The patriarchy is not inevitable

Written By: - Date published: 8:51 am, April 23rd, 2023 - 40 comments
Categories: feminism, patriarchy - Tags: , , , , , ,

I’ve been talking with other feminists lately about the patriarchy and how, in order to dismantle it, we have to know what it is: its structure, purpose and intent.

Part of this means acknowledging that the gains women are making have made under patriarchy’s current form, neoliberal capitalism, are not a threat to neoliberalism itself. This is why we are allowed to have them. The needs and desires of women that threaten the system will always be suppressed. Without radical system change, there is no women’s liberation.

It also follows that were we to change to another form of patriarchy, say fascist or authoritarian states, we would likewise not be allowed liberation. I point this out to show that while there are important and significant differences between neoliberal capitalism and fascism, both deny women the right to our own being, politics and culture.

What is the patriarchy?

The patriarchy is a 5,000 year old hierarchical, domination system many contemporary countries use to organise society, and like all human systems it has structures that are informed by belief. So what are these structures and beliefs?

Left wing feminist and philosopher Jane Clare Jones is a good starting point. 

Lets do patriarchy 101 shall we?

Patriarchy is a system of *male dominance.*

In this system male people hold most of the power and wealth. In this system, very importantly, we also privilege the needs and interests of male people over those of female people.

The feminist analysis of this situation is that society is structured to serve the interests of males. A significant part of these interests involves female people being positioned as a *resource* for males. This includes being a reproductive and sexual resource, as well as the exploitation of female people’s domestic and emotional labour.

That women have certain reproductive capacities, and that men want to have reproductive and sexual access to women is FUNDAMENTAL to why this system evolved, and why men *still have an interest* in maintaining it.

That is, male dominance over women is entirely non-accidentally related to the fact that men want access to WOMEN’S BODIES. 

And on oppression of women as a sex class,

Structural oppression is a class based relation between a dominant class and a subjugated class through which the dominant class extracts labour, or access to bodies, or both, from the subjugated class. That is, structural oppression is a class based relation of material extraction, through which the dominant class profits from the oppression of the subjugated class.

…

There are three main axes of structural oppression – socio-economic class, sex and race.

If that seems too academically dense, put it this way: capitalism (the patriarchy) needs labour to build wealth for the power holders in society. Who provides the people that do that labour? Women. Without women there are no wage slaves to do the work of building capital. We make sure that the species continues, both by childbearing and child rearing.

We generally don’t get paid or particularly well supported for that, and there are serious barriers for women who have children to fully take part in society. The system uses women but keeps us in the proper place within the system: it needs women to have babies and it needs to control that for the wellbeing of the capitalistic system. It can’t pay women for our labour, because then we’d have more power to change the system to something that works for women and children, and that wouldn’t be the neoliberal, capitalist, anti-nature, death cult state we have now. It would mean the end of capitalism.

It’s worth pointing out that men on the trad left who deny that sex is an axis of oppression, are doing the work of the patriarchy. Also worth pointing out that the neoliberal left appears to have largely abandoned socioeconomics and sex as class oppressions.

Patriarchy as a system of domination, egalitarianism as a system of partnership

Another useful analysis of patriarchal structure and belief comes from systems scientist and futurist Riane Eisler, who conceptualised the patriarchy as a dominator system but also presented an alternative: arranging society based on a partnership model.

From the Wikipedia article on Eisler’s 1987 groundbreaking book The Chalice and the Blade,

Briefly her thesis is despite old narratives about an inherently flawed humanity, more and more evidence shows humanity is not doomed to perpetuate patterns of violence and oppression. Female values offer a partnership alternative with deep roots in the pre-Patriarchy paradigm of cultural evolution. No utopia is predicted; rather, a way of structuring society in more peaceful, equitable, and sustainable ways is envisioned.

…

The author compares two underlying types of social organization in which the cultural construction of gender roles and relations is key. Eisler places human societies on what she calls the partnership-domination continuum. At one end of the continuum are societies oriented to the partnership model. At the other are societies oriented to the dominator or domination model. These categories transcend conventional categories such as ancient vs. modern, Eastern vs. Western, religious vs. secular, rightist vs. leftist, and so on.

The domination model ranks man over man, man over woman, race over race, and religion vs. religion, with difference equated with superiority or inferiority. It comprises an authoritarian structure in both family and state or tribe, rigid male dominance, and a high degree of abuse and violence. The partnership model consists of a democratic and egalitarian structure in both the family and state or tribe, with hierarchies of actualization where power is empowering rather than disempowering (as in hierarchies of domination). There is also gender partnership and a low degree of abuse and violence, as it is not needed to maintain rigid top-down rankings.

