If women ruled the world...

[InigoTaran]

Would it be a better place? Interesting article in The Guardian today with opinions from various prominent women.

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jul/05/what-if-women-ruled-the-world

"Producing children doesn't appear to be the motivation. It's either something that many men want to have 'at some point', or a by product, or often just collateral damage - something they actively don't want, despite spending a disproportionate amount of time doing the very thing that can produce them."

That's what really baffles and infuriates me about men. It seems like the only way out of this is PIV no longer being so maniacally desired by them.

I'm downright curious as well. As a woman, I don't have the nerve endings to experience the level of pleasure that they get out of it. How strong must it be for men to keep perpetuating such horrific abuse in order to regularly get it??? I truly can't imagine a level of pleasure that would make me ditch my ethics like that.

Just wanted to add an anecdote to the discussion about whether women are 'naturally' more nurturing etc. I once spoke to a transman about what effect taking testosterone had on him. It was v interesting. So he said that he had much less empathy, for example while watching a sad film that would have made him cry ( as a woman), he just laughed at it instead. He also said they made him much more aggressive and much more horny! So maybe there is a case for castrating men....

Ava I do partly agree with when you say that biology is determinant in terms of things like men's superior strength. But even then, it isn't really determinant of oppression in an a priori sense. The fact that men oppress women is surely not BECAUSE they give birth or that men are stronger. There is no logical progression - independent of sociocultural context - from women giving birth to them being oppressed. Similarly, there is no logical reason why the colour of someone's skin is determinant of their oppression by a group of people with a different colour. Rather, it becomes determinant within a system of oppression. Outside of that system it wouldn't be.

I'm not denying that there are biological differences between men and women: that would be absurd. All I am saying (and I believe Dworkin is too) is that those differences do not - independent of socialisation - determine a person's character. Males and females do not exit their mother's wombs with different charterological predispositions.

Therefore, if, say, big banks and governments were run by women there is absolutely no reason to believe they would not be just as nefarious, venal and exploitative. It would be a different kind of power system possibly, but a power system it would still be.

Inigo I think you're on seriously dodgy - nigh on fascist, eugenicist - ground there. That's not any feminism that I recognise.

They aren't simply beholden to animal instinct but have agency and are ultimately responsible for their actions? They're capable of rational thought, -right?

I don't think men dominating women is irrational. Unfair yes, but very rational.

And obviously we are moving forward. More women are making powerful decisions. That they are doing it under a patriarchy means that a radical feminist agenda will still often be discarded.

But, eventually, just by the law of averages, more of those women will be feminists.

Unfortunately, as women start to get more traction, I think backlash is inevitable. Hence the misogyny magnet that is trans, for instance. Or Trump.

And I can't help feeling that the backlash is working.

But why do they not exist? Oppression has created hugely powerful societies under the patriarchy. If similar oppression had existed under the matriarchal ones - surely they would still be here defending themselves from the power of the patriarchal ones?

I don't follow. How could they have developed power if they never existed?

Due to lots of things - the collapse of the family unit, deindustrialisation, the information economy, biogenetic, technological capitalism - we're starting to see the collapse of the kind of society in which the economy was driven by male strength, and power was enforced through militarism (powerful nation states with invading armies). Sure there's terrorism, but that's a monstrously neurotic response to what is the beginning collapse of patriarchy. Neither are men needed for manual labour because there's increasingly less of it.

Patriarchy is just beginning to founder, and it will take maybe another century at least before it completely dies out. Then...well...who knows what kind of societies people will be living in. All we know is they will be very different. I'm not sure it will be a utopia though.

But why do they not exist? Oppression has created hugely powerful societies under the patriarchy. If similar oppression had existed under the matriarchal ones - surely they would still be here defending themselves from the power of the patriarchal ones?

Exactly.

Patriarchies took over the world because they are violent and oppressive. They are ethically wrong, but hugely successful.

Women just have neither the ability nor the evolutionary benefit from oppressing other women, or men.
Women cannot oppress men because men are physically stronger (though that might have developed because rape was a successful strategy). Women can, with difficulties, oppress other women, but what would be the advantage? A woman can only have as many children as she can give birth to. The only strategy that would lead to her having more offspring would be to force other women to have her sons' babies - and that's indeed the kind of oppression we most often see in patriarchies; mothers in law exploiting and oppressing their daughter in law.

Since in humans, the sex ratio of offspring is even, women as a group do not profit from making it a general rule that men get to rape women, as that would result in them their daughters being raped, too. But if that's the rule anyway, some women are complicit with it as it profits them more than individually resisting it would.

(And in China and India, many women skew the sex ratio of their offspring towards male. They base this on cultural concepts, but those cultural concepts did not evolve in a vacuum.)

Therefore, if, say, big banks and governments were run by women there is absolutely no reason to believe they would not be just as nefarious, venal and exploitative. It would be a different kind of power system possibly, but a power system it would still be.
I've worked in a primary school run by and completely staffed by women. I almost had a nervous breakdown. I worked as a SALT in departments where there were no men. Completely different experience. Some women can be fucking awful when in power and some can be great.

