Why does patriarchy fear and need to suppress women?

[superstarheartbreaker]

Why are men so keen to withhold power from women? Is it fear of our reproductive potential?

Why does it have to be women v men? Why can't some men see us as equals? I find it quite odd.

Or could it be that our ability to give birth etc keeps us in a domestic sphere as it's " natural" to bf and raise kids.

Thoughts please.

IIRC, we can store sperm and use it in IVF to produce viable embryos to implant into women. I'm not terribly sure that you can implant viable embryos into men yet, can you? Or did I miss that in the literature?

So, no, we don't need men to reproduce, we just need sperm.

We need sperm that men produce....whether or not that means that we should diminish men as parents down to nothing more than producers of sperm is debatable.

As for women having what men want - that works both ways. Does that cause insecurity? Only if you're massively insecure, regardless of what gender you are.

I don't agree that men, as a rule, have something women want. Not anything organic, at any rate. The power and money was unfairly got and is unfairly hogged. Shared evenly, I doubt women would want what men have, but men, as a class, don't appear to able to cope without owning and controlling women. Doesn't even seem to be culturally specific. Even the concept of morality and honour bear this out. Invented by men to control women and excuse violence towards women who step out of line. There's no reverse concept.

Men produce sperm, though, so maybe this gen we would be fine, but future generations? Women carry the child and the actual reaction/sex takes place inside her body, but we need sperm and for that, we need men. And we need different men too, so the population isn't too genetically similar (or more genetically similar than we already are, humans are very closely related compared to other animals).

I don't think it is out of resentment at all. I think it is a simple need for power (which means greater chances of survival?) and the innate need which would have been inside men at least historically, for evolutionary and survival purposes. to reproduce and have as many offspring as possible. The only way to do this was to have lots of women who you could reproduce with, and to ensure that you could have as many offspring you would need to ensure those women in your group don't have children with other men. Whereas women, for survival purposes, could pretty much have kids with whoever. So men would (feel they?) need to dominate and protect women to stop them and other men having kids.

Of course that would be from thousands of years ago, but the system has stuck, I suppose, when it isn't necessary for survival/reproduction purposes and society has developed far enough that there is no point in it. I'm probably completely wrong history wise, though.

Surely men have what women wants?

Sex, well- certainly. Affection, yes. Warmth, yes. Men give them the ability to experience motherhood.

Agree Vampire. All the things that men want from women that were quoted upthread are wanted just as much in reverse - sex, affection, warmth, (motherhood) fatherhood.

I'm interested in this idea of men as a class - and women as a class. Since when was it healthy or appropriate to generalise as opposed to looking at specifics? And when did we become homogenous masses that behave in certain ways? I really thought we had moved past that way of thinking.

SirChenjin - I totally agree with you in relation to the use of 'class'. It's such nonsense, but it appears to be used to allow for the outrageously comment to be expounded about 'men'.

As a great man once said when addressing a sizeable crowd of followers - 'you're all individuals'.

Just looking at that homogenous....should it be homogeneous?

Absolutely agree cadno - we are all individuals and deserve to be recognised as such. In no other discussion would we tolerate such generalisations, and yet it's somehow acceptable in feminist discourse to make sweeping claims about 50% odd of the world's population? Another and a for good measure.

Wowser

About men wanting what women can give...yes of course women want those things too,and men obviously have other powers that women want...sorry I'm putting this very crudely, as generalisations (me a bit tired), but this does tie in with my ex career in mental health where I worked with many angry men who as almost caricatures of misogyny expressed primitive and deep seated anger towards women.

The men had physical, financial and institutional power, but the women in their lives had , for want of a better phrase, emotional and psychological power over the men. The angriest men, some who had murdered , often expressed fear and anger of their mothers who had been punitive or uncaring towards them, and felt that towards other women for withholding love and affection (in their terms)

I know these are extremes and so probably not worth holding up, and on the other side of things it is great to see so many more men taking up child care, equal home working and more 'nurturing' work than was common even fairly recently, but I think that there is a fundamental need in many males to dominate women out of insecurity and resentment..but that could just be the company I used to keep

If I were a man, I would be SO ashamed. Men have pretty much ruined everything...the planet, animals, women, children......yet when I ask men if they are ashamed, they say no!? They are either arrogant or stupid. Men have destroyed this planet. When I see the children of Gaza weeping and screaming in pain, I could cry... it is MEN who have done this, yet they don't give a shit.

My husband agrees with me when I say men are a curse on this planet. The good men are dying out, and we should ALL be afraid of that.

ohdobuckup - why do you see it as fundamental ? In my line of work, I hear a great deal of men described that way - although I rarely met them. However, amongst my own group of friends and acquaintance, I can think of none. Are your examples drawn from any one particular part of society?

In my experience, men (in the workplace) just do not trust women to do the job. They think of women as inferior beings who cannot be taken seriously, don't work as hard, will not commit to long hours and at any given moment, will become pregnant and muck everything up; forcing them (the men) to find and train a temporary replacement.