The point here isn’t women/good, men/bad. It’s specifically that the patriarchy is a system that heirarchises power and gives preferential treatment to men and demotes women. In fact it basically treats everyone and all of life badly, but within that some people do better than others. Key here is that men as a class have a vested interest in maintaining the system and women have a vested interest in dismantling it. That’s a choice.

Also important is that Eisler’s model isn’t a reversing of the patriarchy and putting women in charge and men in a subordinate position to women. Women-centric egalitarian cultures centre women, because women will share power, upholding the community and the value of the whole tribe (including men) rather than the individualistic ethic that most of us in the West have been socialised into and that has given rise to the neoliberal capitalistic current form of patriarchy.

Referencing the long development of human culture before the rise of patriarchy in eastern Europe/the Middle East 5,000 years ago, Eisler uses a multidisciplinary approach across anthropology, sociology, law, art, literature, psychology, science, religion and political science.

But Eisler makes it clear that pre-history wasn’t utopia, and the point now is not to return to some imagined state, but to use what we know to create new systems going forward. 

Of note here is that rather than presenting a rigid binary of dominator vs egalitarian cultures, Eisler puts them on a continuum. This in itself is an example of partnership model thinking. Hard dualistic thinking is a feature of patriarchy. Flexible, both/and thinking is what opens the way to egalitarianism. Embrace the contradictions and nuance. 

Indigenous perspectives: not all societies are patriarchal

Following on from this, is looking at the work of Native American scholar, the late Paula Gunn Allen. In the introduction to The Sacred Hoop – Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, Allen outlines seven main themes in Native culture. These include multiple references to what she calls gynocracy (which I interpret not as rule by women, but the centering of women in societal organisation).

Traditional tribal lifestyles are more often gynocratic than not, and they are never patriarchal. These features make understanding tribal cultures essential to all responsible activists who seek life-affirming social change that can result in a real decrease in human and planetary destruction and in a real increase in quality of life for all inhabitants of planet earth.

…

Some distinguishing features of a woman-centered social system include free and easy sexuality and wide latitude in personal style. This latitude means that a diversity of people, including gay males and lesbians, are not denied and are in fact likely to be accorded honor. Also likely to be prominent in such systems are nurturing, pacifist, and passive males (as defined by western minds) and self-defining, assertive, decisive women. In many tribes, the nurturing male constitutes the ideal adult model for boys while the decisive, self-directing female is the ideal model to which girls aspire.

…

In tribal gynocratic systems a multitude of personality and character types can function positively within the social order because the systems are focused on social responsibility rather than on privilege and on the realities of the human constitution rather than on denial-based social fictions to which human beings are compelled to conform by powerful individuals within the society.

Tribal gynocracies prominently feature even distribution of goods among all members of the society on the grounds that First Mother enjoined cooperation and sharing on all her children.

One of the major distinguishing characteristics of gynocratic cultures is the absence of punitiveness as a means of social control.

…

Among gynocratic or gynocentric tribal peoples the welfare of the young is paramount, the complementary nature of all life forms is stressed, and the centrality of powerful women to social well-being is unquestioned.

Again, I feel compelled to point out that this isn’t native/good, white/bad. We’re talking systems here. And please, let’s resist the temptation to dismiss what Paula Gunn Allen is presenting by casting it in (anti) Noble Savage memes just because it challenges our own dominator socialisation.

It’s likely that all peoples have ancestors from egalitarian cultures if we go back far enough.

Speaking about the ways in which Indian women held and hold power in traditional societies, 

The colonizers saw (and rightly) that as long as women held unquestioned power of such magnitude, attempts at total conquest of the continents were bound to fail. In the centuries since the first attempts at colonization in the early 1500s, the invaders have exerted every effort to remove Indian women from every position of authority, to obliterate all records pertaining to gynocratic social systems, and to ensure that no American and few American Indians would remember that gynocracy was the primary social order of Indian America prior to 1800. But colonial attempts at cultural gynocide notwithstanding, there were and are gynocracies—that is, woman-centered tribal societies in which matrilocality, matrifocality, matrilinearity, maternal control of household goods and resources, and female deities of the magnitude of the Christian God were and are present and active features of traditional tribal life.

Feminism looking beyond the patriarchy

Why don’t we know about women-centric, egalitarian societies? Because under the patriarchy, men got to write history and those men have a vested interest in their own sex, race and socio-economic class remaining in control.

