I don't get 'The Patriarchy'

[Himalaya]

I am your basic feminist, in the equal pay, equal rights sense, but not in the sense that I've read a lot of feminist theory (ok, I'll admit it, hardly any)

Quite often on these threads I read about 'The Patriarchy' as an explanation for unequal treatment of women and attitudes towards gender, and I just don't get it...

It seems to indicate that men as a group (all over the world, and throughout history?) have acted together with the intention of surpressing women - la conspiricy theory rather than consideration of underlying factors like biology (the 'genes eye' view of unequal costs and benefits of 'investment' in offspring by men and women) and the impact of class and economics etc...

But maybe I'm reading it wrong?

Genocide and slavery - has happened many times before the African-Anerican slave trade and the holocaust and has happened after. Tribes killing other tribes, those defeated put into slavery happened throughout history. Why would the bible bother to say 'Thou shalt not kill' if killing was an aberation and peace and non- violence was what came naturally? (and actually the bible only meant 'thou shalt not kill Jews', other tribes were considered fair game)

The thing that was so shocking about the holocaust was the industrial scale and operation of it. And the shock that 20th Century modern cultured Germans would do such a think. Many Jews who stayed made the same mistake of thinking that modernity and culture had overcome the darker sides of human nature. It won't happen here they said. But it did. It won't happen again we said. But it has.

People caring more about their family and close networks than strangers who look and sound different, willingness to view out/groups as less human, tendency to follow a strong and charismatic leader and not step out of line - all are aspects of evolved human nature that in the wrong and desperate circumstances can lead to atrocities.

Herbex, Thanks for your reply to my questions.

I think I understand what Dittany meant by doing your own thinking.

I was trying to understand what the so-obvious-it-doesn't- need saying primary causal link in the UK today between male violence and....

Why women remain concentrated in lower paid jobs
Why their are fewer women MPs, judges, captains of industry etc..
Why many women are not happy with their own bodies
Why fewer women study STEM subjects
Why women do the majority of domestic work and childcare, and men don't do enough.

No one has spelled this out and I was purplexed.

But I realise now that the patriarchy you are describing isn't an umbrella shorthand for all the complex systems that result in these problems. It are a totalising system that must be overthrown.

If this means overthrowing the institutions and businesses that manage modern life and taking back the land 'stolen from women' then that would involve and ultimately be met with violence.

Is that what you've been dog whistling at?

Yes I can see that. Any government is going to try to keep the lights on, the water flowing, the food system working, the rule of law intact ...

The very basic biology that if men were already stronger than women before 'the patriarchy' started as a pure cultural phenomenon (as has been stated many times here as what enabled them to overpower women) then there must have been some strong differential evolutionary pressures on men and women before that for it to be possible and worthwhile for men's bodies to develop the costly muscle in the first place.

Which suggests that it wasn't an egalitarian society up to that point. Which makes it a circular argument.

I agree that there are differential evolutionary pressures on men and women that lead to sexual dimorphism, but it is an enormous leap to say that is evidence for a lack of equality.

MillyR -

after puberty men tend to put on relatively more muscle and less fat, women more fat and less muscle, resulting in our characteristic body shapes.

muscle is expensive to put on in terns of calories and nutition. It is a good 'evolutionary strategy' to take if food is abundant and their are benefits to your number and health of offspring in you being able to
dominate others with your strength.

Fat is energy efficient to put on and it's primary function is as a calorie store against starvation. It is a good evolutionary strategy to take if food is scarce and you don't know where your next meal is coming from.

How could men and women's bodies have developed with such different strategies in a society where food was shared equally and fairly as would be the case pre-patriarchy, if the it is all down to choice and culture theory held true.

I think (?) Himalaya's saying that the physiological differences are caused by choice and culture - and that these choices were made way back in the neolithic era when, Himalaya thinks, early humans adapted for survival by giving the men all the meat & making the women eat berries and scraps.

That would have been a poor strategy for ensuring the survival of the young, as nursing women need a calorific diet. Archaeological finds indicate that early humans weren't as thick as Himalaya believes.

political and social systems and male violence are caused by male choices.

I think this is possibly the best and most succinct definition of "the patriarchy" I've seen in terms of the way I understand it.

Dittany - do you seriously believe that our current Western political and economic systems are entirely a male fabrication?

Yes, Garlicbutter,

Not so much individual choices, but socially transmitted practices - technologies and learned practices ('culture') become part of the environment in which people evolve. Like the example of cooking, allowing jaw size and musculature to change, which allowed mouths to develop the agility and mobility for complex speech.