When an intelligent and hardworking female does penetrate the ranks, she is resented for her success as, by being there, she threatens their superiority. Opportunities will not fall into her lap the way they do for her male contemporaries and the networking and support they provide for each other is not extended to her.

I think it all comes down to superiority and a belief that a woman's raison d'être is to bear children and keep house. So, I don't think they are afraid of our reproductive potential. They just want to limit our potential to just that.

Cadno - perhaps, in that I used to work with some extremely violent offenders, and also addicts who had deep seated anger issues and sorrow/self-pity/distress about their parenting, and while there were many who had poor/fearful relationships with their fathers, but it was an expression of resentment towards their mothers which seemed more common.
It was if it was expected, deep seated ( primitive?) that women would be the nurturer, care giver, unconditional love giver, and when a woman didn't fit that mould, there could be a backlash against women in general.

I remember frequently hearing these tough violent men expressing real shock and disappointment and disapproval of women in the armed forces, or female staff that could match (and often beat!) male staff at drinking, swearing and shagging. Again, I realise these are extreme examples but I do think it can be seen in a watered down version in many male behaviours and attitudes.

I think I have also seen the after effects on boys especially at boarding school up to the 1960's where there was an expectation of hardness and 'manliness' to be instilled that strove to break the connection with anything considered 'female' or 'soft', so those attributes were to be denied in boys/men ...sorry going off on a tangent and that's a whole other thread about what happens to socialise young men in our or other societies.

Cadno- males are more vulnerable than females at every life stage. As prem babies, infants, children, teenagers, as victims of violent crime, diseases only men get, suicide, even in plane crashes young women are more likely to survive.

Male life expectancy is lower in every society.

Their lack of a second X chromosome makes then biologically vulnerable in all sorts of ways.

The human race needs sperm and women to survive. With the freezability of sperm, men as such aren't necessary in the basic survival sense.

The vision of a world without men is a whole other thread.

Weatherall well, having a Y chromosome sure has been fun. But I fully expect to die well before my gf - she's 7 years younger and as you say men have a shorter life expectancy. Seems to be a feature of our species. can't live forever eh - the important thing is not to let it get you down ?

ohdobuckup - No need to apologise for being tangental - it was interesting. No doubt there's a whole spectrum of male behaviours out there. Did you enjoy your job ?

Pepper what?

How about saying 'powerful, horrible people have ruined pretty much everything'. Men are not innately worse than women, ffs, or better! Men across the world are more likely to be in a position of power, and therefore those who are powerful and use that power horribly are more likely to be male. But that does not men as a gender are a 'curse' ffs. Have you got a son? A brother? How is your husband a curse?

What a lot of rot you and your husband speak Pepper - do you generalise to that extent as a habit?

No, pepper does have a point.

Have a look at the crime statistics. Around 85% of all crime is committed by men, according to this site fullfact.org/articles/bad_and_dangerous_to_know_do_men_commit_almost_all_crime-28939 I could dig up more official figures I expect if anyone's going to pay me to look (just kidding).

We could also have an interesting discussion about male v female behaviour at the head of companies around the world who do huge environmental and social damage and seem to have little ethics. Or we could if there were more females to watch at any rate. The crime stats are more easy to argue argue about as that's reasonable evidence.

Your use of the word innate is an interesting question. Is it innate? Nature v nurture? I come down on most behaviour being nurture and on,y a little being nature.

Either way I don't think we will have achieved true equality unless the problem of men, as revealed by criminal behaviour, is recognised and we start seriously discussing what to do about it. I'd be very interested in that as a mother to a boy (2: not bank robbing age!).

I think behaviour is mainly nurture. Not specific characteristics you would inherit from your parents particularly, so your parents having a specific personality type wouldn't, imo, affect you, but I think evolution means we are more likely to have certain characteristics than others, for survival. We have been small group animals and for that to be successful, we need compassion and empathy and so on which would be unnecessary if we weren't group animals as we would only be looking after ourselves, and those feelings would be a hindrance. But it isn't hard and fast or anything. We need to be looking for power as that would ensure you were more likely to survive and that need to survive is a part. I would say, imo, how we feel is nature, but how we use or listen to or act on those feelings is mainly nurture.

The whole evolutionary thing is a red herring now. At some point, 1000's of years ago, men might have been seen as superior beings, because of their ability to hunt, with women being inferior due to carrying, birthing and feeding offspring. In hunter gatherer societies, it is mostly the women who provide the staple foods which keeps the tribe alive, hunts may or may not be successful, and the tribe still needs to eat, admittedly, I have more experience of living in HG societies within the Australian Aboriginal tribes, but, from what I've read, they are pretty similar. It's all very interesting.

In modern society, these things don't hold true. We (on the whole) don't need to hunt for survival, physical prowess is less necessary now than it was those 1000's of years ago. To suggest that men, because they are more physically powerful, are always going to be seen as 'better' smacks of evo psych.... which is the biggest tub of arse going.

No, I don't think it is. I think thousands of years ago, a patriarchal society was natural and made sense for basic survival. But that system has stuck when we have no need for it at all.