Who is part of the patriarchy?

[EatsBrainsAndLeaves]

When we use the term patriarchy, do you think that the men you know are part of the patriarchy? And if no, then who is part of the patriarchy?

That makes sense kri.

I think you are probably right, about the important thing coming from this OP being whether privileged people can benefit when they're not actively asking for privilege. And I agree, they certainly can.

Sorry,

Darwin showed a hundred years ago that there is a struggle for existence, and species survive through natural selection. At first sight early humans didn't have a lot going for them.......What differentiates humanity from the lower animals is that, however self-reliant animals such as lions may seem, they ultimately just take external nature around them for granted, whereas, mankind progressively masters nature.

The process whereby mankind masters nature is labour. "mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, and therefore work before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion etc."

or even consider the place of women in the social order for that matter, but if man's actions and his development are shaped by the really pressing needs of eating etc, then s/he shapes those processes too. We labour. Although man is shaped by his environment he also shapes it. We can not conceive of anything without the outside acting upon our conscious.

This way of looking at the world and the development of human society is historical materialism and makes sense of early evolution right up to understanding all forms of oppression in society to this day. .....unless of course you think evolution stopped when we dropped out of a tree!

So why would we be bigotted about race? Where does racism stem from?
Same place sexism stems from but racism does not stem from sexism. Patriarchy theory can not explain other forms of oppression despite the fact that some claim it can.

'What differentiates humanity from the lower animals is that, however self-reliant animals such as lions may seem, they ultimately just take external nature around them for granted, whereas, mankind progressively masters nature.'

How could anyone prove that? That's not what Darwin's theory claims.

How is human 'labour' different from that of animals?

How has this to do with feminism?

As to why we (as a society) would be bigoted about race - well, because 'race' is a construct developed in order to justify exploitation of one group of people (typically, people who look 'different' and originate from a differnt part of the world, from the people deciding what a 'race' is).

How does sexism stem from racism? How could it?

Btw, 'sexism' and 'patriarchy theory' are not equivalent.

The patriarchy is, IMO, institutionally racist. This is because the patriarchy operates by constructing a binary opposition between the favoured group (men, specifically straight, white, upper class, Western men), and 'Everyone else', when it possibly can.

I think Kritique has just about nailed it, my only addition would to say that white men of course cannot jump! But neither can they be said to be free from many sites of oppresion so that they can firstly see the privledge they have, but even then seeing and then having the agency or space to stand out against it is another thing completely. Often it comes down to individual acts not a co-ordinated response. It is the co-ordinated response that many of the liberation/rights movemments have been striving for for many years. This in turn brings us back to the individual, their is no way or point, or value in forcing people to think or act in a certain way. So in order to achieve the equality for all the oppressed groups it needs the majority of people to buy in to the idealism and diffrent vision that at the moment only the minority have for our society, country, and world.

It has everything to do with feminism because all forms of oppression are born out of man's need to requisition resources. All exploitation is born out of this. Just as you have stated "patriarchy operates by constructing a binary opposition between the favoured group (men, specifically straight, white, upper class, Western men), and 'Everyone else', when it possibly can"

but why does it do this? because man hates women?

NO, it is because man shapes nature, he does this through labour, essentially altering the value of those resources and making them have a value. Oil is of no value what so ever if it is stuck in the ground. Even the ground in which the oil is situated ONLY has a value because man has developed the means to extract it.

The cause of ALL oppression has developed out of man's need to and ability to shape the world around him. Put simply it is the greed of man. It is not some weird abstract idea. Or do you think that early proto humans developed a division of labour, then set about oppressing the women in the group. Did early tribal societies oppress women? There is evidence to suggest that early human society was very equal.

Ah, ok.

I don't know of the evidence that suggests early human society was equal, but I certainly believe that oppression is a mad-made construct, not a natural state.

I don't see what it has to do with god, or with race, but maybe it doesn't matter.

I cannot believe for one minute that early human society was equal in terms of gender.
I imagine the women were tough old gals but their confinements would have made equality difficult.
Religion is certainly a man made structure devised to subjugate women and the general masses.

Yes, that's true.

Some people think that, before the Romans conquered Celts in Britain, they may have had a matriarchial religion. But it's not easy to tell, because the evidence is not so very dissimilar to the iconography of the Virgin Mary. It's possible they had a patriarchial religion with female imagery, like early Catholicism.