One of the prime tasks of feminism is to teach women that the patriarchy is not inevitable. In Eisler’s model of post-patriarchy, the beliefs and stories of the system matter. For feminism, shifting the narrative from ‘this is how it’s always been’ to ‘we already know how to do women-centred culture’ is central in women reclaiming our power and liberation.

Feminist historian and founder of the Suppressed Histories Archive, Max Dashu, has this short video on historical and contemporary examples of Mother-Right Equalitarian Societies from across the globe.

Front page image from the Suppressed Histories Archive via Cradle of Civilisation. Max Dashu,

Women’s circle dance in bronze age rock art from Zerovschan, Tajikistan, with numinous quadrant in center. They appear to be wearing skirts, but the dot between the legs is a very common female sign, or the dot in vulva which may also figure  here.

40 comments on “The patriarchy is not inevitable ”

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  1. weka 1
    22 April 2023 at 9:58 am

    If you are on a mobile device and can't see the post (there's a bug on the mobile version) scroll to the bottom of the page and select Desktop.

  2. weka 2
    22 April 2023 at 10:00 am

    the first Jane Clare Jones quote is from here

    I had to remove link to twitter in case it is the thing stopping posts being visible on the mobile site.

  3. tsmithfield 3
    22 April 2023 at 10:36 am

    It seems to me that women have more issues with the Transiarchy than the patriarchy these days lol.

    I think most patriarchal stuff these days is more to do with a residual hang-over from the past that is slowly disappearing. Though, I am saying this from the perspective of a male, but women may think differently.

    On one of the boards I am on we have a chair woman. She is fantastic, and has a really good style. Though, we still tend to have male majorities. Though, that is not by choice, but rather availability. And we do welcome and encourage women to come onto our boards.

    We tend to find we get a different perspective on issues from women, which is incredibly valuable.

    • weka 3.1
      22 April 2023 at 10:45 am

      maybe have a reread of the post. The patriarchy is the overarching system we are all living in. What you are referring to is a snapshot of how women are tolerated in the patriarchal system. It's not women's liberation, and it's not egalitarianism.

      • tsmithfield 3.1.1
        22 April 2023 at 11:00 am

        maybe have a reread of the post.

        You did quote:

        Patriarchy is a system of *male dominance.*

        In this system male people hold most of the power and wealth. In this system, very importantly, we also privilege the needs and interests of male people over those of female people.

        And I stand by what I said. I think the patriarchal system is on the way out. There is a vast difference now in society compared to say the 1950s. Though it does vary a lot between groups and cultures. And there are some groups that are still strongly patriarchal in their structure.

        But, certainly, in my own social circle, I think the patriarchal aspect has declined a lot.

        It isn't what it needs to be yet. But the trend is in the right direction I think.

        • weka 3.1.1.1
          23 April 2023 at 11:32 am

          I know what you think, but you are wrong. You seem to think the patriarchy is sexism and that if we reduce sexism somewhat then it means the patriarchy is on the way out. It's not, it's just the system flexing to allow some socially liberal shifts because having women and liberals on board supports the system.

          But, certainly, in my own social circle, I think the patriarchal aspect has declined a lot.

          That's not the system. You could have said this,

          But, certainly, in my own social circle, I think the sexism aspect has declined a lot.

          and it would have made sense.

    • Shanreagh 3.2
      22 April 2023 at 11:13 am

      It seems to me that women have more issues with the Transiarchy than the patriarchy these days lol.

      My view is that they are one and the same. 'Transarchy' is a slice from the patriarchy loaf.

    • Sabine 3.3
      23 April 2023 at 11:41 am

      The Transiarchy is the Patriarchy but with bright red lipstick, heels and a wig. Same old pig as it always was.

  5. weka 5
    22 April 2023 at 10:44 am

    Reading #PaulaGunnAllen on twitter.

    “The root of oppression is loss of memory”

    If we forget what has been we cannot know what is possible.

  6. roblogic 6
    22 April 2023 at 10:55 am

    It would be nice if so many feminists weren't also profoundly anti-family viewing it as a vehicle of patriarchal oppression. For some women this is true, but for many others motherhood and family are the axis of their lives. We need a better narrative that views the sexes as complementary rather than in competition.

    The "sex and the city" girlboss lifestyle is a marketing scam. And there's a dark side to feminine power – the psychology of empathy can be an abusive political force.

    As I understand it, Marxism recognises female oppression as part of the culture of capitalism, which oppresses everyone, including most men. Only a few, generally sociopathic, males ascend to the elite echelons of power. I like your model of the 'partnership' system that increases the agency of more people over their lives.

