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Steve, I think the idea that you are missing is that the men back in the 1800s did deny the humanity of women. There were discussions about whether women had souls or not. Are women more like men, or chimpanzees?
Women needed to survive, and they needed to be able to raise children. I think you fail to comprehend the huge disadvantage those two facts gave women in western culture where women were legally children for life. Women couldn’t really fight the battle to be recognized as full humans because they were essentially kept barefoot and pregnant.
Yes, women are just as capable as men and just as human as men, but pregnancy really took them out of commission in a society where women could not be seen in public in their pregnant condition. Where 1/3 of women died in childbirth or from complication from childbirth. Where they were essentially tied to a nursing baby, then two years later another nursing baby, then two years later another nursing baby.
It takes more strength for a woman to just survive in a world like that than for men to survive in that world. But it did make a woman dependent on the father of her babies. Human babies are not like any other species, as they are born more dependent because it is a compromise between their big heads going through the birth canal, and their ability to survive independently. So, human females need the cooperation of the father of their babies just as much as mother penguins do. Which need makes them vulnerable to exploitation. And there are men who have exploited this vulnerability.— anna
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