The second part of your post though is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about how evolution works. Natural selection tends to promote traits and behaviors that maximise the chances of the individual genes that promote those traits being passed down. It does not optimise things for the individuals carrying those genes, or for society. There isn't much point thinking about 'evolution' unless you get your head around this point and come to grips with how it works (it
isn't intuitive at all, it really is worth reading a book).

"evolutionary strategies" is a shorthand based on the understanding that the locus of selection is the gene. They are 'strategies' for reproduction and survival. They are nothing to do with intelligent design. That is the amazing (and surprising) thing about evolution. No one had to think up these strategies. The dumb shuffling and transmission of genes over many generation enables many 'strategies' to be tested in teeny tiny steps.

Some plants 'take a strategy' of having amazing flowers with chemical and visual signals in just the right colour for bees to see them (some flowers have 'land here' markers on their petals which show up in 'bee's purple' - a colour that's off the visual light spectrum for us but very clear for bees). Then they develop fruit that are just the right colour and taste to attract animals to eat them and carry the seads off so they do not just grow next to the parent. It's incredibly 'clever' but there is no intelligence behind it. There was no conference of flowers, bees and monkeys to work out the deals and logistics, as there would have to be if this was a human designed system. That's just how evolution works.

The realisation that human beings too are animals too, with bodies, psyches and cultures shaped by the same dumb forces of evolution, allows us to see how societies developed 'naturally' in ways that were neither optimum for the species, tribe or individual but for the stupid, mindless gene. (MillyR - this is why 'good for evolution/ the right to evolve' has no part in working out what is right - thinking about what families need to raise children is about the rights of the child - sentient, vulnerable human beings, not advancing evolution).

Male muscle is an expensive and risky 'evolutionary strategy'. It would not have evolved in an egalitarian society where resources were shared fairly (and taking into account the needs of pregnant and nursing mothers). Therefore we have to conclude that it evolved after (and along with) a culture and ecological niche where men were already comanding more than their fair share of resources. So male strength can not be the explaining factor for how that situation came about in the first place.

Evolution isn't common sense - the 'genes eye view' isn't inuitive at all. It doesn't match up with the common sense rationale about what people would choose to do if they were doing the best thing for themselves, their family, tribe etc.. Farmers who want to maximise the production and survival of calves for example keep many productive heifers and a few bulls. That is the economically optimum choice. Evolution on the other hand has settled on a much more wasteful equilibrium of just about even numbers in bovines, slightly more girls than boys in humans (and all sorts of other ratios in animals occupying other ecological niches)... And the sex ratio has huge implications for the development of other male and female 'evolutionary strategies' and therefore on society.

I've said it before but will reitterate - Understanding how a trait or behavior is/was adaptive for our ancestors has no bearing on what is right, now.

I'm not sure that anyone will take any of this on in what has become a combative point scoring debate where people would rather say 'that's stupid' than 'i don't understand, can you clarify' or 'i think that is wrong and here is why'.

Sorry typo - slightly more boys than girls in humans.

SGM - do you want to say how?

I just love these post facto, science-lite evo psych justifications explanations of patriarchy, it's like Tinga Tinga tales for adults!!

Himalaya - there is a virulent strain of victim mentality rampaging through the feminism topic .

SGM - no, really. How did the differences in male/female muscle/fat ratio evolve (over millions of years) in an egalitarian society where resorces were shared fairly?

Delurking in the hope of moving the thread beyond this circular argument.

Himalaya: as Dittany is trying to pint out to you, much of what you're proposing is speculation, not hard fact. This comment of yours is a great case in point: 'Like the example of cooking, allowing jaw size and musculature to change, which allowed mouths to develop the agility and mobility for complex speech.' What you're describing there is a partcular speculative hypothesis that may or may not be true. The evidence for that theory is circumstantial at best, and is certainly not settled science.

Likewise, much of your speculation on the origins and importance of sexual dimorphism in humans. IIRC hoimind species have less sexual dimorphism then their ancestors. What have been the drivers for that decrease? No-one knows for sure, because the hard evidence mostly isn't there. All we have are hypotheses.

This is why it's a mistake to present the theories of evolutionary psychology as fact. The evidence we have on human evolution is patchy to say the least, and what we're left with is at best interesting speculation, and at worst 'just so' stories that are merely an appeal to evolutionary theory in order to 'naturalise' the status quo.