    • SPC 6.1
      22 April 2023 at 3:03 pm

      The idea that the sexes are complementary, "separate but equal" can lead to "gender" roles and Promise Keeper thinking (some irony that one of their elite is now a Justice on SCOTUS, the career choice path that feminists wanted to be available for women).

      It was brave to post that first link on this thread, and as for the second it builds on that narrative to argue for a framework for governance of society based on reason rather then empathy. It could be posed as man bringing masculine leadership order to the feminine emotional chaos. The so called natural order of the mind/evolved psyche of the academic in Jordan Peterson.

      Yup, the capitalist system ultimately has to sell egalitarian popularism to the males in the social sphere (unity against threat – feminism, social gospel as foreign socialism) and also offer exalted status to women of family values/as mothers/biological females.

  7. Shanreagh 7
    22 April 2023 at 11:03 am

    Oh Weka, thank you.

    'Yum' smiley I relish the chance to update myself since my early studies.

    My thoughts about the patriarchy and religion which is part of the patriarchy to my mind, is that they work as systems until they don't. So that for some women the partriarchy (possibly?) can be a force for good, but not for all women and not all the time.

    I used to be more positive about this & being Ok with working around the margins to ensure that the worst excesses were not meted out on women, I must say all this trans stuff with the typical 'because I say so' attitude and because it confers 'rights' mainly on men has revived thoughts about the systems we live under.
    The virulent anti woman & anti older women slant seems to place it well within the workings of the patriarchy. ‘Men want this, so get out of our way.’

    The price of working within the patriarchy for many women is that we are exposed to the not so nice manifestations that adherence to the patriarchy works to keep women in line and that is misogyny.

    So my thoughts have been turning more and more to the patriarchy. To unfinshed business, structural change……..

  8. Belladonna 8
    22 April 2023 at 11:17 am

    And an example in the news today. This women died as a direct result of the actions of her partner. I accept that he didn't intend to kill her (so not murder), but his actions were aggressive, and careless to a high degree. Apparently this is not considered to be an 'aggravating factor' in our legal system.

    Not only did he receive a manifestly light sentence initially, on appeal it has been reduced even further.

    Systemically, the lives of women (and children) are considered to be of less 'value' to our society, than those of men.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-man-who-ran-over-and-killed-partner-on-christmas-day-gets-home-detention-on-appeal/GZ7G4LTWSVAGXK2CUGVCDDLOBU/

    • Barfly 8.1
      22 April 2023 at 5:00 pm

      Many many years ago a woman drove into Dominion Road and stopped in my lane…I got to enjoy 2 broken arms 1 steel plate 66 stitches some permanent right arm disability a broken foot and a stuffed knee cartilidge I landed absolutely the luckiest way possible after I was 'helped' off my motorcycle all other landings were absolutely death or severely disabled. This womans punishment for "careless driving causing injury" was 6 months disqualification and a $200 fine the courts have had piss poor penalties for serious incidents for decades not all things are about "patriarchy".

      • Shanreagh 8.1.1
        22 April 2023 at 7:23 pm

        I don't this is actually limited to women though. Outside Ngaruawahia my husband and I travelling on a motorbike, were run off the road by someone pulling across in front of us. Husband, a journeyman carpenter, had severe injuries to right wrist and forearm (his hammer holding hand) 14% disability and me a broken nose only because he expertly kept us upfright until we were away from the tarmac and the back of the car
        .
        Bike was damaged, we were damaged.

        Car driver was charged with careless driving, driving over the speed limit. Fine of $100 3months disqualification as 'he needed to have a licence to drive his race horses around!'

        Neither of our anecdotes are really about the patriarchy per se Barfly, more like some things never change in the admin of justice. Though perhaps the admin of justice may be different with a different system? Sometimes the patriarchy chooses male ‘winners’ & male ‘losers’ within its own system.

  9. bwaghorn 9
    23 April 2023 at 6:16 am

    We've had woman pms for over half this century and yet nzs still cycling the plug hole rapidly!!

    At one point every too job in the Clark years was held by a woman.

    Men die earlier, more men in prison ,more men commit suicide, boys do worse at school than girls, if patriarchy is for men it ain't working to well

    • Thinker 9.1
      23 April 2023 at 8:51 am

      I'm glad you raised that, and I support your comment, too.

      There is patriarchy in NZ that still needs dealing with and there certainly has been a lot more in the past (to say the least) that feminists have put a lot of effort into removing. America, for example, is approaching its tricentennial of independence and has yet to have its first woman POTUS.

