I don't get 'The Patriarchy'

Garlicbutter-

What Saltatrix said!

I don't think patriarchy must be embraced by those it disadvantages, but I do think it is part of the nature, in so far as everything is part of nature. I am not sure that thinking about a 'natural order' is useful, it implies that natural is good, and really harks back to pre-evolutionary/creationist/intelligent design thinking.

My problem with the concept of 'The Patriarchy' (at least as it has been described here in a nutshell as 'men chose to take power and the mechanism for that was violence' is that it doesn't seem to have much explanatory power over the individual processes that result in inequality today (e.g. in wages, number of female politicians, business leaders etc..for example) and it doesn't line up with my understanding of how evolution happened (e.g. that the evolutionary pressure for, and use of violence has been competition between men).

I don't think it is necessary to reject the idea that there are evolved traits, and the historic survival rationales behind the structures and outcomes we now recognise as unjust, in order to uphold feminism. I do think that if feminism rejects science it is weaker for it.

I do realise that most people/daily mail etc.. who use a 'its natural' argument are trying to justify continued inequality. But the kneejerk reaction of therefore denying all difference or historic rationale is an intellectual dead-end. The key point that is rarely made is that natural doesn't mean good, or inevitable.

Sorry I didn't mean to imply you are thick at all. I just meant it is hard to explain the mechanism of evolution on a message board, where people are arguing against it on the basis of ideological opposition. It is not intuititive and it doesn't work in the way that 'general knowledge' thinks it does, so it is really worth reading a book or two (I recommend Dawkins, Pinker and Dennett (harder going))

Herbex - you don't have to have worked out the genetics underlying selection for those genetics to effect instinctive behavior. Animal species from primates to bees do not understand genetics and have no intellectual conception of the connection between fucking and babies, but their instincts are still shaped by those forces.

Of course it is a silly sexist myth that health, youth and fabulous bodies are only valued by men because of evolution.

But it is equally groundless to think that these preferences have no foundation in evolution.

Beachcomber - agreed !

...and even then need checks and balances. Power shared out equally has a habit of not staying equally shared...

Herbex - "(where health and youth were more important to men in selecting mates, where wealth and status were more important to women)"...wotalotabollocks. Women have always liked health and youth as much as men, they just weren't allowed to have it...."

First off, the human rights position is that people should be able to have relationships with whoever they want and marry whoever they want. Finding out that there are somewhat different evolved preferences between men and women would not change that one bit (and there is no need to argue against evolved difference in order to make the human rights case).

That said male and female reproductive systems in humans are quite different, and it would be quite odd if this hadn't resulted in evolved preferences as it has in every other animal.

In humans:

• females usually have surviving children that number in single figures.
• females are born with all their eggs in place, as we get older chances of birth defects and difficulty in conceiving get higher.
• females reach menopause
• females have hidden ovulation which means they can hedge their bets about who fathers their children, and who brings them up.

-males can have surviving children in the 100s (if they can afford to support them)

• males make fresh sperm all the time, so the impacts of age or of a spell of illness or poor nutrition on later fertility are not so great.

• males don't play a particular biological role in child survival, but can contribute resources which make a significant difference particularly in harsh times.

For most of human history we were hunter gatherers or subsistence farmers, life was hard and survival was not assured. Being an economically independent single mother was not an option. To raise a child through the dangerous early years took the resources of more than one person, so the way that people related and shared resources between birth families - parents, children and siblings, and between sexual partnerships were part of the survival strategies that evolution would have selected for.

Given the basic biological factors I have outlined males would have evolved a stronger preference for youth and health in their mates (less likely to be carrying another man's child already, more likely to conceive and survive childbirth) and for females to have evolved a preference for status (can he support me and my child?) and be less worried about age.

Social constructs then build on top of evolved preferences - and also reflect the fact that parent's evolutionary pressures (to maximise survival of grandchildren accross all their children, is different from their grown up children's evolutionary pressures (to maximise their own surviving children,while not disadvantaging their siblings too much) - so you get conflicts between generations, as you point out, and social structures that are not supportive of our modern conception of human rights.

Beachcomber -

I think we are both talking past each other, I guess because you are looking through the prism of 'patriarchy' as the explanation and I am looking through the prism of 'natural selection'.

i am not saying that the explanation for sexual inequality is that men are innately violent and thereby unable to refrain from abusing power. - that is trying to apply the idea of natural selection to explain 'the patriarchy' - and as you rightly say it is a dogs dinner.

What I am saying is that i don't see the need for a sepperate (and inconsistent) theory to explain why people and society are not the way we would like them to be.

For long, long periods of our evolutionary history might, aggression, guile, deception and obsequeous followership have been wining strategies (as have being smart, solving problems, being brave, caring for our family etc.. all the good stuff ...) so it's hardly surprising that those nastier characteristics are hardwired and softwired into human nature and societies, and are hard to change.

Justice, fairness, care for strangers, accountability; these are not part of a 'natural order' we need to return to, they are what we are trying to forge.

I am not convinced that imbalances in power and life chances between men and women are explained by violence at all.

On the other hand I do think that HUMAN BEINGS (men and women) do have traits that tend to lead them to abuse power, and let others abuse it if it benefits them. The idea that underneath our socially costructed exterior is some naturally kinder, nicer, fairer version of our selves is intellectually incoherant once we know about evolution (although the idea has a long religious pedigree, which I guess accounts for why it is so pervasive).