The mills of the economy grind away without consulting ideologies.
— Bitter Crank

The economy is the most concrete form there is of how ideology is operating in a given society. I don't know about feminists "blaming" patriarchy; the ones I've read describe its operations in a given social realm or institution. — uncanni

Your formulation is spot on Marx.

But Capitalism isn't about men exploiting women. It's about capitalists exploiting everybody -- men, women, and children -- the earth itself -- for the purpose of maximizing profit. Capitalism is the equal-opportunity abuser, and whether men or women are on the board of directors or in the executive suite makes little difference.

I still think "patriarchy" is a noun naming a non-existent phenomenon which is the Number One imaginary Bogeyman of feminists..

I must say I agree, though I think there is the problem of the patriarchal subjugation of women by men in certain religions.

I still think "patriarchy" is a noun naming a non-existent phenomenon which is the Number One imaginary Bogeyman of feminists. — Bitter Crank

It's not that bad is it? You abstract away the specifics of the mechanism and give it a label.

Capitalism is a name for any socio-economic system in which goods are produced for monetary profit. There are lots of flavours united under one banner. Capitalism the number one imaginary Bogeyman of socialists and Marxists and communists.

Patriarchy is a name for any socio-economic system that relatively disadvantages women. It's the number one Bogeyman of feminists.

White supremacy is a name for any socio-economic system that relatively disadvantages non-whites. It's the number one Bogeyman of western anti-racists.

All these imaginary foes that totally do not exist!

Sarcasm aside, if you want to look at intersectionality, you'll probably see that the processes united under these labels all overlap and have sub-processes of relative autonomy; that idiot down the bar complaining about the pikeys isn't just doing so because of capitalism, and that executive in charge of performance review structure isn't just prejudiced because of racism or sexism. The sites of overlap are intersections.

If you wanna look whether there are novel features in the intersections, you have to go and look. So trans people, trans in non-white communities in America get assaulted a lot more than trans in white communities. Why? Capitalism! Class! Base! Superstructure! Yeah right. More complicated than that.

You can't have it both ways. Either "patriarchy" exists or it doesn't. Indeed, some religions restrict women more than others, but even within Islam, there is a fairly broad range of relationships between males and females with respect to women's independence.

There is no debate that males tend to be more powerful, more dominant, and so forth. Biology makes it difficult for the male of any species to assure his genetic contribution. In humans this has resulted in women being controlled by men. Yada yada yada -- you know the drill.

But "patriarchy" is the practice of an ideology, projected backwards onto history. It's a great theory because it is vaporous and can claim anything it wants. (And patriarchy is by no means the only vaporous theory that gets regular use.)

You can't have it both ways. Either "patriarchy" exists or it doesn't. Indeed, some religions restrict women more than others, but even within Islam, there is a fairly broad range of relationships between males and females with respect to women's independence.

There is no debate that males tend to be more powerful, more dominant, and so forth. Biology makes it difficult for the male of any species to assure his genetic contribution. In humans this has resulted in women being controlled by men. Yada yada yada -- you know the drill.

But "patriarchy" is the practice of an ideology, projected backwards onto history. It's a great theory because it is vaporous and can claim anything it wants. (And patriarchy is by no means the only vaporous theory that gets regular use.)

Yes, I don’t think the noun “patriarchy” has any validity or evidence in support of it. “Patriarchal”, as an adjective in anthropology, does have some validity I think, when it describes situations where men rule over women as a matter of principle.

Sounds like you agree that what is generally understood to be the definition of patriarchy exists, you just don't like the label.

But Capitalism isn't about men exploiting women — Bitter Crank

I do not agree: I see capitalism as quite a patriarchal edifice, along with all the other major institutions. I shouldn't have to repeat that it's all been controlled almost exclusively by men, with very few exceptions. No one ever said that men have a problem exploiting other men. The fundamental power paradigm throughout history privileges male strength and aggression (duh!!) and subordinates the role of those who menstruate and carry babies for 9 months. Clearly menstruation and pregnancy are going to limit certain kinds of activities for limited periods of time, but what does that mean? That women can't reason? That they aren't as smart, if not more so? That they shouldn't be Pope or study Torah at a Yeshiva? No one ever talks about mens' moodiness like they do about women, but violent, aggressive men are extremely moody. Just a different kind of moodiness.