Same with the prehistoric figures of women - we just don't know what they were for.

We don't have any reason to believe either sex was dominant.

Sorry - mine was to kim.

Was religion devised to subjugate women? I think so but why did anyone wish to subjugate women or the masses? Tithes and to protect personal property through marriage both of which point to private property and greed.

So if oppression, not the idea of it, the actual act of oppressing people (women in our case) is a man made system why was it constructed? If women are oppressed because of their biological sex, why did man construct an elaborate system of oppression to deal with something that is just a biological accident of birth? Womb envy maybe? surely not!

Before the advent of private property (which came about because of our evolutionary prowess) why did man worship many gods, many of whom were women? if later he sought to control her womb, why might he do that? because he wanted control over her life giving properties or because in many societies children actively contributed to the economy of the family and he sought control of them, ie their production and labour. Again it's economic.

Well, oppression is profitable, mini.

And people still worship many gods, many of whom are women, don't they? It doesn't prove the patriarchy wrong, and never has, I believe. Worshipping a female deity doesn't make someone a lovely, equal-opps feminist, and in fact there's a well-known misogynistic 'virgin/whore' complex.

oh do tell please, I don't know about this. I don't know of anything other than the Hindu religion, I thought they had a female god. I read something yesterday about how globalisation is actually setting back the women's movement in India because men have reacted negatively to what they see as imperialistic capitalistic western influences. So the men are making a fight back using conservative (essentially patriarchal) demands upon women.

It's easy to tell who is in the Patriarchy. Like Christians have little fishes on the back of their cars and learners have L plates, members of the Patriarchy have large letter Ps.

What LRD said.
Of course people want to subjugate others (women/men and the general masses)...how on Earth do you think our Royals got their jobs?
By being friendly?
It is certainly very profitable if you are the winner.
How many Queens have we had and how many of them were there without the support of male advisors?

Yes, that was what I was thinking of mini. Also paganism.

I don't honestly believe that there's a connection between Hinduism having female goddesses, and globalisation leading to setbacks in the status of women in India.

No I don't think there is a connection in the sense that Hindu men are oppressing women because they have female gods, although reading it again it seems to be about the idea that women should be pure and in some way defend existing patriarchal culture. I was reading this

"Bina Srinivasan contributes an interpretation of religious fundamentalism, based on her searing experiences of the communal violence in the state of Gujarat, India. She argues that religious fundamentalists are reacting to the ravages of globalization, as an extension of colonialism, by creating an imagined past in which the disruption to kinship and community systems is repaired. For this, they need an ?us? and a ?them,? with the ?them? in the role of dangerous disrupters who must be defeated. In this imaginary but powerful scenario, women have a central role as the defenders of cultural norms. Their purity guarantees the integrity of ?us,? and the impurity of the women of the ?other? represents part of the danger. In this context, Indian and other Third World feminists find their struggles for women?s human rights interpreted as dangerous, foreign intrusions, with fundamentalists outbidding them for the loyalties of women, who are given an important role with the forces of reaction"

sdonline.org/35/introduction-gender-and-globalization-marxist-feminist-perspectives/

I would think you could draw a parallel here with the Taliban, they see imperialist capitalist forces as the enemy and think that "other" women are somehow dangerous and that to allow their own women any power they are capitulating to those forces. Again though, it's men against men....a race for power and resources, women just seem to become bargaining chips....method of exchange, in the way that women were the first domestic slaves, women were traded and bartered and sold into marriage to form alliances and shore up class power.

Yeah, they're familiar dynamics. The patriarchy at work.

I'm not clear how it relates to globalization, if at all (I think that may be a red herring TBH). But the fact it's 'men against men' with women as 'bargaining chips' ... that is pure patriarchy at work, isn't it? We think of it it terms of 'men against men' (or we're told to), because 'women' in this context have been reduced to the level of not-even-human. Which is simultaneously horrific oppression, and the excuse for people to ignore women and not talk about the problem.

Of course we are all part of 'the patriarchy' if the patriarchy= the way things are/ the whole of human society.

I think the idea that women have been passive bystanders in the course of human evolution and history quite bizarre.

Has the OP totally abandoned ship here then?

She's probably embarrassed.

It's becoming a bit of a pattern, I hope she is OK and I hope she comes back

Ah, but eleanor, real feminists don't have a sense of humour!