      But, like any cause that requires those who fight it to make it go away it is possible, as the old saying goes, if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks fixable with a nail. IMHO, there's a lot that feminists would call Patriarchy that is actually more Plutocracy.

      I grew up just as feminism was getting some structure, so phrases like "old wives' tale" or "he/she's just being an old woman" were familiar to me. At uni, I went for a holiday job and was told "It's women's work, but you can have it if you want". Although I never spoke like that myself, thanks to feminists I learned how debasing, demeaning talk like that is/was to women. Those certainly are examples of patriarchy and feminists are right to fight against it. It's not just the words, but the impact of the words, like taking away opportunities for women, simply by talking about them in a certain way.

      I also learned that men 'opening up the doors for women leaders' or 'letting women have a say in the decisionmaking' is still patriarchy because it implies womens' place at the table being at the discretion of men.

      But, later on, I worked for a large organisation where we had a middle-age male at the top. He was such a good person and cared about all the people under his leadership, male and female alike. When we had a storm brewing like we had on Auckland Anniversary weekend, he sent everyone home at 2pm and closed the place down, to make sure we could get home safely. The feminists saw that as patriarchy, but I never did. I know that the male leader was very hurt by the labels he put up with because he was nothing more than a good leader who wanted all staff to know they were valued employees. Ironically, when he retired he was replaced by a woman who had little, if any, empathy and our working environment, for men and women, got harder.

      Since 1984, New Zealand has been struggling with neoliberalism and that's hurt all of us. It can't be truly patriarchal because Margaret Thatcher was a key player, globally, as was Ruth Richardson and Jenny Shipley, locally. But it seems to retain a lot of what’s left of patriarchy. IMHO, we became a plutocracy that is as rancid as much of what feminists want to eliminate. "The Establishment" that struggles to keep neoliberalism in place may be patriarchal, by being part of the generation I was at the tail end of and by being so self-important that, in most things (feminism included) they believe the country should change to suit them, rather than they change to suit the country.

      I'm guessing here, because I've only seen the establishment from a distance, that there are plenty of women who play their subservient role of networking with other women who are in the background (ladies who lunch?) and help connect the men in their lives with opportunities that they all benefit from. Many have strong minds, enough to see the patriarchy they are fomenting, but it suits them to help keep the establishment in place.

      What's my point?

      Many men and women would like to see an end to neoliberalism and the plutocracy they consider has been in place since 1984, at least. There always will be an element of plutocracy, but hopefully a new establishment will eventually take over, where food banks and homeless shelters are not seen as part of the mainstream system and where the gap between what the cleaner earns and what the CEO earns (male or female) narrows to about 7 times, which would really help people's lives. Back to where less than half of household incomes will pay the mortgage of a family's own home and where, when the economy hits good times, the OCR is put up and the banks get the lions' share of the average person's wage increase. When this all goes, a large chunk of patriarchy will surely go with it.

      It will help if feminists can narrow their fight to what remains of true patriarchy and acknowledge that some of what could seen as patriarchy is actually an equally undesirable part of New Zealand that affects us all, so we can fight it together.

    • weka 9.2
      23 April 2023 at 11:18 am

      We've had woman pms for over half this century and yet nzs still cycling the plug hole rapidly!!

      At one point every too job in the Clark years was held by a woman.

      That's individual women getting into positions of power because they know how to play the patriarchal game to their and women's advantage. It's not the end of patriarchy. The whole post is about patriarchy as a system and what system might replace that, not simply women gaining power

      Men die earlier, more men in prison ,more men commit suicide, boys do worse at school than girls, if patriarchy is for men it ain't working to well

      Yes, and in the post I said,

      The point here isn’t women/good, men/bad. It’s specifically that the patriarchy is a system that heirarchises power and gives preferential treatment to men and demotes women. In fact it basically treats everyone and all of life badly, but within that some people do better than others. Key here is that men as a class have a vested interest in maintaining the system and women have a vested interest in dismantling it. That’s a choice.

      Patriarchy treats everyone badly, including men. The problem is that men are prioritised in the system* and men have a vested interest in maintaining that because the system socialises everyone into thinking they have to grab what power they can within a hierarchy.

      *men get paid more, men hold more positions of power, systems and physical things are designed for me (universities, medicine, crash test dummies, tools). It's about the system we inherited.

  10. Sabine 10
    23 April 2023 at 11:35 am

    Here is a nice example of approved Patriachy.

