Let's Talk about what Patriarchy Is

[Goosefoot]

So, we had a brief exchange about this on another thread, and it was suggested we move it to its own discussion. I'll copy and past the relevant posts to show what the idea for the discussion is - no expectation that anyone must lay claim to them and of course people can expand or clarify if they want. I'm alternating the font appearance between different quotes.

Can people not see the correlation in the application of identity politics across different groups. This is no different from women claiming theres some kind of oppressive patriarchy. It uses group identity to form a narrative that is both destructive and destabilising to society as a whole.

Patriarchy is still in literal existence in places on this globe.

It's within some women's living memories, being given the vote for the first time. Some women are imprisoned for not confirming to patriarchal religious law. Etc.

Patriarchy in those pure forms is much diminished in the West, it's true. But in some ways the attitudes towards women under patriarchy have just migrated to things like porn.

It very literally still exists in the House of Lords.

However, patriarchy can just be a system where men, for whatever reason, hold most positions of power. You don’t have to believe that all men are involved in a plot against women to observe that a society is patriarchal.

I think patriarchy gets tosses around too liberally.

If you want to apply it to ancient Roman law or more modern versions of the same, yes, it's functioning as a clear and technically useful word that denotes something specific and definable.

But the ways it's used most of the time by western feminists it just means some undefined and often mysterious set of somethings that result is the disadvantaging of women in some way. It reminds me a lot of what Adolph Reed says about the term systemic racism or even just racism - it's just a name you apply to an effect, but it doesn't tell you anything useful about the cause or mechanisms surrounding it. Because it's abstract and unfalsifiable it lends itself to fuzzy thinking. And it doesn't at all lend itself to suggesting solutions or alternatives.

Can you start another thread on this please?

I'm quite interested in teasing out what is patriarchy, what is prejudice against women, what is an inability to socially and economically value caring, what is woman-hatred etc.

@Imnobody4

And neither of you can be botherd to read the article.

I haven't seen an articles posted in this half of the thread? I might have missed it.

I can't see that anyone bothered to read what I posted either, as no one said anything remotely related to it. In fact no one has really even talked much about what the OP said.

Sorry, just to be clear — I don’t mean the second type of bias is directly caused by patriarchy … the bias in favour of the wealthy etc is caused by our class system and very liberal capitalism. Which happens also to favour men though, so it probably is linked. But in any society those deemed the ruling class will enjoy significant advantages. As I said before, though, how you’d ever ensure women enjoy a meaningful and sustainable place at the top of the tree is unclear, given the ability of men to overpower women as a class should they ever wish to.

@fascinated

In a patriarchy rape will always be difficult to convict because those perceived to be in charge/with power/the ruling class (whatever you want to call it — some of these are loaded terms) will always be given the benefit of the doubt.

It’s the same bias that means execs and wealthy people who commit fraud etc are not punished as harshly as benefit fraudsters/shoplifters etc.

The people giving this 'benefit of the doubt' are the members of the jury - so just 12 adult people randomly selected from the public. So its not obvious on what your assertion here is based on. (As an aside Judges have moved away from the phrase 'benefit of the doubt' because jurors were unsure as to what it meant. In stead they say something like 'return a guilt verdict only if you are sure')

As to your second assertion this is also not credible. I worked for a time as a criminal defence solicitor. I know for a fact that Shoplifters were not treated harshly. From the off, they would typically get a conditional discharge or a small fine (which typically wouldn't get paid in any event). As number of convictions would increase the magistrates would start looking at other disposals such as community punishments. Only once you reached the point of them continuing to offend, not pay fines and engaging with community punishments, do the magistrates then start to look at custodial punishments - and even then suspended at first.

If you want to find out more about sentencing for the groups of offenders you mention, sentencing guidelines are available online for you to find. Judges and Magistrates follow these carefully and give reasons for the sentences they decide upon in case their decisions are appealed.

Okay, help a sister out here..... this whole thread has left me feeling dumb as a bag of hammers......

Quite a few people have given a POV as to what they believe patriarchy means, which boils down to a bias in many areas in favour of men - their biological form in design, their advantages in the capitalist system because they don't (generally) bear children, the default to male models for researching and treating diseases that affect women differently, and the fact that although rape is common, it is now under-reported (hence convictions going down) because women have experienced having to prove they really were victims to a higher standard than men proving they didn't do it (sorry, bit ham-fisted there but I'm sure most will get the gist).

