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

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.

True, but it isn't down to the majority of men either who aren't in control.

For example, take the male falun gong practitioners who were horrifically abused (or male Jews in the holocaust). Are we really going to victim blame them because they were the same sex as their persecutors?

I think it's easy to forget that race, religion, politics etc are often as dividing as gender.

I'm not having a pop at feminism btw. I just think that it's only one angle amongst many to be considered.

@BjornAgain81

Dworkin got absolutely slated because she talked about how Jewish men were raping Jewish women amongst the nazi chaos

Well, there are undoubtedly plenty of reprehensible opportunists and low lifes out there - not only good people are persecuted I'm sure.

However, I don't see how that really relates to my point that a male victim is no less a victim for sharing his sex with his persecutor.

I don't think black male slaves would've taken much solace in the fact that the white overseer whipping them also had a penis.

@BjornAgain81

This is why I called this thread feminism 101.

Nobody is saying men don't kill other men. If women overthrow patriarchy men will still go about killing each other, it's what they do. They might kill each other more if they haven't got women to kill. They especially like killing wives and prostitutes. If we remove these women from their available people to kill they might turn on other men or against themselves.

But Women being punch bags for men has had its time I'm afraid

@BjornAgain81

Why are you "what about the menning"

Why should feminism prioritize men?

Your argument is essentially:
Women can't , and shouldn't, fight for liberation against patriarchy because black and Jewish men

"There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the coloredmen will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will
take a great while to get it going again." ~ Sojourner Truth

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

These things are not identical just because you choose to compare them. It being ok for a black person to talk about racism doesn't make any particular claim about patriarchy legitimate. In any case it is totally legitimate to criticise something said about racism by a black person if it is untrue or doesn't make sense.

Many social practices and institutions like marriage, like monogamy, etc, have advantages that aren't just about promoting men's interests. You don't need to assume some sort of engineering by men to account for them, some have advantages for women or even more, for society as a whole.

It is an advantage for more people to be able to marry rather that all women to be married off to fewer powerful men - it's generally better for women as well, but it is probably somewhat stabilising to society. Women (and children) are not necessarily better off in societies where divorce is easy and people can change partners at will, whatever modern women who have the advantage of sex without procreation might think. Limiting of sex partners has things going for it in terms of public health as well which is advantageous to everyone.

It's not enough to say, X is nice for men, to show the development of patriarchy.

If men are all so horrible, why does the human race still exist? There has to have been something in it for women unless we were all locked up and repeatedly raped. Which plainly isn't true.

Monogamy is beneficial to both men and women. Benefits to men include the certainty of their genes going forward to future generations, which is part of the male impetus to procreate. Benefits for women include ongoing support and nurture long enough for children to become independent, thus sending their genes forward to future generations. Like all animals, we exist to create more of ourselves.

To argue that there was once a nirvana where women ran things, that was cruelly overtaken by patriarchy is pure fantasy.

That isn't to say that patriarchy doesn't exist when clearly it does. But it wasn't a conscious act on the part of men to overthrow some idyllic female world. It came out of the struggle of all humans to safeguard their future. Now that our modern societies no longer require men to protect women, the need for it no longer exists either. That is what we should be focussing on. But after millennia of it being this way, this will take time.

@Jaxhog

I'm not saying there was a Nirvana. I'm just truly baffled at how things could've gotten as bad as they have for women.

Maybe without patriarchy none of us would be here-- I'm just putting it out there as an opinion. Maybe women would've thrown in the towel centuries ago if we saw and knew how bad things really were.
Men all over the world have banned abortion, made it difficult for us to get one, so obviously patriarchy is pro Natalist. It was okay to rape your wife and so on. Some women were married off as children. So we know that patriarchy has been heavily invested in keeping women pregnant, often against our wishes.

I just think that the world population would be far smaller than what it is if women were in control

quillette.com/2018/11/25/on-the-nature-of-patriarchy/
Quite a long read but interesting.

I've just literally had enough of hearing about raped babies and maimed women or women "consenting" to being murdered and... well you know.. I could go on but I won't.

