do you believe in the patriarchy?

[bejeezusWC]

A poster on another thread said she views feminism as the struggle against patriarchy. That is how I view it too. I believe that is considered the rad fem stance?

Another poster said she didn't believe in patriarchy

I don't geddit

Why/how are women so unequal if not for patriarchal societies? WHO has been oppressing us?

Please tell me what you think, if you don't believe in patriarchy

Life is unfair.

So feminists just STFU.

Of course, life is completely, utterly, totally randomly unfair. It is just one big lottery with no rhyme or reason to it, at all. No siree.

It is just total coincidence that life's big ole random lottery has white men over represented in power, politics, finance and positions of status.

It is just total coincidence that poverty is feminized, that violence is gendered, that women are disadvantaged and marginalised.

Phew, we got that one worked out, quick smart - random unfair pot luck coincidence, the lottery of life. Got it!

Oh and PMSL at some of the naysayers saying;

STFU western feminists with your navel gazing and concentrate on developing countries.

And others saying STFU western feminists, you can't include developing countries when you talk about women's rights.

Shall we just summarize that to; feminists STFU?

I personally like the assumption that all developing countries are war-torn.

Though I really blame the media for this -- the only time you hear about most developing countries is when there's a war on.

And that developing countries need to do more farming!! Why? Because they're really not pulling their weight in the global growing of food stakes? Bizarre.

SAF - i agree that is why males evolved stronger upper bodies, because of the advantage it gives in fighting with, dominating, and killing other men to have more access to more females.

But that means that a pre existing male tendency to physical strength and aggression being used to dominate women can't be the ultimate cause of 'the patriarchy' (which is often stated here, and I understand as a fairly standard interpretation of the reason the patriarchy came about), because the evolutionary pressures that drove these adaptations were in themselves not very nice (to say the least).

I mean would you describe a society in which men fight over women and the strongest man wins as patriarchal? If so then this central aspect of patriarchy pre-existed male strength and aggression and isn't explained by it (or at least they co-evolved).

None of this is a justification for violence (whether between men, or men and women) but I think it does mean that patriarchy as a purely social construct ('not natural' etc...) just doesn't reflect reality.

Bit less having the fuck exploited out of them by western countries might sort some problems out for much of the developing world.

Alternatively they could just trying spinning the lottery balls again to see if their random totally coincidental luck changes.

Beachcomber - the alternative to 'patriarchy' as the underlying reason for inequality isn't 'cooincidence'.

Just as the alternative to divine creation as the underlying reason for the apparent designed nature of our world isn't cooincidence (although this is an argument that creationists buy into.

Organisms evolve, cultures evolve, societies evolve.

Himalaya are you arguing that male supremacist society is the natural order?

It certainly sounds like you are, and using evolutionary psychology to do so.

AKA the 'lady brains' school of thought.

Shall I post Harry Enfield again?

'There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise.'

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Explanation of why evolutionary psychology is generally not accepted by scientists, particularly biologists but also psychologists is explained here:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-psychology/

Beachcomber

'the natural order' is no guide for morality, or the way we should seek to organise our affairs.

Cancer is part of the natural order. That doesn't mean that we should tell oncologists and cancer nurses that they are misled in thinking that treating and preventing cancer is a good thing. We don't say they should down tools and let people die early and in pain, because to do otherwise would be to buck 'the natural order'.

Are you arguing that feminism is about trying to return the world to 'the natural order'. I don't think it is. I think it is about making the world fairer. The natural order is not fair.

Himalaya -- so you agree that inequality exists?

Do you agree that this inequality primarily benefits men?

If so, that's really all that 'patriarchy' refers to -- an unequal social order which primarily benefits men.

We can have a reasonable debate about the causes of this how this social order came about but to deny that it exists in the first place is just bizarre.

I think that debate is a bit of a distraction though. There is no one cause of inequality, there are many, and yes sure we can include physical features if you want, but it is how humans deal with and assign value to those physical features that tends to really have an impact.

To say that something is a social construct does not mean there are no physical aspects of it -- race, for example, is largely socially constructed, even though people do indeed have different shades of skin colour. But various societies interpret those differences very differently. Men and women may have different physiological attributes but it is what we make of those differences that helps determine our place in society.

The natural order argument against feminism, is that the current state of affairs, is a natural order, and not one influenced by human laws or intervention.

It is the natural order that men have higher status than women.

The natural order is neither fair nor unfair. It just is.

'Fair' and 'unfair' are human constructs.

It is contradictory to argue that the current state of affairs is the natural order, but concede that it is unfair.