The question for me becomes, Would things have been any different had men and women shared equal power and voice throughout history? Can estrogen claim a place beside testosterone, or is that irrelevant? What about the dearth of estrogen in post-menopausal women?

I perceive many patriarchal characteristics in most public women: patriarchy is the master brain-washer.

I do not agree: I see capitalism as quite a patriarchal edifice, along with all the other major institutions. I shouldn't have to repeat that it's all been controlled almost exclusively by men, with very few exceptions. No one ever said that men have a problem exploiting other men. The fundamental power paradigm throughout history privileges male strength and aggression (duh!!) and subordinates the role of those who menstruate and carry babies for 9 months. Clearly menstruation and pregnancy are going to limit certain kinds of activities for limited periods of time, but what does that mean? That women can't reason? That they aren't as smart, if not more so? That they shouldn't be Pope or study Torah at a Yeshiva? No one ever talks about mens' moodiness like they do about women, but violent, aggressive men are extremely moody. Just a different kind of moodiness.

The question for me becomes, Would things have been any different had men and women shared equal power and voice throughout history? Can estrogen claim a place beside testosterone, or is that irrelevant? What about the dearth of estrogen in post-menopausal women?

I perceive many patriarchal characteristics in most public women: patriarchy is the master brain-washer. — uncanni

I see a lot of issues that have to be parsed out here:

1) How fundamentally different are women and men in terms of human thought-process and proneness to aggression? If it is fundamentally different, is it biological or social for most of it? Would a women's economy really be that much different than a man's? Is this binary division arbitrary or falsely correlated?

2) If women acted aggressively like a man, are they "patriarchal"? What if throughout history, all women acted like what is traditionally attributed to men when in power? Would that change things? Would that even be called patriarchy or would that just be called "an inclination for domination in power and control"?

I still think "patriarchy" is a noun naming a non-existent phenomenon which is the Number One imaginary Bogeyman of feminists. — Bitter Crank

I haven't kept up with this discussion, so I was just going through your comments to see what you had to say. I have a question about the statement above. Unless my memory is off, in a previous discussion you said that women are oppressed, which I disagreed with. How does that tie in with your statement about patriarchy?

1) How fundamentally different are women and men in terms of human thought-process and proneness to aggression? If it is fundamentally different, is it biological or social for most of it? Would a women's economy really be that much different than a man's? Is this binary division arbitrary or falsely correlated?

2) If women acted aggressively like a man, are they "patriarchal"? What if throughout history, all women acted like what is traditionally attributed to men when in power? Would that change things? Would that even be called patriarchy or would that just be called "an inclination for domination in power and control"? — schopenhauer1

1. I won't make any generalizations about men and women thinking and behaving differently, because it's just too easy to disprove and find the exceptions to the rules. I do think the psychic economy is very different for men and women; I tend to conclude that this is mostly due to socialization and have no idea how much of it is biological.

2. Your "what if": If men and women had had equal share in composing the philosophical and religious texts, along with all other literature; if they had equal share in establishing all the socio-cultural institutions; if they had chosen to divide all realms of labor equally; if they had shared power and decision-making equally...
There would have been no need for the term patriarchy, for the founding mothers and fathers would have shared equal responsibility for the results.

There would have been no need for the term patriarchy, for the founding mothers and fathers would have shared equal responsibility for the results. — uncanni

That's a point that might negate the idea that patriarchy itself is bad. Perhaps it is just control itself. Now sharing power is definitely a problem, but that might be something that can be decoupled from the control aspect itself.

I perceive many patriarchal characteristics in most public women: patriarchy is the master brain-washer. — uncanni

It brainwashed you, apparently.

Which is why "patriarchy" is meaningless. If a few women are just as patriarchal as men and oppress most women, if a few men oppress most other men as much as they oppress women, then clearly there must be some other principle at work besides hormones and genitals. At the present time (present = last 400 years, more or less) human economic function has become dominant. The kind of work we do defines us, and most of us are defined as the class which labors to produce surplus value, and outside of that function, we have little value to the elite. We (about 95% of the male and female population) are oppressed by a small minority of men and women. Capitalism isn't patriarchy.

In Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times – 1996, Elizabeth Wayland Barber asks the question, "Why were women at home taking care of children and spending much of the day weaving, when men were out and about hunting, chopping, and digging? Her answer is that weaving was safely compatible with child rearing, in ways which hunting, chopping, and digging were not. (20,000 years ago is towards the end of the hunting / gathering stage of activity which had gone on for maybe 300,000 years.). She notes that at least some women developed economic independence in this model. We know this from 4,000 - 5,000 year old records on clay tablets from Babylonia (et al) recording directives of "business women" to male trading agents in other cities, telling them what to buy.

Later on after agriculture and animals came together, and horses, cows, goats, pigs, etc. were domesticated, and tillage and harvesting replaced hunting and gathering, men's work was more dangerous for children because of the large animals and tools involved.

Primate males evolved into larger and stronger animals than primate females. That's our pattern too. Men have tended to do heavier, harder, more dangerous labor, the activities of which would put little children at risk.

Feminists hate the idea that biology is destiny. In some ways it is, like it or not: pregnancy and lactation are just not fairly distributed between men and women. At least some of what is biologically sensible for men isn't biologically sensible for women.

I don't know what you meant in saying women are not oppressed. In some contexts they are clearly not oppressed; in some contexts they are very much oppressed. The same could be said of men. I'm not denying that women are oppressed here; I'm saying that "patriarchy" isn't real. What oppresses men and women these days are the usual culprits: corporations, churches, and states--all large institutions with domination-of-everything-else on their agenda.

I'm not denying that women are oppressed here; I'm saying that "patriarchy" isn't real. What oppresses men and women these days are the usual culprits: corporations, churches, and states--all large institutions with domination-of-everything-else on their agenda. — Bitter Crank

I don't remember the context of our back and forth. Maybe I misunderstood. I guess I think when people say that women are oppressed, that means that they are oppressed by men. Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions, at least in your case.

That's a point that might negate the idea that patriarchy itself is bad. — schopenhauer1

But it just so happens that our world has been largely man-controlled, and history tells the story of men behaving badly on the grand stage of things. There's no current need to neuter the term when men systematically kept women outside of all spheres of power and cultural creation.

Patriarchy refers to a feature of society and culture in which women are oppressed or devalued in relation to men. It isn't one specific action which men take against women (though those do happen), but a feature of certain social contexts and relations. In this respect, participation in it or its presence is not limited to or divided on sex and gender lines.

Our capitalism is a patriarchy because it has these relations, whether they are enacted by men or women. This question isn't about whether someone belongs to a virtuous sex or gender, it's about how they understand and treat women. Women can partake in this just as much as men.

Your hostility is such a turn off that I can't be bothered to read your response to me. You are a hater.

@Bitter Crank
I have to say I disagree with you here. Bitter gave a very cogent response to you there. If he was being antagonistic or hostile, he would have been that, but he gave you a lot of justification for his ideas there.

Feminists hate the idea that biology is destiny. In some ways it is, like it or not: pregnancy and lactation are just not fairly distributed between men and women. At least some of what is biologically sensible for men isn't biologically sensible for women. — Bitter Crank

Feminists do not deny biology. In fact, most feminists argue for women's rights based on biology, like when they push for lactation rooms in workplaces and abortion rights for women.

But it just so happens that our world has been largely man-controlled, and history tells the story of men behaving badly on the grand stage of things. There's no current need to neuter the term when men systematically kept women outside of all spheres of power and cultural creation. — uncanni

Yes but I think we should separate two aspects- the control aspect and the equality aspect. If men and women controlled the economy, and it was oppressive, then it is just oppression, not patriarchy. Patriarchy only pertains to the equality aspect. That is to say, are men and women getting the fair share of power and access to power.. However, the actual use of that power for whatever system itself can be wielded in any which way by male or female. A female might as well back capitalist tendencies as much as male. There is nothing male about capitalism or communism or any other economic ism really. If I came up with a way of life, and I'm male, that doesn't mean the ism is male, and thus a patriarchy.

