Howard Zinn’s chapter, ” The Ultimately Oppressed,” really shows the gender inequality in the 18th and 19th centuries, and how it is based on culture, status, and race. We learned about women and how they were treated, but I never knew they were treated this bad. What surprised me was Zinn talking about how women from Native American tribes were treated with the same amount of respect as men. While white and black women were mistreated frequently and were basically used for child making purposes or as a sex slave. Sojourner Truth was a name that I had heard about from past history lessons, but I never learned everything she had to go through. She worked the fields and would get lashed when punished, and had to watch all her kids get sold into slavery, all because she was a black woman and no one helped her because of that.
In this chapter, Zinn explains the mistreatment of woman as half the population being invisible. Women were objectified by men because of how they looked, this makes it seem like women were viewed as property instead of human by men. What is really crazy to me is how some of these men tried to justify their way of viewing women by using their religion. We still have some inequalities when it comes to gender today, but looking back at how women were treated throughout history it was a lot worse. But that does not mean women have to settle with how we are treated right now, it just means we have to do like the woman in history did, and fight for equality.
I like the point you raised that although we have progressed, women should not settle down and feel satisfied as we still clearly see that inequality between men and women is still present and that we still need to fight to achieve ultimate equality. I was not surprised when I saw that religion was used to justify such acts as I have always seen religion being used as a tool to justify many social issues including racism, homophobia, sexism…etc. I also agree that the treatment of black and white women was horrible during those times, it disgusted me that they were seen as nothing but property.