Grand Old Patriarchy

The main distinction between leftist or progressive politics, and right-wing or conservative politics is how they relate to hierarchies; progressives want to break them down, creating a more egalitarian society, and conservatives want to keep them intact or even reinforce them. The grandfather of all hierarchies is the topic of this post.

Of all the human interrelations that have ultimately resulted in our modern societies, the relationships between men and women is the oldest. In almost all known species, including humans, there's the same assignment of tasks and responsibilities for males and females; the male chooses the female he wants to reproduce with and provides food for the family, and the female gives birth and nurtures the offspring. In nature however there's no hierarchy; animals act on instinct alone, there's no conscious assignment of dominating or submissive roles. All notions of domination, leadership or submissiveness we humans observe in the animal kingdom is a result of our tendency for anthropomorphization.

It's not entirely clear when men started to see themselves as superior to women, what we know fore sure though is that they did, and they did so a long time ago. There are multiple written accounts showing that men saw their women as their property. Aristotle, the famous ancient Greek philosopher (384–322 BC), saw women as inferior to men but superior to slaves, and was quoted as an authority by western thinkers until the end of the Middle Ages. In the Bible God first sought a suitable helper for Adam among the animals, but seeing that no suitable helper could be found among the animals, He ultimately created for Adam a female called Eve. Marriage originated as a contract, a transfer of the ownership of women between men. Rape was originally not a crime by a man against a woman, but a crime of one man stealing or damaging the property of another man. It should come as no surprise then that among conservatives, Christians and traditionalists women are seen as subordinate whose role is to keep the house in order, bare and raise the children, obey the husband and leave to him the task of providing the family with food on the table. All of this is summed up in the classic misogynist expression "Shut up and make me a sandwich!" or "Cool Story Babe. Now go make me a sandwich."

I once saw a woman wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon of a woman yelling to a man "Make me a sandwich, Bitch" in a complete reversal of classic gender-roles, and thought it hilarious and righteous. I'm sure though that a conservative Christian male would not be entertained by that cartoon, and that he would think the woman wearing it a crazy radical feminist. These are the men who can not see the harm in a phenomenon like "mansplaining" because to them it's just another expression of the natural order they so desperately want to hold on to. They are the ones who hang on the lips of a man like Jordan Peterson who uses lobsters to mansplain and reinforce the reality of this natural order. These men are now overwhelmed with new enemies, as they now have to contend with all kinds of genders that threaten to break down this natural order. They commit the classic naturalistic fallacy by claiming that because something is natural, it must be good. They seem to forget that functional modern societies are built for a great part on our capacity to restrain from some of our natural urges...

Anyhow, it should be clear that the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade is not about protecting live, but about holding on to control of men over women. It's a right-wing reactionary backlash against decades of hard-fought progression of women's rights. This makes these men a danger to 50 percent of the population, even though patriarchy is something both men and women participate in and contribute to. People who deny the existence of patriarchy are not to be taken seriously, just like the people who deny the existence of systemic racism. Some social interrelations are so deeply ingrained in society that it takes conscious effort and decades of struggle to recognize and overcome the injustices embedded within them. This is the purview of progressive, leftist forces, and the reactionary backlash from right-wing conservative forces is something that's to be expected and guarded against. Women's right to bodily autonomy and reproductive healthcare should have been codified decades ago; let's not make the same mistake again.

I invite you to watch the below linked video. It's part two of an ongoing series by Renegade Cut about the enforcement of hierarchies, this time focusing on the patriarchy. If you haven't watched the first part yet, you can find it here.

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