    Two well to do males, homosexuals, wanting to make both the pruchasing of viable human ova and the incubation of a child 'cheaper and faster' for people such as them.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/latest/131683159/auckland-samesex-couple-love-being-dads-want-to-improve-the-horrific-process-to-make-a-family

    Christian Newman and husband Mark Edwards are loving life as parents of preschoolers Frankie, 4, and Lulu, 17 months, both born via surrogacy with donated eggs – but they say the process was “horrific” and Newman is working to make it simpler and cheaper for others.

    The family of four, plus their au pair, live on land next to Edwards’ parents north of Auckland in a home the couple designed to be like a “tropical resort”.

  11. weka 11
    23 April 2023 at 11:57 am

    reply to Sabine 10.

    jfc.

    "terrible" and yet he can't even bring himself to mention the woman/women that did all that work to grow those two children.

    Peak patriarchy.

  12. Anker 12
    23 April 2023 at 12:18 pm

    This is my understanding of it all. Women are vulnerable, because we are smaller and weaker that men physically. We give birth and are usually the ones rearing the children. Certainly, despite what some gender idealogues might say, we are the only ones who can breast feed. Men are physically wired to have and want sex, more than women (generally speaking).

    So the above makes women vulnerable. Vulnerable to being poorer (due to child care) vulnerable because we can easily be over powered by most men. Vulnerable to rape. So we are a separate sex class with specific needs.

    I think there is a lot of validity to the view that men don't fear so well, they die earlier, they suicide more and they are more likely to be the victim of homicide.

    But there is a need to focus on women and the role our biology plays in all of this. Of course the gender ideologists are trying to deny biology (especially women's biology). So we need to absolutely push back against this.

    • RedLogix 12.1
      23 April 2023 at 12:58 pm

      Without disputing any of this, I think it worth pointing out that the masculine counterpart to female vulnerability – and largely overlooked by the claim of patriarchal oppression – is the fundamental fact of male disposability.

  13. Stuart Munro 13
    23 April 2023 at 9:11 pm

    The patriarchy is, I think, best thought of as a perspective from which to examine oppressions or injustices for systematicity. To the extent that such outcomes are systematic, the line of argument is valid. But, as a tool, it is subject to inappropriate use.

    All too often such perspectives are marshalled to further emiserate classes or demographics that are neither responsible for nor benefit from the behaviours complained of. It is a tool best used with discretion.

    • weka 13.1
      23 April 2023 at 9:29 pm

      are you saying that Faludi is doing that, or writing about it?

      • Stuart Munro 13.1.1
        23 April 2023 at 10:11 pm

        No – but I have met less scrupulous uses of the term.

        Used carelessly, the patriarchy becomes an unfalsifiable assertion.

        • weka 13.1.1.1
          23 April 2023 at 11:17 pm

          Hmm, well you seem to be using it a bit carelessly. I don't know what you are meaning.

          • Stuart Munro 13.1.1.1.1
            30 April 2023 at 7:13 pm

            The Patriarchy, as a feminist bugaboo, is not readily distinguishable from the medieval notion of the Devil, who at least had a degree of reverse ineffability to explain his ubiquity.

            When the use of this concept steps outside the legitimate role as a placeholder for systemic discrimination, it becomes no better than any other invented stereotype used to demean a class of persons. One might hope that contemporary feminism would decline to stoop to that.

  14. DS 14
    24 April 2023 at 10:53 am

    Margaret Thatcher. Ruth Richardson. Jenny Shipley. Sarah Palin. Liz Truss. Paula Bennett.

    Remind me again of how capitalism and the 'patriarchy' are somehow one and the same, seeing as women are just as capable of being neoliberal kooks as men? Quite apart from the forgotten fact that while unions were still meaningful, it was more common for men to be on the Left and women on the Right?

    • weka 14.1
      24 April 2023 at 11:09 am

      as I said in the post, neoliberal capitalism/the patriarchy allows women to make limited gains where that serves the system. One of the ways that the patriarchal system is served by having rightwing women leaders is that it confuses people's thinking about feminism and moving beyond the patriarchy: Thatcher et al means that women are just as bad as men! This helps stop women from having the real power to effect system change.

      This was discussed during Shipley and Richardson's years, how Shipley in particular enabled certain RW moves because they came from a woman.

      Also, read the post with class analysis in mind. I'm not talking about individual women, I'm talking about women as a sex class as an axis of oppression and I've described pretty well how and why that oppression functions within the patriarchy. It's not hard to see how it functions within neoliberal capitalism either.

