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When I see feminists waving "Smash the Patriarchy" banners it annoys and amuses me. The "All men are Rapists" ones just annoy me.
There is no real agreement as to what the Patriarchy is. It seems to be used as a catchall to be used by feminists.
There was a theory that ancient society's were matriarchal, but that theory seems to be discredited now. Hunter gathers do seem to be more egalitarian, rather than matriarchal.
If you define patriarchy as men in controlling positions of power. It seems this started with the increase of farming. This allowed for a reliable food source, so the population expanded and resources were fought over. Men being more physically capable for defending/fighting became more important. Women's ability to increase the size of the tribe became an asset to be protected. Strength and violence became more important, men's voices more important than women's.
This is seculation on my part.
To me the Patriarchy is just "the system" The world is run by men mostly, and a great deal of the wealth is owned by men. Ordinary poor, men are just as much victims of the system as women.
We are all part of the patriarhal system . The whole world is. So if it was "smashed" what would we have? A matriarchal society? What would that look like? (not nice in my stories LOL)
What I don't like is when "Smash the Patriarchy" is directed at all men. As if men meet in secret to work out they are going to supress women. Some feminists seem to see the Patriarchy as a bogeyman that plots to constantly keep women down. A few months ago I argued that point with a feminist friend of my son's. I said why would a Patriarchy who want keep women down give them the vote? Surely it is against their interests She said it was because of the women protesting etc. Why would a patriarchy that hated women care about that?
Women are increasingly gaining power in politics. Many countries have had female leaders. The UK has had two. Some are good leaders some are bad, just like men.
The USA decided they didn't want one Despite 51% of the population being female. Apparently Women supported Clinton over Trump by 54% to 42%. But 42% of women voted for someone who could be described as the epitome of a patriarchal male. Trump.
I agree that women have been treated badly in the past, and have had less rights than men. I grew up in the late 60 early 70's. Women's rights have come a long way since then. I remember all the girls wanting to be nurses, secretaries or houswives at school. This would horrify the young women of today.
I was surprised when I learned that American woman needed her husband's permission to open a bank account as recently as the 1960s, and it wasn't until 1975 and the Sex Discrimination Act that a British woman could open a bank account in her own name.
Do you think it's best to leave the system to slowly evolve, or does it need smashing, what could replace it?
Comments
One Reason To Abandon Manhood.
The men I knew in my childhood were often right bastards to me. Perhaps after surviving WWII and the Korean war, they suffered from the trauma of it all. Early on, I saw little reason to be a man, and then I married a woman who had herself been abused and worse. She often expressed her hatred of men and I was frequently her scapegoat. That's one of the reasons that I gave up on being male and decided to change teams. Of course the Psychological people were happy to help.
it is understandable Gwen. I
it is understandable Gwen. I said on another post if a black dog bites you , nature makes you scared f black dogs. Even though you know logically not all black dogs are going to bite you.
Some men are very nice, kind individuals. Often men are physically abusive because tey can. women tend to bemore emotionally abusive.
When i was young I admired the women in my family, I wanted to be like them, not the men.
Was your wife ok with your decision?
Leeanna
Very Complex Situation
My wife was abusive and hysterical about it and the family were on her side. 15 years later the children have come round but I do not expect to hear from my wife. I'm not sure I could explain it in 500 pages.
Patriarchy
The Patriarchy to me is religion, If you look at all the religions and there are over 4000 in todays society, all these are controlled by men, get rid of religion and you get rid of superstitious twaddle and one of the Greatest evils in the world
Many countries have had female leaders. The UK has had two
Actually the UK had one Female leader , Margaret Thatcher 1979 to 1990
Wot! No May?
Didn't Theresa May count?
Didn't Theresa May count?
Didn't Theresa May count? Just what I was going to say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_May
Did you notice how it aged her? Tony Blair looked a lot older, but he was doing it longer.
Leeanna
May
Treason May like Tony B Liar were traitors , they tried everything to get to stay in the EUssr Dictatorship, and betrayed the people of UK
Smashing patriarchy
Can you say anarchy? Smash any sort of political system and that's what you end up with. Rule by might. Smash patriarchy and out goes all of the things that make us call ourselves civilized. Mind you I'm not saying that changes don't need to be made. But smashing - suddenly getting rid of - the current political system is counter productive.
If you really want to end the dominance of men, then you need to have a viable alternative. Uniting women to provide that alternative might be a good thing. But let's not lose sight of the traditional attributes of women that make the dominance of women seem attractive. Traditionally with think of women as nurturing and caring. Take a look at today's feminist movement and judging by their spokes persons you'll be hard pressed to find one that's nurturing. You'll find them to be aggressive, because that's what the think it takes to take over. They may be right.
However, we would be trading one form aggressive dominate system for another. The latter will have an axe to grind. God help all the male bodied people. Trans women would fair no better than cis gender males.
No, I think that change needs to come from within. To effectively change the system without going through a period of upheaval, possibly of apocalyptic proportions - at least in the country (ies) that it happens in, you have to work with the system you have. Mind you, I don't have a plan to do that either. But I'll tell you it will need a grass roots base. One strong enough to get by the roadblocks the system puts in place to resist such changes.
Let's face it, the good ole boys ain't going down without a fight.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
My thoughts entirety. It
My thoughts entirety. It doesn't surprise me that many women in charge are aggressive. The feminists will say they have to be withing a male patriarchal system. We are primates. It isn't the nicest primates that are leaders, it's the biggest and strongest.
I have seem feminists argue most species of animals it's the females who dominate. Not in mammals though. There are some, but not many. I saw two women having a coffee saying the world would be better without men. I really wanted to tell them that the reason they could sit there drinking coffee was because a man drove the beans to the shop, built the shop, maintained the system that brings power and water to the shop etc.