And I can't help feeling that the backlash is working

the backlash kind of isn't though. Trump promised all those rust belt poor guys that he'd restore their power - that he would being all their jobs back. Have they got their jobs back? No, because all that heavy industry is gone and is never coming back. Men might be lashing out with online abuse etc but there is absolutely nothing to do about the fact that this is the beginning of the end of their time. They're just not needed anymore, and in no time at all the nuclear family will cease to be the dominant organisation of private life. I'm not even sure if monogamy will be. Why would people get into units of two anymore? They did before because the woman was economically dependent on the man for survival. If the economy ceases to need the family anymore then there will be no point in monogamy.

we're starting to see the collapse of the kind of society in which the economy was driven by male strength,

Economy was never driven by male strength, what utter nonsense.

Economy was driven by exploitation. Exploitation of women as housewives to prop up the male worker to survive his exploitation, and exploitation of women as workers and as wombs to give birth to more workers.

As long as men can exploit women for reproduction, patriarchy will survive.

If we see a collapse of patriarchy, then it will be due to modern birth control and feminism making birth control accessible to all women.

And I am not sure we will get anything out of it, considering that patriarchy has already wrecked this planet, and it will probably be thousand years before we are completely rid of patriarchy.

Women just have neither the ability nor the evolutionary benefit from oppressing other women, or men.

The idea that power and oppression is a matter of 'evolutionary benefit' is highly dubious. There was no evolutionary benefit in oppressing black people.

"I do partly agree with when you say that biology is determinant in terms of things like men's superior strength. But even then, it isn't really determinant of oppression in an a priori sense. The fact that men oppress women is surely not BECAUSE they give birth or that men are stronger. There is no logical progression - independent of sociocultural context - from women giving birth to them being oppressed. Similarly, there is no logical reason why the colour of someone's skin is determinant of their oppression by a group of people with a different colour. Rather, it becomes determinant within a system of oppression. Outside of that system it wouldn't be."

So why do men keep perpetuating this oppressive system? The very system THEY created? It's not aliens dictating the rules of the patriarchy to us.

Economy was never driven by male strength, what utter nonsense.

I meant physical strength.

Well, there was a perception that it was in that men were needed to work down mines and shipyards which involved all sorts of things like heavy lifting; and that nations and empires were built by warriors. That wasn't the reason why women were oppressed as such, but it was certainly part of the identification of men with strength and power and women with passivity.

What I am saying is that this is changing. We don't need big strong men to lift stuff and more warfare is being waged on computer screens.

Power has got nothing to do with people getting anything out of anything. It isn't that rational.

The planet is being wrecked because of a system of global finance capitalism that has got completely out of hand - one of which Thatcher was a key instigator. You can't just say she did all these awful things because she was under the spell of the patriarchy. That's far too simplistic.

So why do men keep perpetuating this oppressive system? The very system THEY created? It's not aliens dictating the rules of the patriarchy to us.

My only answer is that people like power and they don't like giving it up.

Beachcomber, is not the goal that equal numbers of men and women are in power?

Whose goal?

You are forming your questions in a patriarchal way. In a power obsessed way. The goal of radical feminism is to liberate girls and women from oppression, to smash patriarchy, to end male supremacist society and revolutionize society.

Men as a class are obsessed with power. It's tedious and toxic. It leads to a dangerous lack of vision and an obsession with violence and caste systems of social control.

Economy was driven by exploitation. Exploitation of women as housewives to prop up the male worker to survive his exploitation, and exploitation of women as workers and as wombs to give birth to more workers.

By the way I completely agree with you there. The kind of industrial capitalism we had in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was exploitative and patriarchal.

But that is not the kind of capitalism that exists today - which, though just as exploitative, goes about it a very different way. Capitalism no longer needs workers. In fact, it's trying to get rid of them. The exploited worker of the past has a kind of privileged status now. At lest he had a regular income. Most of our workers are out in the Far East, but even they are losing their jobs to machines.

Beachcomber, if we're being realistic - unless your some sort of radical anarcho-syndicalist or something - we have to accept that we are going to need people in positions of power, because we need roads and hospitals and prisons.

Who should those people be? All men? All women? A mix? What does ending male supremacist society actually mean?

The zoology point is an interesting one.

I was taught in uni (over a decade ago now though) that the prevalent view of animal reproduction - that the females get little say, they are organised/raped by the males, they only mate with the strongest etc - is an incredibly flawed analysis tainted with Victorian sex class ideas. Darwin being Victorian after all.

If you look objectively there is a fair amount of gay and non-reproductive sex (lions giving oral for example) that goes on in the animal kingdom. Females will often have sex with the 'dominant' male AND the weaker males hanging round the fridges. Maybe, instead of being forced into it by every Tom Dick and Harry they actually love having all the sex? Why do we start from the premise that sex is unappealing to the females? That in itself is a patriarchal analysis IMO - that sex is desired more by males so females have to be forced into it.

The lecturer talked at length about deer. About how some females do a lot of shagging and some very little, even though lots of them are all occupying a relatively small space during mating season so you'd think they'd all have the same exposure. How maybe the dominant male doesn't force them into a group but they choose to congregate because of looking forward to the shagging, albeit with some 'flirty' stuff where the bloke tells them where to go. Some indulge in behaviours that attract males far more than others. It was all broad brush stuff but his point was if you approach animal behaviour with your own preconceived ideas and beliefs you can construct a fairly intricate theory that may nevertheless be completely wrong.

