I Swear This Is Satire.

When I saw the prompt for this essay in my AP European History class senior year, I knew instantly that I would never be able to write anything on the topic that would get me a good grade. It was something like, "The place for women in the latter half of the nineteenth century seemed to be the home," and something about social, economic, and religious stuff. Knowing that I was going to get a bad grade on the essay, I decided to write something that I knew would enrage the feminist girl sitting in front of me. I received 18 points out of 35, and a number of comments, summarized by "more history, less editorial stuff please." It was worth it.

At the risk of overkill, I want to mention again that this is clearly satire. In fact, this is not funny at all. There is nothing funny about misogyny. All women are unique and capable individuals whose contributions to society are underappreciated and often ignored by the phallocentric elite. Please don't hate me.


The place for women in the latter half of the nineteenth century seemed to be the home, and rightfully so. Men are so vastly superior to women that the woman's place is that which is left by the men. Men understood it to be their sworn duty to care and provide for their women, and therefore set out into the world of employment. Women, being naturally feeble and unable to carry out any real responsibility, were left with nothing to do all day. Oprah wasn't around yet, so the women became housewives, whose "duties" were to keep the house clean and educate the children, while the men worked hard in the real world to put food on the table, although that phrase is misleading. It is actually the "duty" of the woman to purchase, prepare, and serve the food, as the man has been working all day and deserves to come home to a hot meal.

Theoretically, European women had other options, although they weren't really choices. The ugly females, who sadly could not find any man to take care of her, could become some sort of servant or professional assistant of some sort for really rich men who felt sorry for the ugly ladies and their ugliness. Any of these women would gladly marry, and rightfully so. If only they weren't so ugly. And the really attractive and/or promiscuous women could become prostitutes. This is an excellent example of the civility of men. It was an unspoken agreement between the men to not marry the prostitutes, so that they could share them. Marrying one would only create jealously amongst the men, and men are better than that. In theory, a woman could get a real job, but only if they could handle the enormous responsibility. Logically, if they could handle the responsibility of having a job, they should have no problem finding a husband. It is a vicious Catch-22.

Economic considerations may have affected women's career decisions. This is unlikely, as there has never been a single case of a woman understanding the complex world of economics and mathematics. Women only understood enough maths to correctly prepare a meal. Any additional learning was unnecessary, and unsafe. It has been well documented that a woman's head will explode if it is attempted to teach her enough knowledge to understand the world. And this is the overall reasoning behind keeping the women from the outside world. We love them far too much to see their heads explode. After all, who would clean up the mess?