Feminism 101- the creation of patriarchy

[sakura184]

The patriarchal takeover began as a means of controlling female reproduction.

It became important for men to know who the father was and thus began a strictly and violently enforced set of social rules-- which is the origin of marriage. Punishments for women who dared to procreate outside marriage were harsh. Their children were cruelly branded bastards and had to deal with the social stigma and poverty that went along with that. ( See the Magdalene laundries in Ireland for general information about how this worked)

But knowing who the father was was no longer enough. Children had become, by law, the father's property. This was the introduction of children as being property whereas before it was generally understood that children belonged to themselves and their mothers had responsibility over them.

I argue that patriarchy is an affront to natural law, and to nature itself. I argue that this is feminism 101

It's persuasive, but is there solid and numerous historical evidence for this narrative?

Human societies and civilisations didn't emerge in a linear fashion all around the world. I'm doubtful about the 'garden of Eden' story of how things were blissful in hunter gatherer tribes and they were completely egalitarian according to our definition and that when agrarian cultures developed, things declined rapidly for women.

The Neanderthal DNA in all Europeans is a question:

Were they all broad-minded and multicultural, back before the ice age, or was this abduction and rape?

I do, and always have, found that narrative extremely unconvincing. Lack of historical evidence being one reason, and I'm not willing to accept it as metaphorical. A lot of this stuff about early humans living in these wonderful goddess worshipping groups, a la Clan of the Cave Bear, is pretty much made up. And I don't see a ton of nomadic peoples living in matriarchal paradises either.

I think institutional marriage was a much in women's interests as mens'. It's not just that men need to know whose kids are theirs so they can pass on whatever, it's in women's interest to have fathers wiling to help out, and in fact have society compel them to be responsible for their offspring, which is not so simple when you can't get a DNA test and a court order to maintenance.

It's probably also a consideration in small tribal groups and societies that if you don't know who the fathers are, chances of close relations intermarrying could be a lot greater, enough to be significant.

It's just a simplistic narrative and patriarchy is often used as an explanation without showing the real mechanism, much like systemic racism can be. It obscures rather than enlightens.

I think we should use feminist analysis to look at the phenomenon of male violence against women and children, but especially against the mothers of their children.

Research shows that Incidents of domestic violence increase or begin when a woman falls pregnant.

So we have to balance what we know about male violence with the potential help that fathers might be to mothers.

There's some evidence that patriarchy began with the move to agricultural practices, away from hunting and gathering, so the start of the neolithic.

The argument is that agriculture allowed for settlement, which then led to a focus upon a woman's role as the processor of grain and plants within a small area, rather than the former role as a trapper of small animals and gatherer of plant stuffs over a wider area.

This move constricted women's movement and eradicated their collective knowledge about ranging and gathering.

If I remember rightly, archaeologists found female skeletons (in Turkey?) with deformed toes from grinding grain while on all fours, and the theory evolved from there.

@PackingSoap

I definitely agree that the advent of agriculture began to shore up and consolidate male power. Men could begin to hoard food and resources.

I think that patriarchal emphasis on paternity came before this

I found this article quite intriguing as it challenges the simplistic storyline we have assumed for many years.

newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5409/are-we-city-dwellers-or-hunter-gatherers

Caliban and the Witch was an absolutely fascinating read as it really gave background about how women's professions and arts were masculinized and taken over by men ( once they'd killed all the powerful women , the so called witches).

What was most fascinating about the book was how obvious it was that women had clustered together in self sustaining industries (inventing beer, pottery etc) while men concentrated on and monopolized other industries. Midwifery and healing was entirely female, whereas after the Witchcraze it was men who became physicians of course.

Anyway it spoke to me of a world where women had their own thing going on and could easily have been economically independent enough to raise children independent of the fathers.

I really believe the witchcraze was the patriarchy's final stand and men of course won forever.

It became important for men to know who the father was

Their children were cruelly branded bastards

This harms men more than women. Men needed to know the children were theirs for inheritance as such.
Yet children out of wedlock, who they knew were theirs, could not inherit.
Why would men create such a system which prohibits them from passing on their wealth and title to thwir children?

