Separatist Feminism

[VictorGollancz]

Ok, I really am really very late for work at this point but I thought it might be nice to have a space in which we can discuss separatist feminism. I've read a lot of advocates of it, and even incorporate some elements of it into my own life - I prefer not to live with men, for example - but I don't practise it totally and I can't find any examples of any separatist communes.

Does anyone know anything more about it? Does anyone live in a separatist way?

Surprisingly good Wiki link here

Yup, heteromonogamy is about ownership of women as breeding stock - oh, and as domestic servants. Every form of human society in existence has been founded on a way of having a slave class to do the domestic shitwork - and how stable the society is depends on how well the slave class is convinced that slavery is its destiny.

I think it is about genes and the passing on of genes. There are women who have children by different fathers, but those fathers' genes are passed on. They often don't provide for their children and don't care if the woman has other children by other men. I think it was an ownership of women rather than an ownership of reproduction. I think it was a status thing and a genetic fear of bringing up other men's children in a society that enforced marriage. But in a society that did not enforce marriage, then there would be less chance of bringing up someone else's child.

I don't think women are on teh whole anti-social, unlike men. Killers, thieves, criminals and revolutionaries are preponderantly men, not women. I think society in Ancient Rome and throughout history always feared large numbers of unemployed, stakeless men and had to socialise them, often by national service or army recruitment etc.

Claig, people didn't know about genes for ages.
You are sort of onto something with the second paragraph, though: one of the founding principals of patriarchy is that men are each entitled to own a woman - while powerful men in some societies have been seen as entitled to own more than one, it was always regulated so that at least the vast majority of men had access to a woman on the grounds that men who didn't would be resentful and aggressive and steal women that other men owned. Nice way of looking at the world...

I think people instinctively knew about genes before scientists formalised it. People knew that their children looked like them and looked different to other peoples' children thousands of years ago. I think the ownership of women was possibly due to the same underlying genetic instinct of preventing a man bringing up someone else's child and genes. I think the Turkish sultans had a harem of lots of women, which was guarded by eunuchs to prevent them passing on their genes with these women. I think it is similar to lions in the jungle, where teh chief lion had many females and teh younger lions often don't mate.

It was about owning women and preventing other men impregnating them. But I think that was because men were part of the unit bringing up the children, which most societies made the norm. But nowadays, many men don't bring up their children, and they have no interest in owning those women's wombs. Similarly when soldiers invaded countries and later left, they often left children behind, but they had no interest in controlling those womens' wombs, since these men played no part in bringing up those children or any future children of those women. I think it really comes down to genes and genetic investment.

I think that society wants men to have the investment in their children. I think that if society did not make it a norm, then many men would choose to have no investment in their children, just like the male Spartans had not much investment in their children, even throwing weaker children off cliffs etc.
I think it is an animal thing. How much input does the chief lion have with bringing his children up?

I think they did also invest in their daughters, but yes they saw their male children as more important, because they had more chance of gaining power. But Agamemnon invested in Helen. Men cared about their daughters and protected them and often killed men who mistreated their daughters.

Most killings of rapists will be done by other men rather than women - by fathers, relatives, friends or even other men in prison who attack them.

I'm not putting a spin on it. I think patriarchy itself has roots in animal behaviour. It wasn't just something that someone thought up one day. I think it follows animal behaviour social rules.

But there is evidence of matriarchies, in China for example, Claig. Christianity usurped the Great GOddess, and the only way patriarchal religion then managed to gain the power it did was by massacring literally millions of wize women during the "witch"-crazes of Europe and America.

You might be right to say that men are programmed to kill in this way in order to retain their power.

I personally, have more faith in men. I believe they are conditioned to it. I believe we can return to a peaceful matriarchy one day.

And besides, humans are mammals, but we have the kind of intelligence that animals don't have. I think we should move beyond running society by our instincts the way men have done. We should start using logic and reason. Wars come about because men are unable to settle disputes with their brains, and instead use testosterone-fuelled reactions to make decisions.