Apparently none of these things down to any form of patriarchal bias, but are just one of those things due to natural effects of biological differences and we should be focussing on the "real" issues that women face, which aren't that many apparently because all the big changes have been made and what more do we really need?

I don't think anyone is saying that these kinds of things don't happen or exist, even if they might not agree about the nature of certain specific ones.

To me, the question is whether when we talk about them, is are we are remaining closely rooted in the material reality of the situation. Because if we are not, what we are talking about is something that is just a mirage.

So the very first thing that is important is to make sure your observations are correct and accurate, before you even try and speculate about causation or anything like that. This can be difficult even in the sciences at times, but even more so in sociological study where you have multiple complex systems and factors that may or may not be related, and you can't run experiements that control for variables and such. The best you can usually do is try to work with big data sets and control for variables in the analysis, but it's not perfect. One real problem is that no matter how you try and choose good categories of data to collect, or be open to seeing all kinds of links, whatever pre-conceptions you have about that will tend to assert themselves. What would the data show if you grouped it in a different way?

Once you have your data you look for patterns, for correlations, etc. So if your interest is in women, you will probably look for different patterns or disadvantages between women and men, if it is race between different racial groups, etc. This is tricky - if you narrow the focus too much you may miss that your smaller patterns are part of larger ones, maybe even that are outside the specific group you are interested in. But if you don't, it's too much to deal with, and you can't really make useful conclusions.

What you want to do is see the causation working through the patterns. But that causation isn't something abstract - it's material and specific. A chain of events, the way bodies are made, a real historical circumstance, an economic effect, a human psychological mechanism. This effect comes from this chain of causes.

For an abstract idea like patriarchy to be applied to all of those chains of events or real specific causes, or even to use it to describe all the relevant patterns and effects, you need to be really sure the things you are grouping together belong together - they are materially and specifically related. Otherwise it's rather like you decide that all things with wings are birds, and then go on to try and describe the actions, biology, care and nature of birds with reference to your grouping - your result won't be very useful or reflect reality.

This type of mistake (my husband the chemist is telling me - "that's junk science you just an't do that!") is really common in political ideology, economics, even psychology I think, because of the need to talk about abstractions. The abstractions can easily get far away from the reality, because the human doing the thinking begins to reverse the process - instead of looking to the material instantiation and carefully deriving a pattern and causation, they use the ideological tool to examine the material reality - and it will always give the data that the tool is meant to "see". You can see this effect in some of the more bizarre theological concepts of the middle ages, where an abstraction is reasoned out to the enth degree as if it was the thing it was meant to be talking about, but by the end the concept has been wholly unmoored from whatever that was.

[quote Thelnebriati]Prosecuting sex crimes. and the difficulty in doing so isn't anything to do with a patriarchy. Are you saying you'd make them easier to convict and lower the standard of evidence? Are you insane? You dont make things fairer by making them unfair.

No. No one is saying that.

There are some interesting discussions taking place around the role of the jury in rape trials. Jury bias is a serious issue, if it is caused by socialisation (the acceptance of rape myths as fact); then blind selection cannot create a fair jury.

theconversation.com/is-jury-bias-preventing-justice-for-rape-victims-60090

www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/news/2019/10/8/press-release-should-juries-be-abolished-in-rape-trials-my-jury-is-out

www.thejusticegap.com/rape-trial-influence-jury-bias-verdict-outcome/[/quote]
I think this is a good example of a useful and important discussion for feminists. How jury's behave in trials of this kind seems to be a particular problem.

On the other hand, many people are uncomfortable with the idea of not allowing an accused person a jury trial, and making the judiciary alone responsible for decisions.

Some of the way jury selection can be manipulated seems problematic too.

I've also thought that changes in technology and crime investigation seem to have worked perversely for rape trials - this may also be true in some other crimes, I'm not sure. But there seemed to be an assumption at one time that more technological tools would make convicting criminals easier, but it seems in many cases to create room for doubt. As there are more possible interpretations of events, it becomes difficult to convict.

Thank you for that - definitely food for thought.

So the discussion here is really about whether patriarchy as a label is an unhelpful ideological theory, or a factual / historical descriptor?