The idea that all animal reproduction is rape seems to be a case of applying human morality to beings incapable of morality and only driven by survival instincts.

Some indulge in behaviours that attract males far more than others. It was all broad brush stuff but his point was if you approach animal behaviour with your own preconceived ideas and beliefs you can construct a fairly intricate theory that may nevertheless be completely wrong. You only need to have grown up on a farm to know that sheep and cows are not raped. They come into season and then the ram/bull is interested. The female can move off if she isn't.

Yes exactly derxa. Females of many many different species are capable of throwing off or deterring males.

I think the lecturer said some female deer aren't mated with by the dominant male during their peak fertility time because actually they want their 'productive' sex to be with hanger-on A (for example). The male doesn't push it because why risk injury from resistant-female when he can go off and have sex with multiple willing-females. If he's badly injured and struggles to have decent sex for the rest of the season that's a big risk. Is resistant-female worth it? Etc etc.

It's just not as easy as 'the females are chased down and raped' nowhere near.

Of course it's totally different in the wild because a females fertile state is usually known. So comparing humans to other mammals hits a dead end a lot of the time because our sex and reproduction systems are so different.

The idea that power and oppression is a matter of 'evolutionary benefit' is highly dubious. There was no evolutionary benefit in oppressing black people.

That is why it was only started long after written history started, and ended very soon, compared to the oppression of women by men.
It was beneficial to a certain class of people for a limited time, but racism is nowhere as ingrained into society as misogyny.

It's just not as easy as 'the females are chased down and raped' nowhere near.

It depends on the animal species and on the individuum, but animals do rape. Dolphins are especially bad offenders. And you cannot claim that the females "enjoy all the sex"; they are left half dead after the rapes.

Yes, Victorian male scientists quite probably misrepresented the mating habits of a lot of animals to make it look like females were not free anywhere, as free female animals would have challenged the patriarchal society.

But this: "How maybe the dominant male doesn't force them into a group but they choose to congregate because of looking forward to the shagging, albeit with some 'flirty' stuff where the bloke tells them where to go." is nonsense, sorry.

The idea that males exerting dominance over women is "flirty" or "romantic" is very human. It developed in patriarchy. It does not make logical sense.

What's more likely is that the female animals all want to mate - because they have an urge to, and cannot rationally think about whether they want to be pregnant - but that they want to choose with which male animal to mate.
Which is what the dominant male tries to prevent. With more or less success. The argument that respecting the females would get him more sex falls part once you consider that the same is true for human males. Male animals who display sexual jealousy have more offspring in species where the female cannot put a firm stop to this, and then this becomes the normal/main way this animal mates.

And as for lions ... you may claim the female lion wants to be fucked, but you sure can't claim she wants the male lion to kill her young. Which is what male lions do. Killing lion babies they suspect were fathered by other male lions.

Of course it's totally different in the wild because a females fertile state is usually known. So comparing humans to other mammals hits a dead end a lot of the time because our sex and reproduction systems are so different.

That's why human males evolved a year-round patriarchy. Or perhaps the other way round, women evolved hidden fertility to counter patriarchy and be able to get good genes for their offspring despite patriarchy.

Male chimpanzees sometimes abduct young females to wait until they are fertile and then immediately rape them. That's a kind of proto-patriarchy right there.

That is why it was only started long after written history started, and ended very soon, compared to the oppression of women by men.
It was beneficial to a certain class of people for a limited time, but racism is nowhere as ingrained into society as misogyny.

Got nothing to do with evolution though. Power has nothing to do with Darwinism - nothing. People pursue power at huge risk to themselves and the perpetuation of their genes. Your position here is very deterministic - all genes and evolutionary psychology - which seems quite heterodox for a feminist. Patriarchy is a social cultural construct - it has nothing to do with genes, limbic brains, evolution or hormones. Nothing.

The planet is being wrecked because of a system of global finance capitalism that has got completely out of hand - one of which Thatcher was a key instigator. You can't just say she did all these awful things because she was under the spell of the patriarchy. That's far too simplistic.

That wasn't what was said. Pay attention.

Thatcher as an individual may have been power hungry and genuinely wanted to do awful things.

But she would not have risen to power in a society without patriarchal power structures. Because there would have not been any power to rise to.

Awful people can exist in all kinds of societies, but they can only do horrible things, large-scale, in a society that has power structures where few can decide the fates of many.

Perhaps Thatcher would have stolen the neighbour children's lollies in a world without patriarchy. I don't know.
But she would have been swiftly kicked out of a community that doesn't profit from her being in power.

For a pearl to form, there must be a grain of sand. For a system of oppression, there must be an original oppression that all other oppressions are formed around.

But she would not have risen to power in a society without patriarchal power structures. Because there would have not been any power to rise to.

What evidence do you have for that assumption?

For a system of oppression, there must be an original oppression that all other oppressions are formed around.

Must there be? Why?