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?

I was weaned on feminist texts, StewieGriffinsMom . Life has moved on for many women, although most of you lot in the Feminist topic seem to be living in 1960...

... to go with the passive aggressive smileys

Herbex - I am not sure that what we are saying is so different. When it comes down to it you are seeking to make sense of human behavior by thinking about intrinsic traits (that people are strongly influenced by upbringing) and cultural influences.

Calling that Patriarchy whether it happens in Saudi Arabia or the UK, just doesn't seem all that useful in understanding why in a country where most of the formal mechanisms of patriarchy (legal discrimination, no votes for women, unequal inheritance) have been dismantled .Violence and force really don't seem like good explanations for why women are still paid less, hate their bodies etc...

Everyone has jumped on my point that male-female relations are fundamentally different than the tribalism that underlies racism, because males and females interact first and foremost within families while other kind of groups don't. Pointing out the terrible prevalence of infanticide doesn't invalidate that point.

Families are influenced by political systems, but they also have dynamics of their own that are hard to break down (see the failure of the Kibutz systems experiment at reinventing parent-child relations). Famillies existed before political systems, so why should all the explanation for how things are reside in political systems.

As per the child labour example it is easy to say 'exploitation' but hard to pin it down and tackle it. Who is doing the exploiting, the parents who are desperate because they have more children than they can feed? The employer who says they are giving a child a job, and keeping them off the street? The labour inspector who has got too big an area to cover and not enough money to pay his staff? The child who lies about their age when the inspector comes? The embedded culture of corruption? The employer beats the child. But violence is a symptom not the cause of the situation. Bad things happen for complex reasons not simple ones.

Himalaya patriarchy is a political and a social system, it is not just a political system. The nuclear family is patriarchal, so is marriage.

Women may be able to vote in the UK but they cannot walk the streets at night (or go home for many women) without fear of sexual violence - this is patriarchal.

Women are paid less in the UK because we are considered to have less value than men and we have an economic system which penalises women for bearing children - this is patriarchal.

Women hate their bodies in the UK, because women are objectified and their physical appearance is considered a very important aspect of their identity. Women's body parts are fetishised and 'femininity' requires that women alter their natural state in order to be considered acceptable (attractive) to men - this is patriarchal. We are bombarded with images of what is considered acceptable in a women - problem is that most of us don't look like that.

I still don't understand your point about child labour - child labour is not an oppressive social and political system.

I'm still surprised that you do not see the parallels between male supremacy and white supremacy. Indeed the two oppressions are intertwined - at the top of the hierarchy we have rich white adult males and at the bottom we have poor female children of colour. Both systems function with people being classed as belonging to the privileged group or the disadvantaged group. (The class system is the same).

Child labour could be used to explore the concept of privilege and disadvantage - poor black children are more likely to be exploited than rich white children. What is to blame for this? Well, it is oppression by a system that treats people differently depending on whether they belong to the socially constructed advantaged or disadvantaged group. Child labour is however not an oppressive system - it is a consequence of oppression.

Also legal discrimination has not been dismantled in the UK - this is (one of the reasons) why rape convictions are so low.

Laws and constitutions can be changed overnight but attitudes and cultural practices take generations.

For example - if you give the lower classes the vote but the only people they can vote for are upper class, you have legislated for equality but you have not achieved it. (Yet - and it will take generations).

"The nuclear family is patriarchal, so is marriage."

Huge legislative progress has been made in the past half century, both the United Kingdom and in France, in order for marriage to be equal for both parties. While you might debate the differences between the outcomes between the countries (and we now have a great deal of hindsight with which to do so), the political will for equality is clear.

The political will for equality is far from clear.

As long as you have mainstream politicians pretending that equality has been achieved or even asserting that women are now better off than men and have some sort of legal and economic advantage over men, you can bet your bottom dollar that there is no political will for equality - there is the opposite, there is resistance to equality every painful step of the way.

Every single bit of equality women wring from the patriarchy, is greeted by howls of protest from men (and some women) who see it as a step too far.

I think Beachcomber has spelled out very clearly why we still live in a patriarchy, your objection to the term appears to be that most of the formal laws and institutions have been dismantled or altered Himalya (although I think we could put up a bloody good argument that the medical, legal and political structures still look institutionally patriarchal, but that's 3 threads all to themselves so I won't digress to that now), what would you call the political, social and economic system which still treats women and their concerns as less important than men and their concerns?

There is vigorous debate when new "equality" legislation is mooted because when you give to one, you take from another and finding an appropriate balance is very difficult indeed. It is just not as simple as early legislation, such as giving the vote to women.

Well yes, groups whose privilege is being encroached upon, do tend to rather take it amiss and see it as unfair.

Because unfairness the other way, is seen as the norm.

So the fact that women are systematically disadvantaged for bearing and nurturing babies then doing the lion's share of parenting to the detriment of their finances, is seen as fair and natural and normal and any attempt to redress that is seen as taking it all "too far". Or vigorous debate as you prefer to call it.

Herbex - I guess my objection to the term is because it is so all encompassing that I wonder if it is meaningful. All societies in existence now, and most i can think of in history, have had some level of inequality between men and women, so all are part of 'the patriarchy' I guess, despite many many different political and social systems in place. Just giving it a name doesn't help to understand why or how it came about.

The explanation that some men (at some unspecified time in history) chose to take power, and subsequent generations have not been able to break that pattern (or is it that all men make the choice anew?) just isn't satisfactory to me. I'm just the kind of person who wonders why.