Claig, women are not allowed to kill their rapists. Patriarchal courts send women to jail for the slighest mishaps.
If most rapes aren't reported, and most don't get a conviction, because women simply aren't believed then what do you think will happen if a woman kills a man because she was raped by him.
She'd get life. We all know it's true,

There was a mother in Spain recently who killed the man who raped her 13 year old daughter when he was let out from jail for a few days for his birthday (WTF) and sneered at her on the street. She has been locked up in a mental hospital for "pychological evaluation" ., THe patriarchs will put her through the wringer.

Men's right to rape women and children must be protected at all costs in a patriarchy, and the court system and police do their duty in upholding this status quo. We can't have women going around killing their daughters' rapists now can we.

MEn, actually, don'T kill or attack the rapists of their wives and daughters very often. ANd if they do, it's because the rape was seen as a property violation . Until 1992 in Britain, rape was defined as a man forceibly having sex with a woman who was not his wife
According to British law, a man couldn't rape his wife, because she was his property. It's only if you touched another man's property that you were in trouble.

Yes there are matriarchal societies, but not in teh majority. I think nature is vast and there are all sorts of different behaviours and social organisations between animals. For example, teh cuckoo leaves its children to be brought up by other birds, but it is in teh minority among birds. I think nature carries out experiments with different social organisations and human matriarchal and patriarchal societies are different ones, but patriarchy is teh most common one among humans worldwide.

I think the witch crazes were about power and the Church imposing its dominance in all spiritual and healing fields. But the Greek and Roman religions were before the Christians and were also patriarchal, although they did have goddesses. The Christian church became even more patriarchal than the older pagan religions.

I think men are programmed to that, like animals in nature are. But they can be conditioned out of it by socialisation and that is where marriage, a stake in society, national and military service are used to condition men to society's needs. 100 years ago men weren't present at teh birth of their children, but now through socialisation they are. Things change and men are changed by society. Yes it is logic and reason that have created societies over millenia with systems of law and justice, rather than teh barbaric rule of teh tribal chief.

But, wars will never end, because wars are about power and men are programmed to seek power. One day drugs will be used to sedate them and stop them getting power, but teh people who administer these drugs will be the ones in power. Power will never vanish and those who get power will always have that ruthless animal streak.

All we can do is seek to make society fairer, kinder and more equal. But we will never have a perfect world, because at heart humans are animals and have an underlying animal logic of survival, which is nature "red in tooth and red in claw".

But don't you think that a man who killed a rapist would get the same punishment? Society tries to eliminate vigilantism because it is a threat to law and order and teh supremacy of the law. Countries like Albania and Afghanistan have much higher vigilantilism than we have, because the law is not as strong in those countries. Public lynchings used to happen in America, but when teh law took teh upper hand, it stamped them out.

I watched a programme on TV about the Camorra last night. That is a lawless society where brigands wreak vengeance outside teh law. If anybody raped teh daughter or sister of a brigand, he would immediately be killed by these men. Fathers, brothers and male relatives would avenge the raped woman. But in a society of law, where the law has the upper hand, vigilantism occurs much less often.

Here is an interesting article, SAF, Claig, SGB and co, about the different theories on human sexual relationships and how they might have evolved.

Claig, women want power too - some more than others - and some men are not interested in power. Human beings are simultaneously co-operative and competitive - only a very, very few human beings can survive without some form of human company, yet too much human company makes us fight each other for access to resources.

The thing about the law is that it is also power, just a greater power than the tribal chiefs in Afghanistan. The law is backed by the state with its huge arsenal of power and that is why in developed countries the law can defeat the brigands, unless the brigands get to be in charge of the law. Without power, there could be no law.

SGB, I agree. I am not saying everyone is the same. But there are fewer women than men like Saddam Hussein, and obviously people like Stalin, Hitler and Saddam Hussein are the minority among men also, but fewer women than men are as ruthless and power hungry as them.

I agree, I think it is a mixture of honour and subconscious protection of genes.
It may be that the honour itself is a system that formalises genetic protection, I don't know.
The societies we think of today have honour killings, but I don't think that was true of all societies in the past. In the story of Helen of Troy, Helen went off with Paris off her own accord. The Greeks waged war on Paris and the Trojans, but they didn't kill Helen. I think some human behaviour is driven by subconscious instincts, some of it based on genetic advantage.