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?

it does sound like bollocks.

Not only a justification for rape, but the belief that war is inevitable is highly suspect. when you investigate the processes of it you find that it's nothing but another patriarchal construct, like nation states and "races".

Once we crush the patriarchy (!), once women have enough power to STOP war- remember, women never start wars, we just don't have enough power (yet) to STOP the boys and their toys- then there will be no more war.

Women won't brutalize other people the way men do. They can't impregnate anyone for a start.

And yes, races are made up. How many races are there? It's totally random. HUman beings lay on a continuum of various shades and features. Racism was systematically invented in order to justify slavery. It could have been nose or forehead size that differentiated people to the benefit of one group; it happened to be skin colour.
A lot of people have it backward and think that slavery came about because there was an inherent belief that blacks were inferior. That all came later. For many hundreds of years people from all races mingled along the silkroad, in marketplaces, bartered with each other (probably selling women as chattel...)

It looks to me as if you're the one refusing to link cause & effect, Himalaya.

Firstly: rape is probably not a 'natural' means of procreation. During Victorian explorations, some unevolved societies were discovered in which people of both sexes were frequently & randomly sexually active, where there was no concept of child 'ownership'. Although rape and prostitution, for example, have been observed amongst other primates (notably chimps) it's more usual for apes to mate willingly. Throughout the animal kingdom, rape is used as a means of exerting power; it is rarely the normal method of insemination.

Secondly: testosterone tends to make the male stronger (that's not a given, btw). This endows the male with the ability to rape. Males use this physical advantage as a tool for power. In raping all the women and killing all the men, they ensure a new society that is vulnerable to their domination. This is a cultural phenomenon; I can't see how you want to dispute that? Mass rape -> cultural domination -> patriarchy.

Thirdly, your view of secondary sexual characteristics seems a bit odd. Are you telling me that, shown faces of 20-year-old men and women from the same region of China, for instance, or of Native Americans, you'd be able to identify the gender of each one? Likewise, speed and build are determined by many factors other than sex. I'm not sure a fast African female runner is slower than her brother, or that an Aboriginal man can wander further than his wife. Hair distribution is unimportant to survival and doesn't seem to have evolved other than by accident!

It seems a waste to put all your clever thinking to such apparently woolly ends. Where are you headed with this?

I haven't read Pinker, so I'm just guessing as to the content from the title (bad tactics I know) but Blank Slate theory has been largely discredited as a theory within psychology and child development fields.

However I still think that while you can theorise about The Patriarchy in abstract generalisations about male-female dynamics, in reality it is difficult to conceptualise as a) it's so big and so ingrained b) it's so personal c) it invades the home in a way other -isms/-archies don't/can't. So I also think that the comparisons being made earlier between, say, Racism and Sexism are, while interesting, not really valid. Sexism has probably got a good million years head start on racism to begin with....

Even "I'm not a feminist" women do, Dittany. You'll find them making sideways remarks like "He thinks he doesn't have to because he's man", advising young women to flirt because "men are the decision-makers" and openly admitting to manipulation, that being their best perceived strategy. You don't need to use the word to know it's real.

As the Patriarchy seems to me to be a shifting entity depending on which part of society is involved I don't really see how it can be smashed.

Is the Patriarchy maintained through violence in this country?

I took it that MrIC meant that it is difficult to accurately name the cause for patriarchy (I doubt there is one sole reason more an accumulation of factors) since we are talking hundreds of thousands of years.

of course Dittany - I should have been clearer.

What I meant was, some people (not many on this board of course) struggle to conceptualise The Patriarchy as they can't see it manifested in the same was Communism, Nazism, etc were. Thus they reject the idea that it exists and call those of us who insist it does conspiracy-theory crack pots. That's because the Patriarchy has, in most places, gone beyond needing to be actively enforced - the structures were long ago put in place and build into most cultures around the world, so it's now self-sustaining.

It may come as a shock to you that not everyone grasps this fact as self-evident, which (and now I do sound like a conspiracy theory nut ) just goes to show how successful it's been. It's even got lots of women convinced it doesn't exist and male dominance has been down to natural differences between the sexes.

hence my distinction between talking generally about The Patriarchy (which suggests one, global super-structure; inaccurate in my view) in theory, but then breaking it down into the myriad of independently operating structures (sexual segregation justified by religion, sexism in language, capitalist valuation of people based on wage-earning potential, domestic/sexual violence) to show how it works outside of the Politics seminar.

Garlicbutter-

I don't know what you mean by 'unevolved societies' exactly how had they been evolving for less time than the Victorian explorers? And you seem to be saying that their behavior is 'more natural'- why on earth would that be ???

That different cultures are different is not news. As I said to Ditanny it has been a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms since human beings left Africa and went their sepperate ways for a while. So evolved/genetic differences between people in different geographies are fairly surface level (race is a construct etc...) and the rest is culture.