That's just the first thought off the top of my head but I think I'm getting to grips with it now...... I shall ponder some more :)

Quite a few people have given a POV as to what they believe patriarchy means, which boils down to a bias in many areas in favour of men

See I don't think this is what "the patriarchy" means at all. In the original rad fem formulation women and men are distinct social classes locked in a class struggle, and "the patriarchy" is the social system created by men as a class in order to dominate over women as a class, just as Marxists see "capitalism" as the system by which the bourgeois dominate over the proletariat.

So it's not just the observation that a bias exists, but also an explanation for why the bias exists.

@OldQueen1969

Thank you for that - definitely food for thought.

So the discussion here is really about whether patriarchy as a label is an unhelpful ideological theory, or a factual / historical descriptor?

That's just the first thought off the top of my head but I think I'm getting to grips with it now...... I shall ponder some more :)

Yes, exactally.

And also the post by NotDavidTennant is relevent. The thing to remember with that is that in Marxism, if it's being done well, you have to show that your label, like patriarchy or proletariat etc really corresponds to something concrete, rather than ideological, because it is a strictly materialist system.

That's why a lot of the terms of this kind on marxism are relational - they are about that historical dialectic or interplay between two groups. So you have the capitalist and the worker, and the definition of their relationship will always have certain features, because that is what it means to be a worker or a capital owner. In that case, to solve the power imbalance, marxism suggests that the categories are dissolved and you have a society that is all workers.

You can see why this seems like a good tool for feminists, because the nature of the historical (past and future) interaction between men and women will always be determined by the different and complementary nature of male and female.

However, unlike worker/capitalist, this is not a social system created by people, and most people don't think it can be fundamentally changed. Though there has long been a stream of feminist thought that says, you can only resolve this by dissolving the difference through technology - so birth control, artificial wombs, etc. Transhumanism, really. But that raises the question - are you saying that women should become men in order to escape the relational effect of being female? That there is a problem with the reproductive role female? And is this even a plausible idea?

So while you might say capitalism is the name for any system that includes the capital/worker relation , and we need another better system, but would you really say patriarchy is any system that includes the relation of male/female?

However, unlike worker/capitalist, this is not a social system created by people, and most people don't think it can be fundamentally changed.

You're confusing the fact that humans are a sexually dimorphic species with the inevitability of a particular social system. Humans have created many different kinds of societies. Basically you're taking a deterministic view, biology is destiny.

The issue is not to change the fact of being men and women but to challenge and change the power dynamics and inequality that has developed in complex societies which benefit men at the expense of women.

You are arguing that the social systems I would call patriarchical, or androcentrism are basically as natural an immutable as the male female dyad.

I don't know where you're getting the idea feminists want transhumanism. Woman are not broken and in need of fixing.

I don't know where you're getting the idea feminists want transhumanism. Woman are not broken and in need of fixing

Maybe not as a conscious ideal, but it does often seem that some feminists resent the roles and consequent social extrapolations of female biology....that only if women were released from the shackles of childbirth and childcare...and if only men took as much ( or similar) responsibility for children, housework etc.......

Personally, I have come to see the whole trans issue as, in certain ways, arising out of an almost unacknowledegd desire for the suppression of the roles that arise out of the fact of female biology....out of the notion that women are just like men, but with tits and a fanny. If being a woman is nothing other than superficial physical attributes......has no deeper resonance or biological calling card.

@Justhadathought

I don't know where you're getting the idea feminists want transhumanism. Woman are not broken and in need of fixing

Maybe not as a conscious ideal, but it does often seem that some feminists resent the roles and consequent social extrapolations of female biology....that only if women were released from the shackles of childbirth and childcare...and if only men took as much ( or similar) responsibility for children, housework etc.......

Personally, I have come to see the whole trans issue as, in certain ways, arising out of an almost unacknowledegd desire for the suppression of the roles that arise out of the fact of female biology....out of the notion that women are just like men, but with tits and a fanny. If being a woman is nothing other than superficial physical attributes......has no deeper resonance or biological calling card.

I think there’s sth in this.

We need to embrace and value our female biology. Too much ageing of men!

Apeing.

"For an abstract idea like patriarchy"

About as abstract as an erect penis shoved down a woman's throat choking off her air as his abstract weight pins her down helplessly.

As abstract as other men standing around watching her get face raped and choked while they whoop and holler and cheer their mate on, some of them with their own abstract erections waiting their turn.

