DBWI: Is a matriarchal society inevitable?
- Thread starter Hominid
- Start date
Humans never finding out the connection between sex and birth, so the whole world would worship women because they have the magical power of creating young, like the excavations from the Catal Huyuk site in Turkey
I'm not sure anything in history is truly inevitable, but matriarchy is pretty hard to counteract. look at the fundamental: No society can exist without the fundamental reproductive capacity that women's labour and women's bodies represent. You can have an all-women society that only occasionally has contact with men remaion stabler, functioning and thriving through generations (some tribal societies work on what was called th Elephant model), but not all-male societies. I suspect any male-dominated society would, in the long run, be doomed to instability without female involvement.
Of course it is possible to imagine a society in which men actually subjugate women. It would require an inordinate amount of repression, though - you would need to control their labour and take away their children, maybe communally raise them. Or have the men raise them. It is all but unimaginable how you could destroy the maternal bond, and without doing that, how can you disintegrate family structures? No society with a family system can in the long run negate female influence, mother-child-bonding is fundamental to its continuity. Even societies where men hold the majority of property reproduce their structures from mother to child. The amount of violence and the degree of inequality a society without that structure would have to be tremendous, though. I couldn't begin to imagine that it would be considered legitimate anywhere on earth.
Modern ethnology argues that kin is, to a degree, an imaginary concept, so maybe if you set up an imaginary patrocentric kinship system? But how would that work? Who would believe in something so obviously untestable (until modern biochemistry, that is)?
Of course it is possible to imagine a society in which men actually subjugate women. It would require an inordinate amount of repression, though - you would need to control their labour and take away their children, maybe communally raise them. Or have the men raise them. It is all but unimaginable how you could destroy the maternal bond, and without doing that, how can you disintegrate family structures? No society with a family system can in the long run negate female influence, mother-child-bonding is fundamental to its continuity. Even societies where men hold the majority of property reproduce their structures from mother to child. The amount of violence and the degree of inequality a society without that structure would have to be tremendous, though. I couldn't begin to imagine that it would be considered legitimate anywhere on earth.
Modern ethnology argues that kin is, to a degree, an imaginary concept, so maybe if you set up an imaginary patrocentric kinship system? But how would that work? Who would believe in something so obviously untestable (until modern biochemistry, that is)?
I think we would be way better of in a patriarchical society. It's women who start wars and we men have to fight and die for them. If we were in charge, there would be no war.
I would guess that men, being naturally physically stronger, would not have to resort to many of the horrors that some of the primitive matriachs did with breaking the legs and arms of the men so they would stay submissive. Politics would probably also be simpler as men tend to be more direct with things.
It would be such a strange world. I wonder if the laws of the internet would still be the same? I mean, everyone knows that there are no girls on the internet (except for the censors, lol. Sorry ma'am!). I think that the world would be a more joyful place. The problem with our system is that the ruling gender has made itself obsolete! The new synth-wombs are coming on the market, why keep women around?
It's a DBWI thread....
OOC: yeah, i just realized that when i went to see the replies to the thread.
Oh, crikes, that's straight out of Marius Gijmbutas, isn't it? Look, the Sky God is a myth of early twentieth century spiritual archeology. It has no basis in fact. The evidence just isn't there. And there was no early patrocentric hunter society that was overthrown by evil matriarchs appropriating the means of production. Gatherer-hunter societies were always centered around a female centre where reproduction happened and a male periphery of acquisition. I know where you're coming from, and I'm all in favour of equal rights and closing the pay gap, but you aren't helping by perpetuating ahistorical legends.
Seriously, all those flute-playing weekend forest dwellers getting in touch with their inner paleolithic hunter sometimes make me embarrassed to be a neopagan.
I doubt it. You need to keep in mind how uch the centre-periphery ideology patterns our social interactions. The internet is the ultimate 'out there', and in matriarchal society that makes it quintessentially male. A different form of society might well conceptualise it as a series of homes or location of exchange, or simply as a tool of communication, all of which are likely to remain 'female'.
I wish it was! I am sick of telling my wife that I am more than just a play thing! I mean I do have a mind as well - Oh shit I broke a nail typing this, and she is still complaining about how much I spend on looking good, still, if i hurry i can get down to the nail tech shop and have it repaired!
Stephen
Banned
Well the main problem a hypothetical patriarchal society would have is the father can never certain of which children are his, even if he locked a woman up in a cell he cant guard that cell forever can he! He would require some kind of ASB all seeing eye to be sure children are his. So although men can acrue wealth and power due to their strength in war etc they never have heirs to give it to and just distribute in among his sisters and neices where he has the most genetic interest. So as they have true heirs to pass it on to it is always in the greater interest of the Women to acrue wealth and power with the help of their brothers and sons to pass on to their daughters concentrating wealth and power in female hands.
And what man can resist feminine charms! A request from a pretty woman offering her bed or from your mother is almost like a hypnotic spell.
And what man can resist feminine charms! A request from a pretty woman offering her bed or from your mother is almost like a hypnotic spell.
I've never found it that hard, but then, I'm, er... romantically unorthodox. And mums can go suck a clam. I don't see how giving birth to a child gives you any intrinsic rights over it. Communal raising of children should be instituted to prevent parents' neurosci from being passed on. I mean, good Ford!
Stephen
Banned
OOC: Well me neither but I was trying to think of something which would make this DBWI semi plausable.