France only lasted a few years. There doesn’t seem to have been substantial cultural reform—(should we expect Prussia to have adopted the leftist norms & ideology of France due to such an ephemeral military occupation?)—and politically the primary consequence seems to have been an increase in German nationalism, which doesn’t seem to have been such a good thing given the next century and a half of German history. Is there a primary source that goes into more detail about the relevant cultural consequences of Prussia’s defeat in the War of the Fourth Coalition?
ETA: Just realized how off-topic this is. Also close to mind-killing if not itself mind-killing. Perhaps better suited to PM or email.
My knowledge of women’s history in the high middle ages wouldn’t be very good. However, as an Irish archaeologist, I can tell you that the chattel slavery of women in early medieval Ireland was so abundant that a female slave or cumal was treated as a unit of currency, being equivalent to 6 to 8 séoit (one of which is equal to the value of a three-year-old heifer). If I were still a student I would be able to find you more academic sources, but I’ve lost access to most of the journals I used to use. From what I remember, this practice did fall into decline after the arrival of Normans, though this generally attributed to a decline in economic significance rather than a shift in social conscience. If you can access J-Stor, “Lest the Lowliest Be Forgotten: Locating the Impoverished in Early Medieval Ireland” by JW Boyle will provide you with good background on this. I know it’s not exactly what you were looking for, but it as an area which I am, to some extent, qualified to talk about.
I’ve found the Owning Your Shit blog to provide interesting alternative views for some of the standard feminist narratives, though unfortunately it doesn’t cite any sources and is somewhat ideological as well.
the first female ever to be elected to the US House of Representatives, who was a pacifist and the lone vote against declaring war on the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.
The USA elected a representative that wouldn’t even declare war after a comprehensive military strike by an enemy? Wow. I would not have expected that.
That’s at best redundant. They became the enemy due to that particular military strike.
Not especially redundant and the “at best” has highly dubious connotations ‘at best’. The “comprehensive military strike” is ambiguous without something that indicates whether it is “by us” or “by the other guys”.
Even apart from that I wouldn’t accept as remotely tenable the claim that Japan couldn’t be described as an enemy just because active firefights were not in progress, in much the same way that the participants in a cold war cannot be enemies just because the war is cold. Would you really claim that prior to pearl harbor Japan during that war hadn’t done anything that threatened American interests such that they couldn’t be considered an enemy? Was America really naive enough not to realize that the previous actions of Japan and the positioning of their forces didn’t make an enemy, even if it is one that America was until then able to leave to others to fight? Japan certainly didn’t think so, or they wouldn’t have bothered making a first strike while they were already busy.
I’ve heard “gentlefolk” used in communities where outright “cultural re-write” for less sexism and racism is tolerated or encouraged (rather than inducing apoplectic sputtering by some of the reactionary participants). Lesswrong, with the semi-regular and un-commented use of spivak, is one of these places.
On the other hand, to my ear, the penumbra of connotation included by “gentlemen’s agreement” includes elements of feudal virtue and the glamor of evil, where gentlemen on hard times might become highway brigands rather than shop keepers or farmers, because it would be ignoble to work for a living rather than finding some way to prey on the productive members of society “like a proper gentleman”.
Legitimate prey, in that era, only vaguely includes women, because women were mostly just “points” rather than players, formally existing as willing or unwilling chattel, rather than official players of the game. The residuum of this era seems to be what relatively sane feminists are talking about when they speak of “the patriarchy” and “rape culture”.
There were exceptional women, but “gentlefolk” doesn’t make me think of barely restrained rampaging female nobility, the way “gentlemen” subsumes a historical panoply of somewhat foppish, honor obsessed, sociopathic dukes and princes, who had “always winning at ultimatum games and games of chicken” as the essential business model of their caste.
The caste, to persist over time, needed a way to not tear itself completely to shreds through internal squabbling and so develops cultural norms regulating internal strife… hence, a “gentleman’s agreement” could occur between its genuine members. Figuring out a way to identify genuine members (by some method other than never backing down when a peasant tries to get an even deal) loops you back to signaling, completing the circle of game theoretic horror.