  15. Antonina 15
    24 April 2023 at 6:45 pm

    Thank you Weka

  16. Sabine 16
    24 April 2023 at 9:04 pm

    High caste women have always supported men in their endeavors, after all the are the direct beneficiaries of the high value men they attach themselves to be that via marriage, a place on a women list of a political party i.e. 'quota women' 'diveristy pick', or by any other means.
    The rules that are established for the unwashed masses by these high caste people affect men and women equally at first, but with the caveat that in order to keep the men in line the high casts allow men dominion over women and children.
    They can kill them in a fit of rage ' a crime of passion', beat them senseless 'because she/it did something to deserve it', sell them 'can't afford bread to buy so sell the 8 year old girl/boy to the 80 year old man' 'work em cause they cheap' etc. This also gives men the sole responsibility to feed and house the women and any offspring she may produce, which frankly is not an easy task, and often time will result in violence at the home due to the men just losing it, or just abandoning the women. See old times.
    But this dominion over women is something that people seem to not wanting to abandon, maybe because it is nice to be master?
    And yes, every now and then men get send to be slaughtered for the gains of these high caste people, and the women that stay back at home will do all the work the men did, all the work the women did, and keep it together. But we don’t talk about the men who die in the wars of old and rich men a lot, once a year on remembrance day, but we don’t ever speak about the women and children that get burned, shot, bombed, raped, starved and otherwise destroyed in war.
    No remembrance day for the women and children killed in war. No parades for the women that kept the factories going, the farms producing and the hospitals/other jobs staffed. Not even in death for their country are they worth equality.

    It makes perfect sense for these high caste people to point to the women in their company/party/religion/academia and use these women as a messenger tool – a willingly one i might add it pays to play along or be a believer – in order to appease those that might have other ideas.
    This is how we can have the leader of a party that can not/will not answer the simple questions to 'what is a woman' with a small quip like 'my mother is one' or something silly, but rather fumbles about with ideas of leftfield questions and preformulated answers, but a few days later that same party announces that 50 % of them are women. What is a Woman? Like seriuosly, how can you have 50% of something that you can not identify/define?
    But is them that will re-define what women are and what they are allowed to be and currently who is actually one, and if there is dissent, well, remember it was perfectly legal to burn witches, and rather then be afraid of the men burning the women and girls of all ages the good, the decent people were afraid of the witches. Or so we are let to believe.

    The fact that males can appropriate womanhood, girlhood and actual females are being told to shut up, the fact that grown ass adults that are wealthy people buy life human babies on the open baby selling market and complain about the cost of womb lease and ova extraction, the fact that we are sacrificing the healthy bodies of children on the alter of gender theory and the future be damned lets me believe that we are still very much in old testament biblical patriarchy.
    We got us some new toys, social media and pretend sophistication but other then that, we are no different to Abraham who raped his slave for the child that his wife could not bear and who did offer his first born as a sacrifice when demanded by the higher authority (god) to do so.

    Maybe the word patriarchy needs to be replaced with something more modern, but we seem to be regressing as a society.

    • roblogic 16.1
      27 April 2023 at 4:16 pm

      good thoughts.

      as RL noted above, working class men have always been disposable units of labour or cannon fodder for empires.

      perhaps patriarchy isn’t the threat to human wellbeing that some think… perhaps the actual enemy of human flourishing is the system of aristocratic privilege that reduces humans to wage & debt slavery and vampirically extracts their lifetime of work and creativity via economic rents

      • Sabine 16.1.1
        28 April 2023 at 8:18 am

        As have women.

        Can we please just spare a thought for all the women that died in child birth birthing every human being.
        Human beings that were bred for canon fodder, human beings that were bred to work the fields and the mines. Human beings that were sold on the open market for a capital gain.

        Can we please spare a thought for all the women that died in war- directly by war fare, by starvation, by being the loot to spoil by the invading winners?
        Ditto for kids.
        Women were sold as slaves as much as men. Women were bred to create new slaves.
        Women are still sold into sexual slavery, or working slavery as much as men – see Qatar and the world cup. The Bosnian war and their rape camps come to mind.

        Men fight wars, and women try to keep the fire going, keep the country going, working in ammunition depots, flying planes, being nurses and heck even spies. The only thing that in the old world women were not to do is actively fighting. And there are stories about the thirty year war that the women that followed the soldiers – the wifes/mothers – did fight.

        Men die in war fighting and those that survive will get medals, and pensions and day of remembrance and statues.
        Women die in war because they are just spoils/loot of the war, and as i said, there is not one statue, not one day of remembrance for the actions of women during war time.
        They will get no war pension, they will get no medals, they will get nothing.
        Both suffer from PTSD and mental ill health, but women are told to shut up and put up, cause the bloke saw war. Fair enough i guess, unless one is the women that has to live with a bloke broken by war.

