Article Discussing The Increasing Use and Societal Acceptance of Surrogacy

[UtopiaPlanitia]

I found this to be a fascinating article and thought I would share it.

Surrogacy and the rise of the female patriarch
thecritic.co.uk/issues/march-2023/surrogacy-and-the-rise-of-the-female-patriarch/

‘If a single act could exemplify the one per cent woman treating a less-privileged woman just as badly as men have treated women throughout history, it is this. No other form of exploitation is so sex-specific, so central to the distortion of male-female power relations. If there is such a thing as a female patriarch, it is the rich woman who outsources and appropriates female reproductive labour…

…patriarchy is not about policing sexual mores; it is about the control of resources.
This understanding ought to be basic feminism. However, a combination of new reproductive technologies and calls for gender liberation have turned the analysis on its head. It is as though there was never anything wrong with patriarchy’s objectives, just with its methods.’

Such a good article

To elevate women — to grant them true equality — one must disassociate them from pregnancy and birth, activities for the lower orders. Feminists are no longer compelled to defend women as a group uniquely vulnerable to reproductive exploitation because such a definition of women no longer exists. And yet, the exploitation still happens. The babies are still born, to someone whose name denotes neither personhood (woman) nor a relationship (mother).

The language I’ve seen used in newspaper articles etc around surrogacy is very depersonalised, shockingly so to my mind. I presume this is to reduce any potential discomfort or guilt the person(s) paying for the baby might feel and perhaps to try and reduce any chances of the surrogate mother developing an attachment to the child (to keep it present in her mind at all times that she’s considered to be providing a service).

The idea of an economic class of women who have to sell their babies (and regardless of genetics, if a woman gestates a baby, it’s her baby) is so dystopian

I have seen some similar takes on prostitution and OnlyFans etc. where a journalist writes about those who work in these fields in sex-neutral terms and even tries to post an equal number of examples of men and women selling their bodies (which hugely distorts the numbers of men and women who are selling their bodies).

The commercialisation of the female body is necessary in both surrogacy and prostitution, but remembering that it is the female body makes that difficult, so now we are sold the idea that both activities are empowering for women etc.

But, in fact, both of those activities are directly useful for the male sex. Yes, rich women can exploit poor women for surrogacy, but so can rich men, as we have read in recent years.

This is really is an excellent piece.

I think we’ve had threads on both the pro surrogacy articles cited?

At Uni, in the 90s, I studied Feminist Political Theory and I remember studying Shulamith Firestone’s writing, and reading other feminist writers of similar persuasion, and feeling really uncomfortable with their ideas of artificial wombs and raising children communally in state organisations as ways of achieving female liberation.

It seems to me that these ideas have never gone away and now transhumanism/Silicon Valley/America private healthcare are putting a high tech, individualistic & libertarian spin on them by offering to ‘liberate’ humanity through reproductive technology, genetic engineering, and global surrogacy. Seeing babies and mothers as products or resources is so chilling.

I dunno. I think patriarchy is banning two women from coming to a mutually beneficial agreement with each other. I don’t think the women who want to be surrogates are being exploited by the patriarchy by other women who are now being conveniently called ‘female patriarchs’ to try and connect them to the patriarchy through linguistic gymnastics.

There is no such thing as a female patriarch btw, a ruling female is a matriarch and that’s the exact opposite of patriarchy.

If the exploitation of women by other women were an issue, it’s matriarchy not patriarchy.

Agree. The market destroys everything by commodifying it. That's the way we are heading, sadly.

The author has presumably chosen ‘patriarch’ knowing that the ‘matriarch’ is false analogy in etymological terms? Matriarch is a much later invention and comes from Latin, whereas Patriarch is Greek.

Matriarch is derived from the same Latin root as ‘mother’, whereas patriarch is not from father, but from from the Greek root for ‘family’.

Victoria Smith seems to me to have specifically chosen ‘female patriarch’ to describe a female babybuyer precisely because she isn’t a mother, and thus ‘matriarch’ is incorrect.

Smith is a very good writer and thus there is no reason to assume she has made a mistake in her word choice.

She’s made a deliberate choice to obfuscate. I’m not assuming, I know.

Yes the linguistic entomology is that matriarch comes from mother and patriarch comes from father. But patriarch refers to the civic and social patronage system in antiquity which was not about biologically being a father.

Patriarch/Matriarch never were synonyms for an actual father/mother- it’s a different concept entirely- you can be 100% childless and still be a patriarch or matriarch. Its usage was and is more similar to the modern day patron (now unisex) than actually meaning a biological mother or father.

