'Everyday sexism' vs origins of patriarchy and big ideas for the future

[thepennyshop]

I'm just getting into learning more about feminism and talking more about feminism, and I've found there is a lot of talk about the everyday sexism and obvious barriers women face. But there isn't much talk about big ideas for the future.

I suppose I'm frustrated because with the barrage of talk about everyday sexism (which is undoubtedly great to be highlighted) it makes it feel like great progress is being made every day, and people can't get away with being sexist anymore, or for much longer at least. But actually, people being sexist is just one small part of the problems women face. Do we just want people not to be sexist anymore? or do we want an end to patriarchy? And if so, what would go in its place? And why are we even living in a patriarchy in the first place?

I think it would be good to discuss those questions, so we knew what we were aiming for, and whether it was even realistically achievable.

Is anyone with me?

So if patriarchy has grown up since time immemorial and is so unconscious, maybe even based in genetics, is anyone here genuinely optimistic for women's liberation?
I think things are very different now in the west at least. Women aren't so likely to die in childbirth, peoples families dont starve due lack of income, and there is also contraception, so guarding behaviour and passing assets down the fathers line won't have the same benefit in maximising offspring and therefore genes passed on.

Ideally we would need some kind of pressure the other way e.g. women stop having children with shits.

I'm optimistic things will continue to progress and maybe quite quickly - look how far we've come already.

I'm only concerned about having enough but do you ever? There is always something.
To you, your house is the basic future but then you will start thinking about retirement, your holidays etc. What you want now might appear excessive to cave people. People evolve. The wants and what is seen as basic needs change too.

Probably me using new age as progressive is a bit too much for me because they can be the new breeding ground for reinforcing patriarchy. So yah! Maybe that was pushing it a bit

I'm optimistic things will continue to progress and maybe quite quickly - look how far we've come already.

I think this is true, as I understand it we can evolve culture incredibly quickly, we don't have to wait for genetics. If you compare your average persons beliefs 200 years ago to their beliefs now they would be poles apart I would think, but there's no genetic difference between people now and then. The "alpha male" of the catholic religion is celibate for example, so that's the exact opposite of what biological evolution would require :)

I disagree, when you have robots to do pretty much everything, the government can just tax companies enough in order to pay people a living while they can go about what they really want to do. Because do you honestly think the majority of people want to do their job?

And we should figure out how to deal with that, because don't be mistaken, this will come. And we better make sure it does not end up with millions unemployed their jobs being done by robots and them not receiving an income.

PostTruthBreakdown "Vestal's summary of the likely origins of patriarchy is more likely to be accurate, and in the west I can even give the people she describes a name - the Romans."

Like there was no patriarchy or rape before the Romans...

"I have always thought that Muhammad brought his religion into a state where women thrived and he destroyed it. His religion become a means to oppress women and there is no denying that. it's his teaching that made that happen. Whether it happened while he was alive or not."

So true, a major reason I think Islam is a despicable ideology. And why I facepalm when I hear women say no no Islam is great, just read scripture, it's just the culture. And you just explained how that culture came about

I think the question about "can humans ever be satisfied with 'enough'" is going to be a pretty fundamental one for us to resolve quite soon.

My husband and i debate on this quite often. He thinks humans are smart enough to figure out how to save ourselves from extinction using technology but i'm not quite as sunny about it. I'm not sure if we can ever evolve out of the more brutish, exploitative, destructively inquisitive parts of our nature...

Quencher Yup I'd say this time last year I had enough. A bit more than enough tbh.

Other people seem to ramp up their lifestyle when they have more. I save it for the times I have less. And I'd be happy to give it away if I knew I'd always have "enough" (home, food, healthcare.)
(Am now on very low income.)
Of course people may argue over what is "enough", but so many people have no stop button, no contentment factor... just wanting more and more.

'Patriarchy has nothing to do with evolution.'

Is that really a credible statement? To me it is ignoring all the evidence. We are evolved from apes (assuming we all believe in evolution). The idea that our behaviour will not even be influenced by our forefather apes strikes me as ignoring the elephant (or the ape) in the corner of the room.

Equally, in times gone past, a patriarchal model made sense to everyone. The alpha males protected and provided for their wives and children, as they were physically stronger and could accomplish more manual labour in less time.

It is only in the last 250 years or so that machines have taken over 95% of the need for manual labour and 'coincidentally', at least in the West, the patriarchy is slowly dissolving.

At the end of the day biology is all about getting your genes into the next generation. The patriarchy is one stable system for doing this. It's everything to do with evoution but other systems are perfectly possible in the modern world as long as they fulfil the same basic criteria.

Equally, in times gone past, a patriarchal model made sense to everyone. The alpha males protected and provided for their wives and children, as they were physically stronger and could accomplish more manual labour in less time.
There is no way to know if that's true or not.
In fact I'm not even sure it follows that because men are stronger they would be faster at manual labour.
In "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" some if the women were migrant farm workers and that's a description of life at the time.
In developing countries now women farm/pick tea/grow rice etc.
I think you are fitting the facts to some kind of utopian 1950s middle class nuclear family because you are invested in that being the "right" model for humans.

^In developing countries now women farm/pick tea/grow rice etc.
I think you are fitting the facts to some kind of utopian 1950s middle class nuclear family because you are invested in that being the "right" model for humans.^

Yes.

Also, why would hunting - a small % of diet, whilst both sexes "gathered" - mean men had a higher status that those magical beings who actually pushed out tiny humans?

It would be interesting if there was ever data showing the difference in groups of people who chose goddesses and gods as their creator, vs how women are treated in those societies.

How women were portrayed and what sort of roles they were given. I don't believe that men and women have always been treated the way we do now.
I look it at the same way we have waves of empires being super powers and have fallen. The same could have easily happened with the balance of power dynamics between men and women in different societies around the world at different times in history.
What we know is that stories are always written in favour of the winning side. some of the men are writing and have written the current history we have in mens favour. Herstory has been ignored and probably deemed irrelevant, incapable, probably unbelievable and their works brushed off. These are all what happened and possibly happened and still happening.

Devi I agree with your last point. It's not just I farming on industrial scale but all small substance farming and the majority of work is done by women in developing countries.

quencher I think you might like "The Power" which is a novel about a matriarch. Very thought provoking. There's a thread on here about it.

*matriarchy

Men had/have higher status because they controlled resources - food/territory/women- from other men using strength and aggression. Today they control resources using the social and political systems that have developed to reflect this. As I understand it (I'm not an anthropologist, so this may be complete bollocks) when resources are distributed widely in space leading to to very low population numbers - as seen in many hunter gather societies - men and women tend to be more equal.

Nope, you're correct Barbarian.

Devi I will do. Thanks.

larrygryllis we are not evolved from apes! We have no 'forefather apes' either, that's a misunderstanding about evolution, we have common ancestry with apes but they are our contemporaries not our predecessors.

We know very little about our hominin ancestors as there is only very limited fossil remains of either early homo sapiens or homo species that died out and pretty much nothing before that, certainly not enough to know if those groups lived in a patriarchal way or not. We shouldn't assume that because current primate behave in particular ways that our ancestors behaved in the same way. Plus there are matriarchal as well as patriarchal primate species.