Very much so... I don't think I can describe in words just how horrifying it was to read this. This is a country that my ancestors were from. It's hard to imagine it being so patriarchal and sexist as is described here.
The "patriarchal and sexist" adjectives are presumably necessary but not in and of themselves sufficient. For instance, there have been plenty of sexist, patriarchal regimes in European history where behaviors such as the ones described would be considered gross affronts to basic morality by the Christian church (which was an empowered entity whose opinions carried some import).
(One could theoretically hope that gender-studies departments at various universities should find it productive to scrutinize the differences in these patriarchal, sexist regimes in order to understand the nature of the cultural differences which engendered these disparate results. Theoretically.)
"(One could theoretically hope that gender-studies departments at various universities should find it productive to scrutinize the differences in these patriarchal, sexist regimes in order to understand the nature of the cultural differences which engendered these disparate results. Theoretically.)"
Empirically, this is a core part of what gender studies departments in fact do. Just off the top of a quick Google search:
We could debate whether this is doing it well or adequately, but gender studies, if we're discussing it in practice at decent universities and not just theoretically, has a non-zero amount of rigor as a discipline.
Actually, in strong patriarchal societies, these sort of behaviours are NOT tolerated, mostly because women are assumed to always "belong" to someone else (be it her dad, husband, tutor... whatever), and when people DO try funny stuff, other men will put a end to it.
Societies where people start to feel entitled to have women, are the ones that unite several things at once: materialism, individualism, lack of women to marry, or lack of advantage in having a marriage.
Both sexes will always strive to have sex, that is part of being human, but when the "normal" way of having it get screwed, people find alternative ways...
Be it in a hedonistic society with lots of parties (usually those that have everything I mentioned, PLUS became matriarchal, those societies mimick perfectly matriarchal primates), or in a misoginistic society where women are viewed as prizes (on those that lost classic patriarchalist values, but retained the male dominance, like India since 15 years ago, or Saudi Arabia), and some has a bit of both...
"Actually, in strong patriarchal societies, these sort of behaviours are NOT tolerated, mostly because women are assumed to always "belong" to someone else (be it her dad, husband, tutor... whatever), and when people DO try funny stuff, other men will put a end to it."
This isn't actually true. There will always be women not recognized as "belonging" to a male (prostitutes, menial laborers, travelers, orphans etc.) or whose superintending male figure is not high enough status to enforce his "property rights."
Unless we are going into No True Scotsman territory, "strong patriarchal societies" - however defined - do in fact tolerate these sort of behaviors in a great many contexts.
there have been plenty of sexist, patriarchal regimes in European history where behaviors such as the ones described would be considered gross affronts to basic morality by the Christian church
Really? I'm skeptical. Can you point to any historical evidence that this is true?
For example, consider slaveholders in the US. It was always recognized that they could rape their slaves. No one at the time thought that was wrong. Even the church. But perhaps I'm wrong: again, can you point to any recorded historical cases of slave owners who raped their slaves but were chastised by the church? Anything? Even just one case?
I'm pretty skeptical that the church would have opposed a random lord of the manner raping a peasant woman under his dominion either.
