Thoughts On The Origins Of The Patriarchy And Its Unfairness - To Both Sexes

I recently read an interesting review of the movie "Parched", and posted about it on Facebook.

The post elicited an interesting response from a male friend, who seemed a bit uncomfortable about some of the bold statements in it. He expressed reservations about what he called the "feminist agenda". When I countered that the so-called "feminist agenda" was about nothing more than equal treatment of the two sexes (which is hardly sinister), he made a couple of statements.

"If equal treatment was warranted then nature would have made us all [the] same."

"Men and Women are not sub-groups. They together make humankind. No matter how much we try both these pillars will remain different and that's what nature intended."

I realise I may not be doing justice to his views based on two statements lifted from a conversation, but I would like to share what I posted in response to them:

This is going to take a while to explain but it may be worth it, so I request your patience.

Most of us have grown up in patriarchal societies, and so the value systems of such societies may feel "natural" to us, while challenges to such value systems may feel "unnatural". But what are patriarchal societies and why have they come about?

There are sociological theories about this that stem from a fundamental difference between the sexes, not so much physiological but the relative difficulty of establishing paternity as opposed to maternity.

The mother-child relationship is readily recognised, because a woman's pregnancy and childbirth are events that are not easily hidden. In contrast, the father-child relationship is not readily recognisable, because conception is a very private affair! It is the desire to establish paternity beyond doubt that has led to severe restrictions being placed on women. To put it bluntly, women's eggs may only be fertilised under controlled conditions that establish paternity. That is the real reason why women are not allowed freedom of movement, freedom to mingle with members of the opposite sex, or in general, sexual freedom.

Further, this patriarchal system institutes severe punishment for those women who slip past these restrictions and attempt to have their eggs fertilised outside of the controlled conditions prescribed for them (i.e., marriage). That's why we have shaming of women in extramarital or premarital relationships, poor treatment of "illegitimate" children, and extreme punishments like "honour killing". (Indeed, in matriarchal societies, there is no such thing as an illegitimate child, because every child has a mother!)

Knowing this history, we can understand both why patriarchy does what it does, and why it is a highly unfair system. It is born out of the insecurity of men to establish paternity. Restricting the freedoms of one half of humanity is too high a price to pay to satisfy that insecurity. It is far better to educate men to overcome their insecurity over paternity than to continue to restrict women's freedom, which includes their sexual freedom.

It is not as if the patriarchy benefits men uniformly, either. While men do get a better deal than women overall, the patriarchy also unfairly constrains what men may or may not do. This is why many men consider it unacceptable to cry, and why we have such an epidemic of unreported male depression in society. This is also why less evolved societies look down on stay-at-home dads, whereas men and women should be free to decide the roles that are appropriate for their families.

So I really do not see anything sinister in the "feminist agenda". In fact, I embrace it wholeheartedly, because the patriarchy is an unfair system that disadvantages all of us. You are right that men and women are built differently, but we can see how an unfair system has developed because of this difference. It takes a very minor change to get rid of this system, and it pertains to how men deal with their insecurities about the need to establish paternity and the need to control women's sexuality. This is an individual conflict every man must resolve within himself.

This was based on what I remembered reading a long time ago on the patriarchy stemming from the need to establish paternity, so I searched for references and finally found this.

Reference: http://bit.ly/1OPVz5M

I think this is an important set of ideas for everyone to understand, especially men. The patriarchy disadvantages us all (women more than men, certainly), so the sooner it is dismantled, the better it will be for society.

Four Fallacies That Fail Feminism

I don't call myself a feminist because I consider myself a humanist, and I believe humanism subsumes feminism. But obviously, I have no quarrel with feminists because I've found that the issues that outrage them outrage me as well, and for the same reasons. However, I've observed that some of the women who call themselves feminists (feminists predominantly tend to be women) sometimes conduct their arguments in a manner that doesn't serve the cause very well.

Let me list four of the ways in which poor arguments can undermine the feminist cause:

1. Women-are-superior smugness:

I'm not referring to the light-hearted jokes about incompetent husbands that do the email rounds from time to time. I enjoy them as much as the next person. What concerns me is when the same attitudes are expressed in all seriousness. A recent example is a blog post on the LeanIn theme, which goes:

This is one of the many points in my life where I was grateful to be a woman: My natural ability to handle ambiguity enabled me to tackle the challenges of setting up something from scratch [...]

Seriously? Has the ability to handle ambiguity been scientifically proven to be a gender-linked trait? If not, isn't this opinion just sexism? With what face can we then argue with men who claim to be naturally more logical than women, better leaders or better drivers?

We don't want to topple the Patriarchy just to replace it with a Matriarchy. What we should be fighting for is an egalitarian society where everyone is treated as an individual, with no gender-ascribed qualities that either elevate or oppress them.

2. Sisterhood-loyalty trumping fairness:

You read a news item about a woman who has accused a man of some misbehaviour. No independent evidence has yet emerged in the case. It is literally a case of "He said, she said". You often find that the comments section is filled with conclusions based on opinion alone, - not just the predictable patriarchal view that the woman is either lying or must have provoked the misbehaviour, but the equally unjustified calls from women for stringent punishment of the man.

Whatever happened to the principle of "innocent until proven guilty"? I am not making an argument in defence of men here. This is an argument in defence of fairness. If we don't know the facts of a case, we must withhold judgement. The most that we can demand is for an investigation to be conducted with due seriousness.