Anyway, Victorian racism aside,the conquest and rape scenario you describe is a mechanism of natural selection that would result in individuals that were stronger, more aggressive and prone to rape passing down that trait to more surviving offspring. It really isnt primarily a story of the cultural transmission of rape as tool of domination at all (although I'm sure there is some of that too)

First you've got the battle between the men - who gets killed? The weaker, slower on both sides, then all of the losing side who don't escape (so that's genetic pressure 1- for stronger more aggressive men)Then they rape all the women. This does ensure a new society in which the winners dominate as you say, but also a next generation that carries those genes. Etc... over generations... you see how that works?

What I don't understand is how you think men got to be stronger (in general, accross the population) in the first place, if not through the gradual replication of scenarios like this. The idea that men were stronger and then they decided to dominate society just isn't coherant.

I don't know why you think recognising secondary sexual characteristics is odd its biology 101. Yes I think I'd get better than 50% right guessing if Chinese or native American faces are male or female. Someone more used to looking at people from that region would do better. And?

'Hair distribution is unimportant to survival and doesn't seem to have evolved other than by accident! ' Nothing evolves by accident. It just doesn't work that way. Survival isn't the only selection pressure. There is also sexual selection - peahens like the peacocks with the biggest tails (it's damn nuisance but if you can afford to grow a tail like that you must be fit - + your sons will have long tails and attract more peahens etc...) I expect hariness/hairlessness is something similar.

What am I getting at?

The way we are as individuals and as societies is a combination of nature and nurture. And they developed together. It's really uncontroversial.

It doesn't undermine feminism. But feminists not understanding it does.

Evolution.. nature and nurture, what the paragraph above it says.

I mean Garlicbutter saying that some societies are 'unevolved' and no one else noticing (it's racist and it's a complete misunderstanding of evolution) kinda shocked me.

I think it's a huge shame that more people don't understand one of the most important advances in human understanding in the world that's all. Not just feminists, but everyone.

I think it's a shame that more people don't understand feminism.

I also think it's a shame that more people don't understand the socially constructed nature of science. It's a bunch of theories that make sense at a point in time with the evidence available at that time, adapted to suit the social context. Science does not exist in a vacuum so of course it can be used to justify patriarchy, it was written within a system developed within patriarchy. Donna Harraway is good on this.

Most people don't understand evolution. Everyone's heard of it, and think they get it, but alot is misunderstood in popular imagination. It's not intuitive. It doesn't get taught well in school.

I just think it's a shame if feminists don't get it, because it's helpful to understand society. Not so bothered if train spotters or Chefs as a group don't get it.

Dittany - what is the mechanism by which gender inequality -economically, in power and influence (now, UK) is enforced by violence? It is not obvious to me why/how that is the primary mechanism? If that means I don't understand feminism maybe I don't. Can you educate?

garlicbutter- '... unevolved societies ...' you have got to be fucking kidding! You can't be that ignorant, surely? Then again, ' ... doesn't seem to have evolved other than by accident!' perhaps you are?

I would go through your post and point out the many flaws in it but I don't think you'd understand - you don't appear to have the most basic grasp of what evolution means. I suggest you do yourself a favour and read up on the basics before you show yourself up any further. The Selfish Gene is a great introduction to this stuff, but if the title or Dawkins' style of writing puts you off, any entry level book on genetics and evolution would enable you to see where you'd gone wrong.

'woolly thinking' ...

dittany, I don't understand how me saying 'I realise this will enrage some of you' is some sort of 'crack' It certainly wasn't meant that way.

I don't have time to compile a decent literature review for you (in fact, I'm bowing out of this discussion this evening as I'm having some serious problems with DS and won't have the time to MN for a few days). Luckily Pinker has already done so and for those who are genuinely interested, I can recommend The Blank Slate. It's not a comfortable read but it is very well researched. There's a video lecture about the book here, although I haven't watched it myself yet. Or you could just google 'sex differences evolution' and find masses of papers, articles and books.

There are unanswered questions on the other side of this debate too though, aren't there? If male dominance is purely down to culture, when did things turn to shit? Where's the evidence that things have ever been different, anywhere? If there are no psychological differences between male and female humans, what are we to make of the TG community who fight so hard for corrective surgery, believing themselves to be born into the wrong gender? Nobody has answered these questions - where is your evidence?

You may be talking about male violence towards women, but that isn't where this discussion started. I think male violence towards other men is extremely relevant to this discussion - certainly more relevant than all the stuff about race, which any genetic scientist would confirm is only skin deep. If we want to understand and solve the problem of male violence towards women, it makes sense to look at male violence in all its manifestations for context, if nothing else.

MrIC - yes, Pinker is arguing against the blank slate theory.

dittany -'Who says feminists don't understand evolution? That's a silly thing to say.'

well, some of us do ....

garlicbutter - 'unevolved societies' ... ' ... doesn't seem to have evolved other than by accident!'

... and some of us plainly don't.

I'm out of here. Himalaya, I am in awe of your patience.