        If we were to look at current war zones, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even UK then yes, the men do the fighting and dying, but in the end the women too care their share of war, prostitutes, workers, and fighters even and raising their children – the next generation of cannon fodder in a warzone.

        Patriarchy is just a nice academic word that someone coined a long time ago to put a nice shiny of veneer on our societies pretending to be more civil and social then say the Roman Empire, or he Persian Empire or any other Empire.

        A handful of few – chosen by god, or by greed and 'support' of a strong man will rule for everyone else.

        And in the old day you were property to the lord of the manor, you worked for him, defended him, and he had some responsibilities towards you but no one really enforced that. The Magna Carta came along, and people started realizing that between them and the man chosen by god to be king was actually very little difference and thus all male are created equal – mothers and daughters needn't apply, and can we have some 'human rights' laws. And in the western world we have worked on that and come to some good solutions and now we are seemingly intent on destroying the good work by saying that not all men are equal and that is fine so as long as everyone has the same equity of outcome – which of course is laughable as euqal equity does not exist, Russia, China, Kambodia, and other countries that tried to have socialistic minded societies have proven that in the end there will always be a strong man who will tell everyone else how to live and which rules apply to them – sex based, not identity based. And again, mothers and daughters needn't apply, cause they can no longer be defined and something that can't be defined can't have rights, nor can these rights be protected.

        Take abortion, in the west women are scared of a government that would take away their right to have an abortion, in China until the one child policy was scrapped women underwent mandatory abortions if they already had a child. Patriarchy in action. One nation capitalistic and free, one communist and not free – outcome bad for the citizens of both countries, but mainly for women.
        Me i am afraid of both, the capitalists and the communists, as my body to them is something that they don't attach meaning full rights to at best and that they believe belongs to them at worst, and are quite happy to remove these rights if it suits their purposes – see currently NZ self ID. Btw, did you know that the first public toilet in NZ came about in 1927 on K-road, and the first sex segregated prison came about in 1916. 🙂 Rights, a fungible and can be granted and taken with the stroke of a pen.

        So we really need to stop pretending that we have 'human rights' We don't. We have rights that we accord to each others because we think it makes society better, but these rights can be taken away – by lawmakers, or by a rent a mob that prevents a bunch of women from meeting in a public space to discuss matters that pertain to women and to politically meet and organize. Rights that they should have had under the law, but that were not given to them, because …………..- them wanting to exercise these rights made them bigots, phobes, and 'nazis', or 'christian faschists'.

    • roblogic 16.2
      27 April 2023 at 4:29 pm

      Agree with the points about the brahmin caste of women… this includes the new generation of aggressive, highly privileged, spoilt brats we saw at Albert Park last month, revelling in their imagined oppression and its imputed sanction to an emotional frenzy of shadow transference

      The upper classes get to enjoy luxury beliefs and are insulated by wealth and power from the worst effects of said beliefs. Meanwhile women with considerably less privilege are punched in the face and forced to endure the selfish behaviour of AGP males invading private spaces

      It’s not exactly patriarchy, but there is definitely a power dynamic here. The wellington lanyard class and its obnoxious offspring imposing their quasi religious morality on everyone, using direct force rather than democratic means.

      • Sabine 16.2.1
        28 April 2023 at 8:28 am

        Oh that was patriarchy unashamed, unabashed and in full force supported by media, Politian and influencers.

        What you saw was exactly the same that happened in Europe during the witch burnings and the time when males put the scold on women to stop them from speaking up.

        What you saw was exactly the same as the Chinese kids under Mao that put the dunce hat on teachers and elders and forced them to recant and beg forgiveness for their wrong thing.

        What you saw is Patriachy in action. Enforced by those that uphold Patriachy, the educated class of the middle and upper well to do people of this country, those that think that the rules they are clamoring for will never apply to them.

        In fact, every person with a uterus in Parliament is essentially the personification of Serena Joy from the Handmaids Tale. The well married, rich and well educated uterus haver that wrote about stay at home mums and a Christly life, and such, just to find out that once her utopia was realized that she too in the end is just a uterus haver. And those that know the book know that Serena Joy has dominion over the women beneath her, but essentially any man can harm her with impunity. Cause Serena Joy in the end has no more rights then the Handmaid in her patriarchy that she helped to bring forth.

        • roblogic 16.2.1.1
          28 April 2023 at 9:50 pm

          We are down the rabbit hole. The trans cult is sowing the wind.

          We will reap the whirlwind soon, when the truth cannot be denied any longer

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