As abstract as the men with their phones out filming it to add this face rape and choking to their abstract spank bank of filmed rapes for masturbation.

As abstract as the wealthy extortionists who purchase the footage and upload it to websites.

As abstract as the panting thrill of millions of men voyeurs watching this one instance of face rape and choking among the millions of such anti-woman propaganda films men make for daily consumption by everyday, ordinary, common men.

@Imnobody4

sawdustformypony It is obvious that there is a serious crisis in the prosecution of rape throughout the entire justice system. To function properly a Justice system must deliver justice for the victim as well as safe guarding the defendent from wrongful conviction. I can think of no other crime that has such damaging and far-reaching effects for the victim with such an abysmal conviction rate. Certainly not one where men are the majority victims or where women are the majority of defendants. I'm not going to waste my time trawling through all the cases. The system does not deliver justice.

I don't think its obvious that any 'crisis' exists at all. Conviction rates for rape are in line with other offences such as robbery and theft, so I really don't know where youve got the idea that the conviction rate is so abysmal.

No system is perfect but the system we have i believe we should be etremely thankful for is above all and the 1 thing it prides itself on is the fact that its fair. We forget this sometimes and just focus on who we believe the victim is. However every single case will have the outcome that someone finds unjust.

How anyone can even relate our justice system as being part of an oppressive patriarchy beggars belief. Its the fundamental system that gives us protection and the opportunity to seek justice for any crime committed against us, male or female.

@Imnobody4

However, unlike worker/capitalist, this is not a social system created by people, and most people don't think it can be fundamentally changed.

You're confusing the fact that humans are a sexually dimorphic species with the inevitability of a particular social system. Humans have created many different kinds of societies. Basically you're taking a deterministic view, biology is destiny.

The issue is not to change the fact of being men and women but to challenge and change the power dynamics and inequality that has developed in complex societies which benefit men at the expense of women.

You are arguing that the social systems I would call patriarchical, or androcentrism are basically as natural an immutable as the male female dyad.

I don't know where you're getting the idea feminists want transhumanism. Woman are not broken and in need of fixing.

No, that's not what I am saying.

I am saying that male/female is not completely analogous to capitalist/proletariat. The marxist position is clear - as long as this dyad exists, it involves a power conflict, that is the very nature of the relation between them. The solution, the only possible solution, as they see it is to completely remove the capitalist and have only the proletariat.

That's not a possible solution to the male/female dyad. Is it possible to have a human society where there are not disparities in the "outcomes" - the things we think are important and should be measured - between men and women? That's not entirely clear.

I thin I said that some feminist arguments have been a kind of transhumanism. The people who take this approach have concluded that as long as women are burdened with pregnancy and children, the cannot expect to have similar power or status or outcomes to men. This was a significant part of the thinking behind the idea that women must have access to good birth control. Not just that it should be a right, but that until this part of female biology could be controlled, allowing women the sexual freedom of men without the biological burdens of women, there could not be real equality. You also see certain feminists take a similar view that breastfeeding is anti-feminist as it ties women down.

We don't necessarily think of those things as transhumanist, they are too familiar maybe, but the same way of thinking is very interested in things like artificial wombs, to finally free women from the physical (and maybe emotional?) burden of pregnancy. And that does seem to be clearly wandering into transhumanist territory. But they are ideas which are very closely related ideologically, in that they see the specific biology of women as being incompatible with equality and so want to suppress it. It's almost a mirror image of the marxist solution to the proletariat/capitalist problem.

@insideandout3

"For an abstract idea like patriarchy"

About as abstract as an erect penis shoved down a woman's throat choking off her air as his abstract weight pins her down helplessly.

As abstract as other men standing around watching her get face raped and choked while they whoop and holler and cheer their mate on, some of them with their own abstract erections waiting their turn.

As abstract as the men with their phones out filming it to add this face rape and choking to their abstract spank bank of filmed rapes for masturbation.

As abstract as the wealthy extortionists who purchase the footage and upload it to websites.

As abstract as the panting thrill of millions of men voyeurs watching this one instance of face rape and choking among the millions of such anti-woman propaganda films men make for daily consumption by everyday, ordinary, common men.

Those are concrete things, but I can't say I've ever seen a patriarchy walking around doing any of them.