@deydododatdodontdeydo

This harms men more than women. Men needed to know the children were theirs for inheritance as such.
Yet children out of wedlock, who they knew were theirs, could not inherit.
Why would men create such a system which prohibits them from passing on their wealth and title to thwir children?

Really don't know where to start with this but here goes.

Natural law dictates that men do not know who the father is. We always know who the mother is because the baby comes down her birth canal and out of her vagina. Before patriarchy Whether the women decided to let fathers know they had sired a child depended entirely on whether she wanted him to know. Even rapists couldn't be sure because the only way you can be sure you're the father is if you essentially keep a watchful eye over a woman, which was the whole point of marriage.

The only reason inheritance exists is because men began hoarding resources and property at the expense of other people, namely women. Inheritance is a rich man's problem, a man who has accumulated so much wealth in his lifetime that he couldn't possibly spend it all. Needless to say, this male problem of accumulated wealth had nothing to do with women and works contrary to our rights and autonomy over our bodies and over who fathers our children.

Men have always demanded wives to be monogamous and for a long time they were also expected to be virgins before marriage ( still are all over the world).

If men weren't so privileged and war mongering they wouldn't have been able to accumulate inheritance and property wealth off the backs of disenfranchised and less privileged people.

Yet children out of wedlock, who they knew were theirs, could not inherit.

I really need to reiterate and emphasize that the inheritance problem you talk of was a rich man's problem only. If a rich man desired to make provisions for his bastard children of course it was within his powers to do so. What I think you're talking about is wealthy philanderers who had wives but also whores on the side who had their children. According to patriarchal law marriage made children legitimate and even if the man was sure that his bit on the side had had his children men weren't risking it to the point that the whore's children could claim any inheritance. Like Boris "won't admit how many children I have" Johnson.

Obviously I don't regard women as whores. I'm speaking from a patriarchal viewpoint

I really doubt there was some kind of matriarchal paradise at the dawn of humanity - it's a nice thought but highly unrealistic. I think it's also likely that women would've felt more allegiance to the men of their own tribes than women of others.

Look at Nazi Germany for example. Some of the worst abusers of female prisoners were other women - Irma Grese, Hermine Braunsteiner, etc. They didn't see these Jewish women as their own.

BjornAgain81:

Sod off with the "women did it worst" bollocks"!

@BjornAgain81

Patriarchy always needs its handmaidens and while it is definitely bollocks to say "women did it worst" what is upsetting about handmaidens is the deep sense of betrayal that we as women feel when we come across them. We don't feel betrayed by men. Men just do what they do: rape, pillage, exterminate, drop atomic bombs... Men just go about being male.
I do think the extent of female accountability under patriarchy is an argument worth having, however this is a bit of a derail. But in most cases with handmaidens like in Nazi Germany it was a clear cut case of "kill or be killed".

Also, im not saying there was a pure matriarchal heaven but we do know there has been a patriarchal takeover which began with men's insistence of knowing paternity. As I said, even rapists couldn't be sure of paternity so literally the only way men could do this was by sequestering women apart from each other in individual houses with men.

I can't remember which feminist said it but housing women alone and individually with men, sharing our beds and our homes, is a more effective way of oppressing women than grouping us together in gulags and camps or putting women in sheds at the bottom of the garden.

@BjornAgain81
As for allegiance to "our" men I'm not really sure that would be the case to be honest. Keeping things within the tribe means a lot of inbreeding and it might be fair to say women find people who seem exotic or different to be attractive, and there's probably some healthy biological advantage to looking elsewhere for a mate.

But again this is patriarchy in action. I do like to think of an earlier time when women had more freedom.

What we know for sure is knowledge of paternity is the crux of patriarchy and I think the word patriarchy literally means "rule of the father"

Can I also just add that I'm not so cynical as to think that there would never be loving relationships where women would happily share knowledge of paternity with the father himself. I've no doubt this happened all the time.