I'm going out, not ignoring any replies.

i'm lost as to what your point is himalaya - you seem to still be arguing against a straw man. i don't think feminists argue that patriarchy is a natural state or a solely social construct. the arguing of either/or binaries in theory is pretty passe and i actually don't get what it has to do with believing their is a patriarchy or not? feminism doesn't massively concern itself with origins of culture as far as i'm aware - i am familiar with this stuff because of doing my first degree in anthropology. does it actually matter what the historical roots of patriarchy are? we have little in common with our first ancestors and the structures and systems we live in bear very little relation to those we started out in. everything changes and develops and moves forward - whatever the roots of patriarchal oppression are does nothing to justify the continuance of it now.

Me too

likewise there will be interesting theories and historical/anthropological perspectives on racism - it has little bearing though on whether we should accept it now or it justifies it now. whatever it's roots we are tackling and getting rid of it. the same can and must happen with misogyny and male supremacy.

Beachcomber - (in answer to one of your earlier posts) I think the OP was clear - it was about the concept of patriarchy - which I think is different from inequality, sexism, violence etc... and more than an umbrella term.

So to your questions - 'do you think women have equal status?' 'do you think society is male dominated?' 'do you think gendered violence has been eradicated' 'do you think women have fair and equal political representation' 'do you think the working world is male dominated and structured for men?'

My answers are

1. legally yes in most secular developed countries
2. yes, but less than it was
3. no
4. in most countries yes
5. yes, but somewhat less than it was.

I guess your answers are no, yes, no, no, yes (not trying to put words in your mouth , just guessing). So we agree on 2, 3 and 5, and in some countries 1 and 4?

I see that these things are wrong and need to be changed. I just don't see them as part of a phenomena that can be explained with a single word that is separate from the evolution of human beings, economies and societies.

First of all, that single word does encompass evolution of human beings, economies and societies. That is why it is a useful world - it is a (relatively) complete and global concept. Or certainly that is how I use it and it is how I understand it to be used in feminist analysis.

Answers to my own questions are as follows;

do you think women have equal status - no I don't (see porn, prostitution and trafficking for evidence of women as the sex class, plus grooming and beauty practices for evidence of women as 'decorative/objectified/faulty in our natural state/socialised to perform femininity, etc. Plus lower status attributed to female dominated professions, the institution of marriage, the focus on PIV, the constant fight for women's reproductive rights, rape culture, gendered violence, the status attributed to the social constructs of femininity and masculinity.)

do you think society is male dominated - yes I do (see above and below.)

do you think gendered violence has been eradicated - nope, and this one is a biggie.

do you think women have fair and equal political representation - no I don't, see stats from previous link to the LFN, plus look at how female politicians are presented/attacked in the press (Harriet Harman, Segolene Royale, Angela Merkel to name a few).

do you think the working world is male dominated and structured for men - yes I do (see debates on breastfeeding, childcare, glass ceiling, women's pensions, maternity leave, representation of women at board level, proportion of world finance held by women compared to proportion of work done by women, lack of real equal pay.)

Am dashing this off in a rush so have no doubt left plenty out. And we haven't even got onto the politics of housework nor really touched on gendered violence.

Sorry, I don't see how a single word (which clearly from this thread means different things to different peopl) encompass the how and why of attitudes and structures related to everything from breastfeeding to prostitution and from make-up to nursing. And with the same word covering the how and why of these issues in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Vanuatu, and since human beings first started to dominate each other (possibly before they were human beings...) up till now.

Which is why to me it seems very like the concept of 'god' - something that is patently obvious to some people and not to others, even when they are looking at the same things and ascribing 'good' and 'bad' to them in roughly the same way.

SAF - "whatever the roots of patriarchal oppression are does nothing to justify the continuance of it now."

Indeed - but it is worth trying to understand the roots I think, because it can only help to understand why things are the way they are and why they are hard to change.

The point is to combat injustice and inequality, not defend a particular theory about why that injustice and inequality exists, surely?

"It is contradictory to argue that the current state of affairs is the natural order, but concede that it is unfair."

Why?

Take an example outside of feminism:

Human beings have evolved to have the capacity to be murderous. This is adaptable to different contexts, but it is part of our nature.

Nevertheless it is not fair to the person being murdered (!) and so we say it is morally wrong.

You can't look for fairness in nature.

I don't really argue that the current state of affairs is 'the natural order', which you are right sounds like a justification (and bit Victorian), but it is natural -as in arising from human nature, and I think deeply intertwined in it (...where else could it have come from....?).

I don't 'concede that it is unfair', because this sounds like normally you would expect things that arised from human nature to tend towards fairness.

(that was to Beachcomber) :-)

we haven't evolved a capacity to be 'murderous'.

society doesn't evolve.

economics don't evolve.

a lot of social darwinism going on here.

See what I mean? The word seems to mean quite different things to different people.

Beachcomber you say the idea of patriarchy encompasses the way that human beings, societies and economies evolve.

SAF you also believe in the patriarchy but say that societies and economies don't evolve.

I think these distinctions are quite important - not to prevent people working together on issues they agree on - but to clear in our thinking and understanding of the world.