During late Antiquity this secular social patronage system was gradually Christianised- hence the reason why priests gained the title of “Father” even though they were not literally a biological father. Various churches were also headed by Patriarchs, not Popes. Even today, the Catholic Church is divided into twelve patriarchates.

The reason why there was no usage of matriarch as an equivalent to a patriarch until the 17th century was due to the historical oppression of women. There were no women fulfilling that particular role of social patronage as they did not have the power, influence or even ownership of the resources required to do it.

Matriarch is the female equivalent of a patriarch. To call modern day matriarchs “female patriarchs” erases the past three hundred years of the progress of women and pretends there has never been any such thing as a matriarch. It’s also no coincidence she chose not to use the correct term, this is a conscious choice to obfuscate female power dynamics by using terms that carry the connotation of patriarchy and thus cause the reader to think the power dynamics are male, when they are not.

whereas patriarch is not from father, but from from the Greek root for ‘family’.

No. The root of patriarch is also from father!

patriarkhēs literally means ‘father rule’ in ancient Greek. The root of patriarkhēs "chief or head of a family," combines patria "family, clan," which itself has the root of pater "father" + arkhein "to rule"

Now the Romans adopted alot of Greek words after conquering them and this morphed to patriarcha in late Latin.

She’s made a deliberate choice to obfuscate

of everything in that article the choice of the word patriarch makes you angriest?

righty oh

It's a very powerful piece. It is incredible that liberal feminism, which is so obsessed with intersectionality in many ways, completely ignores the massive class, race and wealth axes of surrogacy. Not to mention the international nature of surrogacy meaning that in many ways surrogacy feels distinctly colonialist.

What is not mentioned here (understandably to keep it focused on women) is the lack of consideration of the child at the centre as well. And let's not get into the situation in Ukraine, or what happens when a child has problems at birth, or the complete lack of vetting of surrogate parents that has led to at least one case of a paedophile commissioning a child.

It may have been the seventeenth century's idea that matriarchy did not exist in the past, but Medieval European women definitely had both power and means to be patronas - often leaving large amounts of property to heirs or heiresses, inheriting lordships, being guild members, trading as femmes sole, running businesses in their husband's absence or after he died, going to war (though not to actually fight - a battle axe needs real hefting). Women's position socially and legally deteriorated as Europe moved into the modern era, eighteenth century women had fewer life chances and rights (e.g. UK women could no longer inherit a lordship except in very, very rare cases) than Medieval women, and nineteenth century women were more constrained than women in the eighteenth century.

Great points!

Exactly right. Womens power and status fluctuated in Europe. It wasn’t a steady upward progress.

I’m not angry. I’m pointing out linguistic gymnastic rhetoric to obfuscate that surrogacy is largely a female to female agreement. It’s not patriarchy.

one woman can still exploit another

Yes but that would be along axes of class and race. Not due to “patriarchy.”

fair enough

although it is only possible to exploit women for surrogacy. so there is a sex based aspect to it, even if it's one women exploiting another

Yes, but patriarchy/patriarch refers to male controlled power dynamics in society. Patriarchy/matriarchy is about whether it is male or female rule, it has nothing to do with the sex of who is ruled/exploited.

okey dokes

I'm just not going to get into a semantic argument about it

women being exploited because of their bodies makes me cross

someone choosing a sub optimal word when writing about it really doesn't

Again, I’m not cross/angry. I’m bemused at the authors very obvious use of obfuscation to amp up her rhetoric. It’s a bit more than choosing an suboptimal word when writing about surrogacy. The misnomer, “female patriarch” is in her title and her entire article is an attempt to convince the reader that there has been a “rise of the female patriarch”.

Any female patriarch is a matriarch. So if one thinks surrogacy is always exploitation, rather than one of most things in life where exploitation can happen- work, relationships, et- then because it is female rule causing it, then we have an issue with matriarchal exploitation of women.

Not yet more patriarchal exploitation of women.

are only women exploited at work?

are only women exploited in relationships?

are only women exploited to gestate babies for others?

do you see?

No, no and yes. But again the definition of patriarchy is not exploitation of only women. Patriarchy does in fact result in the exploitation of men as well as women.

The author decided to use “female patriarch” because how else would she then repeatedly connect it to patriarchy on her rhetoric? She can’t witter on about the objectives of patriarchy if she’s uses the correct word of matriarch. Even the least intelligent reader would pick up on the disconnect. But by using female patriarch over and over she fools the average reader into thinking there is any such thing as a female patriarch when there isn’t.

The specific situation she is discussing, childless women commissioning a surrogate is at root a female to female power dynamic which a matriarch and a subordinate woman. Therefore it cannot have anything to do with patriarchs or the patriarchy.