They live within a system that allows them to spout nonsense protected, reasonably safe , because the hated patriarchy makes it possible.
I read an article about old school feminists and what they think of the Patriarchy. None of them could agree. Most thought it was a blunt catch phrase to blame men for all the crap that happens to women.
There are things I find odd. Like a group of mostly men deciding on laws like abortion. Possibly there should be mostly women. If there was a vote on castration, I'd be happy if it was men deciding. Probably a bad example.
Don't get me started on anarchists. My bother used to go to anarchy protests. I explained what it actually meant. He would have all his stuff taken by someone stronger, no unemployment benifit , no shops probably. He just thought it meant Fu*& the government.
Leeanna
I'm not going to get drawn into biological arguments
Or I'll be here all day. Social historians tend to suggest that pre-Neolithic peoples tended to believe in female fertility goddesses, earth goddesses, that changed with the change to worshipping sky gods and the creation of the priesthood, where men took over.
It's all simplistic but may or may not have an element of truth in it. Humans (apes) are emotional beings in whom it's possible to create fear, whether it's with tanks and missiles or hell and damnation. Both are wrong but it doesn't stop them from happening as recent events demonstrate only too well.
The answer is obvious and achievable, we stop believing in sky fairies and other superstitions and we stop aggressive behaviour towards others, replacing it with cooperation and kindness. The religious might argue that's what heaven is like, I think, probably naively, that it would be possible on this earth if everyone wanted it, instead they follow their own shallow desires, fucking up the planet and each other claiming it's progress, right.
Angharad
It comes down to perspective.
It comes down to perspective. I look at someone like Bezos and think why do you need all that money? Someone who struggles to eat every day will look at me and say the same. We never have enough bcause at heart we are still those primitive humans.
Hunter gathers were limited to what they could carry. .
They may or may not have believed in female fertility goddesses, earth goddesses, but that still doesn't mean the society was matriarchal. That seems to be a fairly discredited myth. There may have possibly been some, there are some matrilineal societys today.
The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future
By CYNTHIA ELLER
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/el...
The evidence available to us regarding gender relations in prehistory is sketchy and ambiguous, and always subject to the interpretation of biased individuals. But even with these limitations, what evidence we do have from prehistory cannot support the weight laid upon it by the matriarchal thesis.
The mere fact that Old Europe was agricultural and may have emphasized female fertility goddesses associated with the earth does not by itself mean that women would have had high status. Many simple horticultural societies recognize Earth Mothers and associate the seeds with males, for example in Uganda, the Indies, Italy, Borneo, the Ewe of Africa, the Orinoco and Jivaro of South America, Egypt, Finland. However, the status of women is often low in the simplest of these societies, such as those of the Amazon Basin and Highland New Guinea, where women are taken in raids and carry out the most laborious work of the household.
https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitstream/123456789/38225/...
A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with. The findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, suggesting that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-wo...
Leeanna
Of course it exists
It all comes down to which sex has the greater societal rights and privileges especially if one gender has privileges only derivative of the other gender's privileges instead of having the absolute right to assert their own privileges.
I have found that in general men have greater rights to assert the definition of their own norms should be with minimal consideration of what women thinks. The reverse has not been true as men feel they have every right to diddle with defining what should be consider to be the norms of being a woman. The classic example is that of abortions where women don't even have the right to their own bodies for the longest of times. In a lot of conservative states in the US women as effectively losing that privilege as male backlash and religious (male dominated) conservatism is asserting itself.
The number of women leaders are irrelevant really for a particular society whether they are judged patriarchal or not because they still expect a women leader to have more of a man's leadership style to be respected.
Recall that even as short as 100 years ago a woman in the US could not even get her own line of credit from say to get a store card unless she specifies her husband's income.
In cultural anthropology I learned there are vanishingly few polyandrous societies versus polygamous ones.
In marriages we still look askance at having an older woman marry a younger man.
A classical example is that of the pharaoh Hatshepsut who had her official statuary portray her as male, right down to the beard.
So, what symbology and 'energy' dominates a society also helps to tell if it is a matriarchy or patriarchy in my eyes.
Some of the pressures women
Some of the pressures women have are not from men. "Slut shaming" is usually done by women. Where I work a woman 3 weeks away from getting married got a lift home with a guy we all knew had a crush on her. She told me none of the women in the office would talk to her for weeks. The guys didn't care. The stuff about clothing, a lot of women try to outdo each other, not for men, for themselves.
73.0% of all Fashion Designers are women, so the crazy clothes are designed and dictated mostly by women.
Abortion has been legal in the UK since 1968. It amazes me that such a fundamental right can be decided in the USA at a local level. Religion doesn't play a huge part of legislation here in the UK
"still expect a women leader to have more of a man's leadership style to be respected." Probably true, if they didn't men may not vote for them.
I work for a female MD(CEO to those in the USA) It os the best company I have ever worked at. Most, not all of my male bosses thought with their balls, some were very aggressive. Often to their own detriment. I find women bosses tend not to let the women they work with get away with too much.
The thing about credit, it was worse here Not until 1975 did the U.K. catch up with the U.S., granting women the same right to open an account without a husband's permission.
"In marriages we still look askance at having an older woman marry a younger man." This is probably down to the limited childbearing window women in the past had. Still hung over today. Often a man couldn't support a wife until he was "established"
"A classical example is that of the pharaoh Hatshepsut who had her official statuary portray her as male, right down to the beard"
Probably down to the stereotype of you have to portray male strength to protect and rule.
I think we are heading toward a new more egalitarian society, perhap not in the USA for a while definitely in Scandinavian and Eurpoean countries.
Trump surprised me, but then again the alternative was perhaps not great.
Leeanna