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

I'm sorry but your posts are just ridiculous.

And here's me thinking your posts are ridiculous.

sakura184

Maybe you are new here.
Shutting women down by calling them ridiculous for not agreeing with you 100% is generally frowned upon here.

Honestly, a lot of this stuff is just completely ahistorical and made up. I don't even know how to start talking about it. Like witch hunting? That's a pretty late development historically speaking, it properly belongs to the early modern period, and to connect it to the beginnings of patriarchy...??? there was in some ways a degradation of women's position in society at that time but presumably we can agree that agriculture and inheritance laws and accumulation of wealth were well established by that time.

And as for the desire to acquire wealth being particularly male, and calling women who went along with that handmaidens, I have to wonder if people know any women. Of all the differences between the sexes I don't see the desire for material wealth being a significant one, greedy and materialistic women, or women who want a more secure life to put a better spin on it, are not markedly less common than men who want the same thing. If agriculture allowed humans material advantages does it really seem plausible that women weren't also keen on those? All the women would much rather have stayed hunter-gatherers, all over the world, in every society that adopted agriculture?

This isn't looking at the information and seeing what can be concluded, its reading a set of conclusions or values back into scant or non-existent history.passe some time in the 80s.

@deydododatdodontdeydo

You do raise an interesting point, though, about why men wouldn't provide themselves with moar privileges than they already have. Take Islam for example, in Islam a man is allowed 4 wives as long as he can provide for them. Whereas almost all patriarchies have agreed that it's one woman for one man.
I read an interesting feminist analysis on this and the reason patriarchies tend to allocate one woman to each man is so that men don't lock horns with each other. One man taking four women for himself means that other men might lose out on a woman and it is generally understood that in the name of fairness men should only have one wife at a time.

@deydododatdodontdeydo

I'm just musing about why men wouldn't make provisions for whore's children in law. Like I say, men made all the laws so it was totally up to them what they did. They decided it wasn't in their interests to let the bastards inherit.

I think the main reason was because of paternity doubt as I've said.

but it might also have been "unfair" to codify into law that certain men had kids with multiple partners while other , poorer men, unfairly ( in men's eyes) might have only been able to reproduce with their wife.

First of all, these women were likely not "whores".
Many "mistresses" were high born, noble ladies.
Plenty of the bastards of kings and probably barons and such were acknowledged as real sons, just not allowed to inherit in the law that the men themselves created.
That didn't mean they had nothing - a lot of these bastards were given titles and land.
And in some cases the rulers had real sons, but none legitimate, which was a real detriment to them as they wanted nothing more than an heir to pass their titles, land and wealth to. They actually had one but ruled that they couldn't do that.

Hmm, where to begin on this.

I'm still trying to put my own thoughts together, but here are some odds and ends which I am turning over.

Firstly, archaeology is deeply sexist and 'interprets' finds in terms of its own patriarchal world view. This is now being challenged by, in particular, use of DNA sampling and isotope analysis. In particular, there seems to be evidence for Neolithic women being as well fed as the men and participating in battle.

I've also read an argument that why it all goes wrong at the start of farming is that women are domesticated just as surely as the sheep and the cows. this isn't to contradict the idea of paternity being important, but that the reproductive system is worked out when farmers start keeping animals. Women are now kept for breeding (and hence wife raiding, all manner of things), kept close to home and beaten when they step out of line. So men control reproduction just as they do for the animals.

Worth bearing in mind though, that people are in the end the most important resource if you are an early farmer: without them you can do very little with your land, and you certainly can't defend it.

In terms of writing about the early, pre-patriarchal systems, have you looked at Marika Gimbutas?

Tbh, you come across as much more sexist than most men, Sakura, I'm sorry to say.

The vast majority of women in this country choose to spend their life with a man who is their principle soulmate. They're not forced to. Women earn more than men up until the approximate age of motherhood and studies done by the Economist have shown that those who forego motherhood continue to be promoted more aggressively than their male counterparts.

@onsen
Nice username. I'm Sakura
Well quite. That's why it seems that agriculture and patriarchy are so intertwined.

As for the comment about me being sexist that is the SAME as calling a black woman racist for criticizing white supremacy. She may not like white people for what they have done to her race: it doesn't make her MOAR racist than white people.
Anyway, as if the whole argument was about sexism when it's not. It's about male violence, paternity, and how that perpetuates a patriarchal society

But men are the main victims of male violence, both assaults and suicide. 40x more men kill themselves weekly than they do women (not that either is ok).

