I don't get 'The Patriarchy'

See, I don't think it is immoral. I think it is unfortunate that wealth is distributed very unequally, but I don't think it is necessarily immoral at all. If someone is very clever and able and manages to earn a lot of money and live extremely comfortably, why shouldn't he/she have more than others? That isn't theft - on the contrary, capitalism relies on able people creating value through companies employing many people and enabling them to have jobs.

Himalaya - do you think it is immoral that 20% of the population own 80% of the wealth?

cba

Yes, some people object to the term. There is discussion of that objection at Wikipedia:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_group

No, I didn't know that about vivisection. Also didn't know a majority is a minority ... why not use an accurately descriptive word?

compared to women

I hold out a lot of hope garlicbutter.
DId you know that vivisection, which is cutting and experimenting on live animals was common practice in male scientific communities in the nineteenth century. no man questioned it

It was only when women entered the field of science that anyone declared it was wrong. Frances Cobbe set up the British Society against Vivisection, and spent her life fighting the men in white coats. It wore down her health. They thought she was mad. But she, as a woman and human, could not accept the patriarchal worldview that harming animals was a right that humans had.

When you think about how much power men had, economically and politically compared to men it's amazing that none of them even questioned vivisection, let alone set up a campaign group against it

SGM, you were asking for stuff written that refutes the idea that men have evolved to rape. A colleague recommended a book called 'Evolution, Gender and Rape.'

It refutes the idea from an evolutionary perspective, by looking at the relative reproductive success of not raping, the benefits for women of choosing a particular sort of mate, child rearing and so on. But it is also looks at social contexts that make rape more likely, social climate, educational settings and so on, to argue for the cultural basis of rape.

The editor is Cheryl Brown Travis.

Garlicbutter, when people refer to minorities in a social sense it is usually determined by the amount of economic, social and political power the group holds, not their actual numbers.

Great posts Herbex
yes HImalaya is arguing that we need to look at evolution because that then explains male dominance.

Which I find interesting to say the least because men have always believed they're the ones who have true insight into the human condition. Men believe their art is important and women's is trivial. that their thought is relevant and women's are not.
Is it true that men cannot understand that cruelty, exploitation and using violence to uphold the patriarchal regime is wrong and should be stopped at once? Why aren't they throwing their hands up and saying "FUck evolution, I no longer want to be a member of a group that has treats humans so cruelly."

How can they hold the moral high ground in any other area of life?

How can we trust anything they write or say? They have no agency, according to Himalaya, and cannot be held accountable. They are born to be oppressors.. but then how can they ever understand the full complexity of the human condition?

Actually their insights over the millenia have been pretty narrow and stunted, not to mention wrong, so one thing is for sure: if a person belongs to an oppressor group it harms their sense of morality- their concept of right and wrong

Milly, LOL "Tall people would be violently attacking short people on the street"

haha, so true.

And himalaya didn't answer my question about his beauty-healthy children connection. WHere do beautiful infertile women fit into that worldview?
And if his "theory" was right then if you plotted a graph of healthy children against patriarchally defined beauty you would find there was a causal link.
Except there isn't. Is there. A "plain" woman is no more likely to have difficulty conceiving, carrying and delivering a child than a beautiful woman.

Women are a majority. As are South African Blacks.

Actually, I don't share the view that female rule would lead to world peace & loveliness. But I totally believe we deserve to find out.

I can't think of any situation where a minority isn't kept a minority by an ultimate threat of violence. The situation of Apartheid in South Africa is based on violence, but white people are not more muscular than black South Africans. Homophobia involves gay bashing, but straight men are not more muscular than gay men.

So I cannot see that somebody's body shape has anything to do with a human's decision to use or fail to consistently challenge the use of violence by the group they belong to.

If there was some connection between relative body size and violence, tall people (me and my brother for example) would be violently attacking short people on the street, or supporting other tall people who do, or justifying short-bashing by others by telling short people they were flaunting their lack of height and making themselves into victims. But we're not.

It is ultimately a ridiculous theory.

And if you are arguing that, can you explain why such a natural state of affairs has needed such incredibly repressive policing? Why have men needed to be so incredibly cruel to women throughout history, in order to maintain their dominance over them? Surely if it were natural, women would simply go around being submissive the whole time and men would never actually need to keep them in line by rigging the whole world against them, ensuring that they could never compete for jobs, property, land etc., on an equal basis. They wouldn't bother to mutilate our genitals or rape us or exclude us from public life, because they wouldn't need to in order to control us. We would just accept their control unthinkingly and automatically, without question.

God sorry to say this, but those unending posts about evo-bollocks really are extremely tedious. Who cares about what makes men more muscly etc.?

What are you actually arguing Himalaya? That patriarchy doesn't exist? That we're imagining that most power in the world is held by men at the expense of women? Or that it is a natural state of affairs, that men own 90% of the world's wealth and that they have constructed a society with all the institutions in it geared towards their needs and excluding women from all but a serving role in them? Is that what you're arguing, that this is natural and inevitable because of evolution? Because that's what it sounds like you are arguing.

Ah, I see!

yes I know it was weird,

Hence the oops.

I posted on the wrong thread. You ever done that?

Go to the other thread and you'll get it

Sakura, Not a very authentic proletarian if you've got a PC are you Classwar is just a weird comment! There's enough weirdness in this thread already, surely no need for bonkers classist interjections too?

FWIW it looks to me as if Himalya does get "The Patriarchy" after all; it's more a matter of answering some of the most tediously well-worn objections to the concept: namely, that male supremacy is caused by male superiority and male control of the birthing resource is an evolutionary advantage. Himalaya, you have demonstrated that you don't agree with such Victorian idiocy - are you basically trying to get some clarified answers to those objections?

oops

Classwar. Is that someone who is against the class system, against the bourgoisie

Not a very authentic proletariat if you've got a PC are you Classwar