But what happens with patriarchy is it became the male prerogative to control female reproduction for reasons such as the allocation of resources-- resources that men accumulated through the power they shores up. What we see today is that they can demand sexual and reproductive services from women in exchange for basic resources.

If you watch "Eden" the documentary/reality TV experiment that put a group of people and resources in a remote-ish part of the Highlands for a year or so - you will get to see the patriarchy being born, I think it's the start of the second series you want.

It is fascinating and horrifying. From a reasonably happy and equitable group, with "modern" values, there is a shift and a minority of the men start saying "I'm bigger and stronger, I can do the jobs I prefer faster, so we'll do the jobs we prefer and the women can do all the washing and weed the garden". The majority of men go along with it and become increasingly unpleasant towards the women, who are seen as "lesser". It's worth a watch.

Who said "women did it worst"? Certainly not me. They can be as bad as men though, even if it's less commonplace - the evidence is there.

The wars/imperialism which men have implemented have undoubtedly been pretty horrid, but women have passively benefitted from them in many cases. For instance, without the British Empire we'd likely be a very different country today. Similarly, white women benefit from the privilege and power bestowed by historical racism.

Inheritance is a rich man's problem

So why would rich (and powerful) men create a law which disinherited their own children?
They're the ones with the wealth and the power.
They could have created the patriarchy to benefit themselves 100% and rules that bastards were always legitimate.
Monogamy suits women as well if not better than it suits men, certainly rich powerful men.
In other cultures and at other times, rich powerful men have had harems of wives and 100s of children.
This system is perfect for these patriarchs - they end up with loads of descendents and wives.
Yet you want us to believe these rich men set up this imperfect system here where their actual children are disinherited, and if they have no male children their wealth is lost to someone else's family?
Not a very good patriarchy is it?
Also I'm not sure why the mothers are affected by their children being cruelly branded as bastards, and the the fathers aren't!

@deydododatdodontdeydo

What I think men did, was create a system whereby the bastards of whores couldn't lay claim on their inheritance because it was only by keeping a close eye on women through marriage that a man could be sure the children were his.

And as I say, there was nothing at all preventing men from providing for illegitimate offspring in the form of gifting them property and so on. They simply chose not to because there was always an element of doubt about paternity

@AssangesCat

I can imagine. That's why quite a lot of women opt for separatism

@deydododatdodontdeydo

I'm sorry but your posts are just ridiculous. Women are selling their wombs and their vaginas because the system is set up so that women have NOTHING. Let's be clear on this, women don't just have "less than" men, which would be tolerable. Women, apart from a relatively privileged minority, have nothing: patriarchy makes it so that we have nothing/
And you want me to boohoo that men don't know who to leave their wealth too, and not knowing who to leave your wealth to means the system you've created is imperfect.

Cry me a river. The reason men wouldn't provide for illegitimate children is because they chose a system whereby these children couldn't make claims on their wealth presicely because men were never sure they were the father.

I repeat , there was nothing preventing the men from providing . There was also nothing from preventing men from changing the law should they want to CONSIDERING MEN MAKE ALL THE LAWS without consulting women.

Annoys me so much that men make all the laws then complain they haven't made enough laws to benefit them while women can't even get abortion laws

Sakura184 , I think you might be a new poster. I hope you stick around for some time as I enjoy reading your posts.

I usually like to keep to my women only bubbles because I know that men will never ever see and you can never ever make them see

Women are being maimed and murdered on a weekly basis in the UK, by intimate partners, because still in 2019 they can't make enough money on their rubbish wages to live alone. And if they have kids they're totally and utterly stuck. So they stay with the domestic violence. And people are all "why didn't she leeeave?"

Well I can tell you from first hand experience. She didn't leave because she couldnt afford to

Other women see porn and prostitution as a way of making ends meet, where they get battered, given diseases and often get murdered too. Surrogacy becoming popular too

Then we get "wah wah what will I do with my LEFTOVER MONEY after I die. ? #mensproblems

Men and women are truly living on totally different planets.