It becomes hard to argue against sexist comments directed at a woman when there are equally unsubstantiated conclusions being drawn about a man. We need to value fairness and justice above all. Once again, it's about individuals. Innocent individuals shouldn't fall victim to gender stereotypes in a gender war.

3. Friendly fire, or Those-not-with-us-are-against-us:

Human society isn't one of perfect clones, and there can be honest differences of opinion even among similar-minded people. We need to tolerate minor differences, or at least address them gently, when our overall viewpoints tend to agree. Insistence on adherence to a purist line, with immediate, public and merciless excoriation of those who stray from that line, risks turning a noble ideal into little more than an authoritarian ideological cult. This is a constant lurking danger in online battlegrounds where sympathetic men often wade in in support of a feminist cause.

I have myself faced unexpected "friendly fire" from feminists when engaged in a heated debate with male chauvinists. It was often some woman who took offence at a minor point I made and proceeded to lash out at me, undermining the larger battle we were both having against more obscurantist opinions.

What I would say to such people is, if you feel someone's views are on the right track but not quite where you think they should be, nudge them along rather than attack them. Vituperative attacks against people supporting your cause constitute bad tactics, for two reasons. One is that such infighting is a distraction from the larger argument that is being made by both. The second and more serious reason is that it causes the target of your attack to lose face with his gender compatriots (against whom he had courageously argued), and considerably reduces his willingness to wade into battle for similar causes in future.

Moral: Don't shoot your allies. You need them.

4. Callousness towards other forms of discrimination:

Some feminists seem to believe that gender-based discrimination is the only one that counts, or at least that it is more serious than other forms of discrimination. Let's call this meta-attitude "genderism". In my opinion, the term "feminism" is itself evidence of genderism. Why aren't we all "humanists" instead? Don't we also oppose other forms of discrimination, such as racism, homophobia, casteism, ageism, religious prejudice, etc.? Who is to say these other forms of discrimination are milder or less pernicious? Just ask someone who has been a victim.

The greatest disservice to feminism comes from feminists who are racist, casteist, homophobic or religious bigots, and there are plenty of these around. It's breathtaking hypocrisy to oppose one kind of discrimination while practising another kind.

There really is no choice for feminists but to be humanists as well, and to be seen as such, otherwise their support of the necessarily narrower cause of gender equality can and will rightly be questioned. As a matter of topical interest, it is heartening to see that feminists are by and large supporting the marriage equality cause, but this support is by no means unanimous.

In sum, these are the four attitudes that I believe hobble the fight for gender equality.

Why I Hate The Patriarchy

This seems a rather strange thing for a man to be writing. Why, I should enjoy the perks of being the privileged sex, shouldn't I? It's a man's world and all that.

Two reasons.

The first is a simple sense of justice. The recent media focus on rape and the problems faced by women has rekindled my outrage at the patriarchal societies that dominate virtually every country in the world. The attitudes that blame victims of rape and molestation, that celebrate the sexual escapades of men as somehow heroic even as they condemn the slightest violations of norms of dressing and behaviour by women as "sluttish" and "asking for it", all of these attitudes provoke my anger. Feminism has long ago analysed this societal malaise. It's called the patriarchy, and it's fuelled by the unconscious fear of female sexuality and the tendency to place restrictions on it (with those impulses stemming from the biological fact that a child's mother can be provably identified, but fatherhood has always been a matter of faith).

However, I now realise that it is not just an impersonal sense of justice that underlies my outrage. Every war is personal, and I have my own deep resentment against the patriarchy. It's because of imposed gender roles.

My wife, empathetic to the core, once remarked to me, "It must be hard to be a man. You have to work without a break till you retire."

That insightful remark deserves its own quotation marks, so let me repeat it.

It must be hard to be a man. You have to work without a break till you retire.

Yes, tell me about it.

I've been out of work on two occasions, once when a startup I was working for closed down during the 2001 dot-com crash, and again in 2011 when an insurance company I was working for faced unexpectedly heavy claims and retrenched a big chunk of its staff to cut costs.

I'm relatively sanguine about losing my job, by the way. For some strange reason, being out of work is not a stressful situation for me at all. (Neither is public speaking. I must be wired differently from the rest of humanity.)

What does bug me is the gradually increasing concern from my circle of friends. Oh, don't get me wrong. I absolutely appreciate it when people pass on tips about job openings they're aware of, or the contact details of recruitment agents they know. What bugs me are the questions, the insinuations that my situation is "abnormal" and must be rectified as quickly as possible. A man without a job is a diseased person who must be cured and sent back into the workforce as quickly as possible. "Get well soon" is what everyone is really saying.

Women don't get this sort of pressure at all. That's the flip side of the coin when you consider all the obstacles career women face. A woman can chuck her job at a whim and decide to stay at home, and no one bats an eyelid. But let a man just try the same thing, and watch the social vultures descend. "Have you found a job yet?" "Have you started looking?" And the oh-so-subtle "How's the (job) market these days?" (Translation: Get back to work, you lazy bum!)

Retiring at 65 is OK. Retiring before 65 when you've made a pile is positively envied. It's being out of work when you're not yet financially free that gets you. And the focus is only on the man.

I ask, if a family is not yet financially free, shouldn't both the partners be under equal pressure to work, in terms of social expectations? Why is it the sole responsibility of the man?

This is the pointy end of the patriarchy as I've personally experienced it, and I can tell you I hate it. I would love to be able to say, as many women do, that I've quit my job to "spend time with my family", and have people admire me for it.

Like that's going to happen.

I could go on, but I've got a bus to catch. There's a meeting at 0900, and I can't afford to be late.