Our capitalism is a patriarchy because it has these relations, whether they are enacted by men or women. This question isn't about whether someone belongs to a virtuous sex or gender, it's about how they understand and treat women. Women can partake in this just as much as men. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't believe that our society is a patriarchy and I don't believe women in the US are oppressed as a class. I can understand @Bitter Crank's point that woman are oppressed in the sense that everyone who is not in power is oppressed. Pardon if I've misstated your position BC.

We can agree to disagree: I don't engage with insulting or hostile people.

I am convinced that a culture of hostility dominates here and acts as the fragile mask in front of an awful lot of misery and insecurity. When people have to go out of their way to put others down, I have to conclude they're miserable beings.

Again: we don't know how it would have been had men and women shared power equally. I won't build an argument on speculation, but history leads me to draw various conclusions.

Research demonstrates that men are more prone to suffer from malignant narcissism, Machiavellianism and sociopathy/psychopathy than women.

But it just so happens that our world has been largely man-controlled, and history tells the story of men behaving badly on the grand stage of things. There's no current need to neuter the term when men systematically kept women outside of all spheres of power and cultural creation. — uncanni

Women raise all these terrible men, and yet you want to take away their responsibility for their own lives and the consequences of their actions. That's the opposite of showing respect. Your position relegates women to the status of children. I hang around with strong, opinionated, stubborn women. They would not tolerate anyone telling them that.

Hey, wait a minute - aren't you a strong, opinionated, stubborn woman?

I see what you are saying, and it's a very good point!! But I never took responsibility away from women: I wasn't talking about women as mothers and home makers throughout history. I never suggested that women are pure victims.

I think I'm strong; I will express and argue my opinions and my beliefs without trying to force them on anyone; but am I stubborn? I don't think I'm a particularly stubborn person.

I truly love a mobile, enlightening dialogue with others whom I can take seriously. I hate interacting with rigid, authoritarian minds who shout at you like Hitler.

I don't think I'm a particularly stubborn person. — uncanni

I put that in for rhetorical purposes. I have seen that you are strong and opinionated. It just didn't feel right to leave out the stubborn part. For the record, I don't consider stubbornness a vice. Ok, ok, I'll say "strong-willed."

And for the record, @Bitter Crank is as far from a hater as there is on this forum.

There's no current need to neuter the term when men systematically kept women outside of all spheres of power and cultural creation — uncanni

All spheres... That's too sweeping a term, particularly in the area of cultural creation. Hollywood isn't the world.

Women have gained a great deal of purchase in politics in some large constituencies, like the European Union. Women played a much larger role in the sciences, for instance, and in government in the USSR. True enough, there were once zero women voting in the US and UK, but that has changed, you probably noticed (though I'm not claiming the vote is much access to power, if it is access at all). Women played a zero to almost no roll in government in the US up to 1920, but over the last century that has changed. Around a quarter of congress are presently women. that's a huge change over 50 years ago, when there were 15 altogether, and zero a century ago.

Power is conservative and change in who wields power is slow. Progress is being made.

What do you mean by "cultural creation"?

It seems like women do play a a fairly large role in culture--from creation to criticism. The contribution of women in cultural production has certainly increased a great deal in the last century, last 50 years, last 25 years.

Women can partake in this just as much as men. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But the assumption always seems to lurk in the second row (not in the distant background) that it is women who suffer, whether women partake in the oppressing or not.

It seems clear that in the history of capitalism--hell! The history of the world--the suffering has been abundant for both sexes, whether women have participated in oppressing or not. Capitalisms concern for the family is two fold: One that they consume, and that they reproduce the culture--maybe capitalist bosses are concerned about reproducing patriarchy, but mostly it seems like they are concerned with reproducing a population who fit into the capitalist system of production--eager consumers and docile workers.

I'm not a female or a feminist, so... I probably don't get "patriarchy", or maybe I have patriarchal genes or a patriarchal biome, or something.

The history of the world--the suffering has been abundant for both sexes — Bitter Crank

Sure, there's been suffering on both sides, particularly when you bring in class.

But women of all classes have historically been considered property of their husbands. Men of all classes have historically perhaps been beaten down by the next higher up man, but could in turn beat down on their women.

↪Bitter Crank Your hostility is such a turn off that I can't be bothered to read your response to me. You are a hater. — uncanni

You feel what you feel, but disagreement with your views really shouldn't be taken as evidence of hostility or hate.