But I'm sure you've already made your mind up on this matter so I'm not going to bother arguing the point. 93% of women don't identify as feminists so the majority probably don't agree with you either.

Men are also victims of patriarchy, so why do they work so hard to uphold it and keep blaming women for their predicament?

A woman complaining about patriarchy is not being sexist.

A black woman complaining about white supremacy is not being racist.

The "complainers" are criticizing structures of power which are enforced and maintained by violence. It always Amazes me at how much violence against women and children is required to maintain patriarchy and it proves to me how unnatural patriarchy is

As I mentioned before, the narrative of non-agrarian societies being egalitarian is turning out to be a false one, or at least not entirely true. There is evidence that there were wealthy and powerful tribal leaders and elders well before the myth of agriculture ushering in the hoarding of wealth.

Human history is messy and convoluted, not simplistic and linear. This is a long read, but very enlightening

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

One of my long standing annoyances with feminism is the romanticizing of hunter gatherers and vilification of agriculture.
It's more likely that both forms of human society had shitty and good aspects.

A woman complaining about patriarchy is not being sexist.

A black woman complaining about white supremacy is not being racist.

But the patriarchy is a theory, primarily espoused by a feminists who represent

But this is a great article for showing how our 'expectations' may not have been the way things worked. We're just not open-minded.

theconversation.com/dna-from-10-000-year-old-chewing-gum-reveals-the-secrets-of-stone-age-scandinavians-117272

If you want more of that kind of thing, there is a Ronald Hutton book on the history of archaeology in which he demonstrates, quite convincingly, that archaeological theories tell us more about the present than they can do about the past.

There is an interesting discussion to be had about the patriarchal takeover.

What I do know for sure is things got a lot worse for women in the West around the time of industrial revolution. In 2019 Food, for example, is entirely in the hands of men whereas it never used to be in the past. I studied supply chain management

Interesting article, onsen. :)

What I learned on my course was how patriarchy is now global and globally maintained.

So my course was about food production and supply chain management - how the food grown ends up in the supermarkets. I learned about how in real time village elders were selling women's land and then those very same women were forced to work as temporary Labour for large supermarket conglomerations on that very same land growing cash crops, while those who managed them and got better wages were men.

So in other words I learned how food production is being wrested from women and then I applied that to how it probably happened here around the time of the industrial revolution and it tied in very well with what I learned about land retrieval in Caliban and the Witch

What I do know for sure is things got a lot worse for women in the West around the time of industrial revolution. In 2019 Food, for example, is entirely in the hands of men whereas it never used to be in the past.

You clearly know more than me about the supply chain but I'm not sure I agree with this statement at face value.

Wasn't it still legal to rape your wife back then? And were young women dominating men in education and pay like they are now? Were they even allowed to work in prestigious jobs back then or be in charge of male reports?

Does the average married woman on her way to Tesco to do the weekly shop really worry about food being 'in the hands of men'?

@BjornAgain81

I'm not saying small increments haven't been made. And thank you to the women who got us the vote. I'm just musing really at how things got so royally messed up for women overall.
Young women today are saying they think it's child abuse to bring children into the world, and that they know there's no future. The environment had been destroyed, the world is a shit tip and it happened on men's watch

@BjornAgain81

I think women realize they can't get food without money and they know they have to do certain things in order to get this money, that's why men having control over all food production and distribution means that women have no wriggle room inside modern patriarchy, whereas they may have done in the past judging by the levels of self sufficiency and food autonomy in women I've studied in other countries

BjornAgain81
But men are the main victims of male violence, both assaults and suicide. 40x more men kill themselves weekly than they do women (not that either is ok).
I'm not sure what your point is.
Firstly this is male on male violence which is also subject to social strictures created by man e.g. warfare and warrior status, hard man picking on weaker man, enforcing social norms, intimidating to gain power etc etc.
Violence by men against women is about domination and coercion or social face such as honour based violence.
Violence is a male modus operandi not a female one. The fact that men have throughout history followed the 'big man' route of warlords and power isn't down to women. In fact many cultures actually codify violence against women as a social good.

Sorry to go on about food. I was just absolutely floored when I studied my course at how gendered food is. Women doing the backbreaking work of picking, for miserable wages, supplementing their seasonal incomes with prostitution, and the entire food industry and those who reap the big profits is owned and managed by men every step along the chain. The "western woman " is the minimum waged shelf stacker and cashier and the eastern woman is the picker, men reap all the profits. It's totally astounding to me