Anyone can apply a name to a set of things they see or feel or experience and say that is the cause of all of them. But that gets us concepts like gender identity.

@BlingLoving

Even the legal protections we have could be rolled back overnight and there would be no redress available to us, since males would ultimately be able to overpower women as a class (I appreciate this is a very extreme scenario and hopefully one that we in the developed world will never experience).

In the US, not only are abortion rights being rolled back, but the recent case in Alabama where a woman was prosecuted because her unborn baby was killed in a shooting suggests that in the developed world, this is already happening....

If anything, I cant say I'd not be pleased to see any and all abortion laws 'rolled back'. This would be a tremendous victory for the females that are killed each year and who's voices aren't heard in the most vulnerable, innocent time of life. So no, i dont see that as the patriarchy in the slightest by advocating for preventing the unborn from being killed.

"Anyone can apply a name to a set of things they see or feel or experience and say that is the cause of all of them."

They're named men. Men are causing the harms women are seeing and experiencing.

patri + archy = men harming women by institutionally declaring women inferior and therefore exploitable.

Is patriarchy still a useful term? Does it map to “systemic sexism” - which may be w more useful term as it’s clear, still applies to men and women and is analogous to “systemic racism” that is well understood.

I don't think its obvious that any 'crisis' exists at all. Conviction rates for rape are in line with other offences such as robbery and theft, so I really don't know where youve got the idea that the conviction rate is so abysmal.

What the actual fuck? I see why people have left this thread. Conviction rates for rape are below average, and, more importantly, the number of cases even going to court have gone down. My god, have you lived under a rock?

and this report tries to justify reduction in prosecutions on basis that more women are reporting sexual crimes so everyone is just soooo busy.

OP I actually don't understand 90% of what you say - lots of fancy words but very little sense. But it's clear you think that patriarchy is not a problem. why did you even start this thread if you didn't want discussion?

This would be a tremendous victory for the females that are killed each year and who's voices aren't heard in the most vulnerable, innocent time of life.

What does this even mean? That abortion of female foetuses are bad but not boy foetuses? This thread is mind blowing.

We don't necessarily think of those things as transhumanist, they are too familiar maybe, but the same way of thinking is very interested in things like artificial wombs, to finally free women from the physical (and maybe emotional?) burden of pregnancy

And that way of thinking is also linked to the idea of womb transplants for men, and to the idea of 'fathers who give birth' ( Freddie/Seahorse).

You're confusing the fact that humans are a sexually dimorphic species with the inevitability of a particular social system. Humans have created many different kinds of societies. Basically you're taking a deterministic view, biology is destiny

Yes, there is a kind of biological destiny or determinism.......unless you subscribe or seek for trans-humanistic ideas. Even in matriarchal societies, especially in matriarchal societies, motherhood is key.

The issue is not to change the fact of being men and women

What does being a man or a woman mean to you, if they have nothing to do with biology and the tendencies and consequences that arise as a result of that? Are you arguing for the adoption of a rigid or enforced equality of outcome, or maybe to suppress all differences that are naturally occurring?I think, myself, we have come pretty much as far as is possible in flattening out the differences.

I will fight

Until no one is denied medication for pain because they are a women
Until no girl is teased for being good at maths
Until no one is left unemployed because they may get pregnant
Until rape is not seen as acceptable in any circumstances
Until no child suffers FGM

Should I go on?

Sadly I feel that although progress in some areas is being made its only getting worse for girls in other areas particularly social media perfection, the awful way women are depicted on screen in easily accessible online porn and the disposable culture of online dating apps. Capitalism and the patriarchy are a toxic combination.

Things have got better in some ways but that fact is that from birth girls are taught that so much of their value in life is based on how they look. For many gender roles are very still pretty rigidly defined in childhood.
We then spend their lives having our bodies objectified and scrutinised.

We are making progress but our reproductive organs, periods, troubles, menopause are only starting to be demystified and for many they are still seen as shameful and it is still the case that our pain isn't seen as valid. You only have to look at what has just happened with the vaginal mesh scandal on the NHS.

In many ways the patriarchy is just as damaging to boys. They are expected to conceal their hurt and emotions from a young age so the only acceptable emotion they can show is anger. Damaged like boys who grow up to be men who have been taught to view women in terms of how attractive and disposable they are who are also full of suppressed emotions. And so the cycle continues!