In the meantime, yay for progress, bringing humans slowly out of the bad old days, one semi-horrible half-cynical compromise at a time :-)
With the terminological question, I think its worth comparing a “feudal horror” understanding of “gentlemen” with someone like Jeanette Rankin, the first female ever to be elected to the US House of Representatives, who was a pacifist and the lone vote against declaring war on the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. The word might have no cognate because it is inherently gendered? I think it’s distinctly possible that there are few female gentlemen for basically the same reason that there are few female serial killers.
I’d appreciate links to essays or summat that give a clear-eyed assessment of the extent to which women were or weren’t willing or unwilling chattel at various points throughout history. You seem to be referring to background knowledge that I don’t have—the only “knowledge” of the history of the lot of women (and the culture of gentlemen) I have comes from clearly ideological narratives. Excepting the classical era, it seems like it’d be difficult for me to find analyses that avoided implicit moralizing and stuck to factual description. I’m especially interested in the lot of women during the High Middle Ages, which I tend to think of as a high-point of civilization. I would be surprised to learn that the lot of women then was as bad as it seems like it was in classical antiquity, or as it seems like it is today in much of the world including many Western subcultures.
(Interestingly I notice a small “arguments are like soldiers” effect going on on my part: when you say “yay for progress” you’re specifically talking about women’s rights, but my brain automatically reached for cached counter-examples to “progress” that have nothing to do with women’s rights, and wanted to ask why someone who’s studied complex systems and group epistemology is going along with the progress narrative, even though you never actually said nor really implied that you were going along with the progress narrative in general. I hope this is because I care about historiography and not because I’ve been mind-killed by ideology.)
I’m confused that you linked to the Wikipedia section on the influences of the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. From what it says Prussia’s subsequent reforms were primarily military in nature, and the occupation by France only lasted a few years. There doesn’t seem to have been substantial cultural reform—(should we expect Prussia to have adopted the leftist norms & ideology of France due to such an ephemeral military occupation?)—and politically the primary consequence seems to have been an increase in German nationalism, which doesn’t seem to have been such a good thing given the next century and a half of German history. Is there a primary source that goes into more detail about the relevant cultural consequences of Prussia’s defeat in the War of the Fourth Coalition?
ETA: Just realized how off-topic this is. Also close to mind-killing if not itself mind-killing. Perhaps better suited to PM or email.
ETA2: This Wikipedia section is pertinent, though lacking in citations.
My knowledge of women’s history in the high middle ages wouldn’t be very good. However, as an Irish archaeologist, I can tell you that the chattel slavery of women in early medieval Ireland was so abundant that a female slave or cumal was treated as a unit of currency, being equivalent to 6 to 8 séoit (one of which is equal to the value of a three-year-old heifer). If I were still a student I would be able to find you more academic sources, but I’ve lost access to most of the journals I used to use. From what I remember, this practice did fall into decline after the arrival of Normans, though this generally attributed to a decline in economic significance rather than a shift in social conscience. If you can access J-Stor, “Lest the Lowliest Be Forgotten: Locating the Impoverished in Early Medieval Ireland” by JW Boyle will provide you with good background on this. I know it’s not exactly what you were looking for, but it as an area which I am, to some extent, qualified to talk about.
I’ve found the Owning Your Shit blog to provide interesting alternative views for some of the standard feminist narratives, though unfortunately it doesn’t cite any sources and is somewhat ideological as well.
Relevant articles for this context might be Can we redefine the terms, please? and okay, getting my shit together. They don’t go as far as to discuss the Middle Ages, though.
I find this an excellent reason to pay it no attention. When I clicked on the links I found my prediction amply confirmed.
The USA elected a representative that wouldn’t even declare war after a comprehensive military strike by an enemy? Wow. I would not have expected that.
That’s at best redundant. They became the enemy due to that particular military strike.
Not especially redundant and the “at best” has highly dubious connotations ‘at best’. The “comprehensive military strike” is ambiguous without something that indicates whether it is “by us” or “by the other guys”.
Even apart from that I wouldn’t accept as remotely tenable the claim that Japan couldn’t be described as an enemy just because active firefights were not in progress, in much the same way that the participants in a cold war cannot be enemies just because the war is cold. Would you really claim that prior to pearl harbor Japan during that war hadn’t done anything that threatened American interests such that they couldn’t be considered an enemy? Was America really naive enough not to realize that the previous actions of Japan and the positioning of their forces didn’t make an enemy, even if it is one that America was until then able to leave to others to fight? Japan certainly didn’t think so, or they wouldn’t have bothered making a first strike while they were already busy.