You know in Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares when he just has enough and shouts "Shut the place Down!". I'm just waiting for women to come along and do that with patriarchy. I've truly seen and heard enough

You are making way too many assumptions though. You know abortion is as likely to be opposed by women as men? And that like infanticide, there have been times when abortion was seen as being anti-woman, and diallowing it was seen as redressing a power imbalance that favoured men? There issues are complex and you are looking at things with the assumption that our values in the 21st century around equality are not only right, but that cultures and societies that saw things differently were doing so because they took the opposite viewpoint value wise. That seems logical at one level but it often isn't actually true.

Part of the problem is the word "patriarchy." It's often a lazy word that can mean anything and nothing, and it gets used as a sort of blanket explanation without the need to really connect the dots in a rigorous way.

It's rather like the term "systemic racism". Someone says, why do black Americans have lower educational attainments, or why are mothers more likely to have poor birth outcomes, or anything else, and the answer is "systemic racism." But that actually tells you nothing about the material reality of what is going on, it tells you nothing about the actual historical origin of the situation, it tells you nothing about the way the situation is perpetuated or embedded in institutions, or how it acts psychologically or economically. It can offer no suggestions about possible solutions or change. It just sounds good, and the person hearing the word can imagine any content they want which is really useful for manipulators.

Personally unless people are willing to define patriarchy very narrowly I think it would be better to drop it and use more specific language.

Goosefoot
What word /definition would you suggest?

@Goosefoot

I can refer you to reading lists if you like, both academic and non academic.

We all have to do the groundwork, understanding how patriarchy works, what exactly it constitutes, what kinds of oppression we are talking about: economic, legal, how it is enforced ( violence/war mongering).

Other women are tallying up the victims. All kinds of work is being done by all kinds of women all over the world.

There really is so much information about it for anyone who cares to look.

I'd probably recommend "Counting for Nothing" by Marilyn Frye.

She writes about how capitalist patriarchy is dependent on female unpaid Labour for its survival, not just reproductive Labour but other forms of Labour like care for children and the elderly. It also looks at the the low paid pink ghetto work that women do. Essentially without women's devalued or unvalued work capitalism would grind to a halt and yet men are the ones who benefit financially from the system.

In other words women are the most valuable resource any society can have. Women are more valuable than oil .

Yes I'm aware of all that except I have the feeling that any definitions anyone uses you will pick holes in. You are just saying the discussion isn't discussing what you want without setting out your analysis. What is the material reality etc etc in your opinion, this is after all a discussion and we're all capable of dealing with complex issues.

We've had to drop the word "woman", why not drop the word "patriarchy" too?

Who would this benefit and who would it most emphatically not benefit?

There is no definition of woman and nobody knows what one is, according to British politicians.

There is also no definition of patriarchy and nobody knows what it is, according to Goosefoot.

But you see what happens when you start messing with language. Women lose their ability to name and define.

There are solid definitions of patriarchy - long winded explanations or concise dictionary definitions.

If you're struggling with words like patriarchy and woman then all I can suggest is that you do a bit more reading and catch up

Samurai 184
My previous post was for Goosefoot.
I do agree women's unpaid work is invaluable (like the environment )but doesn't appear in GDP stats.

@Imnobody4

Yes Marilyn Frye is an economist. Neither the economy nor society could survive without women's free and low paid Labour.

Paradoxically, women could probably exist quite fine without being exploited and having their time, energy and Labour used up for capitalist gains-- where they don't even reap the material rewards. Imagine how free we would be under another system.

Keeping men employed is why patriarchy needs perpetual neverending wars- to give men jobs and something to do and to justify them receiving tax payers money ( women's taxes are used to subsidize men's jobs- the military, the police and so on). Women literally hand over money to fund male employment.

What word /definition would you suggest?

I would restrict patriarchy to it's definition when used in politics or anthropology, which just doesn't have the same connotations as you see in women's studies contexts.

For the stuff that feminism is trying to talk about, I think they should actually describe the phenomena they are referring to, it's causes, effects, and so on. If you want to talk about why monogamy is considered an ideal, or is institutionalised, in a certain time and place, you have to really unpick it and describe it and do the work to integrate it into any larger set of systems.