To the extent that this seems to be a human universal phenomenum it seems likely that it has some basis in human nature, not just in social and political systems . And the unwillingness of some people (at least on this thread) to entertain the notion that humans are social animals, with an evolved nature (even to the extent of stating that testosterone production has nothing to do with genes etc...)seems to put the theory on shaky grounds.

It seems to play into the myth that there were some simpler, better times when men and women (and people in general?) lived in harmony and equality, that this was stolen from us and we need to get back to them.

I think the truth is that the better sides of society - human rights, protection of the vulnerable and the freedom not to conform to whatever the strongest power dictates, is a relatively recent and utterly marvelous development, albeit incomplete and still vulnerable to the human tendencies to hoarding power, emphasising status and favoring in-groups and relations.
These advances were enabled by brave politcal fighters, but also by the technological innovations that mean that life is not a daily struggle for survival.

I think the myth (and its day to day counterpart, the assumption that natural=good) is misleading, and gets in the way of thinking about how to proritise and solve problems...but I don't disagree with you that there are problems!

"To the extent that this seems to be a human universal phenomenum it seems likely that it has some basis in human nature, not just in social and political systems"

Slavery seems to be a human universal phenomenon too, if you mean by universal, very recent human history in terms of evolution.

We have been on the planet as a species, for an awful lot longer than the patriarchy defines as history. (It defines most of our history, as pre-history -only a tiny part of it, the most recent part, is defined as history).

Human nature can change. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps the need to have slaves and to suppress half of humanity, has been part of male human nature (has it been part of female human nature too, and if so, why has it needed to be so heavily policed?) for the last few centuries. But what of the millenia before? And what of the centuries to follow? Who cares if it was or is part of human nature, if it is then we have to change human nature. And I ask again, is it part of the female part of human nature, or just the male part? Are you really saying that our natures are so different? And if so that's an argument for men to hand power over lock stock and barrel to woemn because their history is fucking abysmal.

ITA with HerBeX.

If men 'can't help it' they need to hand the power over right now, because they are the wrong ones to have it.

Herbex & Beachcomber

I don't mean 'the patriarchy is all one thing and is explained by one simple explanation in human nature that men and women are fundamentally different'

What I mean is 'what people call the patriarchy is a wide range of complex phenomena. Some of it is the result of unfair rules, some explicit sexism, some of it is implicit/unthinking sexism and cultural assumptions about what men and women should/shouldnt do and some of it individuals choices (influenced by society & biology). Some of it can be understood as a historical hangover from the days when you had to devote full time, hard labour just to stop yourself and your children sucumbing to starvation, disease or attack - the kinds of social and evolved traits that enabled survival in those days are not all good now that we can afford to be more enlightened, and some of it is related to evolved traits of mate selection (where health and youth were more important to men in selecting mates, where wealth and status were more important to women), intensified by someone else's ability to make money from that (I.e. ......it's complicated!)

No I don't think men and women are all that different on a population level, but marginal differences can be amplified by economic systems. E.g if you take time off work for pregnancy and breastfeeding you get marginally better at childcare than your DH and marginally worse as an employee than others who haven't taken time off. And this then affects the subsequent decisions that you make about domestic life and career.

It is not a hard-to-police imposed rule for example that there are economic consequences of raising children. There just are. I am self employed. When I take time off to look after my kids I don't make money. Not because my clients are sexist bastards, just because I am doing something for my families benefit, not theirs. When my DH takes years off employment to be the main childcarer it has hurt his career as much as it hurt mine when I took time off. It is the default situation that families shoulder the burden of childrearing not employers or the state (families are after all the older institution...) We can chose to change that to some extent but there are costs involved so that's something to be negotiated as a democracy.

Male and female traits don't evolve separately but together (e.g. through sexual selection - the female prediliction for peacocks with long tails evolved alongside the male's tail length) and traits more commonly expressed in one sex are passed down both sides (men can inherit male pattern bald for example from their mothers side). In same way the societies that developed over history were not imposed unilaterally by men on women, they developed as the 'sucessful' responses to the environment at the time. Mothers and MILs for example have played a role in passing down gender roles etc...

I am shocked at your willingness to jump to a conclusion that is so illiberal and just does away with the idea of human rights altogether. "... that's an argument for men to hand power over lock stock and barrel to woemn because their history is fucking abysmal." . How would you do that? By taking away their right to vote, to stand for office, their right to hold property? That is just wrong, and totalitarian and scary (just as it is in Saudi Arabia..)

Himalaya you are knee jerking and not reading properly.

We are saying that if men are innately violent/controlled by testosterone and thereby unable to refrain from abusing power then that is an argument for them not to have power.

The feminist argument is that men are humane and not innately abusive, and that the masculine characteristics which lead to the abuse of power, and violence against women, are socially constructed. (Although there are separatist feminists who would disagree with this.)

I think what we are saying is that you can't have it both ways - what your argument comes down to is; 'might is right and male might is innate'.

I am saying 'might is not right and male abuse of might is not inevitable/innate'.

Nobody is arguing for taking the vote away from men (although your argument makes a strong case for it!).

What's your argument, Beachcomber? That because men sometimes abuse power, they are not fit to exert power?

Nope.

Then please clarify, because that is what I understood from your previous post.

I already have clarified.

No you haven't. And you can't, because you are writing mumbo-jumbo...

Or perhaps you just don't understand what I am saying, and have clarified in my post of Mon 11-Apr-11 08:58:08

"What's your argument, Beachcomber? That because men sometimes abuse power, they are not fit to exert power?"

Bonsoir you are treating me as some kind of imbecile - it is starting to grate.

I might clarify further if you stop being so rude and superior (which is kinda weird when you are the one who is failing to grasp a concept).